People in America live in a world that is dominated by a pretty merciless and unforgiving form of capitalism. By the way, this isn't another post from me to begrudge capitalism and its many faults. On the contrary, I'm just stating my opinion of how things are. In my own particular city, the homeless population has tripled in just five years from what it was. This seems to be a real-world example of how brutal the capitalist system is and how money is really the most important commodity in today's world (at least the one in America).
So that being said, the reason I always thought one would want to attend an elite university, school, or college or whatever was because it affected your bottom line. It turned into real world money. It was an investment in a person's future. However, times have changed. I don't think it's an investment anymore. Here's my story of how I came to that conclusion.
I have a friend who is sending her son to one of these to get really good at music, and I wonder what the end game is. I don't think he's enjoying it as much as "she" thinks he is, being away from family, and having difficulty making friends and social connections (at least ones that last longer than a year). If it were me, I'd be pretty unhappy with an identical situation. I'd be afraid to tell my mom who has been whipping this dream for a long time now (is it my dream or is it hers?). Furthermore, I'd be in competition with any friends I'd make along the way for a job at a symphony. That fate has gotta be awful. Imagine walking in and seeing your friend (for example) from school and knowing that they are only hiring one viola player and that you need to compete with them for the job and that one of you is going to walk away a loser.
In addition to that, I looked up the salaries of professional orchestra players, because I'm curious. They make about $110,000 a year. I myself make about $90,000 a year. That's only a $10.00 per hour difference over a 40-hour work week than myself (before taxes take a bite), which could easily be made up by renting out a room or doing some Doordash. I graduated from the University of Idaho with a Bachelor's degree in English and live in a middle-class home in good old South Salt Lake City. I drive 24-year old vehicles that I maintain well, and I live paycheck to paycheck due to mortgage payments, insurance payments, and everything else that's inflated. So, a person that maybe gets into an elite school...gonna pick on Julliard for a second...and graduates with all that music training after spending hundreds of thousands of dollars for that education gets what? A gateway into the middle-class lifestyle that I already live at? How does any of that make sense?
I see this stuff all the time. People blowing hundreds of thousands of dollars on educations only to just get a job that doesn't pay much more than a Master's degree would that you could get in a community college. There is also trade school, which is far cheaper than Julliard. People who are HVAC certified or who are electricians around here are making 100K plus a year instantly. Oh and that middle class home that I live in? It is now valued at $750,000. In order to take on a $750,000 mortgage, you need to bring in about $250,000 to $300,000 per year as a household. That means that if you are a couple that MANAGES to stay together (and that's a tough one), both of you need to work and have salaries in the $150,000 range. Graduates from elite schools are not getting these kinds of jobs unless they are the exception rather than the rule. And let's just say you do somehow manage to be the exception. Well congratulations! You can now afford to live in the same middle-class home that Mike (me) lives in and you too have won the right to drive 24-year-old cars.
None of this makes any sense anymore. Maybe it used to back in the 70's and 80's. The average wage for Americans was $40,000 a year, and you were considered "well-to-do" at $60,000. Now, $100,000 a year is average. I think I read on Business Week that in many parts of the country, making $60,000 is considered low income now. But the thing is, I think industries are really struggling with paying people more than $100,000 a year in the same manner as they always used to. Only inflation has taken a lot out of the value out of those wages. "I make six figures now" is now "congratulations, you still can't afford a home and will probably rent all of your life."
So, why do people still send their kids to these schools? Is it ego? Is it low self-esteem? Is it narcissism, because they get a credential that allows them to feel good about themselves? They still end up in a middle-class home driving vehicles they can't afford to replace because new cars are topping $60,000. I suppose they could buy a cheap Hyundai, but that doesn't seem to fit the graduate of Harvard or Yale now does it? One of these things is not like the other. And what people can afford versus the costs of their educations (and the other price of said education) is breaking the logic circuits of my brain. And what's more is that these people who attend these elite schools and who indeed end up in the Middle Class look down on their neighbors, because they feel that they "shouldn't" be mixing with the commoners. But that's the Catch-22. They themselves ended up a "commoner" and the elite school didn't do what they thought it was going to do for them. This causes mental illness as they get anxiety and depression, because no one around them is good enough for them, and they secretly know that it all doesn't make sense. "Because I accomplished this and this...I should have different neighbors? Why am I not neighbors with Steven Spielberg? Why am I not friends with Timothee Chalamet?"
