¶ … Value of a BA Degree
The Value of BA Degrees
Would you say this statement is "True" or "False"? Too many people are going to college these days. Many experts in business say that the statement is true. People once thought that college degrees were the most important advantage that people could attain through their own efforts (Ruiz 2011). But the situation is changing. A look at employees and entrepreneurs in Silicon Valley underscores a more pessimistic and sobering view of college education (Ruiz 2011). People who work in technical jobs without the benefit of formal coursework in higher education can be free to follow their interests and creativity (Ruiz 2011). These new technology experts don't need to get locked into boring corporate jobs that pay well in order to pay off enormous student loan debt burdens (Ruiz 2011). The cost of higher education keeps rising and there are those who believe it is a bubble in the making, following in the footsteps of the technology dot.com bubble of the 1990s and the housing bubble of the 2000s (Ruiz 2011). The same pattern is playing out today with students paying too much for diplomas and dogmatically revering college degrees, while the evidence to support their enthusiasm for and faith in the advantages that will accrue because of the degree are rapidly eroding (Ruiz 2011).
Value is not a static attribute. Anyone who follows the markets knows that value is always changing -- the price of stocks is not static and commodities trade in volatile markets. If college degrees have become commoditized, they may very well be susceptible to the vicissitudes of the market place. Consider how the value of a college education has changed just over the past several decades.
Parents and teachers have long encouraged high school students to go to college, to learn a trade, to make something of themselves. For generation after generation, these have not been conflicting messages. But in economic circumstances that high school graduates face today tend to obscure the wisdom of the advise of their elders. Students wonder if there really will be jobs available for them if they enter the labor market after four years of college. A primary question for high school graduates is whether a college degree -- particularly a bachelor's degree -- still has currency in today's labor market.
According to the Bureau of Labor Statistics, substantive economic value is still attributed to earning college degrees. Yes, that's correct -- even in the fall of 2012. For the civilian population 25 years and over, the following employment data applies: (1) For people with less than a high school degree, the unemployment rate is 12.2% (BLS). (2) For people with a high school degree but no college, the unemployment rate is 8.4 (BLS). (3) For people with some college or an associate's degree, the unemployment rate is 6.9 (BLS). (4) For people with a bachelor's degree or higher, the unemployment rate is 3.8 (BLS). Unfortunately, the data for this fourth category includes people who have earned bachelor's degrees, master's degrees, professional degrees, and doctoral degrees (BLS).
Perhaps the question to ask is not whether a BA degree is likely to increase one's chances of getting a job, but if a BA degree will mean getting a job that pays more. Some research indicate that post-secondary education does not act as the "great leveler," something society has long believed to be true. Long-standing class hierarchies don't go away upon commencement (Edsall 2012). In fact, if anything, the income achievement gap is widening and the cultural and political implications of this are staggering (Edsall 2012). Statisticians, economists, and educators talk about the "college premium,' which is a high level way of referring to the difference in annual earnings between a college graduate and a high school graduate (Edsall 2012). The college premium rose from a 50% difference in the early 1980s to nearly an 80% difference by the year 2007. Workers with high school degrees averaged about $31,286 in 2007 and their peers with college degrees earned an average of roughly $57,181 (Edsall 2012). This is a very significant number: workers with college degrees in 2007 earned 82.8% more than workers who held only high school degrees (Edsall 2012). In the year 2007 -- before the beginning of the fiscal crisis that commenced in 2008 -- workers who earned college degrees could fairly assume that they would be in a better position to gain or maintain socio-economic status in the upper-middle-class range than workers who had not earned college degrees (Edsall 2012).
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