Two observations I would like to make.
- College degree participation has greatly expanded just over the last 25 years ( I suspect even more if we went back 50 years) but here is the data going back to 1990 http://nces.ed.gov/programs/coe/indicator_caa.asp
Certainly if we look at the # of manufacturing jobs in the USA 50 years ago we would probably see the proportion of service jobs to manufacturing jobs parallel the growth in college degrees – namely as we have become more of services economy we have needed less skilled blue collar jobs and therefore more kids have gone on to college to work in the services sector.
- All the statistics on income or educational achievement we look at are normally done for the median or average student at the relevant institution. This I suspect is a major problem as I think the skew to the tails is much greater than commonly appreciated. Going to college 30 years ago was reserved for kids with money and those who got good grades in high school;. Today you dont need money (thanks to student loans) and you dont need grades really either. So the bottom half of the distribution of kids who go to college are problematic and they skew the data and statistics to indicate among others this negative conclusion we are debating 'providng income boost or not' -- it is precisely this bottom half of college aspirants who probably should not be going to college but due to societal pressures feels they have to, they are the ones unemployed, living in parents basements and what not.
I think if we look at the top school college graduates we continue to see very successful kids becoming high income earning or high self satisfaction members of our nation and communities. The benefits of a college education are still very much paramount in terms of determinants of future success… but its increasingly a function of attending the best schools with the highest caliber students and resources. Ultimately this is why 90% of us are on this forum, n’est pas?