HIGHER EDUCATION BUBBLE UPDATE: The Economic Guide To Picking A College Major:
For all the recent skepticism about the value of a college education, a bachelor’s degree is still “worth it” on average. In fact, according to a recent analysis by economists at the Federal Reserve Bank of New York, the average value of a college degree is near an all-time high, even factoring in rising tuitions.
But the key word there is “average.” The same Fed researchers also found that the lowest-earning 25 percent of college graduates earn less than about half of high school graduates — and the high school grads also had four years to make money while the college students were taking on debt. And those figures don’t include the shockingly high percentage of college students who don’t graduate, many of whom end up with the worst of both worlds: saddled with debt, but with no degree to help their job prospects.