Obviously the current job market isn’t looking so hot for anyone right now. Most of us don’t have a trust fund to fall back on, and the state of our economy makes attending grad school a distant dream for so many of us. With the pressure to land an entry-level position armed only with perseverance, savvy, and Bachelor’s degree in hand, the importance of choosing the right college major is more crucial now than ever before.
In a recent article, Newsweek names the nine majors that lead to the “best” jobs. The list includes majors along the lines of finance and information systems – things that have always been regarded as boring safe and prestigious. I have to say, though, that the value of a career can’t be summed up by the median starting salary. Sure, some people are actually passionate about construction management (hey, we don’t judge) and if you are, then of course this is the perfect major for you. But for those of us who prefer to pursue skills that are slightly less mainstream (or that won’t make you want to bludgeon yourself with a calculator during your third all-nighter in a week), I say “why not?”
Throughout college, I remember seeing my peers who chose to major in things like biology struggle to stay awake during their work days while my Communications major (obviously not the most conventional) allowed me to spend the days of my internship interviewing high profile celebs at a major magazine. Win!
With that being said, we say “suck it, high paying jobs!” and have compiled 5 majors that put you on the path to career awesomeness.
1. Floristry: Cuyamana College in California offers this program. Essentially a combination of botany and art, this major exists within the Ornamental Horticulture department. Students pursue their Associate of Science degree by learning everything from planting flowers to designing wedding arrangements. (Side note: where can I find a program that teaches me to devour…err…create Edible Arrangements? If someone can find me one, I’m THERE.)
2. Arts and Entertainment Management: Drexel University’s Westphal College of Media Arts and Design is just one of the places where you can find this exciting major. At Drexel students can choose a specialized concentration. Depending on this and an individual student’s skills and interests, graduates can go on to become agents, managers, artistic/creative directors, and more.
3. Viticulture and Enology: Think an Ivy League education and alcohol are mutually exclusive? Then you obviously haven’t heard of Cornell’s program. Viticulture and Enology is basically just a fancy term for the study of wine. Students within this major take courses that promise to make them experts on all things related to vino. I have to warn you, though – if you’re caught slappin’ a bag of Franzia with your dorm mates, you might get booted from the program.
4. Cartooning: It’s not exactly a college major, but this program is seriously cool. For students who can’t see themselves in a traditional university setting but would still like to develop their skills after high school, The Center For Cartoon Studies is a god send. One and two year certificates are offered, as is a Master’s program. An education is Cartooning teaches all the essentials of the craft: from storytelling to drawing. This institution, located in Vermont, promises to create master cartoonists, qualified to work at a variety of major media sources.
5. Film and TV Costume Design: FIDM offers this course, which not only teaches the fundamentals of design, but also includes plenty of info on how to navigate the industry and deal with other professionals. Who knows? If you’re a fashionista in the making, this may be the very thing that could turn you into the next Patricia Fields (the super successful costume designer for Sex And The City.) I mean, how much fun would it be to dress Blair Waldorf week after week? This is one program that could definitely lead to an exciting career.
Of course, if you really want to have a fun career, there’s always Michigan….
One of the big problems during the financial crisis was a bank run in the shadow banking system when doubts emerged about the safety of deposits.
In my last column at the Fiscal Times, I talked about an approach to solving the problem that involves having deposits in the shadow system backed (insured) by high quality collateral.
But high quality collateral is not the only option. Another way to do this is through a type of insurance along the lines of what the FDIC does for the traditional banking system, along with restrictions on eligibility for the insurance. In reaction to my column, and in support of the insurance approach, Morgan Ricks of Harvard Law School emails:
I enjoyed your Fiscal Times piece and am glad you're focused on this issue.
I'm a big admirer of Gary and Andrew's work, but I would encourage you to give some more thought to whether collateral requirements for repo are likely to do the trick. Here are a few things to consider:
- Many of the short-term liabilities of the shadow banking system were and are uncollateralized (think about Lehman's reliance on unsecured commercial paper -- the default of which caused the Reserve Fund to "break the buck," igniting the run on money market funds; and Citigroup's SIVs, which financed themselves in the unsecured markets).
