College Is Still A Good Investment
May 15, 2009 by Tisa Silver
Filed under Finance
All week long, I have written about various financing options (loans, grants) for college students. Going to college requires sacrifices, but it offers many long-term benefits. Expensive as it may be, college is still a good investment!
Here are some interesting statistics about college in the United States:
Photo by gadgetdude, courtesy of flickr
In 2008, 29 percent of adults 25 and older had a bachelor’s degree, and 87 percent had completed high school.
Workers with a high school diploma earned an average of $31,286 in 2007, while those with a bachelor’s degree earned an average of $57,181.
High school graduates can expect, on average, to earn $1.2 million over the course of a normal adult’s working life.
Bachelor’s degree recipients can expect to earn $2.1 million
Master’s degree students can expect to earn $2.5 million.
Doctoral degree graduates earn about $3.4 billion on average.
Graduates with professional degrees (programs include dentistry, veterinary medicine, and law) top the average lifetime earnings scale at $4.4 million.
It appears that education and earnings are directly related. This may not always be the case, but these statistics prove that higher education has value.
Aside from the monetary value, education can provide greater employment options and opportunities for advancement. For more information on the career benefits of higher education, visit Bizzia: Careers and read Darlene’s post, “One Degree At A Time.”
It’s been a fun week for me since I am a huge fan of education, but tomorrow, it’s back to financial markets!
(Sources: Educational Attainment in the United States: 2008, The Big Payoff: Educational Attainment and Synthetic Estimates of Work-Life Earnings, Lifetime Earnings Soar with Education )
