Posted on 05/27/2014 6:40:14 AM PDT by SeekAndFind
Some newly minted college graduates struggle to find work. Others accept jobs for which they feel overqualified. Student debt, meanwhile, has topped $1 trillion.
It’s enough to create a wave of questions about whether a college education is still worth it.
A new set of income statistics answers those questions quite clearly: Yes, college is worth it, and it’s not even close. For all the struggles that many young college graduates face, a four-year degree has probably never been more valuable.
The pay gap between college graduates and everyone else reached a record high last year, according to the new data, which is based on an analysis of Labor Department statistics by the Economic Policy Institute in Washington. Americans with four-year college degrees made 98 percent more an hour on average in 2013 than people without a degree. That’s up from 89 percent five years earlier, 85 percent a decade earlier and 64 percent in the early 1980s.
(Excerpt) Read more at nytimes.com ...
I am of the school of thought it is better to have a college degree that to not have one. Generally speaking college graduates do have higher incomes and lower unemployment rates than non-college graduates. That all said, the costs have skyrocketed in recent years. Here is what I did to get through college and not pile up a mountain of debt:
1) I selected a public university, not a private one.
2) I selected a university near my house and commuted to school.
3) I avoided excessive partying and fraternities.
4) I worked two part time jobs while working my way through college.
5) I bought only used textbooks.
6) I kept borrowing to an absolute minimum.
I still think if college students followed some of this, they could keep their student loan debt manageable.
“participation trophy called a degree”
Interesting..........................
One thing I might agree on is that the bachelors degree has been devalued. Post-graduate degrees or professional certifications are required for almost every job I look at.
Climatologist: Just hang out your shingle.
Climatologist: Just hang out your shingle.
I am right now dealing with a very bright and capable person with 20+ yrs. experience in his industry who is having a hard time getting a look because his Bachelors Degree is from a nondescript online school.
The Affirmative Action hires in all the HR departments won’t give him a second look based on that alone. Despite the fact that he has ACTUALLY DONE THE JOB!
All good advice.
I think a college degree is better than no degree in most cases. The major is important and the final student debt is also important. Where you go to school also matters, but I would rather have a degree in Petroleum Engineering from a state university with little debt than a degree in liberal arts from a prestigious university with a hundred thousand dollars of debt.
RE: I still think if college students followed some of this, they could keep their student loan debt manageable.
And how would that affect private colleges?
Never believe anything from the NY Slimes, LA Slimes or the ComPost.
The job market demand for instant unemployment degrees IUD’s, the so called soft degrees, started going down hill about 3 decades ago.
The lack of demand for IUD grads has increased since the melt down and will continue. Why, their worthless degree brings nothing to the market place.
The lack of demand for IUD holders is so bad, the liberals in power are pushing for very high cost minimum wage salaries. Why, because most IUD grads can’t find a real job. So they will try to become $25/hour minimum wage bozos trained to ask, “Do you want to king size your order?”
“Because most employers have drunk the Kool-Aid and actually believe that colleges turn out fully prepared, plug-and-play employees requiring zero employer-paid cost for training.”
Those days became passé when the current big economic meltdown happened.
Now, companies like Google are saying that the SAT’s and college degrees are not indicators of success in their company/industry.
Often, these companies are monitoring Science Fairs and the Math Olympics out here in California to identify potential employees and to start their selection procedures. We are seeing and will see a lot of competition for young and smart kids like there is for good athletes for industry and universities at the high school level.
We have a couple of younger relatives in their mid teens, who have been treated to rush trips to several of the top universities in California for a couple of years, since they excelled in middle school. Those trips have nothing to do with fraternities or sororities, the trips are controlled by the universities and various departments .
Now, their younger relatives are getting the same come and visit our campus rush after a year of high grades in middle school. These kids are not interested in a IUD degrees, they like and excel at the hard sciences.
So who will get a good job after graduation?
The smart kids, who take the hard sciences and graduate with honors in 4 years in a tough and respected university? Who probably interned with pay during the summer with a top company?
Or the liberal know it all affluenza brat, who took 6 years to get a 120 hour degree in Hispanic Lesbian Art Appreciation with a college loan debt between $150,000 to $200,000, who has never worked a day in their life for money?
Which student will be living unemployed in their parents home until the parents kick them out or sell their home to go to a retirement home?
“The Affirmative Action hires in all the HR departments won’t give him a second look based on that alone. Despite the fact that he has ACTUALLY DONE THE JOB!”
Those AA bozos and bozoettes will destroy your company about 5-10 years.
That's about to end. The wailing and gnashing of teeth among liberal college professors is going to be deafening.
HR departments are where the dregs go to keep a job. The worst of the worst corporate idiots reside there.
Are you speaking from experience on college, or just an opinion from viewing other’s mistakes?
An alternative view:
http://www.econtalk.org/archives/2014/04/bryan_caplan_on.html
Colleges help employers sort the marketplace. You’ll enjoy the podcast. Econtalk is excellent brainfood.
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