A lot of it isn’t:
These estimates of high lifetime earnings levels make a common error: They assume that the current generation is going to get the same financial benefit from college that people did who graduated 40 years ago.
But things are different today. According to the Bureau of Labor Statistics, nearly 70% of all high school graduates go on to college — compared with 45% in 1960.
Then, only the brightest and best-prepared students attended college and the schools offered academically rigorous courses that prepared students for the future.
Now even middling high-schoolers attend college — and often learn very little. Then they enter a job market where a bachelor’s degree is relatively common — and must compete against many others for the same jobs.
Overpriced and underperforming, combined with government subsidies: thus are bubbles made.
It’s likely that some degrees can actually have a negative value. Consider any of the “Angry Studies” programs out there that teach how the subject of the studies (e.g. women, blacks, latino, fill in the blank) have been mistreated throughout time. The likely outcome of that kind of indoctrination is a grievance monger. Who would want to bring that attitude into their organization?
Whether a person goes to college or not, the key to finding employment is to have skills that an employer is willing to pay for. You can have more degrees than the proverbial thermometer but if you can’t actually do something that makes the employer money, you aren’t likely to get hired, at least not in the private sector. The government hires a bunch of people like that and it shows.
I hate these kinds of studies. They lump massive differences in labor categories together and they make no sense. Is the fine arts degree really on par with an engineering degree in financial outcome? Unfortunately they want to lump these degrees together to make it seem like the any college degree is financially worth it. This is just not true.
I don’t have a problem with fine arts degrees. However, you don’t go into them for financial reward. They don’t call them starving artists for nothing…