A new report from Georgetown University’s Center on Education and the Workforce states that “the high school economy is gone and it is not coming back” and that two-thirds of jobs now require workers to have at least some college education.
Furthermore, the program or major that a college student chooses makes a significant difference in that student’s financial future, according to “Five Rules of the College and Career Game,” based on data from the U.S. Census Bureau’s ongoing American Community Survey.
The Georgetown Center came up with information and guidelines from its research to help prospective college students and their families select programs that will best fulfill their educational and financial goals.
“The variety of college programs today is a Tower of Babel,” said Dr. Anthony P. Carnevale, lead author of the report and director of the Georgetown Center. “We need to help students decipher their options in the first major investment in the journey from youth dependency to independent adulthood.”
According to the report, “a blizzard of options” exists for students because of the burgeoning number of postsecondary programs, which more than quintupled from 1985 to 2010 – from 410 to 2,260. Meanwhile, tuition and fees at public four-year colleges and universities have risen 19 times faster than average family incomes.
“We feel as though there just isn’t enough information out there for people who are considering going to college – for students and parents – about how much money they’re likely to make in the end,” Martin Van Der Werf, editor of the report, told Diverse.
College “has gotten so expensive that it’s very important that people understand before they go into debt what they’re likely to get at the other end,” he said.
