Friday, October 20, 2006

Stay in School

WSJ: The typical American worker with a four-year college degree earns a lot more money than a similar worker who didn't go beyond high school -- 45% more.

Education does pay. But in today's economy, getting a bachelor's degree is no longer a guarantee of raises big enough to beat inflation.

Although the best-paid college grads are doing well, wages of college grads have fallen on average, after adjusting for inflation, in the past five years. The only group that enjoyed rising wages between 2000 (just before the onset of the last recession) and 2005 (the most-recent data available) were the small slice with graduate degrees.




4 Comments:

At 10/20/2006 12:24 PM, Anonymous Anonymous said...

While I agree that there is a definite benefit to increased levels of education, I'm not sure how meaningful this chart is. It appears to only include wages and excludes other forms of compensation like health benefits and the impact of taxes. But perhaps I am being too picky.

I enjoy the new blog, keep at it.

Press

 
At 10/20/2006 5:53 PM, Anonymous Anonymous said...

MBA, JD, and MD are in economically valued fields. I think the other degrees are pulled down by having a portion of un economic degrees like a BA in Armenian lesbian poetry of the 16th century.

 
At 10/21/2006 9:36 AM, Anonymous Anonymous said...

This article was very interesting. With the data shown here, why is UM Flint phasing out the joint BBA/MBA program?

 
At 10/21/2006 4:04 PM, Blogger Mark J. Perry said...

The joint BBA/MBA will no longer be necessary under the new, revised MBA program that is being phased in now. BBA students can now complete an MBA with as few as 30 graduate credit hours, if they qualify for the 12 waivable credit hours, and don't elect to have a concentration. Therefore, students can take 120 credits for the BBA, 30 credits for the MBA, for a total of 150 credits under the new program, which is the same as the joint program (150 credits). Further, BBA students will now get their BBA degree after 120 credit hours, instead of waiting and getting the BBA and MBA degrees at the same time. So BBA students could potentially enter the MBA program right after the BBA program, and complete both degrees with the same number of credit hours, and in about the same amount of time.

 

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