And Masterclasses? What a joke those things are. In short, Masterclass consists largely of handsomely compensated celebrities who are exceptional within their fields because of innate talent or even genius, innate drive, and plenty of resources to succeed so that they can try to pass on what they know to others who have none of those qualities. Mozart is famous for responding to a person who asked him how to write a symphony when he suggested that they start with something much simpler, like a concerto. The person said to Mozart, "But you write many symphonies." And Mozart replied, "Yes, but I didn't have to ask how to do it." It's not a slam, but just truth. People somehow get it into their heads that just because they observe one person doing an incredible thing that it is somehow repeatable by them. But it usually isn't, and people would be much better off knowing what their limitations are, because every person is different.
Anyway, it may sound that I'm anti-education. I'm not. I love education. But what I don't understand is the incredible costs of some education. It's almost like people don't plot out their endgame. Or they think that their rugrat is a prince or princess (they are not) and no matter what the cost...THEY ARE WORTH IT! The Last of Us just this week had an excellent example of what I'm saying in the characters of Henry and Sam (Spoiler alert).
Henry threw a really good man and a solid leader under the bus (he was murdered) so that he could get his little brother Sam the leukemia treatment he needed to live. This led to extreme anger and revenge from the survivors of the good man that was murdered. These survivors literally tore post-apocalyptic Kansas City apart looking for Henry and Sam to punish them for what they did. This led to hundreds of deaths from bullets and violence, because they awoke a huge hive of zombies that killed them all. And then Sam got bit anyway, ended up a zombie that his brother had to put down. And then his brother was so filled with guilt and depression that he committed suicide. It was a spectacular example of, "I'm going to do everything I can for a brat and I don't care what it costs!!!" And then it ends up costing hundreds and hundreds of lives, and it is just spectacularly stupid and awful.
Anyway, it's like we now have a society of unhinged parents who think that their darlings are worth everything. No price is too high. Parents no longer ask the important question: what is the final thing that I expect from educating myself in this way? Is the endgame to get a middle class lifestyle? If that is the case, then there are easier and cheaper ways to go about doing this. If the endgame is to be rich and famous, then you are going to need more than education. You probably need good looks, luck, and honestly...probably a willingness to allow yourself to be exploited by rich and powerful people in ways you may not be comfortable with. And that's just the truth as I see it. I wish someone could make sense of elite schools for me. I'd sure be willing to listen. I'd like to believe that they aren't completely useless, at least as far as capitalism is concerned. The world has changed significantly in the last fifty years and what elite schools offer compared to what you can just get with a vocational education has narrowed to the point where the actual things you can buy with the money you get from your job aren't all that different unless you can make millions of dollars a year. But the jobs for people who make millions of dollars a year will always belong to the people (like Mozart) who never needed the education to begin with, because they could just "do it."
I think the flaw in your thinking is that Julliard is not really like a college. It's an arts school so you can't really compare it with trade school to learn how to fix air conditioners. That's apples and oranges. There is still probably some bragging rights in going to Julliard for the kid and the parents because it's a prestigious school.
ReplyDeleteFor most people it's like why they wear Nikes or carry an iPhone or drive a Mercedes when a cheaper brand would do just as well--if not better. You can probably say the same for Ivies like Harvard and Yale.
For writers there are prestigious programs like the University of Iowa Writing Workshop. A lot of talented writers have gone there as students and instructors like Kurt Vonnegut and John Irving. If I go there and then afterwards I'm querying my novel, do I have a better chance than if I went to Saginaw Valley State University? Probably. Because at least in writing circles it's a high-valued brand name. And there's still probably a good ol boy (and girl) network so the agent or editor I query might have gone there. They might at least be acquainted with it enough that they'd think I might be as good as those famous writers who have been associated with that.
