4 year Survey Degree and ROI

I think these "studies" are in general, stupid. Your education is of value when you go into a genuine profession that requires a college degree, especially when you go into business for yourself. However, how much money you make on your own is totally dependent on you and your imagination and initiative. That ability is more to do with your upbringing than on your formal education.

Wanna just make money? Skip college and go sell stuff on commission. Sell any kind of stuff, it doesn't matter ... just sell stuff and you can make lots of money.

Going into a profession is more about having the satisfaction of doing something you enjoy, something you love to do. Making money is nice, everybody needs some to live on, but you don't want to go through life hating what you do just to make lots of money.

If you are in surveying and that's what you want to do, I would think the ROI would be good assuming you live in a state that requires a degree to get your license. The truth is surveying doesn't always pay that good unless you get your license.

This question is critical to the survival of our profession. If the ROI is negative, it will probably change dramatically.

The coming generation is realizing that the emporer has no clothes when it comes to the promises of formal education.

Currently, university pushers recommend taking on debt early in life, leaving the workforce for four years, and then over-consuming expensive goods for the following 35 years during a "career".

A wave is growing of people who instead: enter the workforce ASAP, learn a blue-collar or IT skillset, invest aggressively, and retire at 35. It's happening...the change is here.

From a purely economic perspective I don't think the ROI on a Surveying degree stacks up at all well.

You would be way better off putting that investment of time and money into an Engineering degree.

Or save yourself a year and do Accounting, Law or Computing. All those will bring more money and have better professional support.

At present Surveying is a lifestyle choice, and probably a bad one at that.

Just my $0.02

(and Yes, I do have a four year surveying degree)

Jim, I always love your comments, as you are one of the few surveyors I know who has actually arrived at the end stage of grief over loss of the profession as we know it. (Stolen from wikipedia: The Kübler-Ross model, or the five stages of grief, is a series of emotional stages experienced when faced with impending death or death of someone. The five stages are denial, anger, bargaining, depression and acceptance.) Most surveyors I know are still at stage one or two!

"...However, how much money you make on your own is totally dependent on you and your imagination and initiative. That ability is more to do with your upbringing than on your formal education..."

This applies to any profession, career or job.

One of the things you need to understand in business is odds. If you can learn to play the odds in Las Vegas, you can probably learn to win playing the odds in Business.

That said, all things being equal, why wouldn't you want to increase your odds of success any chance you can.

Try this in excel,

What is the annual salary of a good job out of high school you would have reasonable expectations of getting? (say $25,000/year)

Plug that in for year one in your spreadsheet. Assume a 3% annual COLA increase. After 40 years your annual salary is $79,175.67/year. While you earned $1,885,031.49
in a 40 year career.

What is the annual salary of a good job out of College you would have reasonable expectations of getting? (say $45,000/year)

Plug that in for year five in your spreadsheet. Assume a 3% annual COLA increase. After 36 years your annual salary is $126,623.81/year. While you earned $2,927,417.49 in a 36 year career. That also accounts for starting out $80,000 in the hole, because your college degree cost you $20,000/year for four years.

What could you do with an extra $1,042,386.00 in retirement?

Thankx for the kind comments.

I have to say that I am hugely disappointed with the leadership (or lack thereof) shown by our professional bodies. And judging by discussions I've had with others, I'm not the only one.

For example I think the NZ Institute seems hell bent on destroying what value it has to its members.

But then isn't it up to us to show some leadership, to take the reins and to drive any changes we see needed?

Me, I'm too old, too tired and too near retirement to really be bothered...

Very valid point, but it's worth remembering:

If you invest the $80,000 in an S&P 500 Index Fund, with an 8% rate of return (historically probable), in 36 years you will have $1.28 million from that investment alone (run it through any online investment calculator). The trick is to earn AND invest early.

If you look at the Historical Annual Returns for the S&P 500 Index - Updated Through 2011 you will find that 8% is not realistic.

But, Great point about investing. Look at the incremental yearly difference in pay beginning in year 5. How can you invest that incremental yearly difference?

How much longer can you last in a career working more with your mind as opposed to your back?

It doesn't even pay that well if you DO get that licence

8% is very realistic, even slightly conservative. Look at the column of "25-year average annual returns". Nearly every 25-year period is above 8%.

I certainly grant your second point, in that the pay difference could be invested to great advantage. But I totally disagree with the assumption that the degree holder will be out-earning the equally bright and ambitious non-degree holder by such a great margin.

> Very valid point, but it's worth remembering:
>
> If you invest the $80,000 in an S&P 500 Index Fund, with an 8% rate of return (historically probable), in 36 years you will have $1.28 million from that investment alone (run it through any online investment calculator). The trick is to earn AND invest early.

This is kind of flawed logic in the sense that it assumed that you'll have 80K cash, right out of high school, that you can either invest or use to go to college.

I'd think few kids would fall into that category.

