How Not to Train a Dog

Dogs can be wonderful companions - but the key thing is, they want to be your companion, too.

I mentioned the cost of owning a pet earlier in my blog.   A pet can easily cost over $1000 a year with pet food, shots, heartworm medication, flea and tick medication, and occasional boarding and vet visits.  Easily.

Thus, it always amazes me that people on "fixed incomes" or folks who cry poverty are the first to go out and get a pet - preferably an expensive "breed" pet they pay money for - and then whine about how broke they are.   If you are only making, say, $25,000 a year, if you get a dog, you just spent 4% of your income - and that's a lot.

It also amazes me that people who work 9-5 jobs or even worse, those jobs requiring 10 or more hours a day of work (plus commuting) decide to get a dog.  Dogs are pack animals and what they want most in life is to be part of the pack, be accepted by the pack, and to always be with the pack.   They rarely are lone wolves who want to be alone.  

As a result, if you get a dog and then leave the house for 10-12 hours a day, your dog is almost guaranteed to end up neurotic.  It will eat the sofa, chew your shoes, and shit/piss all over the floor (the latter usually due to the fact that other than greyhounds, most dogs need to use the bathroom every few hours).  The owner comes home, is outraged, and gets angry with the dog, tossing him outside because as we all know, "dogs like to be outside."

No, they don't.  They really don't.   I was raised on this nonsense - my parents had dogs and promptly neglected them (their attitude toward children was about the same).   Other than the attention the pets got from us kids (which was intermittent at best) the pets were neglected and of course, neurotic.   My parents tried to "paper train" their dogs and when that didn't work out, my Dad would whip the dog with a rolled-up newspaper and "rub his nose it in" and then toss him outside.

Ahhhh...Parenting!

And I am not saying I am the perfect "dog parent" either.   When we had our Lab/Chow mix (a very active and intelligent dog - not recommended!) we used to work all day long and then come home.  The dog was happy to see us, and we would "let it outside" where it would do its business and then stand by the door wanting to come in and be with the pack.   We didn't understand why, as it was "cooped up" all day long and surely it would want to go out and "run around" - right?

Wrong.  What the dog wanted was to "be with" its owners - its pack.   And it took a long time to learn that the dog didn't need training, its owners did.

One thing we did right, in retrospect, was to crate the dog while we were away.  I made a 4' x 4' pen for the dog in the basement and when it was a puppy and we had to go out, it stayed there.   The dog learned not to soil its own space and really "house training" the dog was a non-event.  It was far less dramatic than my Dad's technique.  But in his defense, in the 1960's, that is how people trained dogs.

When I started my own practice, I could bring my dog to work, and when I started working from home, the dog was always asleep in my office, at my feet.  The dog was in dog heaven at that point - "being with" its humans almost 24 hours a day, 7 days a week.   Not surprisingly, the dog really mellowed out at that point - no more separation anxiety.

When we got our greyhound, I was working at home all the time, and it was not hard to stay with the dog most of the time.   I learned quickly that the greyhound never really wanted to go out, other than to do its business, and once in a while to run like hell for about three minutes.   The mistake people make with greyhounds is "letting them out" in the backyard and assuming the dog wants to hang out there for an hour or so.   It doesn't.  It wants to sleep at your feet.   When you leave the dog outside for hours at a time, it gets bored, digs under the fence, escapes, and gets lost.   Greyhounds do not naturally run away, it is the owners who leave them out.

All the greyhound wants in life is to "be with" and that's about it.  Most dogs are this way, if not all.  Again, they are pack animals and the instinct is very strong.   When you leave a dog alone for long periods of time, they get neurotic.

So the first thing in training a dog is to decide if a dog really fits your lifestyle.   Like it or not, a dog can be a real damper on your lifestyle, as it gets inconvenient and expensive if you want to travel.  Traveling with a dog can be problematic (which is why we have an RV) and leaving the dog behind in a kennel can make it neurotic as it suffers from separation anxiety.   Again, the extent of this depends on the dog, some are very sociable and enjoy a kennel.  Others just want to get away from other dogs.  Perhaps being raised in a kennel the greyhound is not too keen on returning to it.

Second is crating.   My neighbor just got a puppy and says that crating the dog is "like putting it in jail" and that is bullshit.   Dogs love confined spaces like caves and dens and again this is part of their instinct.   They will cherish the kennel as "their" space and go to it as a safe place when there is thunder or whatever.   Long after they are puppies, many dogs love to have a kennel or crate to retreat to.

