According to a recent article in the Ventura County Star, business is now the number one major among college students.

That's up from, say, the 1970s, when business was a distant third. This is information that comes from the National Center for Education Statistics and the Princeton Review.

A lot of theories are offered in the article penned by Jean Cowden Moore, and she sums them up in this key paragraph: "Educators say today's students might not be as idealistic as their counterparts in the 1960s. Plus, they've grown up more coddled than past generations. Now that they're college students, they want to continue the lifestyle they grew up with, and they see business as a major that will give them a stable income."

So this isn't explicitly personal finance-related but education is related to future earnings so I'm writing about it even though it might be a bit of a stretch.

Basically, some schools have decided that since a 100 is an A and an 80 is a B, that an F should be a 50 -- even if the grade a student actually earned was a 0. That's so crazy that it just might be ... completely insane! The rationale, according to one principal, is "motivation and to give kids the opportunity to pass a grade."

Well that's great. But if you're going to call a 0 of out of 100 50%, you might as well dispense with the whole grading ritual and pass everyone.

Now for the economics tie-in. Policies like this that hand out high school diplomas in exchange for writing your name devalue the education -- and make it so that employers now will only hire based on a college degree. So students who 50 years ago could have gotten a job with a high school diploma now have to spend 4 years and $80 thousand to get the same job.

When we talk about making education affordable again, we should also talk about making a high school diploma meaningful again. Calling 0's 50's doesn't help.

Science Daily released an article today which cites clear scientific evidence showing that the better educated we are, the longer we tend to live. The study, which was conducted by the American Cancer Society and the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, analyzed data from more than 3.5 million deaths occurring between 1993 and 2001. Science Daily reports that the study concluded; "People with less education have fewer financial resources, less access to health insurance or stable employment, and less health literacy." It would seem that not only do the rich get richer and the poor get poorer, but the poor get deader sooner also.

The greatest percentage increase in death rates was reported to be within the social class, white women. In that group, death rates increased by 3.2% annually for women with less than 12 years of education. The group of white women with more than 12 years of education also had a statistically significant increase in death rates of 0.7%. Men on the other hand, have seen increases in longevity. Well educated black men showed the greatest improvement, with a 36% decreased death rate. Well-educated white men also posted longevity gains, with a 25% decreased death rate.

My street level analysis is this: The education factor speaks for itself. Well educated people have the knowledge and resources to take better care of themselves. This is not to minimize the fact that they also tend to do fewer stupid things. Women, as they increase their power, leverage and exposure in this world, also increase their stresses and risks. Black men are beginning to make up for decades of high mortality rates, by working together to enhance their socio-economic well being overall. Men in general have begun to admit their vulnerability to the ravages of life and more of us are willing to admit when we need help.

As for us educated white guys living longer, well, that's probably just dumb luck.

Whenever I find myself on the subway, I'm careful to pack a book. After all, living in the Bronx, I've discovered that staring at people can be a life-threatening mistake; besides, life is short and my reading list is long.

Every so often, though, I make a mistake and forget. After I finish reading all the advertisements in my subway car, I will, occasionally, surreptitiously check out my fellow passengers. While many of them are generally checking out a novel of some sort, an equal number usually have their noses stuck in a school book.

It's cool to see so many people working on their education. Of course, the vast majority of them are studying to become geriatric nurses, which is a great idea given that the Baby Boomer generation is rapidly approaching old age. After all, these are the people who have demanded special attention for most of the last sixty years, and there's no reason to expect that they're going to get any less selfish as they take the slow walk into the great unknown. (For the record, if you're looking for job security and a good wage over the next twenty or thirty years, you might want to learn how to change bedpans and dispense Geritol.)

A privately funded program in a public school in Manhattan offers kids up to $50 for doing well on standardized tests. Schools across the country are experimenting with incentive programs that reward students for everything from showing up to school, to doing well on tests, to getting good grades overall.

Is this just a sign of the times? Or is it something that we should frown upon? I'm a believer that kids should go to school and they should learn because it is the right thing to do. You can't get ahead if you can't read. Yet these days, it seems that fewer students and families value education the way we used to.

I will be interested to see if these incentive programs really do any good. Part of me thinks that the students who already try hard will keep doing so, while the majority of those who don't want an education will not take advantage of this opportunity. I hope I'm wrong.

I am glad, though, that the incentive programs are being paid for with private funds. I do think a case could be made for better ways to spend that money, but so long as it is not paid by the taxpayers, I don't really care. Oh, and the teacher has an incentive too: If the class improves enough, she can get a bonus up to $3,000.

Tracy L. Coenen, CPA, MBA, CFE performs fraud examinations and financial investigations for her company Sequence Inc. Forensic Accounting, and is the author of Essentials of Corporate Fraud.

What follows is a "My View" column that I wrote for the Cape Cod Times while I was in high school. I am posting it here as my response to Tennessee's decision to require financial literacy classes:

We are approaching a retirement crisis. The average baby boomer household has a net worth of about $100,000, less than one-sixth of what most experts agree is needed for retirement. According to a recent article by actor, economist and writer Ben Stein, retiring baby boomers are headed for a decline in their standard of living similar to the one that swept this country in the 1930s. With the Social Security system that was supposed to serve as a safety net in limbo, pundits are lining up to blame just about everyone for the boomers' dismal financial situation. Some blame the politicians. Others blame a materialistic consumer culture characterized by conspicuous consumption. But I think there's one institution that no one is talking about that deserves a giant share of the blame: schools.