- Money market investors do not want to take possession of collateral and dispose of it. Even if the collateral is high quality, they don't want the interest rate risk. That's not their business. They don't want to deal with the consequences of a counterparty default. This is why, in the crisis, many money market investors stopped rolling even those repos that were fully secured by Treasuries and agencies:
- See Chris Cox's testimony on Bear Stearns (here http://www.sec.gov/news/testimony/2008/ts040308cc.htm): "For the first time, a major investment bank that was well-capitalized and apparently fully liquid experienced a crisis of confidence that denied it not only unsecured financing, but short-term secured financing, even when the collateral consisted of agency securities with a market value in excess of the funds to be borrowed"
- See also FRBNY's repo task force report (here http://www.newyorkfed.org/prc/report_100517.pdf): “Discussions in the Task Force emphasized repeatedly that many Cash Investors focus primarily if not almost exclusively on counterparty concerns and that they will withdraw secured funding on the same or very similar timeframes as they would withdraw unsecured funding.”
- Even if collateral requirements reduce the likelihood of runs, how do we calibrate them -- what is the objective function? Presumably we think maturity transformation (fractional reserve banking) is a good thing -- it increases the supply of loanable funds by pooling otherwise idle cash reserves and deploying them toward productive investments. Risk constraints (such as collateral requirements) necessarily reduce this surplus -- there is a real social cost. How do we appraise the corresponding benefit? That is, how do we estimate the systemic instability associated with any given level of collateral requirements? My argument is that we can't. And by "we" I mean not just the government, but anybody.
My paper argues that we avoid these problems with an insurance regime; that financial firms outside the insurance regime should be disallowed from conducting maturity transformation (i.e., they would have to rely on term funding, not money market funding); and that we should develop functional criteria of eligibility for the insurance regime. (By the way, this is not the same thing as "extending" insurance to shadow banks.)
Anyway, these are things worth thinking about. I think the insurance approach needs more serious consideration than it has received -- it's a little lonely over here ...
Best,
Morgan Ricks
See here for nice summary of this approach and link to the underlying academic paper.
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Obviously the current job market isn’t looking so hot for anyone right now. Most of us don’t have a trust fund to fall back on, and the state of our economy makes attending grad school a distant dream for so many of us. With the pressure to land an entry-level position armed only with perseverance, savvy, and Bachelor’s degree in hand, the importance of choosing the right college major is more crucial now than ever before.
In a recent article, Newsweek names the nine majors that lead to the “best” jobs. The list includes majors along the lines of finance and information systems – things that have always been regarded as boring safe and prestigious. I have to say, though, that the value of a career can’t be summed up by the median starting salary. Sure, some people are actually passionate about construction management (hey, we don’t judge) and if you are, then of course this is the perfect major for you. But for those of us who prefer to pursue skills that are slightly less mainstream (or that won’t make you want to bludgeon yourself with a calculator during your third all-nighter in a week), I say “why not?”
Throughout college, I remember seeing my peers who chose to major in things like biology struggle to stay awake during their work days while my Communications major (obviously not the most conventional) allowed me to spend the days of my internship interviewing high profile celebs at a major magazine. Win!
With that being said, we say “suck it, high paying jobs!” and have compiled 5 majors that put you on the path to career awesomeness.
1. Floristry: Cuyamana College in California offers this program. Essentially a combination of botany and art, this major exists within the Ornamental Horticulture department. Students pursue their Associate of Science degree by learning everything from planting flowers to designing wedding arrangements. (Side note: where can I find a program that teaches me to devour…err…create Edible Arrangements? If someone can find me one, I’m THERE.)
2. Arts and Entertainment Management: Drexel University’s Westphal College of Media Arts and Design is just one of the places where you can find this exciting major. At Drexel students can choose a specialized concentration. Depending on this and an individual student’s skills and interests, graduates can go on to become agents, managers, artistic/creative directors, and more.
3. Viticulture and Enology: Think an Ivy League education and alcohol are mutually exclusive? Then you obviously haven’t heard of Cornell’s program. Viticulture and Enology is basically just a fancy term for the study of wine. Students within this major take courses that promise to make them experts on all things related to vino. I have to warn you, though – if you’re caught slappin’ a bag of Franzia with your dorm mates, you might get booted from the program.
4. Cartooning: It’s not exactly a college major, but this program is seriously cool. For students who can’t see themselves in a traditional university setting but would still like to develop their skills after high school, The Center For Cartoon Studies is a god send. One and two year certificates are offered, as is a Master’s program. An education is Cartooning teaches all the essentials of the craft: from storytelling to drawing. This institution, located in Vermont, promises to create master cartoonists, qualified to work at a variety of major media sources.
