>Doug Henwood wrote:
>
> > I know the wage and income distribution literature pretty
> > well, and I know that the U.S. is characterized by a large and
> > widening dispersion within demographic categories as well as across
> > them. But all other things being equal (which of course they rarely
> > are) you're more likely to be better off with a BA than without one,
> > and more likely to be better off with a master's than a bachelor's.
> >
> > What is the point of questioning this so stubbornly?
>
>I think the point people are getting at is the one that seems obvious to
>you, that if 40% of us get BAs now, and 10% of us got them 50 years ago,
>then it's not the entree it once was -- it gets you into the top 40%
>rather than the top 10% of the job distribution. And before, you used to
>get that high with a HS diploma. So in that sense, it's less valuable --
>more "common" -- than it used to be, and going to college now gets a lot
>of us what going to high school used to. But of course, by the same
>token, finishing high school now gets you what finishing grammar school
>used to. So the gap can stay the same, or even increase, while all
>degrees being devalued (in terms of their entree value) through a process
>of credential inflation. And in a similar manner, the BA can be
>subdivided such that you need a "good" degree to get entree to the same
>percentile in the job pyramid that you could have crossed 40 years ago
>with a no-name degree.
>
>So I think there are two different arguments here. You're comparing
>having a degree to not having one, and measuring it in monetary returns.
>Others are comparing having a degree today to having the same degree 40
>years ago, and comparing it in terms of how high it got you on the
>available job pyramid. And pointing out that college degrees are more
>clearly subdivided into qualitatively different classes than they used to
>be back before the massive 60's expansion of the college system.
At least one in five employed B.A.s was in a non-college job, according to a 1994 survey by the Bureau of Labor Statistics (and this without even considering the problem of credential inflation that has been mentioned several times here).
Yoshie