For a puppy, the crate or kennel is a way of house training.   Dogs instinctively do not shit where they sleep which is pretty much common sense if you think about it.   In the dog den 1,000 years ago, if a dog shit in the den, it probably would be thrown out of the pack.   So they "hold it" until you get home and let them out (provided you don't leave them for 12 hours at a time).   They naturally learn not to shit where they sleep, and as they get older, they start to learn that the house is the "den" for the pack and would not dream of soiling it unless it was an emergency (which is often the fault of the human, not the dog).

Our neighbor refuses to kennel, so the dog shits and pisses all over the place.   So they tie up the dog outside "so it will go outside" and they figure that the dog's bladder and bowels will be emptied this way and the dog will somehow pick up - through osmosis - that it is supposed to "go outside" to poop.   No, this does not work.  The dog merely whines and barks while tied up outside, being bitten by mosquitoes and noseeums.  It wants to be inside, with people.

The neighbor just ignores the barking, figuring the dog will "bark itself out" and if they let it in, they are "giving in" to the dog, which needs "tough love" or something.  They also have an asinine theory that the dog will learn house training from their other dog, which is an interesting concept, but a flawed one.   The dog is just fine, it is the neighbors that need training!  Or more precisely, the neighbors should be tied up outside for a few hours with the bugs biting so they can think it over.   Maybe for a week or so.

The result of this asinine "training" technique is that the dog learns nothing other than its owners hate him for some reason.  It still poops and pees all over the house, which now smells like dogshit, literally.  The dog barks and whines and annoys the whole neighborhood.  They now resent their own dog.  The husband calls it "a little rat" which is not very nice.   Why bother getting a dog in the first place?

And again, it goes back to the idea of do you really want a dog, or is this just some passing fancy?  When you are 70 or 80 years old, it is something to think about.  A dog can be a 10-15 year commitment, and it may outlive you.   One neighbor down the street decided to "rescue" a pit bull mix puppy, which seemed cute at the rescue center.  However, once it grew up, it dragged its owner on the leash, and they fell down and broke their hip. 

Here's a hint:  Want a dog or cat that is pre-trained and a short-term commitment?  Adopt a 10 year old dog or a 15-year old cat.  They are usually very mellow and laid back and happy to be with someone at that stage in life.   And because they are not cutsy-wootsy puppies or kittens, they are much harder to adopt.   You are really being a saint in adopting an older pet - particularly when some oldster has to go into the home and has to leave a pet behind, which breaks their heart (another reason old people should think hard about getting a pet!).

But tying your dog up outside for hours at a time?  That is not "training" that is just pure neglect.

Why the US Auto Industry is Headed for Bankruptcy Again

"American" (Union) car companies still cannot compete with foreign makes.

The recession is over and everything is back to normal, including the same bad old habits that caused us to go into recession in the first place.   American car makers (which means "Union" car makers, as one of the "American" companies is Italian) are back to making huge SUVs and Pickup Trucks as the price of gas is cheap and the profit margins on these beasts is in the five-figure range.

Why make some tiny car that sells for $10,000 when you can make $10,000 profit on an SUV?  It is compelling math, but illustrates the short-sighted nature of the "US" auto industry.

Before discussing this further, we need to address exactly what is the "US auto industry" anyway.   The traditional "Big 3" automakers - GM, Ford, and Chrysler - are now international conglomerates, like most large auto companies today.  There is nothing particularly "American" about them, other than their country of incorporation.   Like any other automaker on the planet, they manufacture and sell cars and trucks in the USA, Europe, and China - and have factories in all three locations.

So why are Honda, Toyota, BMW, Mercedes, Nissan and (until recently) Volkswagen, so profitable, while the US automakers were struggling?   The answer is that there is one thing and one thing only which distinguishes the "US Auto Industry" from the rest.

The United Auto Workers.   If you see a posting online about how great "American" cars are and how all "foreign" cars are crap, you can bet it is a posting by a paid shill for the UAW.   Because American cars, by all real metrics, still do not match the quality of most foreign brands.   They do not last as long, they cost more, and they are less of a value.   And the companies are constantly in trouble financially.

Today, the "Big-3" are making money hand-over-fist because gas is under $2 a gallon and pickup trucks are selling for as much as $70,000, which means they make ten grand (at least) on each one that goes out the door.

But the "Big-3" are losing money on smaller cars.   Fiat-Chrysler is discontinuing the Dart and the 200, while Ford is moving Focus production (and other small car production) to Mexico.   GM is cranking out pickup trucks and SUVs, as fast as it can.  So long as gas is cheap, people will keep buying large trucks.   But when gas goes to $5 a gallon or the economy blips - as it did in 2008 - things will get very, very bad in a real hurry.