5. Film and TV Costume Design: FIDM offers this course, which not only teaches the fundamentals of design, but also includes plenty of info on how to navigate the industry and deal with other professionals. Who knows? If you’re a fashionista in the making, this may be the very thing that could turn you into the next Patricia Fields (the super successful costume designer for Sex And The City.) I mean, how much fun would it be to dress Blair Waldorf week after week? This is one program that could definitely lead to an exciting career.
Of course, if you really want to have a fun career, there’s always Michigan….
One of the big problems during the financial crisis was a bank run in the shadow banking system when doubts emerged about the safety of deposits.
In my last column at the Fiscal Times, I talked about an approach to solving the problem that involves having deposits in the shadow system backed (insured) by high quality collateral.
But high quality collateral is not the only option. Another way to do this is through a type of insurance along the lines of what the FDIC does for the traditional banking system, along with restrictions on eligibility for the insurance. In reaction to my column, and in support of the insurance approach, Morgan Ricks of Harvard Law School emails:
I enjoyed your Fiscal Times piece and am glad you're focused on this issue.
I'm a big admirer of Gary and Andrew's work, but I would encourage you to give some more thought to whether collateral requirements for repo are likely to do the trick. Here are a few things to consider:
- Many of the short-term liabilities of the shadow banking system were and are uncollateralized (think about Lehman's reliance on unsecured commercial paper -- the default of which caused the Reserve Fund to "break the buck," igniting the run on money market funds; and Citigroup's SIVs, which financed themselves in the unsecured markets).
- Money market investors do not want to take possession of collateral and dispose of it. Even if the collateral is high quality, they don't want the interest rate risk. That's not their business. They don't want to deal with the consequences of a counterparty default. This is why, in the crisis, many money market investors stopped rolling even those repos that were fully secured by Treasuries and agencies:
- See Chris Cox's testimony on Bear Stearns (here http://www.sec.gov/news/testimony/2008/ts040308cc.htm): "For the first time, a major investment bank that was well-capitalized and apparently fully liquid experienced a crisis of confidence that denied it not only unsecured financing, but short-term secured financing, even when the collateral consisted of agency securities with a market value in excess of the funds to be borrowed"
- See also FRBNY's repo task force report (here http://www.newyorkfed.org/prc/report_100517.pdf): “Discussions in the Task Force emphasized repeatedly that many Cash Investors focus primarily if not almost exclusively on counterparty concerns and that they will withdraw secured funding on the same or very similar timeframes as they would withdraw unsecured funding.”
- Even if collateral requirements reduce the likelihood of runs, how do we calibrate them -- what is the objective function? Presumably we think maturity transformation (fractional reserve banking) is a good thing -- it increases the supply of loanable funds by pooling otherwise idle cash reserves and deploying them toward productive investments. Risk constraints (such as collateral requirements) necessarily reduce this surplus -- there is a real social cost. How do we appraise the corresponding benefit? That is, how do we estimate the systemic instability associated with any given level of collateral requirements? My argument is that we can't. And by "we" I mean not just the government, but anybody.
My paper argues that we avoid these problems with an insurance regime; that financial firms outside the insurance regime should be disallowed from conducting maturity transformation (i.e., they would have to rely on term funding, not money market funding); and that we should develop functional criteria of eligibility for the insurance regime. (By the way, this is not the same thing as "extending" insurance to shadow banks.)
Anyway, these are things worth thinking about. I think the insurance approach needs more serious consideration than it has received -- it's a little lonely over here ...
Best,
Morgan Ricks
See here for nice summary of this approach and link to the underlying academic paper.
Catherine Herridge - Fox <b>News</b> | Gender Discrimination | Age | Mediaite
The US Equal Employment Opportunity Commission filed a complaint yesterday against Fox News for a gender and age discrimination case dating back to 2007. The FNC correspondent, Catherine Herridge, is still an employee with the company, ...
2010 World Series of Poker Europe: A Look Back In Photos | PokerNews
Relive the World Series of Poker Europe, from Phil Laak's first bracelet to James Bord winning the main event in our photo gallery.
<b>News</b> Corp Gave $1 Million To Chamber Of Commerce: Report
News Corp., the parent company of Fox News, contributed $1 million this summer to the US Chamber of Commerce, the business lobby that has been running an aggressive campaign in support of the Republican effort to retake Congress, ...
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