Lot’s of people are jumping onto the question of the value of college education. In a just released book titled “Is College Worth It?: A Former United States Secretary of Education and Liberal Arts Graduate Expose the Broken Promise of Higher Education” the former secretary of education asserts that the promise of education has been broken.
Data from the US Department of Labor shows that the conclusions the authors draw in the BUZZ Today quote simply are not true. Source: Department of Labor careeronestop
The graph shown here shows that for every level of education, higher levels of education result in both lower unemployment and higher income for most graduates. Note that the median is the point where one half of the group is above the value and one half is below. The conclusion has to be that for most students, higher levels of education result in higher economic benefit to the learner. 
Source: Washington Times – Is College Worth It? book review: William J. Bennett and David Wilezol’s “Is College Worth It?” asks and authoritatively answers one of life’s biggest questions. It provides a thoroughgoing deconstruction of the “of course it is” delusion. It turns out that for too many, and maybe even most of our young people, the answer to this central question is, sadly, “no.” “Whether the standard of excellence for higher education is cultivating the mind and the soul or maximizing financial return on investment, most of higher education fails most students,” the authors write. The Department of Labor data shown here is unambiguous. For every increase in education level obtained the unemployment goes down and the income goes up. Under no line of reasoning can one conclude from this data that higher education fails most students. Instead of the sweeping claims that associate degree holders earn more than bachelor degree holders (shown not true in the data above) or that the ROI on an education investment is not worth it financially, the discussion needs to focus on what a student needs to do to make sure that they get the best return on their personal investment. The Practical Guide on how to do that is what Your Future is Calling is about. Instead of making headline grabbing general statements about all and every, we need to be helping individual higher education students make better decisions about their own career choices, college majors and universities that they attend. This can only be done with specific objective data about the choices each individual faces.
The graph shown here shows that for every level of education, higher levels of education result in both lower unemployment and higher income for most graduates. Note that the median is the point where one half of the group is above the value and one half is below. The conclusion has to be that for most students, higher levels of education result in higher economic benefit to the learner. Source: Washington Times – Is College Worth It? book review: William J. Bennett and David Wilezol’s “Is College Worth It?” asks and authoritatively answers one of life’s biggest questions. It provides a thoroughgoing deconstruction of the “of course it is” delusion. It turns out that for too many, and maybe even most of our young people, the answer to this central question is, sadly, “no.” “Whether the standard of excellence for higher education is cultivating the mind and the soul or maximizing financial return on investment, most of higher education fails most students,” the authors write. The Department of Labor data shown here is unambiguous. For every increase in education level obtained the unemployment goes down and the income goes up. Under no line of reasoning can one conclude from this data that higher education fails most students. Instead of the sweeping claims that associate degree holders earn more than bachelor degree holders (shown not true in the data above) or that the ROI on an education investment is not worth it financially, the discussion needs to focus on what a student needs to do to make sure that they get the best return on their personal investment. The Practical Guide on how to do that is what Your Future is Calling is about. Instead of making headline grabbing general statements about all and every, we need to be helping individual higher education students make better decisions about their own career choices, college majors and universities that they attend. This can only be done with specific objective data about the choices each individual faces.
Filed Under: Adult learning, Career, Income, Money // Tagged: bennett, college, degrees, secretary of education, unemployment, worth it