Fiat-Chrysler's solution is no solution.  Simply abandoning the small car market is not the answer.  If other companies can make money - worldwide - on small cars, the "Big 3" should be able to, too.   And if not, they should ponder why this is so.   And I would suggest the answer lies across town at the union hall.  Despite the relief that GM and Chrysler found through bankruptcy, their labor costs are far higher than their competitors - in terms of wages, benefits, and restrictive union rules.   Bankruptcy (and the threat of it, with Ford) granted these companies only a temporary repreive from the inevitable.

Once again, we are back in the 1990's, when cheap gas fueled SUV sales and everyone bought low-mileage enormous vehicles which were profitable for the Big-3 "American" car makers.  Meanwhile, every other car maker in the world was able to make money selling smaller vehicles and did so.   When the shit hit the fan, GM, Ford, and Chrysler found that they could not make money selling smaller cars and the smaller cars they made were not attractive as they were so de-contented (to bring down costs and compensate for overpaid labor) that no one wanted to buy them.

Even small trucks were unprofitable.   As I noted in earlier postings, when manufacturers sell products, they do so based on perceived value not on "actual cost plus a reasonable profit margin".   So a small truck, such as a Chevrolet Colorado, costs about as much to make as the big one, the Chevrolet Silver-A-Do.   They have the same number of parts, more or less, and cost the same amount of labor to assemble.  The big difference is in perceived value as the buyer thinks that a "larger" truck should cost more and a smaller truck should cost less.

As you can see, the smaller truck is thus a better value than the larger one, which is why I have a Nissan Frontier and not a Nissan Titan.   Better gas mileage is just a bonus.  Nissan has been able to stay in the small truck game by not changing the design for a decade.  They also assemble them in Mississippi, not Michigan, and pay part-time employees $15.50 an hour to screw them together.   Even then, Nissan would rather I spend $10,000 more on a V-8 Titan, as they would make a lot more money on that.

GM got back into the small or "midsize" truck business, but as others have noted, they are likely less profitable than the full-size trucks.  Ford still sells the smaller Ranger overseas, but is giving mixed signals whether it will come to America.   Fiat-Chrysler is on-again, off-again about bringing back the Dakota.   At the present time, with Dodge Rams running out the door, why bother?

Fiat-Chrysler has shed its small car lineup (or will do so shortly) and is actively looking for a buyer to take over the company - and odd thing in this era of record profits based on SUV sales.  Problem is, who would want it?  Marchionne already had lunch with my old college classmate Mary Barra, and she took a pass on the offer.   Why bother buying another American car company with outdated car designs and products that compete with their existing lineup of SUVs and Trucks?  Who wants more outdated plants and UAW workers (and their pensions?).

The same will be true for the Japanese.  Maybe Honda would like to have big trucks, but not the headache of UAW plants and bloated management (which would be a culture clash with Japanese management and union practices).   Nissan and Toyota already have full-sized trucks (at least in the half-ton range) - why would they want the Ram?

The Germans?  Well, Mercedes already tried with Chrysler and then threw in the towel.   I doubt BMW would want such a nightmare.   One problem for all the "foreign" companies is that if they bought Chrysler, the UAW would likely demand that they unionize their transplant factories already in the USA and that would be a nightmare.

The attempt to sell off Fiat Chrysler is admission that there is too much automobile manufacturing capacity in the world today.   And as the weakest link in the chain, the "American" auto companies will once again be the first to fail when the economy weakens or conditions change.

What sort of conditions?   Well, China exporting cars to the USA or even India exporting cars to the USA.   Both China and India are selling cars already (Volvo and Jaguar/Land Rover) in the United States, albeit not cars made in China and India.   But once the camel has his nose in the tent...

Things are finally back to normal after the crash of 2009.  Sadly, this means we are right back where we started from - with an overheated Real Estate market, ultra-cheap gasoline, and everyone buying monster trucks like there is no tomorrow.

Seems like we never learn, do we?

Your Sewer Line and You

Owning a house is fun, particularly when expensive things break.

The "American Dream of Home Ownership" is a false dream.   The American Dream - if there every was one - was all about succeeding on your own merits in a free economy - having opportunity to get ahead and make something of yourself, regardless of your background.   That was the dream, not owning shit.

Politicians, however, have whored that dream and made it all about owning houses - not homes, houses.  A home is where you live, and it could be a tent or a travel trailer.  A house is just a thing you buy to make into a home.

And once you've owned a few houses or condos - I've owned nine so far (including investment properties), and currently own two - the joy or thrill of having a nice refrigerator or fancy countertops sort of wears off, rather quickly.   It is like owning a car, only more expensive and harder to replace.   A car you can tow to the dealer and for a couple hundred a month get a new one.   A house, well, unless you are really, really handy, can be costly to own and repair.

