College?

While I'm a very big proponent of a higher education, it should be kept in mind that a higher education, namely college, isn't necessary for success. What is in you, rather, is the key to success.

15 Successful Entrepreneurs Who Didn't Need College

Going and Graduating From College: How Does Your Country Stack Up?

A brief piece over at The Economist offers some insight into college entry and graduation rates at a cross section of countries. Check it out!

Potpourri: A Couple Current Relevant New Stories

Today I thought I would share some news items currently filling up my “Blog Content” bookmarks folder in Firefox. Aside from the news, I might just have a perspective or other opinion to offer on the matter. Read on to find out!

Australian Survey Shows That Men Are Happiest With Educated Wives

From a survey reported in the Sydney Morning Herald reports:

“Every extra year of education a wife has under her belt significantly increases the chances her husband will report being highly satisfied with life. But Shane Mathew Worner, of the Australian National University’s economics program, says it may be that an educated woman’s earning power is her biggest asset.”

This only goes to reinforce a point that I’ve been making for years regarding men and women: Men—you don’t necessarily want to marry the hot girl that doesn’t have a clue what she’s talking about. Sooner or later any novelty or benefit of her “hotness” will wear off. When you get past that, you may want to carry on a civilized conversation about something, I don’t know, educated. While you can certainly set your sights on the beautiful woman in the room, it might be wise to make sure that she hasn’t checked her gray matter at the door.

Why Slim People Dislike the Overweight

This is an interesting one from the University of British Columbia:

“Antipathy toward obese people is a powerful and pervasive prejudice in many contemporary populations. Our results reveal, for the first time, that this prejudice may be rooted in multiple, independent mechanisms. They provide the first evidence that obesity serves as a cue for pathogen infection.”

And the reaction from one half of the “Two Fat Ladies,” show that aired in the late 1990s on BBC and the Food Network, Clarissa Dickson Wright:

“In the 1960s there were a lot of bigoted people who were anti-black, anti-Jewish, anti-everything but when they couldn't get away with that any more they turned into food-Nazis instead and began attacking people who were fat.”

People tend to take on the traits and habits with those which they socialize. Does it really matter if it is a behavioral or biochemical matter?

Weekend Bonus: The Salaries of a Good Education

Once upon a time, when I was standing at a point where I was researching and mapping out my educational landscape and my future, I figured that my salary potential could essentially double with each subsequent degree: Whereas an Associate’s degree could earn me a potential of $25,000 USD per year, a Bachelors degree could earn me $50,000 USD. Going up the “degree ladder” offers initial diminishing returns, but higher potential in the long-term: Whereas the non-Ivy League MBA, for example, can earn you 35 percent more and an Ivy League MBA can earn you up to an immediate six figure salary with the potential for a five figure sign on bonus. The amounts earned by Ph.D.s vary based on discipline and sector.

A recent study shows that earnings have been increasing for college graduates: “The results suggest that the increased hiring is translating directly into higher average starting salary offers.”

Leave it to free market economics to increase the salaries of job seekers with the right qualifications in a booming economy. While salary trends multiple disciplines increased, business degrees warranted some of the best earnings increases: New economics graduates earned $47.239, new accounting graduates earned $46,718, new management graduates earned $43,701 annually, while the highest increase was to new marketing graduates who earned $40,161. The second highest increase that was able to be measured was a 4.2 percent increase in management information systems, with a salary of $47,648.

Engineering majors posted an average salary of $54,698 across all sub-disciplines: Mechanical, chemical, civil, electrical, and computer engineering.

Others:

Discipline	Salary	Percent Increase
Psychology	$31,631	3.5
Political Science	$34,590	5.9
English	$32,553	5.3
Sociology	$32,033	3.5
History	$33,768	3.3