Education: ticket out of poverty
For all those people seeking a job in the 1950s or 60s, having a degree and getting a government job was a sure passport to success.
Typically a government job was a ‘get me out of poverty’ ticket. Many parents would happily sacrifice everything to educate their children. This they considered their most important step in being able to come out of the village or town to a more civilized place – which largely meant Delhi or Bombay.
They were happy that their children had got Government jobs…which meant they were sure to get a regular income and a fantastic indexed pension to boot.
Then these people in the 1970s and 80s paid through their noses for ‘coaching classes’ and made sure that their children cracked the JEE. These Engineers then went to IIM and then sold colored water. But what the hell, they moved from a 2 bhk in the suburbs to a real house – 4 bhk in the middle part of the city. Then they bought the neighbors flat too. Wow they had moved a couple of notches above what the dad thought they could. Parents even went for a small ‘foreign’ tour, and they had really arrived.
Now the gen after that is in a kind of a dilemma. Will they be able to jump 2-3 notches higher? Seems difficult.
These parents have saved, invested, and have let us say Rs. 15 crores net worth. This is a serious amount of money, and it is their sense of humor that they call themselves ‘middle class’. Fine. They can send their kid to any part of the world to study. Spending a couple of crores is not an issue. They also think (like their father thought) – RoI on education is INFINITE.
This is NOT TRUE. Not true at all.
I now see parents wondering ‘how can I make life great for my kids’ mode. So it is no longer JEE that is the aim, but starts earlier. IB school, then obviously foreign education (what is the use of IB to send him/her to IIT?) so it is USA, UK …etc. However if the students does not have the marks or merit, it is Australia. Or Singapore, or Dubai.
Does this mean he will now get to a networth of Rs. 1500 crores (after all his father got to 100 times his grandfather’s net-worth, did he not?).
Well, well I think difficult. Some of them surely will, but most will NOT.
The world itself might get to be a more difficult place to live. It will be far more competitive.
Education helps you move from a low paid job to a high paid job. However it does not help you move from one category to another. Like films, entertainment, sports, etc. do. They are the game changer keys.
A Sachin or a Sourav have just moved from a middle class family to an extremely wealthy (remember not just rich) category. From a net worth of Rs. 50 lakhs to Rs. 3000 crores.
Such jumps happen only and only with super talent, luck, timing,…..etc….
Rajaram
Subraji,
Excellent thought. Also, people owe it to themselves to make big jumps in quality of life (wealth being just one part of it).
I particularly like your last sentence, that one needs talent, luck, timing to make a quantum leap. Now, not all have Tendulkar like talent. You either have it, or you don’t. As for luck, it happens. Nothing we can do about it.
It is the third aspect that is most relevant to most of us, who are not Tendulkars or Shah Rukh Khans. TIMING. For me, timing is luck meeting preparedness. We need to constantly prepare ourselves, so that when luck meets us, we take it. Reminds me of what Buffet said, that invest like a you have a punchcard and can only punch 20 holes in it. If one had only 20 moves to make in life (lukcy situations), be prepared to bet big in those situations. That is the only way to a balanced life for the majority of us who cannot speak of any outstanding talent.
Rgds,
Rajaram
anmol puri
Subra Sir
Cant figure out what is that u want to say / convey / carry forward…from this post ?
Reply Aawaited
Sanjay Singhaniya
Hi Anmol,
I guess this is the message :
With education, you can rise to certain income levels. But beyond it, you have to have super talent, luck, timing. Education is not a game changer key as it is thought to be by current generation.
By the way, it would have been interesting if people from different generations would have invested in gold certain %of income and compared that across generations. 🙂
Krish
Imagine the pressure on kids of movie and sport starts. They have to multiply 3K Crores into 3 lac Crores. I can’t imagine the target figures on current generation of Reliance family.
Siva
Dear readers,
The point is people have to specialize themselves to a skill and they have to sell that skill. Thats what important in this competetive world.
Saravanan
I get this point from this post:
Do not put pressure on your kid to get first rank, education is no more a game changer
Advait
Whether u have 1.5 crores, 15 crores, 150 crores, 1500 crores or 15000 crores……..at the end of life, you leave everything behind….so why not enjoy life and be satisfied with what u have…..it is useless to u in the afterlife !
Deepak
Subra,
Its the law of diminishing marginal returns 🙂 education can take you only so far into a job and no further … skills and entrepreneurship make the difference in whether you will end with 15, 150, 1500 or more crores….whether any of these numbers allow you to lead a happy life, make yourself useful to the larger society again comes back to the quality of education and value system…. I hope I can give my kids both of these…
Sanjay
Hi Advait,
At the end of life, you are going to leave everything behind. The question is how much you can accumulate before your retirement. Whether the corpus would be sufficient till end of life. If you have accumulated that much then it is just a number for you. And at that point, money does not matter. you can enjoy life and be satisfied with what you have.
For many others, savings for goals is a cause of concern.
Remember, this is finance related blog. 🙂