And even if you are handy, you do get tired of working on houses.  And when you get older, well, you become unable to do so, so you have to hire people, and they want a lot of money to fix things.   And increasingly, the "things" a house needs are getting more and more expensive.   Time was, you could replace a central air conditioning system or a furnace for about $3000.   That was a decade ago, if not more.   Today, I am hearing neighbors paying $5,000 to $15,000 to have new systems installed, which is a lot of money.   Going fancy in the HVAC department, with zoned systems or hydronic heat can make this even more costly.

In addition to things like that are the little hidden bits that can be costly to replace only because the labor cost is so high.   I wrote before about your home's water line.  When I was young and robust, I replaced my home's water line in a weekend.  It was hard work, but not technically difficult.  The parts cost was less than $100.  It was digging that big hole that made the process so hard - and so expensive, if you had to hire someone to do it.

And every home has a water line - or a well - and eventually they need to be replaced.   When you buy a home that is 40 years old or older, this is something to think about.

Sewer lines are another issue, which I wrote about in the same posting above.   They can be very costly to replace, particularly in the North where they are buried deep.   Here in the South they almost lay them on the ground (not really, actually about 18" deep, if that).   Nevertheless, if your home is over 40 years old, you may be presented with a surprise bill one day - a bill that you may not be able to pay if you are living "paycheck to paycheck" and your credit cards are maxed out.

With a Condo, it is no different.   And our remaining condo is continually having pipe breaks, even after all the HVAC piping was replaced.  As a result, we have more special assessments and these are often unexpected and onerous, particularly again, for the homeowner who is living "paycheck to paycheck" and whose credit cards are maxed out.   Which is a good reason not to live that way, and no, you don't have to, you just have to learn to live with less.

It is also a good reason not to be "house poor" or to stress yourself financially to buy a house, as it leaves little headroom should something unexpected happen.   Buy less house and have a margin of safety.

Our sewer line is about 45 years old and it is showing signs of needing replacement.   Problem is, previous owners planted trees near the line, so they tend to extend roots into it.   The second problem is that those trees are now 150' Georgia Pine trees, that are about 24-30" in diameter and are very close to the house.   Removing the trees is a prerequisite of replacing the sewer pipe, and removing the trees (if a permit is available!) is expensive and difficult - and also tears up the yard pretty good.

By the way, the next time you think about planting a tree, think about where you are planting it.  Stay at least 10-15' away from sewer and water lines - the farther the better - and also away from the house itself.   Think about how tall the tree will get and how easy it will be to remove later on.  Remember that you may need truck access to remove tall trees.   Letting a stray pine tree grow up because you think its "cute" to have it near the house is like bringing home a lion cub because he is cuddly.   Later on, he will grow up and eat you in the night.

So what's the point of all of this?   Well, owning a home house isn't all that it is cracked up to be.  It is just owning a thing that is on a piece of land that ultimately belongs to the government.  Owning a house means you are basically a steward of it for a few years - the average being about a dozen years or so - before you move on to some other home and someone else takes over yours.

Getting emotionally involved in a house or thinking it has some special meaning is foolish thinking.   You will likely move away eventually, and move on to something else.   Over-paying for what can be a maintenance nightmare is just plain foolish.   Houses are just things, and when markets heat up and people get excited about buying "homes" they forget about things like broken furnaces and busted sewer lines and leaky roofs, and other high-dollar repairs than can quickly turn your "dream" into a nightmare - if you don't budget for these things in advance.

Worse yet, many a young homeowner houseowner (interesting term, "homeowner" - sort of like "worker" or "consumer" or "motorist", no?) will immediately rip out a brand-new or at least serviceable kitchen or bath and spend tens of thousands of dollars replacing it, without thinking about mandatory expenses like a new roof or driveway (oh right, I did that this month, too - $1250 just to replace about six feet of it), furnace, air conditioner, and so forth.

Renting may seem like a crappy deal, but on the other hand, those expenses (and worries) are not yours.  If the roof leaks, it is an inconvenience.  It is not a worry to you whether the house will fall down or what its resale value is.  There are some advantages of renting.

On the other hand, if you are astute and handy, owning a home can be a good deal, particularly if you stay for more than five years (to recoup the transaction costs) and if you can do a lot of repairs yourself.   For example, we are finally replacing our ancient wood-frame single-pane windows with vinyl replacement windows.   The overall cost for the windows is about $2200 or about $180 a window (the prices have gone up recently - the days of the $99 replacement window are gone!).   Since we are doing the installation ourselves, we are saving at least $2200 in installation costs.  And it is not all that hard to do, either - if you are handy and not afraid of taking risks.

