Author Archive
Ignore Reality, Sell Jobs Plan
It took them several weeks after introducing the American Jobs Act, but the White House has finally gotten into the numbers behind the Act’s edu-employment parts. A report released yesterday by the Obama administration – “Teacher Jobs at Risk” – tries to paint a picture of truly dire circumstances, which is a pretty easy task when you offer no context for your numbers.
The foundational assumptions, of course, are that more money necessarily equals better education, and less money worse. This so flies in the face of reality – at least according to federal test scores – as to be laughable. Well, laughable were it not for the fact that most people are wholly unaware of the truth, and that has made education a giant albatross around our wallets.
Which brings us to the more specific context-dodging deceptions in this report.
The sweet spot in the report — sweet like chocolate-covered arsenic — is a block on the first page pithily titled, “The American Jobs Act Could Prevent Hundreds of Thousands of Layoffs, and Allow Schools to Rehire Thousands More.”
Sounds great, right?
Sure, unless you consider that the $30 billion the administration intends to spend on this — yes, Virginia, there is a cost side — will have to come from people, either today or in the future. That’s right, it will be taken from human beings who are just as real as education employees, and who probably have lots of important things they would do with the dough if allowed to keep it. And that includes the hated “rich,” who would spend their money or invest it, leading to the ”saving or creating” of lots of jobs.
So this isn’t about opposing jobs. It’s about opposing government deciding who does or doesn’t get employed.
But perhaps we are on the verge of education employment Armageddon. The administration’s report, after all, says that 300,000 elementary and secondary jobs were lost between 2008 and 2011, which seems like a big number. The report doesn’t say whether that was net or total, and it is probably a worst-case scenario, but still, that feels huge.
Huge, that is, until you see what it’s out of. In 2008 the total number of school and district employees was 6,318,395. That means a 300,000 loss was just a 4.7 percent trimming — far from humongous. To put that in students-per-employee perspective, using the latest total enrollment estimate such a cut would have taken us from a ratio of 7.9 students per employee in 2008 to about 8.2 to 1 today. In other words, it would have created a student-to-employee situation we haven’t seen since all the way back in…2003.
Oh.
But what if we lost another 280,000, which is the scenario the administration if trying to scare us with for the current school year? Add that to the 300,000 worst-case loss between 2008 and today, and it would be a total edu-jobs loss of 580,000. In percentage terms that would be a 9.2 percent drop since 2008, and in student-per-staffer perspective an uptick to 8.6 kids per employee, a proportion we last saw in just 1998.
That’s regretable, perhaps, but considering the gigantic staffing increases over the decades — a near doubling since 1969 — and stagnant achievement scores, we should probably be asking why we’ve let cuts be so small up to now. And lest we forget: The nation has an over $14 trillion-and-growing debt, which threatens all of us like a gigantic asteroid hurtling toward Earth. In light of that, using taxpayer dollars to keep public schooling a perpetual jobs factory not only flies in the face of educational logic, it is fiscal and economic lunacy.
The Obama Administration’s edu-jobs plan might work politically — it might be a great weapon for getting votes — but as public policy it is utterly irresponsible.
Principal of the United States Returns
Today the POTUS — in this case, Principal of the United States — will give his third annual, national back-to-school speech, to be televised live by MSNBC. The immediate target, of course, is the kids, but I doubt it would be viewed negatively by the President if lots of adults saw or heard the speech and thought, “Wow, this guy really cares about kids. I really like him.” And who knows, maybe footage of inspiring the children will make it into a campaign ad or two.
The speech itself, from what appears to be the early-release transcript, does seem to focus mainly on encouraging the kiddos. At least there’s that. But it also has some nice self- and special-interest-serving bits:
You’ve also got people all across this country – including me – working on your behalf. We’re taking every step we can to ensure that you’re getting an educational system that’s worthy of your potential. We’re working to make sure that you have the most up-to-date schools with the latest tools for learning. We’re making sure that our country’s colleges and universities are affordable and accessible. And we’re working to get the best teachers into your classrooms, so they can prepare you for college and a future career.
Now, teachers are the men and women who might be working harder than anybody. Whether you go to a big school or a small one, whether you attend a public, private, or charter school – your teachers are giving up their weekends and waking up at dawn. They’re cramming their days full of classes and extra-curriculars. Then they’re going home, eating some dinner, and staying up past midnight to grade your papers.
And they don’t do it for a fancy office or a big salary. They do it for you. They live for those moments when something clicks, when you amaze them with your intellect and they see the kind of person you can become. They know that you’ll be the citizens and leaders who take us into tomorrow. They know that you’re the future.
