The Dangerous Economist: Yes, a College Degree Is Still Worth It

Sunday, May 28, 2023

Yes, a College Degree Is Still Worth It

College graduates continue to command higher wages, but to combat falling enrollment, schools need to emphasize skills over credentials

By Jeffrey Selingo and Matt Sigelman.

Jeffrey Selingo is the author of “Who Gets In and Why: A Year Inside College Admissions” and a special adviser and professor of practice at Arizona State University. Matt Sigelman is president of the Burning Glass Institute and a visiting fellow at the Harvard Kennedy School’s Project on the Workforce.

Excerpts:
"the four-year degree is still a valuable commodity, delivering an immediate 25% wage premium within a year of graduation—a difference that held steady over the 12-year period"
"having a degree makes it easier for graduates to recover from early career struggles, allowing those who are “underemployed” to move up more easily into jobs where more of their co-workers have a degree."
"what employers want out of the degree has changed, and colleges need to rethink the credential so that their graduates can better compete in today’s job market."
"The economic value of a bachelor’s degree has typically depended on the prestige of the college and the market demand for certain majors. While that generally remains true, we also found that a third ingredient is critical to the ultimate payoff: the specific skills students leave college with.
In decades past, employers looked to degrees as indicators of basic capability, training new hires with required skills. Today, people are less likely to stick with a job, so firms expect employees to arrive ready for work."
"higher education must spell out the skills that students learn on campus and help them to see where those skills are needed in the workforce."
"a public administration major who also has investment skills can see their wage premium rise by nearly a third, while a liberal-arts major who is knowledgeable about strategic planning gets a 20% boost."
"Knowing SQL, a database language, delivers an 11% wage premium for a natural resources major (where SQL is a relatively rare skill) but only a 4% return for a math major (where SQL is relatively common)."
"Business majors get a greater wage boost from skills in negotiation and influencing others than from studying accounting."
"a degree by itself no longer signals that college graduates have the skills employers are looking for. That’s why the University of Texas system is beginning to embed “microcredentials”—ranging from data analysis to project management—into the four-year degree"
"Today . . . Where the degree is from, what it’s in and what skills you learn matter far more. To make the degree more valuable for more students, colleges need to bring new focus to how students fare after graduation."

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