2012's Worst Paying College Degrees

Payscale.com analyzed the data in its online salary database and has revealed the college degrees that go along with the jobs that have the lowest median pay for their respective career professionals in its 2012-13 College Salary Report. Note - these figures represent the typical annual combination of pay, bonuses, commissions and profit sharing earned by people who have been successful in working in these fields for at least 10 years and were willing to participate in Payscale.com's survey, which means the reported median incomes will likely be inflated above each field's actual median incomes....

College Degree		Median Annual Salary
	Child and Family Studies	$37,700
	Social Work	$45,300
	Elementary Education	$46,000
	Human Development	$47,800
	Special Education	$48,900
	Culinary Arts	$49,700
	Athletic Training	$49,800

So what possesses people to take out big student loans to go into professions like these that offer such little compensation? Payscale.com offers the following insight:

To translate, the people in these majors are perhaps so disconnected from reality that they do not recognize that the reason their trades provide so little return on their educational investment is because they really do not require unique ability, which is why society does not reward them with greater compensation.

These people are then exploited by the higher education establishment, which really does know better, but can't help noticing that these same people are willing to pay nearly the same amount of money for their college degrees as do people in careers that society values a lot more.

And let's not forget the role of the U.S. federal government in guaranteeing and issuing student loans, which has its own ulterior motives for pushing higher education that offers little real benefit to society.

Elsewhere on the Web

Say what you will about the careers that go with the degrees above, but at least many of the people who pursue these degrees might actually get jobs in their fields of study, if only low paying ones. Kiplinger's Caitlin Dewey takes things several steps further and identifies the college degrees in Payscale.com's database that combine low pay with high rates of unemployment for their graduates!

Also, this isn't just an American phenomenon. Don't miss this perspective by a recent PhD graduate in Britain who complains that the "real world" doesn't understand or appreciate their skills.

The substrate for a fundamental and historical transformation in education exists. With the taxonomic and hierarchical organization of knowledge now available to anyone for free, the days of the importance of the traditional (and expensive) university and the paper degree are in fact quite numbered. Electronic certification for competency in a given subject matter? Free - to anyone willing to put forth the rigor necessary to learn the material and earn it. Paper degrees that cost hundreds of thousands of dollars and leave families subject to harassment by subhuman bill collectors will be a thing of the past.

Combine

1) the crushing cost of traditional eduction, which filters out otherwise quite talented and capable students;
2) the built-in bias/indoctrination that lards traditional education; and
3) the ubiquity of free, open-source, copyleft information

and you can see a perfect storm on the horizon.

As this new paradigm gains ascendancy, and with its high degree of specialization determined by the learner (as opposed to cookie-cutter education), and with business owners themselves taking a structured autodidactic approach to learning and therefore preferring it in their colleagues/employees, the traditional university will fade into a more limited and specialized role.

It will, for many of us, be a most welcomed day, a day of true equal opportunity, a day that demarcates the end of the Ivy League hegemony - a day when merit is determined by objective knowledge. For some, of course, the day will not be so welcomed because they will be expected to demonstrate skill now, today, rather than point to a piece of paper earned 20 years ago. For all, it will be wonderful as it will raise overall competition and productivity.

Then - when America jettisons the traditional pedagogic paradigms in favor of one which leverages the advantages of the 21st Century - we can push toward restoring American exceptionalism in the world.

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