The Value of Higher Education website, created by Educational Testing Service (ETS), is devoted to highlighting issues and trends in higher education. We provide news, insight, resources and a positive platform for discussion about America's ever-changing higher education system.
From the Brookings Institute comes this interesting Hamilton Project policy memo that provides " … thirteen economic facts on the growth of income inequality and its relationship to social mobility in America; on the growing divide in educational opportunities and outcomes for high- and low-income students; and on the pivotal role education can play in increasing the ability of low-income Americans to move up the income ladder." Note Chapter 3 on the pivotal role education plays in improving social mobility … especially higher education.
"Promoting increased social mobility requires reexamining a wide range of economic, health, social, and education policies. Higher education has always been a key way for poor Americans to find opportunities to transform their economic circumstances. In a time of rising inequality and low social mobility, improving the quality of and access to education has the potential to increase equality of opportunity for all Americans.
How Much Protection Does a College Degree Afford? The Impact of the Recession on Recent College Graduates, the newest research from Pew's Economic Mobility Project, reveals that a four-year college degree helped shield the latest graduates from a range of poor employment outcomes during the Great Recession, including unemployment, low-skill jobs and lesser wages.
"Higher education is one of the key factors driving upward mobility in the United States," said Diana Elliott, research manager of Pew's Economic Mobility Project. "Even under the pressures of the most recent economic downturn, a four-year college degree provided protection in the labor market for recent college graduates."
A college education both promotes upward mobility and prevents downward mobility, as shown by prior research from Pew's Economic Mobility Project. A college graduate has a three times greater chance of moving from the bottom to the top of the family income ladder than a person without a degree. Moreover, college graduates earn more and experience higher employment rates than their less-credentialed counterparts.
Read more about the Pew report >
This opinion piece from the Hechinger Report by Donald Hall, dean of the College of Arts and Sciences at Lehigh University, take a interesting look the benefits of higher education not just from the standpoint of cost or job prospects, but rather "value," a data point that he contends colleges and universities should track, report and promote. Commenting on such proof points he says, "It's certainly about more than price and return-on-investment. These are valuable data points, clearly. But the price of a house doesn't represent the value of your home. A home is what you make of it, as is higher education. It's a framework for your life, where memories are created, lifelong friends are met and you grow into your own person. When we discuss the state of higher education with my colleagues at other schools, or our students, faculty and staff, what we discuss more than salary data is value."
A recent story in The New York Times reports that federal data is showing that the number of Americans graduating from college has surged, "sending the share with a college degree to a new high."
According to reporter Catherine Rampell, "Last year, 33.5 percent of Americans ages 25 to 29 had at least a bachelor's degree, compared with 24.7 percent in 1995, according to the National Center for Education Statistics. In 1975, the share was 21.9 percent. The number of two-year college degrees, master's degrees and doctorates has also risen recently."
Later in the article she notes that, despite controversy the costs and challenges of pursuing a higher education degree, "Many economists point out that college graduates have fared much better than their less-educated peers and argue that rising educational levels will help the economy in the long run. Since the recession began in December 2007, the number of Americans with bachelor's degrees who have jobs has risen by 9 percent, while employment has fallen for everyone else.
Also noted in the article is the fact that the unemployment rate for graduates of four-year colleges between the ages of 25 and 34 was 3.3 percent in March, according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics. For high school graduates in the same age group who had not attended college, it was 11.8 percent.
A new study from The Hamilton Project, a Washington, DC-based think tank reports that "…the investment in even a partial college education is still worth it, amounting to average earnings of $100,000 more over a lifetime than for those who merely finish high school."
Here's another story on the fact that it pays to earn a college degree. However, you have to get the right degree. This feature from National Public Radio features Anthony Carnevale, director of Georgetown's Center on Education and the Workforce. He's discussing their latest study "Hard Times: College Majors, Unemployment and Earnings."
Read this latest story from The Washington Post on the sharply rising numbers of graduate degrees being turned out by the nation's colleges and universities. According to the article, "From 2000 to 2012, the annual production of master's degrees jumped 63 percent, federal data show, growing 18 percentage points more than the output of bachelor's degrees. It is a sign of a quiet but profound transformation underway at many prominent universities, which are pouring more energy into job training than ever before."
The website Payscale.com recently released a list of more than 1,500 schools measured purely by the 30-year return on investment (ROI) for Bachelor's degrees. The site also tracks typical starting salaries for graduates of these schools. Find out which are the top schools and why.
The New York Times covered the Labor Department's recent report showing the unemployment rate for college graduates in April was a mere 3.9 percent, compared with 7.5 percent for the work force as a whole. "Even when the jobless rate for college graduates was at its very worst in this business cycle, in November 2010, it was still just 5.1 percent. That is close to the jobless rate the rest of the work force experiences when the economy is good," states the article. "Among all segments of workers sorted by educational attainment, college graduates are the only group that has more people employed today than when the recession started."
Read more about the employment status of college graduates >
A report recently released by CollegeMeasures.org outlines the first-year earnings of recent graduates from two- and four-year public institutions of higher education in Texas. The report concludes that while the degree a student earns is important, the student's program and institution are also key contributors to their first-year earnings. Technical college degrees were also found to have a significant payoff in the Texas labor market.
See the full report on earnings of Texas graduates >
The new report from The Pew Charitable Trusts, featured in our Spotlight section, was covered in a January 9, 2013 article by New York Times reporter Richard Pérez-Peña.
Read full New York Times article about the Pew report >
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