“To see how few earn college degrees is really disturbing”
Thirty years ago, there was a 31 percentage point difference between the share of prosperous and poor Americans who earned bachelor’s degrees, according to Martha J. Bailey and Susan M. Dynarski of the University of Michigan. Now the gap is 45 points.
While both groups improved their odds of finishing college, the affluent improved much more, widening their sizable lead.
Likely reasons include soaring incomes at the top and changes in family structure, which have left fewer low-income students with the support of two-parent homes. Neighborhoods have grown more segregated by class, leaving lower-income students increasingly concentrated in lower-quality schools. And even after accounting for financial aid, the costs of attending a public university have risen 60 percent in the past two decades. Many low-income students, feeling the need to help out at home, are deterred by the thought of years of lost wages and piles of debt…
“It’s becoming increasingly unlikely that a low-income student, no matter how intrinsically bright, moves up the socioeconomic ladder,” said Sean Reardon, a sociologist at Stanford. “What we’re talking about is a threat to the American dream.”
Blowback
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Lots of people drop out of college. Going to mindless classes and always being broke sucks. Only the people who really see the value in a degree stick it out. People who get it for “free” don’t have a vested interest.
Timin203 on December 24, 2012 at 6:26 PM
People should return to trades. Fluke these leftist thought gulags.
jawkneemusic on December 24, 2012 at 6:30 PM
Thanks, in large part to leftist government interference and outright hostility by the left towards the idea of the normal family. And now they push ahead with the insane notion of the “gay pretend marriage”, further making a mockery of civilized structures.
A BS excuse. Every single person in the US (and most on Earth) now has more ready access to more information and more free coursework and tutorials than ANYONE had just 30 years ago. No matter how poor a kid in America is, he can go to the public library and have the world at his fingertips – FREE – on the internet. Back in the old days poor kids used to go to the public libraries to read and work on their own, and those kids has access to very little. Today’s kids have everything available – textbooks, online tutorials, free classes, … No one today has an excuse that their school sucks (although we can thank the leftists for that, too). It is all about how motivated someone is. Money is not even a barrier to anything.
Thanks, once again, to leftist government intervention where the feral government has helped push up the prices of everything surrounding college as they loan people the money to pay up for less and less. Everything else that includes technology is dropping in price and rising in value … except for in academia, where textbooks now cost hundreds of dollars apiece (which is beyond highway robbery) and idiots pay almost as much for the ebook versions (which shouldn’t cost more than $4 apiece). But, the feral government provides the steady stream of money through its conduits – the gullible and stupid students – and the universities and textbook publishers oblige the government by constantly raising their prices totally disconnected from any reality, at all.
ThePrimordialOrderedPair on December 24, 2012 at 6:30 PM
This country has convinced itself that the only way to live a prosperous life is through a college degree. Not everyone can, or should, go to college.
Skilled trades often earn more than some college degrees and don’t cost a fortune to learn. In fact, with most of them you earn a living while learning the trade.
We need to take the emphasis off of college and start encouraging vocational education as well.
single stack on December 24, 2012 at 6:34 PM
Honestly, 90% of majors in college are useless anyways. People are better off saving their money and just going right in to the work force… If companies would stop using “college degree” as an equivalent of “not an idiot” (I know a LOT of idiots with degrees). Nothing I learned in college is applicable to my current job, and a decent amount of the required classes were just leftist propaganda. You should hear what they teach in macro economics.
Timin203 on December 24, 2012 at 6:38 PM
…And can we also acknowledge that maybe the rich kids in the ‘burbs, being children of smart, successful people, are a little smarter then some poor kids who are children of obama voters?
Timin203 on December 24, 2012 at 6:41 PM
“Crushing debt” How, exactly, did they acquire this debt? At what point did the lender discover none of them was going to be able to re-pay the loan? And, what are the reasons they don’t have their degrees yet?
Why, the answer is right here….
The need to earn money and campus alienation is not a unique element for minorities. Boyfriends? You mean, I have to pay for these loans because of “boyfriends”? Really? In what bizarre world is this a valid reason for anything?
BobMbx on December 24, 2012 at 6:46 PM
Oh I know. I’m a college boy who earns his living in a skilled trade that learned in the school of hard knocks.
single stack on December 24, 2012 at 6:49 PM
An ever-increasing government is what is threatening the American Dream.
Get government’s nose out of higher education and watch tuition drop like a rock.
Start taxing those endowments. Put the same constraints on a university’s ability to make a “profit” the same an the insurance companies. Give students a “refund” if the college has too much money at the end of the fiscal year.
ButterflyDragon on December 24, 2012 at 6:57 PM
I just finished a semester of macro, oh brother, I wouldn’t have believed how bad it was unless I heard it with my own ears! Even my husband’s anti-Keynsian rankings didn’t due justice to how ridiculous AD and As curves are. My professor is waiting for the return of the Phillips curve as well. I can’t hear about GDP without rolling my eyes now that I know how they calculate that number. No wonder the world is falling apart.
Ann NY on December 24, 2012 at 7:01 PM
Rantings – stupid auto spell check…
Ann NY on December 24, 2012 at 7:02 PM
Just say “liberal policies,” it’s quicker.
29Victor on December 24, 2012 at 7:10 PM
i am working on getting my bachelor’s degree… because many businesses require it, or at least prefer it. that’s the only reason i’m in it. i don’t actually like it very much! so glad it is my last year of school ever!! i am so sick of school after all these years of my life.
Sachiko on December 24, 2012 at 8:17 PM
I love articles like this regarding college education.
Being someone who went to college and was about 5 classes short of graduation with a BS, I found I have an interesting perspective. Once I discovered that I was more than capable of being hired and working on my own merit and intelligence, the desire to go back to school to get my bachelors degree faded quickly.
I also discovered the long held truth that college education is not about getting a job. It is about becoming an educated person. It is about teaching you how to learn. Colleges have been selling their product as a solution to success and that you get a degree and then the world is an open book. What was left out was the massive amount of hard work and sacrifice to get you there. Even more to the point, was college simply made your starting point a bit higher on the scale but you still had to prove yourself like everyone else.
We long blew past the return on investment being positive for most college degrees. With $60,000+ in debt, there is no way to settle that deficit in less than a decade. Meanwhile, you could have been working for 4 years and had more experience and a career than a college graduate. I know a couple friends of mine who graduated with computer masters degrees and couldn’t find work. They were too expensive and didn’t have enough experience to justify the cost.
This article lays out this long sob story about these girls and tries to sell it as being difficulty with getting through college. However, the article is littered with one bad decision after another which lead to their bitter conclusion.
We are treating college education as a trade school. If you want to go to school to learn skills to get a job, go to trade school. There are HUGE job opportunities in various trades that could earn you a lot of money at a very young age.
The education bubble is close to bursting and no doubt the taxpayer will have to clean up just like the housing market.
Flashwing on December 25, 2012 at 12:25 AM