Thinking about College? Pay Attention to These 5 Rules

By Anthony P. Carnevale

Now more than ever, postsecondary education is a key pathway to economic independence. Before the 1980s, two-thirds of jobs required a high school education or less. Now, the same share of jobs requires at least some college.

But just as postsecondary education has become more valuable, it has also become more expensive. At four-year public colleges and universities, tuition and fees have risen 19 times faster than average family incomes since 1980. Many people can’t afford to repay their student loans, resulting in a default rate of 11.5 percent — a burden on taxpayers.

With these outcomes, it’s little wonder that a significant number of college-educated learners experience some kind of buyer’s remorse. A 2017 Gallup Poll found that given the chance, more than half of Americans would change their degree type, institution, or major.

So how can students avoid this regret? One strategy is to carefully explore the probable financial outcomes of their educational choices. To help students do this, we examined the data and developed five guidelines for making informed decisions:

1. Generally, more education is better. Workers with bachelor’s degrees have median earnings of $62,000, compared to $47,000 for those with associate’s degrees, and $36,000 for those with high school diplomas. Graduate degree holders fare even better than those with bachelor’s degrees, with median earnings of $80,000.
2. Field of study can be more important than education level. Graduates with bachelor’s degrees in architecture and engineering have median earnings of $85,000, compared to $46,000 for those with bachelor’s degrees in education.
3. While major matters, discipline is not destiny. The top 25 percent of workers with bachelor’s degrees in the arts and humanities earn more than the bottom 25 percent with bachelor’s degrees in architecture and engineering.
4. Less education can be worth more. The median earnings of workers with associate’s degrees in science, technology, engineering, and mathematics (STEM) are higher ($60,000) than the median earnings of those with bachelor’s degrees in education ($46,000).
5. Earnings gaps persist across career paths. Workers with bachelor’s degrees in the humanities and liberal arts have peak median earnings of $66,000, compared to the $103,000 at peak earning years for those with bachelor’s degrees in architecture and engineering. An earnings gap persists from the beginning to the end of their careers.

To further guide students and their families, we created an interactive College Major Earnings Tool that allows users to examine earnings by major at the state and national level.

While no student should choose a major based purely on earning potential, all students should know what the payoff is likely to be before making the first major investment in their journey from youth dependency to adult independence.

Watch our video and visit our website to learn more about Five Rules of the College and Career Game.

Dr. Carnevale is Director and Research Professor of the Georgetown University Center on Education and the Workforce, an independent, nonprofit research and policy institute affiliated with the Georgetown McCourt School of Public Policy that studies the link between education, career qualifications, and workforce demands.

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