A Matter of Degree

(Click image to enlarge)

Sometimes I think it's more difficult to get through to teens these days about the importance of higher education. Maybe it's just my imagination or a different take on my parent's generation observation that "in my day the snow was waist high". Whatever it is, clearly a college degree or higher is more important now than ever before.

From the New York Times...

The unemployment rate for workers over 25 years old who haven’t gone beyond high school rose to 10% in May, nearly doubling from 5.2% a year earlier, the government said Friday. Among workers who haven’t completed high school, the unemployment rate rose to 15.5%, compared with 8.4% last year.

By contrast, the jobless rate among those with four-year college degrees was 4.8%, up considerably from 2.3% a year ago, but well below the rate for people with less education.

The pay gap between college graduates and everyone else, for instance, reached a record high last year. Four-year-college graduates made 54 percent more, on average, than people who attended college but did not graduate. Fifty-four percent!