Don’t Quit Your Day Job – Personal Finance, Economics and Investing

…enter grade inflation. This site has recently touched twice on the topic of the spiraling cost of advanced education. Recently the New York Times covered something that the schools are giving back for the increased attendance cost – higher grades. Yes, grade inflation is increasing at a pretty decent clip right along with college costs.

Carnivals and article links for the week!

That treasure trove of data the Bureau of Labor Statistics has a fascinating report that it calls the “Employer Costs for Employee Compensation” report. Last Wednesday it released its report on the compensation costs at various employer types (and locales) for March 2010. One of the interesting things it does, as picked up on Mark Perry’s (great) blog, is to spin out the government’s estimate of overall hourly wages – for private industry, and for state and local government workers. The government workers win in a first round knockout…

As I mentioned in my last article, education is one of the categories where spending has increased the most over the last decades. However, it’s unclear if the product students are receiving is even worth the cost they have been paying. At issue: this article from the New York Times, heavily digested all over the internet. Setting aside the fact that our protagonist majored in Religious and Women’s studies, what is the value (in expected weekly salary) of a graduate or an undergraduate degree?

What’s grown faster than inflation the last 40 years? No, not medical expenses. What’s grown faster than that? You guessed it (from the title of this post) – education costs increased almost 1000% from 1978 to 2008, compared to about 300% in the generally price level as measured by consumer inflation. Yes, inflation is one of the categories of spending which is increasing at an off-the-chart-rate.