it’s been an article of faith for decades that those with college degrees out earn those without. and it clearly shows up in the data.
the correlation is unmistakable. but, and this is a massive but, that does not mean what many suspect. it does not mean that “college creates earnings and opportunity.” for many, it starts to seem to mean the opposite: college is lost opportunity and vast expenditure and debt accumulation that will never pay for itself. and a lot of this comes down to bad expectations and a form of “lake wobegon fallacy” of statistical illiteracy.
the percentage of americans getting college degrees has exploded from around 4% in 1940 to the mid 37%’s now and this actually understates the issue as this is just the number who successfully completed a 4 year degree. over 70% of recent high school grads enroll in college which means that around 45% of 16-24 year olds are enrolled in college and more than half were at some point. what was once 1 in 20 is now 1 in 2. and that’s a VERY different thing and this is where the cargo cult emerges:
an institution for the top 5 percentiles of a society is a very different place than an institution for the whole top half. it must be structured differently, work differently, place different demands, and perhaps most of all: it’s output and the outcomes of those who attended are going to be different. college is not magic. it does not make people more motivated or smarter. it may select for these traits, it does not make those who attend “higher percentile” in terms of innate ability or expected outcome.
past a point, it may be inflicting harm and i would argue that based on the promises and expectations, it’s creating a mathematical impossibility.
it seems like every kid who enrolls in college is expecting to be in the top 10-20% of earners. this is sort of “the deal” that folks are buying into. but if 50% of society is enrolling, it’s obviously impossible. the real world is not lake wobegon. we cannot all be above average. half of society cannot be a top 10% earner and that’s the sort of outcome being mistaken for the marker of “went to college” a thing that used to all but unerringly signify “top decile” but that does so no longer. somewhere on the order of 3/4 of them are going to wind up being disappointed. they have to be. it’s just math. (perhaps this is why high schools and universities seem so increasingly loathe to teach it?)
It just so happens: “The average scores in three of the four subjects featured on the test – mathematics, reading and science – were below the ACT College Readiness Benchmarks. The benchmarks are the minimum ACT test scores required for students taking the test to have a high probability of success in college.”