As debate over the high cost and sometimes diminishing returns of a college degree these days continues, a new report suggests the relative value of the degree really depends on whether you're a man or a woman.
According to a new report from Fusion Interactive, women of all degree levels tend to end up getting shorted salary-wise when compared to men with less education.
The report notes that the median male college dropout still out-earns the median woman who graduates with a four-year degree -- a trend that persists in virtually every combination of degree type and gender. Female community college grads, for example, end up with nearly identical estimated lifetime earnings as a male who only finished high school.
Even when arts and science degrees are pitted against each other, men with arts degrees, on average, earn more throughout their lifetime than women with science degrees.
The report, which cross-references years of salary data (via salary information company PayScale) with gender and college degree, also helps users answer how long it will take to pay off various degrees.
Fusion also takes stock of the some caveats with the data used to generate the interactive report, including the fact that salary information from older workers reflects graduation trends from 20 years ago. It notes:
This charting tool does not provide information about how much any given person can expect to make, or even how much the average college grad makes. Instead, it shows the results of millions of surveys from PayScale, a company that asks Americans every day what job they have, what education they have, and how much they’re earning. Most people fill out this survey because they want to see what they’re worth—what the going rate is for their type of job. One consequence is that precious few surveys are taken by people who are unemployed. The PayScale surveys are also bad at capturing data from jobs where it’s common knowledge how much people earn -- government jobs, for example, or minimum-wage jobs.
You can read a full analysis of the report breaking down other important caveats over at Fusion.
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