To my right-most quarter of the room: Congratulations! You are all doctors!

You graduated from

small, private liberal arts colleges and went on to prestigious medical schools. After graduating,
you interned for a couple years and were successfully placed into residency for a year. Now you
practice general medicine in Akron, Ohio pulling home nearly two-hundred thousand a year.
My right-middle quarter: You also took the schooling route, attending the same college as our
doctors to your left, but you decided to major in education and to stay for an extra two years to
get your masters. You also settle down in Akron, earning just over 100000 annually.
My left-middle quarter: You too attended the small private college, but you decided to enter the
job market right away with your bachelor’s in education. You join your colleagues in Akron,
with a salary of just under 90000.
And my left-most quarter: You decide to forego college-life and go directly into the work-force
as a plumber, making just over 70000 yearly in your hometown: Akron.
Everyone pursues their respective paths right out of high-school and eventually decides to retire
at 65.
Now I want a show of hands: Who thinks they have the highest average spending power over
your, say, 100-year lifetime. And who thinks they have the lowest?
Well, my doctors who felt they had the highest standard of living, you are indeed correct; you
have an average yearly spending power of just under 34000. But I have to apologize to my more
educated educators: not many of you saw yourself in the lowest bracket, but you actually have
the lowest living standards with between 26000 and 27000 in average yearly spending power.
And to our other educators, you make about a thousand more than your friends with masters. But
our plumbers: Congrats to you also! You ended up making a mere $400 less annually than our
doctors.
How’s that make any sense? Didn’t our doctors make two-and-a-half times more annually? Well,
with taxes, loans, and only 35 working years, that big salary deteriorates pretty quickly. And
were the long nights in med school, losing-out on the vast majority of your twentys, and
averaging just under 60 hour work weeks1, worth the annual 400 over our plumber who work 40
hours a week2 and got to enjoy the entirety of their late teens and twentys? That’s an extra 20
hours a week to spend with family, pursuing hobbies, or whatever else, and an extra eleven years
to go on vacations, enjoy themselves, and maybe even search for love.
A key factor we must consider here is “economic opportunity cost,” or more simply, what we
missed out on by going to college. On this lifetime earnings chart, the opportunity cost between
our plumbers over to the left and everyone else is the area between the respective curves. Notice
that the only intersection with the plumber’s earnings line is the doctor’s earnings, showing that
only the doctors make more in the long run, and this takeover doesn’t even occur until year 40,
which corresponds to age 59 in our case study here.
Now, this graph already favors our plumbers to a large extent, and it only shows the financial
side of things, where we would expect the plumber to fare the worst. Let’s take a look at a more
utility, or potential happiness, based graph now. Throughout the entire life, our plumbers make
more per hour worked than all three other groups, and our doctors actually had the lowest
working efficiency. Extrapolating a bit here, this actually has some potential indications on long-
term happiness as it reaffirms that the plumber is the most economically efficient worker and
will have the most time to spend with family and the highest potential to maintain a sustainable
work-life balance. If that weren’t enough, Princeton economists showed that any additional
salary over 75000 does not actually increase happiness, and recent estimates have even
discounted this number to 50000 annually.
College can be a great path, but it really is not the only path. While everyone has heard the
stories of successful college dropouts or non-attendees, its worth reiterating that David Geffen,
who started Dreamworks and is worth 9 billion dollars, Michael Dell, who founded Dell has 28
billion dollars, and Bill Gates, who has now reached just under 100 Billion, all dropped out of
their respective colleges.
This type of success story is over-emphasized in the argument against college, but people often
fail to recognize that many non-college requiring careers have equal or even greater long-term
potential than their college counterparts. For many people, college is the perfect path to define
interests and figure out what life holds or to pursue select personally rewarding careers, like
teaching or nursing. But its not for everyone.
With your children, with your friends, with your family, or even with yourself: when the
discussion about attending college comes up, don’t assume enrolling is always the right decision.
The short-sighted assumption that it is the only path that leads to success and happiness could not
be more flawed; just ask the rich and happy plumbers over to your left.

1: https://www.bestmedicaldegrees.com/salary-of-doctors/
2: https://www.owlguru.com/career/plumbers/job-description/
3: http://www.tjmcoaa.org/StudyThistoSeeWhetherHarvardPaysOffLaurenceKotlikoff
4: https://www.forbes.com/sites/learnvest/2012/04/24/the-salary-that-will-make-you-happy-hint-
its-less-than-75000/#424b481e3247
5: http://content.time.com/time/magazine/article/0,9171,2019628,00.html
Intro = PUNCH: Personal Unexpected Novel Challenging Humor
Body = SUCCES(s): Simple Unexpected Credible Concrete Emotions Story