Probably the only big question stemming from this speech is why so little hubbub about it? In 2009 it was huge news. Today — almost nothing.
Certainly one thing is this year, unlike 2009, the Department of Education didn’t put out ham-fisted, potentially politicized teaching guides to go with the speech. And clearly the President’s supporters no longer have the same ardor they did in his early, far less bruised days. And it seems the White House just isn’t publicizing this address very much, maybe to avoid revisiting past acrimony, or maybe just to seem less intrusive in all aspects of American life than he did in 2009.
Or maybe it’s this: Like all unprecedented federal intrusions, once the precedent is set Americans just get used to it. And there are always new threats to battle, right? Meanwhile, freedom is eroded just a little bit more.
Now there’s a topic I’d like to see the Principal of the United States address.
How About ‘Not-Bought Books Week’?
In case you hadn’t heard, we’re in the midst of “Banned Books Week,” a self-righteous time of year when librarians in particular condemn efforts to get books booted out of public schools and libraries. It’s supposed to be a week in which Americans are shocked and dismayed over efforts to make Twilight novels, or The Catcher in the Rye, harder for kids to get for free.
Well, not “free,” exactly. I should say “on the public dime.”
Wait? This isn’t about outright burning of books, or expelling them from every home and Amazon list, but removing them from publicly funded institutions?
That’s right, and that makes such “banning” much more complicated than the American Library Association would have you believe.
You see, when a public institution chooses to buy a book with taxpayer money, more than just free speech rights come into play. So to does the right of taxpayers not to be compelled to support the speech of others. So book “banners” have just as much right to demand the removal of books as others have to demand that they remain on the shelves. It’s not censorship. It’s equal rights.
There’s another part of this: with public libraries and schools, government employees or some other governmental entity—maybe a selection committee—is choosing which books to purchase. That’s just as much discrimination against one or another book as demanding that a volume already purchased be removed. It’s just censorship on the front end instead of the back.
Here’s what I propose: go to your local public library and see if they offer every Cato book ever published. If they don’t, loudly decry their unconscionable censorship. Then, tell them that as long as anyone decides what goes into their library at public expense, someone’s rights will be trampled—rights don’t just kick-in after books have been procured. Finally, let them know that the only way to end this unacceptable situation—and the constant, zero-sum battles over who’s rights will be respected—is to get taxpayer money out of schools and libraries.
That will go over like a lead library cart, of course, but it will at least begin to address the real problem.
Obama’s Double-Secret Violation of the Constitution
Though few people outside of the Tea Party—especially politicians—have the guts to say it, federal education control like the No Child Left Behind Act is blatantly unconstitutional. Authority over education is not among the federal government’s enumerated powers, and laws like the NCLB—which truly is a wreck driven by what self-interested politicians thought sounded good—also go far beyond the 14th Amendment’s charge to prohibit discrimination by state and local governments.
But not satisfied to just have Washington fully ensconced in classrooms, this morning the Obama administration officially went to double-secret violation of the Constitution, adding a brazen dumping of the separation of powers to federal education policy.
This second layer of Constitution-contempt comes in the form of the administration telling states that they can get waivers from the No Child Left Behind Act—which the NCLB allows—but requiring that they adopt administration-approved policies to do so. That second part the NCLB does not allow, meaning the president has decided to rewrite the law all by himself—including strong-arming states to adopt “college and career ready standards,” another step toward federal curriculum standards—even though the Constitution is crystal clear: “All legislative Powers herein granted shall be vested in a Congress of the United States.”
In response to this, will we finally hear the Constitution loudly, constantly, and honestly invoked and defended by members of Congress, especially those in the GOP who don’t have the obstacle of having to defend “their” president? We sure as heck should, but don’t count on it: If they start really defending the Constitution now, think of all the violations they’ve happily perpetrated that someone might notice. No, better to keep up the double-secret evasion and complain on other grounds, like President Obama is being too “political.” Because no one in Congress—or anywhere else—would ever act based on political motives, such as concluding that “Constitution, shmonstitution, we can’t push to get the Feds completely out of education because people would think we are mean.”
No, political thinking like that would never happen.
State Schools Kill Big East, Private Hoops in Critical Condition
A couple of years ago I predicted it (though I was hardly the only one): Darwinian conference predation, driven by football and the quest for television markets and money, would kill the Big East, and at least seriously hamstring the small, basketball-centric private colleges that made up so much of it. Huge, flagship public universities would consolidate power in service of football, I and others foresaw, and relatively small schools like Georgetown, Villanova, and St. John’s — which could never produce enough alums to regularly fill even close to 80,000-seat football stadiums — would be orphaned.
