College Pays
And it pays more now than it used to. This is Yglesias, at his blog:
The latest study form Georgetown’s Center on Education and the Workforce confirms the existence of a large and growing college wage premium. In 1999, people with bachelor’s degrees earned a 75 percent premium over those with high school degrees. Today that’s up to 84 percent. What’s more — and what I think is particularly interesting — is that “within the same industry, workers with more schooling usually land better paychecks.”
In the old days the distribution of wage income was determined more by “brawn power” and there were obvious limits on how much variation there could be. Today the distribution is much more determined by “brain power,” and the variation is much wider.
Yes, but is it the college that makes people more productive, or do more productive (smarter) people go to college?
College may pay, but their tuition charges are a rip off.
More spin from a self-interested parties.
This simply reports on synthetic earnings distributions estimated from 2009 cross-sectional earnings reported to the CPS. It uses self-reported educational attainment. The study “reproduced the methodology originally used in the 2002 Census report on lifetime earnings.” The implicit assumption is that 60 year olds with college degrees working today are predictors for that 25 year olds working today will be earning when they are 60.
Think that college selectivity, and the usefulness of college majors, has changed in the last 40 years?
Colleges select by demonstrated academic ability and perseverance (as measured by the ability to get a high school degree). Assuming these abilities are related to pay, their graduates are already more likely to succeed whether or not they go to college.
Studies like this say little or nothing about whether college adds anything for the marginal student, especially since there are small studies showing that a lot of the gains in earnings depend on a few majors.
The scandal is that academics ignore the problems with the work and issue press releases implying things that haven’t been shown.
College and universities do a poor job of actually explaining to students what they need to know to get a decent job. Some academics believe the degree is merely a signaling process to tell potential employers you are motivated. However, some skills pay much better than others and can be readily used on the job.
The other day I read an article in Slate written by a Harvard professor bashing humanities education. A alrge number of people who decide to study humanities cannot get a job in their field or end up getting a job they could have performed with a BA degree rather than a MA or PhD. Yet humanities professors whose job depends upon a steady stream of RAs and TAs encourage students to enter a field they cannot earn a living from.
If I had it to do all over again I’d probably become an engineer.
I loved school (and still am actively pursing more education), but I think colleges do a bit of a disservice to students by letting them matriculate without fully explaining how many real-world jobs there are in subjects like archaeology and Greek.
I agree with Buster. If I had to do it all over again, I’d probably double major in math and computer science. Leave the art classes for electives.