We replaced this window in the garage first as a test to make sure the size was correct.  Sadly, when we returned to Lowes for more windows, the $138 replacement model was sold out - and they are not carrying it anymore.   Home Depot was able to order the windows, but at a slightly higher cost ($180 per window, with argon).

Of course, it doesn't end there, does it?   After rebuilding the garage door opener about four years ago, it started doing something really weird - opening and closing by itself.   An older unit, it did not use "rotating codes" and some sort of electrical interference is setting it off.   I looked online for answers, but the bottom line seemed to be that replacing the motherboard was the only solution.  A $57 solution.  A new garage door opener - basically the same model but with rotating codes and optical sensors - is available from Lowes online for $119 plus tax (our friends at Chamberlain - a closely-held family-owned company, pretty much own this market).   So, I guess it is time to replace that as well.   Might get a dollar or two for the old one on Craigslist.

UPDATE:  You can't give away a used garage door opener.  They are so cheap new, no one wants a used one.  And because of liability concerns (older ones have fewer safety sensors) even charities like "home again" won't take them!

So, what's the point of all this?  Only that owning a house is a series of expenses over time, just to maintain and keep it up - not to mention the labor of cleaning (we have an appointment with the pressure washer as well!).   The more house you own, and the more fancy it is, the higher these repair expenses will be.

This is a choice, not an obligation.  If you are not handy, the costs could be rather steep, and often unexpected.   Owning less house, or even renting are two viable alternatives.  If you don't own a house or condo, don't feel like you are missing out on some great fantastic deal.   While it can be financially advantageous to own in some circumstances, odds are you will have more money in your 401(k) than in your house, by the time you retire.

UPDATE:  After more camera work, we determined that the real problem wasn't our sewer line, which was replaced (with PVC)  about 10 years ago, but where it met the municipal system -which had clay pipe.  Tree roots were tapping into the joints at the clay pipe.  I call the sewer authority and they claim they will come look at it, and possibly cover the repair.   So maybe I dodged a bullet here.  We'll see!

UPDATE:  The sewer authority came and inspected the sewer pipe, which was made easy by the fact I spend a couple hundred having an access port put in.  If you put in a sewer line, make plenty of access ports for inspection and roto-rooting!   Anyway, they agreed the old clay pipe was in bad shape, but if they replaced it everyone on the block would want a new one as well.   So the guy told me that if it ever has a root problem again, to call him and he will "send the guys out" to roto-root it for free.   Sounds like a workable solution for now.

All of the island plumbing was installed in the 1960's and we had a water main break the other day which was pretty serious.  I hope this is not sign of things to come - like with our condo!  Pipes laid underground do wear out over time.  Just because you don't see them doesn't mean they are not there!

The Problem With College is College

College....delivering an obsolete education since 1950!

Both Hillary and Sanders have the whole college thing wrong - and backwards.  Their proposals not only won't fix college, it will make things worse.

Sanders proposes making college free for everyone.   Hillary proposes making it "affordable" for the poor by offering work-study programs (which really are the best education - why limit those to the poor?  She clearly doesn't understand work-study programs!).   Both are proposing increasing the government subsidies to colleges.

Sadly, not only will this not work, it will make things worse.   As you may have noted, the cost of college has outstripped inflation for a couple of decades now.   Costs have gone up at twice the rate of inflation - if not more - while the quality of a college education has gone down.   Throwing more money at the problem won't fix it.

In fact, easy money is the problem.   That and the antiquated and incorrect idea that a "college education" is always going to make you wealthier, no matter what the cost.

Colleges have raised tuition steeply because they can.  They know students can get loans, and in fact, the "financial aid" department will be very active in helping you get grants and loans.   It is like the billing department at the hospital - they know how to bill Medicare, and come after you for the difference.

The increase in the amount of student loans and the availability of private student loans has meant that colleges and universities haven't had to keep an eye on the bottom line, but rather simply raise prices.   And for a student loan financed over 10-30 years, a $10,000 increase in tuition amounts to only a couple hundred dollars a month in loan payments, if that.

The question no one is asking is why college has gotten so expensive for no apparent reason at all.   Colleges are hiring "adjunct faculty" at cut-rate prices and denying tenure as much as possible.  The quality of an education is suffering at the same time.   Where is all the money going?