With the departure of the University of Pittsburgh and Syracuse to the Atlantic Coast Conference, that now seems almost unavoidable.
But this isn’t the fault of Pitt and Syracuse, or even the ACC (though perhaps the ACC deserves scorn for its 2003 raid of the Big East, and Pitt for its possible duplicity about its move). No, ultimately it’s the fault of a higher education system that gives flagship state schools massive size advantages over private institutions both physically and in terms of enrollment. (Though all of higher ed, of course, is awash in taxpayer dough.) This advantage is primarily thanks to taxpayer subsidies, which underwrite the schools’ gigantic enrollments and, too often, their athletics programs directly. So the ACC was largely reacting to moves by what’s now the PAC-12, the so-called Big 10 (which also has twelve members), and the impending destruction of the Big 12 thanks to the inability of two behemoths — the University of Texas and Texas A&M — to get along.
Indeed, in the grand scheme of big-time college sports, the ACC is the most friendly of the emerging ”superconferences” to private schools; with the addition of Syracuse it will have five of them, the others being Duke, Wake Forest, Boston College, and the University of Miami. But it will almost certainly be considered the weakest of the superconferences in football, and if you look at the latest Sagarin ratings of the ACC schools, note the cellar-dwellers: Wake, Duke and Boston College.
This is depressing if you enjoy high-level, private school hoops. Of course, a few football-free private schools do enjoy regular success — Xavier, Gonzaga, and most recently Butler — but their resources are significantly smaller than the members of the current Bowl Championship Series conference schools, with lucrative BCS television contracts tied, first and foremost, to football. So with the likely demise of the Big East, the going is likely about to get much tougher for the likes of Seton Hall, Providence, and other Big East, hoops-only schools, even if they are able to hang on to relevance.
Is federal anti-trust action needed to deal with this, as some have suggested? I’m no anti-trust expert, but I’d say absolutely not. For one thing, when this has been threatened before it has had little to do with fair competition, and much to do with federal legislators trying to get the flagships in their states in on the BCS. That will do private schools little good, and hardly seems motivated by a real desire for fair competition or justice. We should also hope that Congress will focus on other, more important things, like, say, getting Washington back to its proper constitutional size. And most important, attacking the BCS will do little to address the fundamental problem: As long as states furnish huge subsidies to public universities, those institutions will always have a massive size advantage is the world of college sports.
So good-bye, Big East. Government schools have killed you.
Jobs Bill Only Makes Political Sense
I can’t look into President Obama’s heart, so I can’t tell you what motives are driving the American Jobs Act. I can, though, tell you this: One look at the facts about American education, and his proposal only makes sense if the goals are to energize union support, and perhaps use spending as some easy shorthand to tell voters that the President cares about kids.
The basic reality is that over the last several decades governments at all levels have conducted ever-bigger education money bombings with no positive academic impact. According to the Digest of Education Statistics, real per-pupil expenditures rose from $5,671 in 1970-71 to $12,922 in 2007-08 (the latest year with available data). On the federal level, between 1970 and 2010 per-pupil spending rose an astonishing 375 percent. Meanwhile, National Assessment of Educational Progress scores for 17-year-olds – essentially, our schools’ “final products” – were almost completely flat. More money did not buy better results.
What did it buy? Exactly what President Obama seems to want to protect: staffing bloat. Between 1969 and 2008 American schools went from having 22.6 students per teacher to 15.3. District administrative staff went from 697.7 students per employee to just 363.3. In total, students per employee dropped from 13.6 to 7.8, all while academic outcomes froze. We got lots of jobs – many unionized – but nothing of educational value.
There is simply no way to look at the data and believe that $30 billion for school staffing will improve education. So it must only be about jobs, and ineffectual jobs at that.
That “ineffectual” part is the economic key. Stimulus supporters argue that paying for any job is good because employed people spend their dollars. But they ignore that the money must come from somewhere, and that somewhere is ultimately taxpayers who would either spend it themselves – including investing in new or existing companies – or put it in banks that would lend it. So the money would be spent one way or another, only taxpayers have huge incentives to employ it much more efficiently than do public schools, if for no other reason than they did the hard work of earning it. In the aggregate, that means we’d be better off just letting taxpayers keep their ducats.
