What a surprise- not! A new study (based upon US Bureau of Census data) has reported that folks who go to college earn $ 1 million more than those who don’t. No, not in one year, silly- over their lifetimes. Which comes to about $ 25K a year. Moreover, this data has been around for at least 40 years- because I knew these facts back when I was teaching.
Thankfully, that was not the only conclusion from the report (The Economic Value of College Majors). Drs. Anthony P. Carnevale, Ban Cheah, and Andrew R. Hanson of Georgetown University discerned that 35% of all jobs today are demanding a college degree. (I have reported that it’s getting to the point that Kmart thinks their employees need college degrees.
According the study about ¼ of all bachelors degrees awarded are in business, with education a distance second at 9.4%. Interestingly, more than ½ of those who were awarded baccalaureates with biology and physical science majors have gone on to obtain a graduate degree. That is because these fields do value [i.e., pay higher salaries] the advanced training- biology and life science majors with advanced degrees earn a 64% wage premium and physical sciences a 50% wage premium for those with advanced degrees.
Here’s the real problem- those who enter the field of education are scraping the bottom of the barrel when it comes to salaries. (Of the bottom 25, only artists, social workers, and musicians are those not in education.) And, we wonder why our kids are not getting good educations? (Did our governments never learn that we pay for what we value?)
There are also wide differences within each profession. For example the top quartile of finance majors are paid more than $ 100K a year- but the bottom quartiles barely eke out $ 50K. (At least in that field, it’s clear that those with more capabilities earn greater compensation.)
And, as I have routinely discussed, while chem e’s (and their variants) comprise about 5.5% of those attaining degrees in architecture and engineering, they are generally the highest paid of all degreed candidates. (By the way, the actual percentage of chem e’s is only 0.4% of all the graduates. And, about 2/3 of those who plan to major in chem e don’t finish with that degree.)
And, while STEM degrees pay the most overall (that’s the median), the range means that there are plenty of folks with other degrees that do pretty well.
And, while we do expect our BS/BA degrees to afford us better salaries, that is not the only reason to obtain a degree. Moreover, given the potential salaries, there are great reasons to find schools that cost less- because we don’t want our graduates to be burdened by college debt all their lives.
