college

Everything’s Getting Worse but College Might Make Things Less Worse for Some

/ The Old Crank

Wossamotta U.That’s kind of how I feel after reading Jared Bernstein’s sensible take on the college earnings premium. It’s not that there isn’t one, but, as he puts it, “it doesn’t inoculate you against global wage arbitrage, accelerating labor-saving technology, and high unemployment.”

Bernstein shows that the college earnings premium has been flat for women over at least the past decade, and rising a lot more slowly for men than it was back in the 1980s. But this data includes people my age who started out in better paying jobs after earning their degree. I’d be interested to see the wage differential between those with just a high school degree and those under 30 with a college degree. Considering that average wages for college graduates have been falling steadily since even before the recession, I don’t understand why the wage differential for future generations won’t continue to narrow.

The other point is that not all college degrees are the same. A BA from Harvard presumably has more earnings potential than a BA from lower tier school. But unless I’m mistaken, the college premium argument is based on the average earnings of everyone currently in the workforce with a college degree, young and old.

It seems like we’re asking young people and adults without college degrees to work harder and invest more in education, but settle for less—maybe a lot less, in terms of earnings—than prior generations.

In the comments section to Bernsteins’s post, someone argues that “[E]lectricians, plumbers, carpenters, HVAC, exterminators, all blue collar work etc. is where the future lies… [T]hose trades carry little or no debt, have apprenticeships and pay well from the get-go. AND they carry job security.” It’s kind of old-fashioned now to talk about, but a lot of adult education programs can (and do) help adults move into those kinds of careers. The emphasis in adult education now is to ensure that adults become college and career ready, and I hope the career readiness piece looks at ways to help more adults move into apprenticeships for these kinds of jobs.

Community College Enrollments (and College Enrollments in General) Are Down

/ The Old Crank

From Inside Higher Ed:

Data released by the National Student Clearinghouse Research Center on Tuesday—in the first of what the center says will be twice-a-year snapshots of up-to-date enrollment statistics—show that college enrollments declined by 1.8 percent in fall 2012, driven by larger drops for for-profit colleges -7.2 percent and community colleges -3.1 percent. Enrollment fell by 0.6 percent at four-year public colleges and universities, and rose by half a percentage point at four-year private nonprofit colleges… (my emphasis)

The declines, which follow on a very small decline in fall 2011, as reported in federal government data in recent months, are unsurprising, given that college enrollments typically rise and fall with the unemployment rate. So the fact that the enrollment boom that colleges enjoyed as the economy tanked in 2008 and 2009 has begun to reverse itself is in many ways to be expected.

But that suggests that the philanthropic and government efforts to get significant numbers of adults to go to college or to return there to pursue President Obamas goal of driving up the number of Americans with a postsecondary credential may not be bearing much fruit. (my emphasis)

Here is a link to the report itself: Term Enrollment Estimates, Fall 2012.

h/t @edfunding