What we’ve tried already supports this. Contrary to what Dan Domenech writes, public schools have gotten oodles of bailout money. The original stimulus included roughly $100 billion for education, the bulk of which went to public K-12 schooling, and in 2010 the President signed legislation giving states another $10 billion to keep school employment rolls engorged. And did unemployment plateau at about 8 percent, as the Obama team projected? You know the answer.
How about fixing dilapidated school buildings? Again, money is not the answer, unless the question is how do you win union friends and influence voters.
As I testified in 2008, for years school districts had been spending more on maintenance and construction than it was estimated they needed to bring all schools into “good overall condition.” Yet conditions seemed to keep getting worse.
What’s the problem? First, districts often put off maintenance so that small problems become bigger. And second, they often spend lavishly on School Mahals, a tendency embodied by L.A. Unified’s $578 million Robert F. Kennedy Community Schools complex.
Of course, building something brand new, equipped with more superfluous lights and whistles than the original starship Enterprise, doesn’t make practical sense if you could keep the old buildings fully functional at a fraction of the cost. But practical and political are totally different animals. Keeping the boiler in good repair simply doesn’t make for politician-aggrandizing, ribbon-cutting photo-ops. But undertaking a big addition or renovation, which Obama’s bill would pay for, absolutely does.
And let’s not forget: All the labor would likely have to be hired at union rates, in keeping with standard federal requirements. So jobs yes, but not more jobs in exchange for market wages.
Ultimately, the President’s bill would do nothing for education and would hurt the economy, because government spending more almost by definition means a nation wasting money.
C/P from the National Journal’s “Education Experts” blog.
If Only Government Schools Would Go Extinct
I don’t know much about Texas governor and GOP presidential candidate Rick Perry, though I appreciate his resisting federal bribery in education. I can, though, say that the dustup over his remarks yesterday concerning the age of the Earth, and whether some Texas schools teach creationism alongside evolution, is not a sad commentary on him. It’s a damning commentary on public schooling.
First, let’s get the facts straight: No, it wouldn’t be constitutional to advocate creationism in public schools, though it might be acceptable to teach the religious basis for it without declaring it the truth. Even without possible legal finessing, however, it is very likely that teachers are discussing creationism in Lone Star science classes, and just about every other state’s. As a groundbreaking survey of high school biology teachers recently found, about 13 percent of surveyed teachers explicitly teach creationism or intelligent design in their classes, and about 60 percent dance around evolution, sometimes by teaching numerous views on the subject.
How could this be happening?
About 40 percent of Americans believe that roughly 10,000 years ago God created human beings as we currently exist, and they aren’t going to just let the schools for which they have to pay taxes ignore that. Nor should they: ours is a nation built on individual liberty, and government attacks that at its core when it compels people to support schools that either teach things they find abhorrent or fails to teach things they feel essential. Of course, those who oppose the teaching of creationism are equally justified in standing up for their convictions — hence the creationist black market and constant public-schooling conflict.
The solution: Let parents choose educational options consistent with their norms and beliefs, especially through tax credit programs that allow individuals or corporations to choose what kinds of schools they’ll support. And yes, many people will select options others will dislike, but that’s both a part of freedom and the key to getting coherent and transparent curricula for all.
As a side — but hugely important — note, it is very dangerous to let government declare scientific “winners.” Reality — while very hard to truly know — is not determined by “consensus,” or who can convince the most politicians of something. It simply is. As a result, letting something become officially approved thought is to be assiduously avoided. But don’t take my word for it: Just read up on John Scopes and the huge challenges he faced trying to teach kids about offically forbidden evolution.
Pell Grants Best for Buying Votes
Quite simply, Pell Grants are not supposed to be for the middle class. As the U.S. Department of Education’s website makes clear, Pell is supposed to be for “low-income undergraduate and certain postbaccalaureate students.”
So why characterize Pell as a benefit for the middle class? Because lots of people consider themselves to be in that group — which federal politicians rarely define — and policymakers want their votes.
Unfortunately, as Rep. George Miller (D-CA) recently demonstrated, saying Pell is intended for the middle class also makes it a valuable weapon in waging class warfare.
“Pell is the reason they are able to go to college and get ahead,” Miller said in response to congressional Republicans purportedly looking to trim the program as part of debt reduction. “It’s a shameful excuse and an attack on middle class families.”
Other than their usefulness in browbeating those who’d dare propose education cuts, Pell Grants are, at best, of limited value. Yes, they are needed by some people to go to college, but that’s because they are largely built into college prices. Basically, give me a dollar more to pay for school and my college will charge me another buck.