Like anything else, it is hard to pinpoint one single area of "waste" that is causing the cost of college to explode.   Salaries for administrators are no doubt at all-time highs.  Bloated staffs and management add to the cost.   Cost of maintaining the huge and antiquated infrastructure on campus has no doubt crept up.  Salaries and benefits for union workers on campus no doubt add to the toll.   Retirement benefits for professors are also part of the picture.  Even the cost of scholarships to attract smart students adds to the bottom line.

As I noted in earlier postings, colleges are like General Motors back in the 1990's.   GM was stuck with a high-cost infrastructure, high overhead, huge pension liabilities, intransigent unions, and a product that was pretty crappy and no one wanted.   Cheap gas kept the game going for a while, as people would buy the empty steel boxes that are SUVs and Pickup Trucks.   But when the economy blipped for a moment, it all came unraveled.

Similarly, Colleges have a huge bloated overhead and an increasingly crappy product - as graduates are finding out.   Costs are passed on to students (and the government) in the form of loans and grants.   The difference is, of course, there is no Toyota or Honda making a better product at a lower cost to keep their feet to the fire.   Colleges have no competition other than other Colleges, who largely have the same cost structures.

Or do they?   Increasingly, students - the smart ones - are finding out that they do have choices and alternatives.   They can go to a two-year school and transfer to a "name" school and get the same diploma as the person paying for all four years.   They can go to a State school and get in-State tuition instead of going to a private institution and paying a lot extra.   They can cut expenses in school and borrow less by living more frugally, instead of having a new car, a nice apartment, and fancy clothes (and yes, a lot of students live that way, which is why colleges are ringed with retail stores).

On National People's Radio this morning, another sob story about "how hard we have it"(tm) and "how Awful America is"(tm) with regard to college this time.   We are told in breathless tones that students are graduating with more debt that ever, on average, but they fail to mention what that average amount is.

That's because the average amount is $35,000 and that includes loans the parents took out.  It doesn't seem so scary when you put it that way.  (The print edition of the story does mention this, however).

So, to illustrate the point, NPR picks a "typical" student who got a Master's degree in Computer Engineering at Cornell and rang up a staggering $190,000 in student loan debt.  They whine about paying $2000 a month in student loan payments and that "paying for a new tire" on their car "cleaned out their checking account".   Must be a Maserati.

NPR picks someone with a student loan debt over five times the national average as a poster-boy.  They pick someone who went to a private Ivy-League school which has some of the highest tuition rates in the country.   They picked someone who chose to get a Master's degree in a field where they are hiring people with Bachelor's degrees for the same amount of money.   When it comes to programming, you will learn more by doing in the field than by studying in college. 

And the message is clear:  What needs to be fixed is not the college that charges so much for an education, but the system that pays for this education.   We need, as a country, to just throw money at colleges and hope they spend it wisely, because as their track record shows, they are quite capable of controlling costs and not letting them spiral out of control for no reason whatsoever.

And yes, the sarcasm light is on.

Of course, all these policy choice issues and whatnot neglect one important thing:  Personal choice.   Many, if not most, of the sob stories on NPR represent outliers and not the average.   The story today is a case in point - they picked (how did they pick, anyway?) a student who made a lot of poor choices, in terms of borrowing money, choice of school, and whether or not to get a graduate degree (in a field that really doesn't value graduate degrees)*.   And we are supposed to feel sorry for him or believe that his experience is somehow a norm.   It isn't.

The problem with College isn't that there aren't enough student loans or grants but that there are too many.   The problem with College is College.  It delivers an inferior product at an inflated price, and the consumers don't perceive that there is a lower-cost alternative product to be had as a substitute.

We need to understand why Colleges are raising prices so rapidly and fix that problem.  And no, closing the chemistry department isn't the answer.

 

* Graduate degrees in Engineering or technology related fields are an interesting choice.  If you want to get a job as an Engineer, a B.S. in Engineering is required.   Beyond that, experience trumps education.  A Masters Degree in Engineering makes you something of an odd duck.  Are you an academic or an Engineer?   And does the Masters Degree mean you will demand more money?   And if so, does that degree make you more valuable than someone with three years' experience in the field?   Maybe things have changed in recent years, but back in the day, someone with a graduate degree in Engineering was a rare bird - and usually a pretty useless theoretician, in the field.

UPDATE:  Read this article about "luxury" college apartments.   Many people graduate from college with a lot of debt, but in many cases, it is not necessary debt.

Great Expectations (And Circular Logic)

Is going to college worthwhile if it leaves you broke and unemployed?

I had a dream last night, after talking to a couple of friends about their college experiences.   I was talking to a young fellow who had recently graduated from college and was pissed off that he could not find a job and had to pay back a lot of student loan debt.   The discussion went something like this:

SJW:  "It's not fair, man!  I went to college and now I can't find a job!  And I have $25,000 in student loan debt!"

ME:  "Well, maybe you shouldn't have gone to college, then."

SJW:  "But man, you have to go to college in order to get a good job!"

ME:  "Well, doesn't your experience negate that?  You went to college and have no job!"

SJW:  "But everyone knows that if you go to college you'll get a good job and make more money!"

ME:  "Well, maybe if you study something of merit.   And if that is indeed true, then it is worthwhile spending money on a degree, isn't it?"

SJW:  "But now I can't pay my student loans!"

ME:  "Well, maybe you shouldn't have gone to college, then."

And so forth and so on.   It kept going around in circles, because the young man could not get his head around the idea that college is not a guarantee of a good job anymore if indeed, it ever was.   As a result, the cost/benefit analysis of going to college has changed.   No longer can many young people waste four years of their lives majoring in "sensitivity studies" as the cost of doing so is crippling.

The problem is, of course, young people are often pressured into going to college by their parents, who are using an obsolete paradigm based on their college experience of decades gone by.   For them, going to college was indeed a "step up" in life as it was reserved for a special few who had the grades to get in and who could afford to go.   Even majoring in Liberal Arts, they ended up with good jobs after graduation - or at least a lot of them did.

Today, that has changed.   Or maybe not changed so much.

I was talking with two men in their late 50's and 60's about their abortive college careers.  In both cases, their parents "forced" them to go to college to study something they didn't want to study, and in both cases, they dropped out and ended up doing what they wanted to do all along.   Their experiences are illuminating.

David came from an upper-class WASP family that had moved to rural New Hampshire.   David went to the local high school and was more interested in vocational training.  He liked to tinker with things, fix old cars, and repair old houses with his Dad, who bought them at foreclosure and re-sold them.  

David went to see his guidance counselor at school and told him he wanted to get into the vocational tech program.   "I know your parents," the guidance counselor said, "they would never approve of this!  You are going to college and should take the college-prep curriculum!"

His parents subscribed to an antiquated notion - one that existed in the USA from about 1920 until 1970 - that going to college not only was a good career move, but made you a better person and is "what one did" when one was from a certain social class.   Junior not going to college was not an embarrassment to Junior, but to the parents, who would brag that Buffy was accepted at Swathmore or Junior got into Middlebury.  The needs of the child were secondary to the social needs of the parent.

So he spent his high school years studying literature and history with a little chemistry, physics, and math thrown in.   He struggled.   But he graduated and was accepted at a State forestry school.   He was to be a forest ranger, or so his parents supposed, never bothering to figure out what such a career entailed, or that for the number of young kids majoring in this field, barely 1 in 10 would find a job - as they were scarce.

The reality is, of course, David has no real interest in forestry.   It sounded like something close to what he really wanted to do, of the choices offered to him.  He went to school, drank and smoked pot, and was back home before the second semester was done.  His parents were furious and his Mom (who pushed the college bit, because in 1948 that is what she did) wouldn't talk to him for years.

He settled down, got a job, and started fixing up old houses and flipping them, and got his real estate agent license and also was a licensed appraiser and home inspector.   It turns out, he did very well without college, and in fact, his short stay at college was just a waste of time.

He was fortunate, in retrospect that he dropped out and lived his own life.   If he had stayed - feeling obligated to do what his parents wanted him to do in life - he would have been miserable, unemployed, and in debt, and probably working service-sector jobs and suffering from low-self-esteem.

Ivan wanted to be a pilot since he was a kid.   That is all he ever talked about and when he was in high school, he bugged his parents to send him to an aviation school.   They were horrified.  Their son was from a "good family" and would study the arts!  That is what the children of rich people did, back in 1952.  But it was no longer 1952, but 1982.   His parents felt that learning how to fly a plane was like a trade or something.

Ivan also played the trumpet in the school band and was pretty good at it, so his parents sent him to one of the most prestigious (and expensive) music schools in the country.   Ivan wanted to be a pilot, but being only 18 years old, went along with what his parents said to do, as they were older and knew best and besides, they controlled the purse strings.

Once at school he realized two things.   First, there were people there who were far better musicians than he was.   Competition in the music business is fierce - a dozen or more qualified people will apply for a position with an orchestra.   Most people with music degrees are lucky if they can play in a band for tip money at the local bar.   There simply are not a lot of jobs in this field, unless you are really, really good, and Ivan realized he was merely "good".

The second thing he realized was, he really wanted to be a pilot.