So when you send your kid to Julliard, you're paying for the brand name more than anything.
@Pat: Quick Google search turned up this: "After graduating from The Juilliard School, some of the top-earning careers students pursue include Art, Drama, and Music Teachers, Postsecondary ($95,510), Music Directors and Composers ($48,790), and Actors ($)." Let's tear apart those stats for a moment. The biggest one mentioned is "postsecondary." That gig paid $95,000. That's like $5,000 more than I make right now with my bachelor's degree from the University of Idaho. It's also less than beginning HVAC people make. So, that's where my brain break is happening. It doesn't make sense. What's the point of "elite" if when you graduate you cannot be "elite" in capitalist America?
Delete@Pat: I had a few more thoughts. In trying to clarify what I've said in my post above, what I'm getting at is that inflation (in housing in particular) has ruined everything. People graduating from elite schools WILL NOT be able to afford even what was considered a middleclass home in 2010. If you graduate from Yale or you graduate from Juilliard, and the job that you end up getting helps pay for a MOBILE HOME. It is not "Elite" anymore. And going to these schools just for the "street cred" to be able to flash a name around is going to do nothing but create a bunch of poor people who think that they are better than everyone else. Who knows, they may in fact be smarter and more talented. But what they get paid will be able to purchase the same crap that a person who attended a vocational trade school can purchase. And how do you think that is going to play out when one person tries super hard to get mediocre returns, and another person plays the game on easy mode and gets the same result? It's going to make people resentful, angry, depressed, anxious, lonely, and it is all going to feed back into our society that is already starting to collapse. It's f'ing nuts, and something has got to change.
DeleteYou reminded me of a meme someone shared once on Facebook. In one panel an old guy is screaming at people basically from the 60s-2010s: You have to go to college and get a degree! Then in the other panel the same old guy is screaming in 2016: You should have gone to trade school! That wasn't it exactly, but you get the gist: people our age were always told we had to go to college and get a degree in some high-paying field like law, medicine, or business. Then all the sudden they changed the playbook on us and now we're supposed to go to trade school to fix air conditioners or become plumbers. Which besides being able to bend over and show my crack, I wouldn't really have much value at plumbing, or probably air conditioner repair--or most musical instruments for that matter.
DeleteColleges charging so much that students are in debt basically forever is more short-term thinking. I mean if you're spending your whole life paying off student loans, how are you supposed to have kids who can then go to college?
Then there's the fact Ivies like Harvard and Yale have such high endowments they could basically educate every student there for free and still have plenty to spare. But in capitalism you think about today's profits and future profits are someone else's problem.
@Pat: If I'm right, and to be "elite" now and the near future means you have to pull down millions of dollars a year, I now see a deep irony that was previously invisible to me. The 1% of the 1% will be able to afford homes and wonderful vacations, and the 99.9% of everybody else will essentially live in communist conditions. The concert musicians, the doctors, the lawyers, the writers who only make a million a year... all of those people will have the same crap. Same mobile home, same dinner, same living paycheck to paycheck. The 1% of the 1% will have all the nice stuff, because three bedroom homes will cost three million dollars and new cars will start at $120,000. We will see doctors driving a 24-year-old car. They went to "Yale" so that's what they could afford. It just happens to be the same as what a University of Idaho education gets you too because there's a limit to how much employers can actually dish out in wages before everything just collapses. We got here because unhinged lucky people drove the prices of everything through the roof, so that no matter what your wages are, if you're on "salary" and not just being handed millions, it doesn't matter. It's like communism driven by capitalism...an enforced sameness brought around by greed that hits a ceiling of what people can afford to pay. Of course this flies in the face of all those capitalist screamers who (over the years) said that capitalism was a hedge against people all living the same and that it was communism that stifled innovation. "People have to have a reason to invent." Well those "reasons" aren't going to matter much when your education doesn't provide a huge bump over the next guy with a poor ass education.
DeleteI'm so glad I didn't go to a big name school. I think things are going to change. Well, I hope things are going to change...
ReplyDeleteSome people need the big name. It is bragging rights.