Of course it’s not just Pell that influences prices — there are lots of other sources of aid, and colleges confront numerous variables that affect their costs — but subsidize something and prices will go up. And boy, do they go up in higher education!
One last consideration is crucial but rarely mentioned. One of the great political benefits of Pell is that to recipients it’s free dough — no need to pay it back. That lets politicians play Santa Claus, not the mean banker who sinisterly comes after you to return student-loan money, plus interest. But keep in mind what, in most cases, college is ultimately for: to enable attendees to greatly increase their earnings. In light of that, how can politicians justify simply giving away money from taxpayers? Quick answer: They can’t.
Were you or I to do that it would be called “stealing.” When government does it, apparently, it’s called “helping the middle-class.”
C/P from the National Journal’s “Education Experts” blog.
School Snatchers Invasion Confirmed!
The good news: Supporters haven’t been able to completely stamp out debate over national curriculum standards. The bad news: The Invasion of the School Snatchers strategy is real, and it is working!
Yesterday, I blogged about a letter from Jeb Bush reportedly causing a subcommittee of the American Legislative Exchange Council to table model legislation opposing national standards. Subsequent to my writing that, a follow-up Education Week post reported that debate wasn’t, in fact, quashed by Bush’s letter. Unfortunately, it appears consideration was postponed for another reason: Most state legislators have no idea what’s going on with national standards:
“Legislators have heard of it, but not a whole lot of states engage legislators in discussion of the common core,” said [John Locke Foundation education analyst Terry] Stoops, who describes himself as a common-core opponent. “Some wanted to know more about it, because state education agencies or state boards of education didn’t give them much information, if any, on the common core.”
If this is accurate, it confirms exactly what I’ve been saying for months: Despite being told that the national standards drive is “state-led,” the people’s representatives have been frozen out of it. Worse, it suggests that national-standardizers’ strategy of sneaking standards in is working.
Adding to confirmation of this school-snatcher strategy is a recent blog post from the Fordham Institute’s Michael Petrilli. At first I was heartened: Petrilli, a flag officer in the national standards campaign, was renouncing Secretary of Education Arne Duncan’s intent to make national-standards adoption a requirement to get waivers from No Child Left Behind. Perhaps, I thought, I’d gotten my first taker in the Demand Real Voluntarism Challenge. But then it sank in: Petrilli wasn’t demanding that Washington stop perpetuating the voluntarism sham. No, he was afraid something as un-stealthy as high-profile waiver demands would suddenly direct much-unwanted attention to the school-snatcher invasion:
The only possible outcome of Secretary Duncan putting more federal pressure on the states to adopt the Common Core is [to] stoke the fires of conservative backlash–and to lose many of the states that have already signed on.
Hopefully that is exactly what will happen, and both the unconstitutional waivers, and the snatchers strategy, will get all the negative attention they deserve.
From Avoiding the National Curriculum Debate, to Smothering It, Just When We Need It Most
Former Florida governor Jeb Bush cares about education. He made major education reforms in the Sunshine State, including many centered on private school choice. He has established the Foundation for Excellence in Education, and dedicates much of his time to education reform. Unfortunately, when it comes to national curriculum standards, it seems his genuine caring has led him to avoid—and now attempt to quash—critical debate on both the dubious merits of national standards, and the huge threats to federalism posed by Washington driving the standards train.
As I’ve complained on numerous occasions, it’s clear that supporters of national standards have employed a stealth strategy to get their way: back-room drafting of standards, content-free Language Arts, and, especially, employing the maddening mantra that national standardization is “state-led and voluntary.” Sadly, you can now add quashing debate to that, even among conservatives and libertarians with longstanding and crucial federalism and efficacy concerns. And according to Education Week, it appears that Jeb Bush—whose foundation just a couple of years ago invited me to participate in a panel discussion on national standards—is taking point on the smothering strategy:
In this space, we’ve been telling you about a few efforts in state legislatures to complicate adoption or implementation of common standards … A move that had the potential to involve many states unfolded last week in New Orleans, but was stopped in its tracks. And none other than former Fla. Gov. Jeb Bush, revered by many conservatives, was involved in stopping it.
The Education Week report links to a letter that Mr. Bush sent to a subcommittee of the American Legislative Exchange Council that was slated to simply take up discussion of model legislation opposing national standards. Mr. Bush urged members to table the proposal. In other words, he urged them to not even talk about it, because apparently even considering that the Common Core might have dangerous downsides should be avoided, even among people who believe in individualism and liberty.
