I was thinking about Higher education today. Another blog was having a discussion about Education being an investment in yourself and that you should expect a return on that investment.
I don’t think I agree with this. If you look at education being an investment, you would select your course based on what would pay the most money a few years after the uni days have finished. We would all be dentists (I think they have the highest starting salary first year out)
Another thing is that for a successful investment, you have to finish the course. If you select the course based on pay, it doesn’t take into account your strengths and weaknesses, not to mention interests. Its not a good thing to find out you can’t stand the sight of blood after Year 2 of medical school.
Also like any investment, you might make the wrong decision. The I.T industry is a good example of this. A lot of people studied I.T in the late 90’s early 2000’s during the boom time when fresh graduates could get a job pretty easily on amazing Pay. Nowadays, I.T graduate salaries are pretty low, (median graduate salary of $38000 in 2005 compared to $40,000 in 2001) and the number of positions available for graduates are lower still (75% of graduates working in 2005 compared to 80% in 2001). These stats are all from the Australian Bureau of statistics.
So the goat believes that Education belongs in a different category to investment. It’s more of a cost of living. You need food, you need clothes, you need shelter and in today’s fast changing world, I believe you need education. The return should be satisfying the need, rather than the money or the job.
So you should make your selections based on that. Preference should be given to courses that suit you and your personality. Your needs. Part time/full time, location of the education facility, age of student, quality of teaching. All of these things are more important than the potential job at the end of the degree/diploma.
Best option, like anything is to keep it simple. Find your strengths and look for a course that appeals to them and your interests. Look at education as a way of increasing your knowledge. Forget about the vocation. Educated, talented people will always get jobs, and it might be one you haven’t even thought of yet.
And you never know your luck. You might find you have put your money into BHP instead of One-Tel
Friday, January 5, 2007
Tuesday, January 2, 2007
Dead men tell no tales
In the middle of my Christmas leftovers, I ran into the news that Suddam Hussein was executed. What a waste. Of all the things they could have done with Saddam, killing him off was probably one of the worst.
To quantify my statement I will say that I am against the death penalty. In my opinion, the government should not kill its own citizens. How can a government make laws criminalising the death of a person, and then turn around and say, "Oh, but we can do it"? For me, it shrieks of gross hypocrisy.
The advocate's of the death penalty always go one about the deterrent value of the act. At how it makes people less likely to murder if they knew that their own life might be forfeit. Well, the stats, as always, suggest otherwise. Using US data http://www.deathpenaltyinfo.org/article.php?did=169&scid=12, we find that the murder rate in US states that have the death penalty is higher than those that don’t sentence murderers to death.
If we apply this theory to Iraq, I don’t think there are a lot of Iraqi criminals out there going "Well I don’t want to end up like Saddam, so I better put the gas away and not kill a couple of hundred Kurds". If the Iraqi insurgency got their hands on poisonous gas, it would probably go straight into the so-called "Green Zone" where the Iraqi government is (not to mention the US embassy)
The only argument I have heard in a positive sense regarding the death penalty is the economic angle. That is costs millions of tax payers funds to keep prisoners in jail for life Indeed, in the US, according to Department of justice figures, it costs an average of $25,327 US to imprison someone for a year (2003 figures). This is in the Federal System, which we will say is roughly equivalent to the state based systems (According to Bueuru of justice figures) .So if someone was imprisoned for life, say 40 years, we are talking a fair bit of dosh. But even on death row, prisoners have an average of 12 years of imprisonment before they are put to death. California stats have each prisoner of death row costing $90,000 a year. So if we discount this, it is really only 28 extra years.
These figures are dwarfed by the court costs of a death penalty case. Indeed in a 2005 report, it was found that the state of California spent 250 million per execution over 20 years. http://www.deathpenalty.org/index.php?pid=cost&menu=1%22
That’s a lot of money to kill someone. I haven’t seen any figures for Saddam’s trial, but I’m sure it wasn’t cheap. So you have to ask the question, did the Iraqi people get their money’s worth?
I think not. Saddam is an icon to the Sunni minority, no doubt, but in jail he can not do any harm. Look at Colonel Noreiga. He is languishing in a Florida prison at the moment. No one thinks that when he is released (this year in fact), that he will go back to cause havoc in Panama. In fact Noreiga gave a fair bit of information regarding the drug trade to US Authorities. Who knows what valuable information went with Saddam to the grave? You want someone who knows where the bodies are buried? Who knows the informal tribal networks the Sunni insurgency is using? Saddam’s your man. If he knew he was facing a lifetime of jail, he would be handing over nuggets of valuable information for a packet of smokes.
I think right from the start, the Americans should not have given Saddam to the Iraqi authorities. They should have handed him right over to the International Criminal Court. He would have received as fair a trial is as possible and would be facing life imprisonment. But that is a little too worldly for the Yanks.
To quantify my statement I will say that I am against the death penalty. In my opinion, the government should not kill its own citizens. How can a government make laws criminalising the death of a person, and then turn around and say, "Oh, but we can do it"? For me, it shrieks of gross hypocrisy.
The advocate's of the death penalty always go one about the deterrent value of the act. At how it makes people less likely to murder if they knew that their own life might be forfeit. Well, the stats, as always, suggest otherwise. Using US data http://www.deathpenaltyinfo.org/article.php?did=169&scid=12, we find that the murder rate in US states that have the death penalty is higher than those that don’t sentence murderers to death.
If we apply this theory to Iraq, I don’t think there are a lot of Iraqi criminals out there going "Well I don’t want to end up like Saddam, so I better put the gas away and not kill a couple of hundred Kurds". If the Iraqi insurgency got their hands on poisonous gas, it would probably go straight into the so-called "Green Zone" where the Iraqi government is (not to mention the US embassy)
The only argument I have heard in a positive sense regarding the death penalty is the economic angle. That is costs millions of tax payers funds to keep prisoners in jail for life Indeed, in the US, according to Department of justice figures, it costs an average of $25,327 US to imprison someone for a year (2003 figures). This is in the Federal System, which we will say is roughly equivalent to the state based systems (According to Bueuru of justice figures) .So if someone was imprisoned for life, say 40 years, we are talking a fair bit of dosh. But even on death row, prisoners have an average of 12 years of imprisonment before they are put to death. California stats have each prisoner of death row costing $90,000 a year. So if we discount this, it is really only 28 extra years.
These figures are dwarfed by the court costs of a death penalty case. Indeed in a 2005 report, it was found that the state of California spent 250 million per execution over 20 years. http://www.deathpenalty.org/index.php?pid=cost&menu=1%22
That’s a lot of money to kill someone. I haven’t seen any figures for Saddam’s trial, but I’m sure it wasn’t cheap. So you have to ask the question, did the Iraqi people get their money’s worth?
I think not. Saddam is an icon to the Sunni minority, no doubt, but in jail he can not do any harm. Look at Colonel Noreiga. He is languishing in a Florida prison at the moment. No one thinks that when he is released (this year in fact), that he will go back to cause havoc in Panama. In fact Noreiga gave a fair bit of information regarding the drug trade to US Authorities. Who knows what valuable information went with Saddam to the grave? You want someone who knows where the bodies are buried? Who knows the informal tribal networks the Sunni insurgency is using? Saddam’s your man. If he knew he was facing a lifetime of jail, he would be handing over nuggets of valuable information for a packet of smokes.
I think right from the start, the Americans should not have given Saddam to the Iraqi authorities. They should have handed him right over to the International Criminal Court. He would have received as fair a trial is as possible and would be facing life imprisonment. But that is a little too worldly for the Yanks.
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