Does college pay for B- students? Probably, yes
- Joanne Jacobs
- 7 days ago
- 1 min read
College pays off -- usually -- for people who earn degrees, writes Fordham's Mike Petrilli. Sending unprepared students to college to fail makes no sense. The challenge is what to do about B- or C+ students. Should they try for a bachelor's degree? Community college? There aren't that many apprenticeships out there.
On average, college seems to help even underprepared students, writes Matt Barnum on Chalkbeat.
Students who squeaked into Florida International University with a 3.1 grade average earned 22 percent more 10 years later than students with a 2.9 who didn't make the cut, according to a 2014 study by Yale economist Seth Zimmerman.
The students who just made it into FIU averaged 800 out of 1600 on the SAT, the 21st percentile for collegebound high school seniors, Barnum writes. "Only about half of these marginal FIU students went on to earn a bachelor’s degree within six years." It's not clear whether earnings gains went only to graduates, or whether dropouts showed some benefits.
Studies in Georgia, Massachusetts and Texas have found similar earnings gains for students with below-average test scores who got into unselective four-year colleges, he writes. Community college helps less, but seems to be better than no college at all.
Most of these students entered college decades ago, Barnum writes. We don't know if the results still hold up.
If the college degree is seen as an unreliable signal of learning or work habits -- especially a degree from a low-prestige college -- the trade-offs will change.
I give this post this high rating because the last two paragraphs show an awareness that friends like Mike Petrilli consistently miss, when they phrase their generalizations in the present tense, as if they were conveying unchanging truths: it's clear that costs have risen sharply in the decades since those FIU students enrolled, while the greater frequency of bachelor's degree attainment usually suggests reduced marginal utility, therefore reduced returns, on that attainment; more money circulating will suggest higher nominal wages, without higher purchasing power: all these call into doubt the advisability of such average students going into higher education in the 20th century manner, although individuals probably will do well if they choose career paths towards which their inclinations give…
But do the "earnings gains" exceed the life-crushing student loan debt? And do many students still learn to learn instead of just get some random time-dependent knowledge
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