Unfortunately, quashing debate arguably wasn’t the worst aspect of Mr. Bush’s letter. No, that was the fundamentally flawed pretenses he offered for why Common Core should be embraced without debate.
Look Out, Voluntarism! Here They Come Again!
Anyone who’s paid really close attention to the national curriculum standards debate – alas, not many people — knows that many standards-hawkers are guilty of one, unacceptable thing. It’s not just pushing for national standards, which though unsupported by meaningful evidence can still be endorsed by reasonable people. No it is constantly asserting that standards adoption is “voluntary” for states. Today, that lie is being exposed once more — if you know the code, that is.
It is being widely reported this morning that in September U.S. Secretary of Education Arne Duncan will publish criteria states will have to meet to be granted waivers from the No Child Left Behind Act. (A gross violation of the Constitutions’ separation of powers, by the way, but that is a slightly different debate.) And the administration is signaling that, among other things, it will force all states that want relief from NCLB to adopt national curriculum standards, better known as the Common Core.
But wait: At least based on this morning’s media reports, the Department isn’t actually saying that states will have to adopt the Common Core.
Ah, but it is saying that, only using the smoke-screen euphemisms that national-standardizers constantly employ to mask Washington’s foisting of a de facto federal curriculum on every public school in the nation.
Let’s clear the haze.
The Washington Post notes that “administration officials said they will grant waivers to states that adopt standards designed to prepare high school graduates for college and careers.” “College-and-career” standards means the Common Core, because it is the only multi-state standards regime that purports — dubiously, in the eyes of some experts — to represent adequate preparation for both college and work.
Bloomberg News corroborates this conclusion both by noting that the Obama administration has already pushed for “national standards,” and by quoting White House domestic policy adviser Melody Barnes, who said that ”low expectations, uneven standards and shifting goals are unacceptable. Those days are numbered.”
Why, however would the federal government flatten “uneven” state standards?
As Bloomberg suggests, this is not new. But again, you have to know the subtle cues. The federal ”Race to the Top” shoved states into national standards, but using the crafty verbiage of “adopting internationally benchmarked standards and assessments that prepare students for success in college and the workplace.” President Obama’s proposal for reauthorizing NCLB speaks similarly; it would require states to adopt “college- and career-ready” standards. And in case that’s not enough proof for you, Washington is spending $350 million on two consortia that are developing tests to go with the Common Core, one of which just released draft curriculum “frameworks.”
All of this leads me to reissue a challenge I offered a few months ago to purveyors of the voluntarism ruse: If you really want this to be voluntary, loudly and publicly condemn federal coercion, declaring it unacceptable.
So far, the response has been thundering silence. But the Obama administration is poised to offer yet another opportunity to make things right.
Kudos to Carnevale!
About a month ago, Anthony Carnevale and his associates at the Georgetown University Center on Education and the Workforce released a report that, in my estimation, significantly oversold the value of college degrees. As I wrote, it focused too much on median earnings by educational attainment, and made some considerable leaps of faith about the value of degree-holding people who have jobs that do not require college degrees.
Today, in contrast, I’m grateful to Prof. Carnevale for producing a new report that goes a long way toward correcting the first flaw in his June offering.
The College Payoff: Education, Occupations, Lifetime Earnings, released today, does nice work breaking earnings down by both employment category and educational attainment, and showing the significant overlaps in earnings that result. Overall, for instance, Carnevale and company found that 14 percent of workers with no more than a high school diploma earn at least as much as the median Bachelor’s holder. Especially striking, 1.3 percent of people with less than a high school education rake in more than the median possessor of a professional degree (think doctors and lawyers), the highest-earning educational category.
Looking at specific job categories, The College Payoff identifies some of the major occupations you can go into with lower educational attainment that out-earn job categories with higher ones. For instance, driver/sales workers and truck drivers who maxed out at a high school diploma earn an average of $1,531,000 over their lifetimes. That beats the earnings of secretaries, retail sales managers, accounting and auditing clerks, customers service reps, retails salespersons, and nursing and home health aids with some college under their belt. It also beats secretaries, customer service reps, retail salespersons, and accounting and auditing clerks with Associate’s degrees.
There’s a lot more data than that in the report, of course, and it would reward perusal.
Unfortunately, the report’s concluding section starts with this:
No matter how you cut it, more education pays.
As the report itself reveals, there are in fact lots of ways to “cut it” that enable you to earn more with less formal education. Alas, old habits die hard for Carnevale. But just for providing these data, he and his team are to be thanked.
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