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Actuarial Science Ranked As Most Valuable College Major (bloomberg.com)
According to a new report from Bankrate, actuarial science, the formal term for the study of insurance, was ranked the most valuable college major.
"The actuarial science profession is interesting because students don't need advanced degrees to gain livable wages, but instead are certified through a series of exams overseen by the industry's professional organizations," said Bankrate.com analyst Adrian Garcia in an interview. "Students typically pass one to two of these exams while in school and then go on and complete others while working, earning raises and bonuses as they pass." Bloomberg reports: Actuarial science majors earn an average annual salary of $108,658 and have a better-than-average unemployment rate at 2.3 percent. And at a time when student debt is at a record high, these graduates are less likely to incur the added expense of additional schooling and delayed earning potential. Less than 1 in 4 graduates pursue advanced degrees. The study ranked 162 majors with labor forces of at least 15,000 people based on average annual income, employment status and whether those graduates went on to pursue a higher degree within 12 months. Income accounted for 70 percent of the weighted ranking, unemployment for 20 percent and 10 percent was awarded to career paths that did not demand additional education. The data was derived from the U.S. Census Bureau's 2016 American Community Survey.
"The actuarial science profession is interesting because students don't need advanced degrees to gain livable wages, but instead are certified through a series of exams overseen by the industry's professional organizations," said Bankrate.com analyst Adrian Garcia in an interview. "Students typically pass one to two of these exams while in school and then go on and complete others while working, earning raises and bonuses as they pass." Bloomberg reports: Actuarial science majors earn an average annual salary of $108,658 and have a better-than-average unemployment rate at 2.3 percent. And at a time when student debt is at a record high, these graduates are less likely to incur the added expense of additional schooling and delayed earning potential. Less than 1 in 4 graduates pursue advanced degrees. The study ranked 162 majors with labor forces of at least 15,000 people based on average annual income, employment status and whether those graduates went on to pursue a higher degree within 12 months. Income accounted for 70 percent of the weighted ranking, unemployment for 20 percent and 10 percent was awarded to career paths that did not demand additional education. The data was derived from the U.S. Census Bureau's 2016 American Community Survey.
I clearly remember my mom telling me this multiple times in the early 90s. I wonder if the Internet boom made this false for a while or if this "new" report is just stating that something that's been true for twenty-plus years is still true.
My mom had no connection with the insurance industry, it was just commonly known career advice that if you were good at math then passing the series of actuarial exams was a sure route to a good paying job.
Feel free to put together your own report ranking college degrees in order of "making the lives of humanity happier" but that's simply not the ranking order used by this report.
The vast majority of insurance is voluntary and that's a good thing. All insurance is fundamentally gambling but there are definitely cases where a high probability or certainty of a known cost is better than a low probability of a potentially much higher cost. This is mostly true when the higher cost is devastating or entirely out of reach.
Actuaries are simply gamblers who are smart enough to accurately calculate the odds. If you can find a sucker to bet against, by all means gamble with a sucker, but the actuary is more likely to stay in business long term.
And if you don't want to gamble at all, you'll still have to contend with the uncertainty of the universe, but nobody is forcing you to lay cash on the "child fell down a well" scenario. However if you are doing stuff with a potential to cause serious harm (operating heavy machinery, practicing medecine, etc) you can expect to be forced to carry enough insurance to pay for your mistakes even if you swear that you'll never make a mistake. The rest of the world simply isn't willing to take your word on your own assessment of your own perfection.
Uh huh. The funny thing is that all these jobs are STILL HERE, even though "AI" is here. I mean, just buy a Watson license from IBM and you can get rid of those pesky employees. Yeah right. It is almost like AI is complete BS or something.
But the insurance industry does improve safety and prevent harm. It encourages programs, standards and good practice in those it insures in exchange for lower insurance rates. So hurricane resistant building designs will get lower premiums in hurricane prone areas. And they do this by accessing risk based on statistical evidence. It pushes best practice before bad things happen.
I think much of the issues with say flood insurance propping up otherwise too risky flood prone communities, is that the insurance is government subsidised in flood prone areas. Which distorts the market pressure from increased insurance costs on flood prone areas, and instead encourage further building.
Probably the clearest example I can think of is the setting up of the "underwriters laboratory" for what was originally fire safety standards and approval for fire safety in buildings and electrical safety, setup by the National Board of Fire Underwriters, now the American Insurance Association trade association. UL standards are everywhere, and ensure product safety over a wide range of products.
Already happened for about 10 years. But
1. Not all lemmings could handle the math
2. Not all schools want to admit all the lemmings
3. Like accountants, lawyers and doctors, the field is well-protected through the certifying organizations.
I paid $240,000 for my house. I owe $200,000 on it.
Without insurance, if/when something happens to my house - hurricane, fire, etc, I'd have no place to live AND owe $200,000 paying for a house I no longer have. That would be catastrophic for my family.
It's insured for $400,000. If it's destroyed by a hurricane (or more likelly in my area, tornado or fire), I'll pay off the $200,000 I owe and then use the other $200,000 to buy another house with cash.
If a fire or tornado destroys my house, I'll still have an house and won't have a mortgage payment. I'm HOPING for a tornado. Insurance means it would be a windfall (haha) instead of a catastrophe.
> No risk is reduced by that "product".
