10 Weekend Reads (+ graphic ROI on college degrees)

The 4th of July of weekend has gotten off to a very pleasant start so for those of us who are sunning and funning, here is another interesting weekend reading list courtesy of our friend Barry Ritholtz.  On this list is a very interesting article about the nature of modern cultures that seem to promote the endurance of bad ideas.  But the real winner this week comes from the New Republic: "The Foreclosure Sleuth:  How a Sports Agent Uncovered the Biggest Financial Fraud in American History."  A close runner up is today's graphic, courtesy of The Economist, which shows the 20-year financial return of various college degrees.  It seems to negate the popular notion that technical degrees provide for better careers than liberal arts degrees as one can easily observe most of the dots clustering right around the 5 to 15 percent mark, meaning they all return a fairly respectable positive ROI.

The main flaw in this analysis would seem to me that the Engineering color is in the same part of the color spectrum as the arts, which would seem to skew all the results.  Engineering should have been a completely different color such as black or maroon so it would stand out and thereby offer a different perspective.  Also, engineering, business and science degrees seem to be many while humanities and arts are few, which is the opposite of the reality where most colleges offer many more liberal arts majors than they do science or technical.  Be that as it is, it is still a very interesting graphic that shows that most any college degree offers a positive return.


10 Weekend Reads 6-2-16 - The Big Picture

10 Weekend Reads

July 2, 2016 7:00am by Barry Ritholtz

The weekend is here! Pour yourself a mug of Sumatra coffee, grab a seat on your favorite hanging chair, and get ready for our longer-form weekend reads:

• How Mark Zuckerberg Led Facebook’s War to Crush Google Plus (Vanity Fair)
• The Most Fascinating Impact Investor You’ve Never Heard Of (We See Genius)
• ‘It’s the age of the self’: how Kim Kardashian gamified her life and made $100 million doing it (The Verge)
• Why bad ideas refuse to die: They may have been disproved by science or dismissed as ridiculous, but some foolish beliefs endure (The Guardian)
• The Daily Trump: A Time Capsule of the Unpresidential Things Trump Says (The Atlantic)
• The Foreclosure Sleuth: How a sports agent uncovered the greatest financial fraud in American history. (New Republic) see also Why we trust, and why that’s changing online (CJR)
•Why Does a Tire Company Publish the Michelin Guide? (Priceonomics)
• The Civil War that Could Doom the N.R.A. (Vanity Fair)
• War, On Drugs: Killing people is hard and horrible. No wonder that warriors, from berserkers to jihadis, need drugs to get in the mood (Aeon)
• National Geographic travel photographer of the year – in pictures (The Guardian)

Be sure to check out our Masters in Business interview this weekend with Ross Buchmuller, former President of AIG Private Client Group and now founder and CEO of Pure Insurance.

Which college degrees offer the best financial returns?

Source: The Economist