New college wage premium numbers from Census

Regular readers will be well-acquainted with my interest in the college wage premium. The fact that college graduates make significantly more than those with lower levels of educational attainment is relevant, I argue, to debates about how best to finance higher education. Well, the Census is out with new wage premium numbers, and their estimates actually show a larger wage premium than the Georgetown study I previously relied on. Here is the breakdown:

The full breakdown with methods is contained in the larger report. The quick take away is that the median Bachelor’s degree holder makes $1.05 million more over the course of their lifetime than the median high school graduate. That’s a lot of money, and it should cause those fixated on presenting college students as the oppressed youth to reconsider. If you are looking for oppressed youth to fixate over, you should probably move down the wage scale a bit.