Have you ever heard of Underwriters Laboratories (UL Listed, UL registered)? Or fire codes? Underwriters means insurers. The primary product safety organization was founded by insurance companies.
How about the National Fire Protection Association, which writes the fire codes? That's insurance companies again.
Ever heard car commercials bragging about their IIHS safety rating? IIHS is the Insurance Institute for Highway Safety. Again, the primary safety organization is insurance companies.
It's rare to have a business style degree based on calculus (mixing in linear algebra and operations research, OR was awesome!).
Calculus based statistics was hard (sophomore year). Life contingencies was much more difficult (senior year).
I moved into IT right after graduation. Not much calculus after that, but I always enjoyed it (until sin/cos came into the equation).
BlameBillCosby.com
you are de-facto arguing for single payer government health care
I have been arguing for single payer health care for decades, as a matter of fact. I wasn't necessarily trying to steer the discussion that way but I would prefer to see a sane single-payer system then the giant clusterfuck we currently have. The best insurance I've ever had in this country was from a state-run system, but the government gradually restricted it to fewer and fewer eligible people as time went on. If I could drop my current insurance and buy medicare instead I'd happily do so.
Which I think probably answers your original question
As opposed to letting people suffer and die without insurance?
In that I just want the insurance industry to go away. It's been shown in simple dollars why we have the system we have, and it's not because it is in any way better. We have the system we have because the insurance industry owns Washington DC. They pad the pockets of politicians on both sides of the aisle to make sure they get what they want - they outspend the NRA and compete with the defense industry for top "honor" in terms of lobbying spending - and the Affordable Care Act was their collection on their investment.
Damn_registrars has no butt-hole. Damn_registrars has no use for a butt-hole.
You want to know my problem with people like you? You think your way is the only way. I like to use insurance for catastrophic coverage only. You see, if I know it's something I'll definitely have to pay for, I'd rather save for it and pay for it directly. Eliminate the middle man, makes it cheaper. But there's people like you who think I'm wrong. You think you know better than I. You assume because you can't save for this sort of thing, nobody can, so insurance should be required to cover everything, and you lobby to make the type of insurance I prefer illegal, even though unlike you, I'm capable of planning ahead. And I throw this at you and all you'll be able to do is throw lies like "they don't cover anything". No, they don't cover what YOU want. But your ego is so fucking big, you're such an authoritarian that you'll lobby to outlaw my preferred insurance method. I now have to pay 5 times as much for an insurance policy that pays for shit that I know I'm going to have to pay for, but hey, it's important that I have to pay for a middle man because YOU can't plan ahead.
I pointed out that insuring your home and its contents removed the risk of financial ruin due to a fire, tornado, etc. That's the proper use of insurance - preventing financial ruin by making a predictable small payment so you don't have to worry about losing $200,000.
The other insurance I carry is because I have a young child and I am the essentially the sole bread winner for our family. It only costs a couple hundred dollars per year for me to have a $250,000 life insurance policy to take care of my family if I die before I'm retired. Again, losing me without having insurance would be a financial catastrophe for my family. Insurance largely fixes that. (Wife has a plan to complete her degree while paying the bills with the first half of the insurance money).
A corollary is that you should NOT buy insurance on your $60 DVD player and other consumer items. A broken DVD player is not a catastrophe. It won't ruin you. Therefore rather than paying an extra $25-$50 every time you shop the electronics section, it is wiser to put that money in the bank. Then when the DVD player breaks you just buy a new one. It costs 75% that way, and you don't have to deal with filing a claim.
Twenty years ago you could be medical insurance in the US. It covered you for major medical expenses that would be catastrophic. A $35 doctor visit for strep throat isn't a major catastrophe, so insurance isn't relevant and wasn't involved. Medical insurance was fairly reasonably priced. In the last 20 years, people in the US, and our lawmakers, seem to have totally forgotten what insurance is. Insurance isn't for $35 items, that's what twenty dollar bills are for. But now we have insurance companies inserted into the process even for a $10 vaccine, so the doctor gets to pay a full-time claims person to handle paperwork and they wait a month or more to get their $10 for the vaccine. The insurance company has thousands of employees handling these tiny claims. All of those people and all of that process costs money. So now the insurance costs over twice as much and you STILL pay the doctor the $30, now they call it a co-pay. Now you ALSO get too pay the insurance company hundreds of dollars per month more and mostly you're paying for everyone's paperwork.
I wish I could still buy medical insurance, instead of a health plan. Medical insurance isn't that expensive and the claims hassle isn't that big of a deal for something you only deal with once or twice in your life. I've got $35 in the bank, so I can pay for a a strep test without also paying an insurance company an extra $35 to process the payment.
Even worse, now not only does the insurance company bureacracy have to get involved in every little medical thing, I'm also required to pay for crap that's rather questionable as to whether it's medical or not. The UK association of chiropractors, when organization which licenses chiropractors in the UK, says that the entire idea of "sublaxation" is bull, total snake oil, and that's what chiropractic is bases on in the US - snake oil. Yet I'm forced to pay for this snake oil, because lawmakers require insurance companies to include it. As I recall, one bill even listed aromatherapy (smelly candles) as something insurance companies (and therefore their customers) would be forced to pay for.
You want to fix medical costs in the US? That will require several different changes, but bringing back *medical insurance* as an alternative to *health plans* would certainly help.