Education as an Investment

Education in our society is what has brought us out of the caves and into the light of a technological enhanced world. An educated society is a productive and creative society. The more educated the people of a civilization are, the more productive and valuable these people are to increasing the GNP (Gross National Product). (Case, 2009) The investment into education of employees and the general public is a delayed, long term investment. There are short-term and long-term gains in any investment, whether it is corn, wheat, property or people. Countries that encourage and support education of their people, output from those graduating college is over a $1 million of additional income in a lifetime to society.

Today people are going back to school to become reeducated due to the transition of our society from an industrial based economy to a technological based economy. People, who have lost their jobs in the automotive industry assembly lines, today have to learn about computers and the software used with it in a business or technological environment. Our country realized the great long term benefit of having higher educated people; financial aid is available to pay for the increasingly high cost of online education and university learning. Many aerospace programs require a percentage of PhD, master’s degrees, and associates degrees to validate their defense projects. New breakthroughs are occurring everyday in the medical field, engineering field, and physics field, all due to highly trained and educated people who have graduated from top notch universities. They are contributing breakthroughs such as cures for many of man’s diseases, new consumer electronics devices such as LED television, Nano-technology to better energy solutions in solar, geothermal, wind, fuel cell, and other forms of energy generation.

We have outsourced over 20 million jobs over the last twenty years, to reduce the labor cost by having goods manufactured in China, India, Vietnam, Philippines, and other countries around the world. We have become a compartmental economy, with specific goods made in every country from around the world. The United States is still the world’s innovator of more patents than any other country in the world due work and living environment. Human capital is based upon knowledge, skills and talents of people. (Case, 2009). The better educated people are the higher the human capital worth. People in high level jobs and less desirable jobs are those that include compensating differentials. Risky jobs should pay higher wages, such as firemen, policemen, and lumberjack workers, but don’t due to higher degrees pay higher salaried jobs. Economic income increases with high net assets in a family with a higher skill set. In countries with the highest poverty is directly proportional to lower educational levels of its people. When a higher percentage of people are educated you have lower poverty levels due to those people being marketable for employment. Risk aversion through rawlsian justice argues that by having a society of highly trained people reduces the social problems that comes with poverty, high unemployment and increased crime. (Case,2009) When our society starts to invest as much money into reeducating it people as the defense budget, we reduce unemployment compensation payout, public assistance, Medicare, and Medicaid payouts. We should take notice of countries with high output of engineers and doctors compared to the United States, more opportunities are available for the most educated.

Over 100,000 engineers and doctors are graduating from India and China every year, and they want to work in the United States due to the career and monetary opportunities.  These graduated understand that by being well educated and employed in high position jobs they have improved their quality of life, standard of living, and in positions to help solve many of the world’s economic, and social problems.

The best defense for this nation is not more money into the Department of Defense but into education. Education should be put in a defense category, because the best defense from any invasion or take over is for the masses to be educated and enlightening regarding all areas of understanding in college. A core curriculum in basic subject matters such as: psychology, philosophy, economics, politics, medicine, physics, chemistry, engineering, computers, hardware and software, are essential to expose the student to all areas of potential academic discipline the student may chose for a career.

Learning is a continual lifelong endeavor that is thorough out one’s life. After high school and college, the more you learn, the more valuable an asset you are as a resource at your job. The United States has to change its youth’s belief that we are a leisure based economy and opportunities should be given to everyone. We need to revamp our public school system which is behind the rest of the world. There are millions of American youth that graduate with no knowledge of financial management or with a skill set to get a job. In today’s society it is almost mandatory to get a good paying jobs you must have a bachelors or masters degree in a marketable field. Today, with the internet, today’s youth can see what jobs are available today in any field due to online sites as: www.careerbuilder.com, www.indeed.com, www.dice.com, www.theladder.com, and www.monster.com. These are just a few of hundreds of sites for the career graduate can find gainful employment.

In today’s world wide repression, even the best educated individuals need a diverse and often have expertise in multi-fields to be competitive in today’s workplace. Continuing your education, on campus, and off, will always have long term payoff for a better quality of life and better future. We are all potentially diamonds in the rough; education provides those tools to polish our surfaces and discover the brilliance that lies beneath the surface of our potential contributions to society.

References

Beyer, C. B. ( Summer 2010). Investor Education: What's Broken and How to Fix It. The Journal of Wealth Management. , London:. Vol. 13, Iss. 1; p. 11 (6 pages).

Case, F. ,. (2009). Principles of Economics. Upper Saddle Hill, NJ: Prentice Hill.

Cobb, J. (1994, Aug 1-7,). Foreign beer puts the heat on the Big Four. Japan Times (International). , pp. Vol. 34, Iss. 31; p. 13 (1 page).

Herbert Dawid, M. K. (Amsterdam: Aug 2010.). Innovation threats and strategic responses in oligopoly markets. Journal of Economic Behavior & Organization , Vol. 75, Iss. 2; p. 203.