The Rich Get the Most Out of College
Well-off white men make connections that help them get ahead of their classmates
By Noah Smith
Representing economic research to the public is a difficult exercise; results can be subtle and come with a lot of qualifications. What’s more, the research tends not to come with guidelines for how to apply the results to real-world public debates — that’s a pundit’s job. Thus, it’s inevitable that pundits will sometimes make mistakes.
Tim Bartik, an economist at the Upjohn Institute for Employment Research, recently took journalism professor Ellen Ruppel Shell to task on Twitter for alleged misrepresentations of his research with colleague Brad Hershbein. Shell’s New York Times op-ed entitled “College may not be worth it anymore,” argued that the monetary returns to higher education are much lower for poor families than for middle-class or rich ones.
As Bartik points out, he and Hershbein found that the college earnings premium — the lifetime difference in earnings between those who get a bachelor’s degree and those who only finish high school — was substantial for people from all income backgrounds:
