Wall Street Journal: The Declining Value of Your College Degree

The Declining Value
Of Your College Degree
By GREG IP



A four-year college degree, seen for generations as a ticket to a better life, is no longer enough to guarantee a steadily rising paycheck.

Just ask Bea Dewing. After she earned a bachelor's degree -- her second -- in computer science from Maryland's Frostburg State University in 1986, she enjoyed almost unbroken advances in wages, eventually earning $89,000 a year as a data modeler for Sprint Corp. in Lawrence, Kan. Then, in 2002, Sprint laid her off.

"I thought I might be looking a few weeks or months at the most," says Ms. Dewing, now 56 years old. Instead she spent the next six years in a career wilderness, starting an Internet café that didn't succeed, working temporary jobs and low-end positions in data processing, and fruitlessly responding to hundreds of job postings.

The low point came around 2004 when a recruiter for Sprint -- now known as Sprint Nextel Corp. -- called seeking to fill a job similar to the one she lost two years earlier, but paying barely a third of her old salary.

In April, Ms. Dewing finally landed a job similar to her old one in the information technology department of Wal-Mart Stores Inc.'s headquarters in Bentonville, Ark., where she relocated. She earns about 20% less than she did in 2002, adjusted for inflation, but considers herself fortunate, and wiser.

For decades, the typical college graduate's wage rose well above inflation. But no longer. In the economic expansion that began in 2001 and now appears to be ending, the inflation-adjusted wages of the majority of U.S. workers didn't grow, even among those who went to college. The government's statistical snapshots show the typical weekly salary of a worker with a bachelor's degree, adjusted for inflation, didn't rise last year from 2006 and was 1.7% below the 2001 level. .....(more)

The complete piece is at: http://online.wsj.com/article/SB121623686919059307.html?mod=yhoofront

"That's why they call it the American Dream- because you have to be asleep to believe it"

George Carlin

their degrees are only valuable when its included in their employer's portfolio.

there is a 2 pronged reason for this. 1st off more and more people are attending college and obtaining degrees (http://www.census.gov/population/socdemo/education/cps2007/Table1-01.xls) thus making them call closer and closer to the "dime a dozen" level or, IOW, nothing more than a commodity. 2nd is grade inflation (http://www.mnsu.edu/cetl/teachingresources/articles/gradeinflation.html) also devaluing the college degree. together they cause a double whammy.

while it might be elitist of me (donning my asbestos union suit), I, in part, blame the tons of easy money (grants/loans) available for college. Make the money available and people/companies/schools will find ways to spend and take it in. The most recent example of this is the huge amounts of money made available to the mortgage industry: they most certainly found ways to avail themselves of that money...much to our detriment.

Making us a dime a dozen, nothing more than a commodity.

To add to that, fewer and fewer people are actually needed to do more and more things, thanks to automation.

The problem would then seem to be that the world is increasingly of, by, and for the machine. You are an inefficient glob of whatever, that needs to eat, sleep, take care of children, etc. If you, as an interchangeable cog, are let go, there is another one of you waiting. Easily replaced.

There is nothing special about the US any more that makes it any more competitive than other developed or developing countries.

Our wages are too high. Our environmental laws too strict. Our healthcare too costly. Our system of education inferior.

We forced corporatism down the world's throat for 50 years, and now the world will laugh as it destroys us.