So, like David, he drank too much, smoked too much pot, didn't study or practice, and dropped out after a couple of semesters.   His parents were furious and called him a failure and foolishly he believed them.   He bummed around the college town taking odd jobs and whatnot until one day he took a tourist plane ride at a tourist town and realized he really wanted to be a pilot.

The rest is history.  He paid his own way through aviation school, did his time and now flies a cargo jet.  He loves the work and the best part is.... no passengers to deal with.  

I could go on and on with dozens of examples of people I know who went to college and dropped out or even graduated - and then bummed around for years trying to figure out what to do with their lives, only to latch onto something that had nothing to do with their college experience.   I am one of those dozens of people.

The difference is, of course, in days gone by, college was less expensive, so the cost could be paid for by your parents or modest student loans.   It still can be today, if you shop around carefully (going to a State school instead of a private one, for example).

David, for example, relates to me that his friend's son wanted to go to a tony private college and ran up $100,000 in debt, obtaining a useless Bachelor of Arts degree.   Now unemployed, he wants to double-down his bet by borrowing another hundred grand for law school - not realizing that the market for lawyers has dramatically changed in the last decade.  But at least this young man is doing something he wants to do (although arguably spending way too much money doing it).  Others are dragooned into college by well-meaning but ill-informed parents.

It is very difficult for parents and children alike.   Parents live in fear of the child who says, "I don't want to go to college" - thinking that the child's future is limited to working at a 7-11 or Wal-Mart.    But the reality is, if you learn a skill or trade you can make more money that probably half of all college graduates.   If you don't want to go to college, go to electrician's school, plumber's school, welding school, or even bartending school, for chrissake.

And it hardly means you will be a Philistine.  A local welder here makes wonderful art that is exhibited in several galleries in Georgia and Florida.  He also owns a business repairing boat propellers, which pays the bills when the art does not.  It is highly doubtful he will ever starve - or work at Wal-Mart.

Things have changed over the last few decades, and parents fail to grasp how much they have changed.  Colleges have become more and more irrelevant with their "safe spaces" and "queer studies" programs.   Very few kids are graduating with a degree that is anything other than academic in nature.   Colleges have dumbed down while the cost has gone up.   College is no longer a value proposition for the most part.

At the same time, the labor market has reacted to the decreased value of the college degree.   As I noted in another posting, there are arguably some college degrees which are Toxic in nature - guaranteed to not only not get you a job but essentially blacklist you from many potential employers.   As an employer, I would be hesitant to hire someone who graduated from touchy-feely protest U. with a degree in social justice.   Not only would they be worthless as workers, they would cause trouble for your organization.

Sadly, parents and guidance counselors fail to grasp this change.  And changes like this occur in our society and in technology all the time.  When I was in high school I divided my time between the school's computer terminal, writing programs, and hanging out behind the maintenance barn, smoking pot.   I wanted to write programs for a living, but at the time, few people made a good living writing programs.

My elders told me that there was "no money in software" and that it was a "dead-end career".   They told me that Engineering was where it was at - preferably mechanical, because electrical was "too hard".   Colleges and Universities back then had no degrees in "Computer Science" or if they did, it was a Bachelor of Arts degree, not a Bachelor of Science.   They might teach Fortran or Cobol, and perhaps this newfangled language "C".  The Patent Office wouldn't recognize Computer Science as a "technology" well in to the 1990's.  A background in programming was deemed insufficient to be hired as a Patent Examiner!

Of course, by then, who would want to work at the Patent Office?   Computer programmers were becoming millionaires - and even billionaires.  Everything my parents, my guidance counselors, my professors, my colleges, and even employers told me was flat-out wrong.

And not even learning from this fiasco, the same sort of folks went on to pooh-pooh HTML as any kind of career choice, even as websites became wildly popular.   Having missed that boat as well, they now pooh-pooh the idea of writing "apps" for a living.

Taking career advice from anyone over 30 is problematic.   And the problem is, in a rapidly evolving economy, what is considered "solid career advice" is usually not only obsolete but horrifically wrong.

But it is not hard to understand the angst of the parents of today.   One parents confides in me that they want to "launch" their problem child so that he can leave the home and establish himself in society (a laudable goal of course) as he has every indication of being the sort of bounce-back stoner who would be quite content to live in their basement until they die or move.  College - any sort of college - seems like the answer.   And any sort of major - even a ridiculous one - seems like "better than nothing" for their kid.

Maybe, however, college isn't the answer.  He worked in his Dad's trucking company a few summers and seemed to like that a lot.  Why not get two-year business degree and learn a little accounting - and perhaps some diesel mechanics?   One day he may take over that business.   And he may be better prepared for it with some skills and trades than with a C-average in "art" and the low-self-esteem from dropping out.