New research challenges conventional wisdom about the value of a college degree.
The data, as analyzed by the Manhattan Institute’s Connor Harris, reveal that millions of high school graduates actually do better than comparable college graduates. Statistics that suggest otherwise are averages that gloss over the “enormous variability in outcomes at each education level,” Harris argues. As usual, the devil is in the details.
In fact, the earnings of the top half of workers with only a high school diploma overlap with those of the bottom half of college graduates. Moreover, every individual in the top 25% of high school graduates outperforms every individual in the bottom 25% of college graduates with Bachelor of Arts degrees with their earnings.
“Experts portray a labor market with high-earning and low-earning pools, the former of which can be entered only by completing a college degree … this is doubly wrong,” scholar and author of popular new book, The Once and Future Worker, Oren Cass notes in an introduction to Harris’s report.
Instead, many college graduates use their degrees in fields that pay less than some jobs attainable with just a high school diploma or end up working in fields that do not even require a degree. Conversely, jobs available to those with a high school diploma continue to be in large supply and often offer opportunities for advancement.
Interestingly, the data trends persist despite historic “asymmetry in investment” favoring college over workforce preparation programs. It is striking to imagine what trends would emerge if the federal government allocated comparable funds to workforce preparation programs, as Secretary of Education Betsy DeVos has proposed.
“Today, regardless of aptitude or preparedness, a high school graduate enrolling in college can receive enormous subsidies to help fund a campus experience that can appear more amusement park than education,” Cass writes. “That same high school graduate, making the often wise choice to move instead toward a job, gets nothing.”
Indeed, it is likely that young people themselves exhibit a more nuanced understanding of the pros and cons of college, unlike the “experts” and political elite pushing “college for all.” Yet, many adults in their life, and government incentives, insist they are wrong.
Counseling students using the true story told by the data will serve them far better than empty platitudes that everyone must go to college. Instituting incentives that help them choose career pathways would be even better.
Kate Hardiman (@katejhardiman) taught in a Chicago high school and is currently a law student at Georgetown University Law Center.
