Larry Summers cites in his debate with Amy Chua that Bill Gates and Mark Zuckerberg dropped out of Harvard emphasizing what those “two” achieved without a university education.
While Gates was building Microsoft and Zuckerberg Facebook, do you believe these two billionaires spent ten hours a day doing what the average American child (raised by SAPs such as Summers) does to enjoy the first quarter of his or her life?
Summers doesn’t mention that Warren Buffet, one of the richest men on the planet, attended the Wharton Business school at the University of Pennsylvania for two years then transferred to the University of Nebraska-Lincoln. Working part time, he managed to graduate in only three years.
Summers doesn’t mention that it is common that the top one percent of executives with annual incomes of $500,000 or more often have Ivy league educations from universities such as Stanford, Harvard, Yale or Princeton.
“Asian countries value education more than other countries.”
Summers doesn’t mention that the top 15% of the upper-middle class are highly educated and often have graduate degrees while earning a high 5-figure annual income commonly above $100,000.
To be specific, the median personal income for a high school drop out in the US with less than a 9th grade education is $17,422, and with some college that medium income jumps to $31,054, while a person with a professional university degree earns an annual medium income of $82,473. Source: Wiki Academic Models (this source was citing US Census data).
It’s okay if Summers and his fellow SAPs let their children and teens have fun the first eighteen years of life, but don’t forget, the average life span in the US is 78.3 years.
What are those children going to do for enjoyment while working to earn a living the next 60.3 years as an adult?
Most children raised by Tiger Moms such as Amy Chua shouldn’t have to worry. Those children (as adults) will probably be in the top 15% of income earners and enjoy life much more than those earning less than $18 thousand annually.
Learn more from Costco Connections “Is College Worth It?” or return to The War Between Old-World Values and New-Age Parenting – Part 1
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Lloyd Lofthouse is the award-winning author of the concubine saga, My Splendid Concubine & Our Hart. When you love a Chinese woman, you marry her family and culture too.
This revised and edited post first appeared on iLook China January 31, 2011 as Amy Chua Debates Former White House “Court Jester” Larry Summers
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