The fact of the matter is, most kids either get their parents to pay for school, work their way through school, take out student loans, or some combination of the three. It's easy to get student loans and a minimum wage job to make it through college, but not so easy to get a loan or a job that will allow you invest 80K in the S&P 500 at a very young age.

I think a more realistic look at the situation is that if you don't go to college, you'll likely have the type of job where you live week to week and can afford to save very little for investing. If you do go to college, and get a worthwhile degree, it's more likely that you'll have the type of job that will allow you to max out your IRA every year.

If you assume 8% return, putting $5,500 (the current max., I think) away a year for 36 years would get you about 1.1 million to retire on. Get a job with a 401k and employer matching, and it goes to nearly 3 million.

Of course, there are people who degrees and are worthless employees and can't keep a job, and people who don't get degrees and go on to be billionaires ... but, odds do favor the college route.

Thanks for the thoughtful response, Ranger.

The $80,000 is accumulated 4-years after high school, at the date equivalent to college graduation. And while this would require diligence, I don't perceive it as that far fetched with the right mindset (travel to the oilfields, work toward being a journeyman electrician while still in high school, one-year diesel mechanic's certificate, etc.) The important thing is that we are comparing apples to apples; that is equally bright and ambitious persons.

And maxing out your IRA is great, and an employer match is even nicer. But the early, aggressive earning and investment is critical.

Jim I both agree and disagree with your two major statements.

I concur that the professional body here in my state is lack lustre . Possibly because of the nature of the majority of surveyors. I abandoned my professional body in early 2000's, but fortunately found the then chat board POB which was usurped by Beerlegs/Surveyor Connect when POB's board upgrade fell into an abyss and as a result formed personal bonds with hundreds of US surveyors from visiting the states. I have observed that these boards have a wide range of personalities with differing views.
So advise can be extremely varied.

One such area is education. We in Australia have had the surveying degree since the 1960's ! So I am bemused that there are so many states in the US that still do not require the degree for entry into surveying. Old hands know my views. That said I suggest that having just clocked up 36 years in my OWN surveying practise and 44 years since graduation that studies on ROI as quaintly called are absolute rubbish. I say that because if any one has the passionate desire and drive to be successful then they can! The very thing that the I see is making surveying a trade is the fact that you do not require a degree in many states.

Today more than ever there are many more avenues of surveying that require additional study and experience to become proficient in a single field of surveying. I suggest that "The more you know, the more you know the less you know!" Being licensed in the US as a surveyor to me is unfortunately misleading to the public as this board constantly exhibits the fact that non graduate surveyors have limited understanding of spherical geometry and coordinate systems when using GPS. Today it is impossible to be proficient across all the fields of surveying that have sprung up as a result of the electronic revolution.

It is essential today to get a broad brush education and then specialise! Those with a license remaining in the traditional boundary redefinition and engineering field are now but one small part of surveying, so the university path is the only path to a successful career in surveying.

For those who say graduates know nothing . Well just because they have had little experience in their critic's field they do have a huge asset of a broad over view of many fields of surveying. It is while a student that you select a path you wish to concentrate your future. Knowledge is constantly evolving. In my case GPS was not even a twinkle in the eye of surveyors, albeit man had landed on the moon when I was at university. The beauty was we had studied spherical trig, projections, scale factor, divergence etc, etc so when that new technology arrived the learning curve was not so steep as it is for those with no formal university education.

To the original poster, I strongly suggest you must obtain a degree that will allow you to professionally specialise.

Forget the ROI rubbish, as what you as an individual are passionately prepared to intelligently put in will more than likely exceed your current wildest expectations.

Forget the degree path and you will for ever be wallowing with many others desperately trying to eke out an existence in the surveying back waters.

RADU

Well, a certain well known noted seminar presenter learned surveying from the International Correspondence School of Scranton, Pennsylvania. Why would anyone need anything more?

Ditto.

Good advice, Mr. Mugnier

I've always thought looking at higher education as a pathway to some "guaranteed" wealth and security is nonsense. Life is worth so much more than "a bottom line". In my opinion a good education has to be bridled with some sort of drive and direction.

I remember a speaker at a seminar once ventured a prediction:

If you employed a highly educated man as a gas-pump jockey and he had no vertical aspiration, he would retire as a gas-pump jockey. If you employed a highly motivated high school drop-out in the same job there's a chance by the end of his career he might own the entire oil company.

There are many factors in a formula for success along with an education.

discussion is getting way to serious.
find a rich woman
let her supply the money
then you can afford to survey

I learned the basics of measurement and computation in the Army. When I left it didn't take long to discover the market for Special Weapons Instructors with a GED was somewhat limited...

Trying to retro-fit an education has been tough. Lucky for me I worked through the development of today's complex tools. I consistently pushed myself and learned to follow successful Surveyors with my ears open. I might have done better on the mouth shut part but that's another thread.

The bottom line is simple. My career would have gone better (or at least kept a faster pace) had I started with a better foundation. The money would have likely been a wash. If the 4 year degree is a required part of your chosen path, the ROI is a moot point. If you can make the investment do it...

My .02, Tom