Americans have made poor decisions with money (a savings rate of zero, compared with the average Chinese household's 40% savings rate), landing themselves in the precarious position they are now in. That's largely a result of financial illiteracy. Far from correcting this problem, the schools have ignored it, and kids still know nothing about money.

An article on Consumerist today, Report Card on Personal Finance Education Nationwide stirred up memories for me. The article was prompted by the decision in Tennessee last week to require a personal finance class for all graduating high school students, starting with this year's 7th graders. This is a decision that adds Tennessee to a list of LESS THAN 20% of states that currently have a personal finance education requirement.

Through most of last year, I listened to my son, then a high school senior, rant and rave about the curriculum at his high school. The school requires four years of a foreign language (and at the time there were only two choices, French or Latin) but, you guessed it, not an hour in the curriculum on personal finance. What this means is that students might graduate proficient in translating the Aeneid, but knowing essentially nothing about compounding, investing, stocks and bonds, mortgages etc. Huh?

It's hard to believe that in all of New England, the only state that seemed to actually require financial literacy is the State of Maine.

The Consumerist article includes a map so that you can see where your state stands. Consider sending an email to your superintendent's office.

A piece in the USA Today looks at an emerging, and I would say disturbing new trend: Kids being paid to go to school, get good grades, or attend after-school programs.

And not just parents slipping their kids a few bucks: We're talking about the government cutting kids checks for going to latchkey.

In suburban Atlanta, eighth and eleventh-graders $8 an hour for attending an after-school study program.

Baltimore is set to pay kids as much as $110 for improving their test scores, and even New York fourth graders can win $500 for improving their scores on standardized tests.

There are a few things that come to mind. First, shouldn't kids be grateful for their educational opportunities? Second, doesn't incentivizing fourth graders with large sums of money make these tests even more stressful, and is there any good reason to put little kids under that much pressure?

But a key issue to me -- as someone who was bored out of mind during school -- is that the fact that we have to bribe kids to go to school is indicative of how boring and insipid the work is. Standardized tests and textbooks have taken all the fun out of what should be a time for learning and discovery. Now it's all about drilling.

Why don't we take the money we're going to pay kids for study and use it to develop a curriculum that kid might actually want to study.

I feel compelled to followup on my rant earlier this week ("Kitty Couture: Money Down the Drain") by a reader reminding me that a preschool enrollment race is underway. This is especially true in New York City where 3 year-olds face heavy competition to be accepted at preschools with an annual tuition as high as $30,440. Forbes recently did a piece on the most expensive preschools in America.

It isn't the tuition that bothers me. Infinite money entitles people to whatever expenditures they choose. I don't care that by comparison to the Ethical Culture/Fieldston School rate, the preschool at New York City's prestigious Horace Mann is a more affordable...$26,880. I don't even care - although it is mystifying - that in a 2002 scandal, Smith Barney investment analyst Jack Grubman appeared to have raised the rating of a stock important to Citigroup just as the Citigroup CEO was putting in a good word for Grubman's twins at the prestigious 92ND Street Y Nursery School.

Grubman?

Do you find yourself wondering where your donations go when you write a check to a large organization? Are you interested in education? Perhaps you would prefer to choose who receives your money, and for what purpose. If so, you might want to check out Donorschoose.org.

Donorschoose matches willing donors with requests from teachers for funding of specific, small-scale classroom needs. For example, a class in San Jose, Calif. needs $189 for a worm farm and accompanying text books. A Texas class of second and third graders need $665 for digital cameras so they can put together a digital yearbook. A school in North Carolina asks for $835 to beef up its fiction collection. Donors can choose to fund all of the project, or pool a smaller contribution with those of other donors.

At the end of the project, the donor receives a feedback package with photos and the teacher's impact statement. The funded school typically returns 15% of the donation back to donors are given the option of contributing up to an extra 15% to fund the not-for-profit's operations.

This is one of many opportunities opened up by the Internet to connect donor and recipient. If you have some cash and a desire to do some good with it, this would be worth your consideration.

Everyone knows the cost of college is completely out of control. Kids are graduating with unprecedented levels of student loan debt, and it's often a difficult burden to carry into the first years in the workforce.

BusinessWeek's Alison Damast takes a look at 11 tuition-free colleges all over the country. Many, like Berea College in Kentucky rely on extensive work-study programs that allow students to work off the entire cost of their education while they're in school -- a nice alternative to paying off student loans out of your Social Security check when you're in your sixties.

Another interesting program is the City University of New York's Teacher Academy which prepares students for careers as math as science teachers -- both of these fields are currently suffering from a critical shortage of talent, so any program to induce more kids to pursue the career is a worthwhile investment for society. Cooper Union is a highly-selective college with programs in art, engineering, and architecture.

And then there are the Military, Air Force, Naval, Merchant Marine and Coast Guard academies which require a nomination from a state congressman.

I was in high school not all that long ago -- and I don't remember the guidance counselor ever mentioning anything about these tuition-free colleges. My brother is an engineering major -- and also was never told about programs like the Franklin W. Olin College of Engineering.

These seem to be a very, very, well-kept secret, and it seems like most prospective college students and their parents don't know about them -- Forward this post to anyone you know who might be interested.