Posted on 04/26/2015 2:59:36 AM PDT by iowamark
Freshly minted college graduates who majored in fields like architecture, business, computers, statistics, engineering and health can expect to start jobs where they earn more than high school graduates with decades of experience.
That’s the finding of a new report from Georgetown University‘s Center on Education and the Workforce, which dives into the varying career outcomes for graduates in different college majors. The report underscores both the size of the premium for higher education in the U.S. labor market and the even larger premium that accrues to graduates with select areas of expertise.
“Back in the day, especially in the 1970s, the degree level didn’t matter as much–what mattered was what happened to you on the job,” said Anthony Carnevale, the center’s director. “Now the jumping off point–the degree–matters a great deal.”
What Mr. Carnevale’s report concludes–as illustrated by the complicated but important chart above–is that college graduates with different degrees have wildly different labor market outcomes. For most degrees, a new graduate earns slightly less than someone with a high school diploma and decades of experience. High school graduates ages 35 to 43 earned $36,000 in 2012, the most recent year for which the detailed degree-level data can be parsed. But some degrees allow new workers to start out earning more than their experienced, but less educated, elders. For example, the median recent engineering graduate–those just age 22 to 26–earned $57,000 a year. Graduates in computers, statistics and mathematics earned the second most–$48,000–right out of college...
(Excerpt) Read more at blogs.wsj.com ...
I call it ‘the myth of American Education’. It might make a good book title!
This all has to do with the HR movement.
In some aspects the generic “college degree vs. high school” comparison might yield questions about the real value of a college degree.
Where this falls apart in my opinion is in the engineering and science related areas. As an engineer, I managed a group of degreed engineers, largely graduate, some PhDs and a few new BS engineers. Also had a few HS graduate technicians, etc. There is a reason why the engineers got paid more than the technicians with 20 or more years experience. In effect, the technicians wouldn’t have had a job were it not for the engineers who were addressing real problems customers were willing to pay for.
Whenever I see salary categories of Social workers compared against engineers I just have to laugh and wonder why the comparison? Equality for all, no understanding of actual hard work and ability to actually learn hard new things.
Yeah, i have a son finishing his first year of engineering at a top ten engineering school right now. He is putting himself through hell now with the expectation of big rewards later. It was a shock and an adjustment that he was doing homework for 6 or 7 hours a day. And some times praying for a C.
Our son copped a BS in Computer Science. He’s now VP of Engineering for his firm, making the tall dollar...
My son finished school last year witn an Engineering degree at a top ten school. Starting pay at his first job was over 100K, bonus the first year was just over half his salary and stock options will net over a million in two years.
Still not enough to buy a house in the SF Bay Area, after taxes.
Hey, those social workers should be paid much more. They are actually social engineers reengineering the shift of income from the rich to the poor. That’s a huge project, involving trillions of dollars. Ain’t as easy as you think.
In the late 1980’s I met an alumnus of my college who had been a civil engineering major, one of the toughest majors in the school.
Circumstances had taken him away from C.E. related work for seven years, which according to him was enough to make his technical knowledge obsolete & now he was forced to sell real estate for a living.
I would have flunked out of C.E. in a heartbeat. These were the guys who wore their K&E slipsticks in holsters and were terribly intelligent & I mean that sincerely.
Yeah...it’s hard work comin’ up with all sorts of excuses why a lazy dumbass leech should be gettin’ paid. They gots rights.
If yer gonny be a cog, ye might as well let them pay you enough fer a bmw and a summer house.
Only in a world that pays people to kill babies in their wombs, where a quarter-billion dollars can be spent on a painting, or whee you can spend a thousand dollars on breakfast.
Oh please... Civil engineering was the EASIEST! All those people do is push dirt around. Try Chemical Engineering.
I took a CIvil E course as an elective and made an A, just by knowing how to convert units. :-)
I had lunch yesterday with a friend. She's in her 90's and we talked about her life. She told me with some amazement, "I didn't go to college and I'm richer than all my nieces and nephews who did".
And, in fact she is. The pastime among all those nieces and nephews is trying to get Aunties millions.
The college/resort industry is in the end stage of a government funded bubble, and they are starting to get shrill.
Amen, FRiend. The fact is... MOST college degrees aren't worth the paper they're printed on, and cost FAR too much.
We have allowed the Educrats to become the gatekeepers to professional careers. Sad that MOST education professionals are/were to worst students in schools.
I heard Electrical Engineering was tougher than C.E.
One of my classmates who was C.E. said the courses for his final semester could be called “dirt, water, rocks, and s***”.
It’s all academic since I was a humanities major, modern languages. I knew what I was good at & I wanted to graduate.
;^)
Well, the obvious solution for those who don’t have degrees is entrepreneurship.
Which type of engineering?
In healthcare, even nursing, the masters degree is becoming the requirement. Part time entry level often requires a bachelors for all but the menial level jobs.
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