That College Degree: More Valuable Than Ever JUNE 1, 2014 Continue reading the main storyShare This Page EMAIL FACEBOOK TWITTER SAVE MORE To the Editor: Re “Is College Worth It? Clearly Yes, New Data Says,” by David Leonhardt (The Upshot, May 27): While it seems indisputable that college graduates will, over the course of their lifetimes, earn more than those who don’t graduate from college, I was still left wondering if the studies cited in your article proved the definitive economic impact of a traditional college education. We could probably identify many things that distinguish the haves from the have-nots when it comes to lifelong earnings — not the least of which are the socioeconomic privileges enjoyed by the upper-middle-class kids who populate most of America’s universities today. If we insist on evaluating college as an economic value proposition (regrettable, but understandable given what it costs), we should probably identify the marketable skills students acquire over the course of four years that they didn’t possess earlier, and the cost and effectiveness of alternatives that do (or could) exist. TIM WALLACE Farmington, Me., May 27, 2014 To the Editor: Certainly statistics do back up the basic fact that those with college degrees do better than those without such degrees, and that the gap between these two groups has been growing. Still, I think this focus on getting people to go to college and graduate ignores a critical problem — that many areas of employment that are expected to grow in the next 30 years (food preparation and service, the service sector, construction, home care) do not require a college degree. Nor do most of these jobs pay well or provide decent benefits. So yes, let’s work on trying to get as many people to go to college and to graduate as possible. However, if we fail to address the problem of low wages of those who become employed in the many important sectors of the economy that do not require a college degree, then we will continue to live in a society in which many people are left behind. Thankfully, there are policies and remedies that could address the problem of low wages, such as enacting living wage laws and making it easier for workers in these sectors to join unions. MICHAEL SPEAR Brooklyn, May 27, 2014 The writer is an assistant professor of history at Kingsborough Community College, CUNY. A version of this letter appears in print on June 2, 2014, on page A20 of the New York edition with the headline: That College Degree: More Valuable Than Ever. Order Reprints|Todays Paper|Subscribe
Posted on: Sat, 05 Jul 2014 01:59:17 +0000
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