Income gap between college grads and non-grads growing, but not for good reasons
Despite the numerous claims to the contrary, a college degree does in fact look like it’s worth it, as the income gap between college grads and non-grads is growing. However, the gap’s widening is mostly due to continual downward trends of non-grads’ household incomes.
Myles Udland of Business Insider has the story (with the original chart from the Fed presentation):
College-Educated Americans Are Doing Better Only Because Everyone Else Is Doing Worse
College is expensive, but the income gap between college graduates and those without a degree has widened sharply in the last few years.
This chart from a presentation by Bill Emmons at the Federal Reserve Bank of St. Louis, and alerted to us by guest author Invictus over at Barry Ritholtz’s The Big Picture blog, shows the growing gap in income between those with at least a bachelor’s degree and workers who haven’t finished college.
“[I]t’s not so much that those with college degrees are doing particularly well, it’s that everyone else is doing significantly worse,” wrote Invictus. “This is a stunner.”
Emmons chart tracks incomes on an inflation-adjusted basis. Only the college-educated households have been able to preserve their purchasing power.
College-Educated Americans Are Doing Better Only Because Everyone Else Is Doing Worse (Business Insider)
Comments
“a college degree does in fact look like it’s worth it, as the income gap between college grads and non-grads is growing”
There is that old problem of correlation not being the same as causation.
Kids that do better in high school, and/or come from stronger families (financially or otherwise), are more likely to attend college. But if that group did not attend college for some reason, they would still do better than the group that does not attend because they are not as able.
The increase in the income gap might be attributed to more difficult economic times, or a wave of illegals that do the non-college kid jobs for less, or other factors.
Looking at whether college was “worth it” might take ten or twenty years of analysis. Four to eight years of one’s life and ~$80,000 are spent, to learn what is mostly available from the internet, (except for the hard sciences). The student then has obligation to start “servicing the debt”.
And in those formative years, finally away from the parental oversight, one’s personality is molded by leftist radicals, living in a superficial world of tenured idealism. This might indeed help shape the student into a good union member, or loyal Marxist, that will strike against the evils of capitalism.
The “cost” of that manipulation may not show up in the paycheck, but rather in lost freedom. But those that roar against the collectivists here at College Insurrection are indeed furthering their education on a higher level. 🙂