Way back in time, I commented on the decrease in school hours in the US by saying this:

I predict that the real mark of being middle to upper middle class soon will be isolation from the state school system. This is already the case for the upper class: it is what Eton, Harrow, Winchester and Oxbridge are for. But the middle class will home school: the upper middle class will put their children in private schools that will function like gymnasium. I expect that international qualifications — like the International Baccalaureate and Cambridge (which already have a fairly big number of schools, including state schools offering them in NZ) will become popular.

The alternative, of course, is to do what Sweden did: privatize the schools and break the teacher’s unions. That leads to more equitable education.

I stand by this. Being a gentleman — a member of the gentry — has been remarkably fluid in England from the middle ages. The squires, who made up (and still make up) the bulk of the house of commons are not noble, but of good families. You can move up — businessmen, lawyers (unfortunately) and members of the professions such as physicians and prelates have been knighted in roughly the same proportion throughout this period. Families rise, and families fall. (In fact, one of the family legends is that we emigrated a generation after the family lost their fortune)

The easiest ladder up has been education. The second ladder has been success in business. Here, I am a case in point: my grandfathers were a postmaster and share-milker (contract farmer: he owned the cows but not land and shared the income from his herd with the farmer): my parents both trained as school teachers. They sent me to a local school in a lower middle class suburb — decile three. Now, I then got into a professional course, became an academic, and moved into an area where the local high school is decile 9, Going to university was rare from my school: getting into a professional course is common for boys at my son’s school.

Now, in the hope that it will help those choosing their majors, this came out earlier this year..

Graduates with a Bachelor of Arts – the most common degree in New Zealand and the degree on which salaries in the report are benchmarked – can expect to earn around $30,800 in their first year of work and $40,100 by their third year, while those who gain a degree in sciences can expect to start work on around $32,900 a year, jumping to $42,200 by the third year of employment.

By comparison, students who specialise in medical studies can expect to be earning 2.59 times more than those with a Bachelor of Arts after three years in the workforce.

Other high-earning fields were veterinary studies (1.61 times more pay than humanities), law (1.47), electrical engineering (1.44), pharmacy (1.43), accountancy (1.42), computer science (1.36) and nursing (1.26).

Degrees in teaching earn 1.27 times more in the first year, but by the third year that advantage dips to a factor of 1.16 times. Graduates with degrees in tourism, performing arts, visual arts, and graphic and design arts earn between 10 percent and 20 percent less than those degrees in humanities. However, degrees in communication and media studies earn 11 percent more.

Your major matters, particularly in New Zealand, where most professional courses accept students after one intermediate year. If you are going to university, consider the income you will make with your degree. The idea of doing a degree for mere interest is not viable in these days of student loans that are not discharged if you go bankrupt. So consider the financial benefits as well as the costs.

Finally, finish as close to minimal time as possible  If you want to party, don’t go to university, just go to the student pubs. Get a job instead. You can learn a lot from a well run franchise, such as McDonalds.