Posts Tagged ‘Education’

Is tertiary education really worth it?

Despite the general mood of anti-intellectualism, New Zealand has a relatively high rate of participation in tertiary education. However, for many, they attend university for reasons rather than enrich themselves or get a higher paid job. I once heard that a female university student said the sole incentive for her to attend university is the higher chance to find the "man" with "potential", financial potential that is.

So what kind of financial potential a university graduate may possess? In a recently published OECD report (PDF) on education, it is suggested in New Zealand, on average, a male university graduate would earn about NZ$ 170,000 more in his lifetime than those with only high school qualifications.

It may sounds like a lot but it's the earning increased in lifetime. Put that in context of a typical working life of a Kiwi (age 22 - 65), the average increase in wage works out like $80 a week, about 10% - 15% percent increase from the average wage in New Zealand.

Furthermore unless you are lucky enough to have rich parents,  you'll have to pay for your tertiary education nowadays. In my situation, I estimated that I need at least 12 years (4 years university and 8 years full time working) before I can reclaim the amount I invested in education. This estimation is actually too optimistic, as you are less experienced and earn less in first few years.

Inflation would make the repayment a bit faster, thanks to the interest-free student loan.  However, that does not help in the long run as your other costs would also increase.

The return rate for your investment in tertiary education varies, largely depends on how much financial support you get from your parents and the government, but 10% - 20% in the long run should be a pretty accurate estimate. It does not sounds too bad, but there are also risks. It depends the wider economic environment is tied up to your employment status, if you don't work, you no longer receive the return on your investment.

From a pure monetary sense, I would rather invest my money in real estate market than education. However according to MasterCard, there are things in life you just cannot put them in  monetary value. The report suggested three: people with tertiary qualification are generally more healthy, has more interpersonal trust, and are fairly interested in politics.

So the circle of life continues

I come from a very low decile secondary school  - budget blow out is kind of school's "regular" thing because most of the students are too poor to pay the "donation", and quite a lot of them come to school with an empty stomach, because their family are either too poor or just cannot bother to make a breakfast for their kids. Because of that, low decile schools usually have a special feature that cannot be found elsewhere - free breakfast for everyone, which itself isn't too bad really.

But anyway, these are also the common characteristics of the low-performance students.

So will increased fines for parents who allowed their kids to wag make any difference?

Well, it's that kind of National style "economic" thinking - like let the children wag is uneconomic to parents so the wagging won't happen. This is the part I don't agree with National Party: the world just doesn't run purely on economics, there are lots of other factors involved. For example, fine a beneficiary $3,000 dolloars for not registering their kids does nothing more than put another $3,000 dollars on taxpayers' account -  it's like transferring taxpayer's money left pocket to right pocket.

Auckland University switching to Google Apps

Auckland University's email services will be switching to Google Apps next month.

Google Apps is a service most of ordinary users never heard of, but yet it is so popular that some of small site owners just cannot live without it. It provides an integrated solution for small site owners, provide the Google services like Google Chat, Gmail and Google Canlendar to users of those sites, free of charge.

I'm not a very tech savvy person so the Google Apps saved me from all the hassles like manage emails. If somebody is more unsavvy than me, they can even build a whole simple site by using Google Sites.

Compare with old university 100mb storage  (1mb maximum attachment) email system, the Gmail service is just too generous, and it was free in the form of Gmail for quite a long time now. And even better, it is free.

There's only one down side:there will be usual google ads in it. Oh maybe two, another one being the administrators have little control on storages(I think all your emails are now stored on Gmail server）.

I thought people paid enough tuition fee to fund an email service that has no ads on it.  I didn't expect to see this kind of time and money save move on New Zelaand's largest universiy.

It's bit worrying that corporations are becoming more involved in the process of educating our future generation.  I wonder what kind of effect would have on the people who get their business degree in "Fisher and Paykel Appliances Auditorium".

Another worrying bit for more self is that my other bit of life online is now just fell into the hands of Google, yet again. I'm already dependent on lots of google services like Gmail, Google Reader, Calender, Apps, Docs ... they are all good but you just feel you cannot put all your stuff in the hands of one giant corporation.

It may not doing the evil today, but who knows what will happen tomorrow?