College Is Worth It
  • Home
  • About CIWI
  • Research & Insights
  • Contact

Questioning the Barista Myth

1/27/2016

 
Picture
Paying for college can seem daunting considering the seemingly endless stories of college graduates burdened with incredible amounts of student debt. But are these anecdotes really representative of the norm? Economists at the Federal Reserve Bank of New York don’t think so. 

Jaison Abel and Richard Dietz – who have researched the topic of higher education for years – found that while recent college grads have struggled during the Recession, they’ve done better than most believe.

Here are some key points of Abel and Deitz’s analysis:
  • Most of the underemployment of new graduates after 2008 took place in jobs that pay better than food service.
  • Most grads have moved past their initial employment that didn’t require a bachelor’s degree.
  • While things were “more difficult” for some liberal arts grads than for more career-related majors, the preceding points still apply—and liberal arts grads are also not relegated to the service industry.

​Although about 45% of recent bachelor’s degree recipients have been working in jobs that don’t require a college degree, only about 19% of these (or 9% of all recent grads) were working in low-skilled jobs. This is far from the idea that college grads as a whole are doomed to wither behind a coffee shop register.
Picture
More importantly, from 2009 to 2013 about 40% of underemployed recent graduates were working in the four highest-paying categories of non-college jobs, while only 18% of non-degree workers could say the same. So even if underemployed, college grads were more than twice as likely to be working in higher-paying jobs as were workers who lacked a college degree.

​The Bottom Line
A college degree serves as a shield against a poor economy, but it doesn’t guarantee a good job—many grads have still been burdened by student debt. The question is this – are colleges doing enough to help these graduates?

Comments are closed.

    Categories

    All
    Access
    Cost Of College
    Degree Attainment
    Earnings
    Economic Mobility
    Employment
    Job Satisfaction
    Liberal Arts
    Quality Of Life

    RSS Feed

    Archives

    March 2017
    September 2016
    June 2016
    January 2016
    December 2015
    November 2015
    June 2015
    May 2015
    April 2015
    March 2015
    February 2015
    January 2015
    December 2014
    November 2014
    October 2014
    September 2014
    August 2014
    July 2014
    June 2014
    May 2014
    March 2014
    February 2014

Powered by Create your own unique website with customizable templates.
  • Home
  • About CIWI
  • Research & Insights
  • Contact