The Value of College

The bottom line, go to college.

From the NYT...

The chart above, adapted from a recent Bureau of Labor Statistics report, shows the difference in weekly pay between people with a given education level today and their counterparts from a generation ago.

As you can see, most men today earn less than equally educated men in 1979, with the exception of the most highly educated. The opposite is true for women: Most women today earn more than their equally educated counterparts from 1979, with the exception of the least educated.

There are a few forces behind these trends. One is that generally speaking, it’s harder to make it in today’s job market than it was a few decades ago if you don’t have at least a high school degree, since the expectations for what educational credentials workers should possess have risen. This is in part because the economy is less dependent on lower-skilled, manual-labor-intensive industries like manufacturing, and more reliant on industries that require formally credentialed education and training, like health care. Thus, in general, the earnings potential for the most educated has risen, and that for the least educated has fallen.