Is a College Degree Still Worth It?

According to a new report by Anthony V. Carnevale, director of the Georgetown University Center on Education and the Workforce, full-time, full-year workers whose highest degree is a bachelor's make 74 percent more, on average, than those whose highest attainment is a high-school diploma.  Bottom line: college is still a good investment.

Among some of the report's most significant findings:

• Even as the housing bubble seems to be dissipating, unemployment rates for recent architecture graduates have remained high (12.8%). Graduate degrees and work experience did not shield these graduates from a sector-specific shock; graduates with experience in the field have the same jobless rates as the economy overall (9.3%).

• Unemployment is generally higher for non-technical majors, such as the arts (9.8%) or law and public policy (9.2%).

• People who make technology are still better off than people who use technology. Unemployment rates for recent graduates in information systems, concentrated in clerical functions, is high (14.7%) compared with mathematics (5.9%) and computer science (8.7%).

• Unemployment rates are relatively low for recent graduates in education (5.0%), engineering (7.0%), health and the sciences (4.8%) because they are tied to stable or growing industry sectors and occupations.

• Graduates in psychology and social work also have relatively low rates (8.8%) because almost half of them work in healthcare or education sectors.

Learn more and see where your major ranks in their study.

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