The Broken University System in America

Explicit content warning

10/13/20 • 83 min

America's university system is falling apart at the seams! Tuition costs continue to rise, the quality of education is falling, accreditation from the university system has become worthless, and standardized testing has lost its mind. In this episode I invited Louis a great friend of mine and ex-colleague to discuss these topics and provide some possible solutions. Both of us work in an industry that requires a master's degree at minimum and is highly technical (quantitative finance). I have started to wonder if a college degree is even worth it for the majority of people. I guess the real question is who is a college degree best for, what sort of degrees are worth it, and where should you go to avoid over paying?
Louis went to college for his undergrad at McGill University in Canada where he saved a ton of money. He then went on for an MBA at Baruch College where he again saved money by not going to a highly priced school. On the other hand I went to a cheap state university by going to Washington State University but decided I needed an advanced degree with a big name and decided to pay a ton of money to go to the University of Michigan. The decision of where to go and how much to spend can have a huge impact on your career opportunities. Other important lessons such as knowing yourself will be discussed as a college degree is not right for everyone.
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Previous Episode

Quant Goals and The Big Picture

A common question I get a lot is, what does a career path in quant finance look like? People assume doing math and stats doesn't change. We'll the process doesn't look much different than any other job. You start on small projects that have low impact and then get moved up to high profile, billion dollar projects where everyone is watching. You will then progress into management roles and a few lucky and skilled people will end up executives.
I also discuss my personal goals in this episode which tie back into the career progression mentioned earlier. For example, how do I improve my soft skills? How do you retain technical skills when you become a manager? I also talk about other personal goals and projects such as wanting to write a book, run a half marathon, and shoot some short films as a better way for me to describe the emotions behind being a quant.
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Next Episode

Why I Dislike Talking About Trading and Investing

As someone who works in quantitative finance and runs one of the largest YouTube channels dedicated to quant finance, everyone wants me to talk about trading. First off, I'm not a trader and don't work for an investing firm. But the main reason is that everyone has an opinion on trading that they think is a fact. You really have two different camps and both are non-sense.
The first camp are the business people in traditional finance. They worship Warren Buffet and think you can simply look at cash flows to determine an assets value. They also like to create fairy tale futures about companies and why they will be worth a lot or nothing...even if it contradicts their simple cash flow theory.
The second camp are the quants or nerds. They bring in massive amounts of data and apply models blindly to everything. Once they get a number they are determined it must be a fact. They also want to tell you all about how smart they are because they do math.
The problem with quantitative finance is that we're modeling people and guess what...people aren't easily understood. Finance, economics, politics, and quant finance are all soft sciences that are based on people making decisions. I enjoy discussing the businesses in detail but realizing you need data and statistical theory to also support your ideas. I work in risk management so I need to try and find every reason why my idea is wrong. That's right! Look for what's wrong, don't look for why you're right/ Confirmation bias is one of the biggest flaws the human race has. So in summary...I just don't like talking with people who are over confident and lack enough real world experience to have an educated discussion about trading and investing. But who knows, maybe I'll add a few more videos on the topic.
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