Earlier this week, we included new information on career earnings based on the type of school attended. Here, the government looks at first-year numbers based on degree programs.
The U.S. Department of Education release data on first-year earnings of college graduates, for the first time broken down by program level. The information, collected from federal tax data, is the most comprehensive and likely accurate information on different college programs currently available.
Combined with the program-level debt information the department released in May, prospective students, researchers and administrators can now – as some have already done – slice and dice the information to identify what majors are “worth it” (in at least one simplistic way) and which college graduates earn the most. But the data are likely to continue, rather than end, debate over whether vocationally oriented data like earnings and debt are the right way to judge higher education programs.
Education Secretary Betsy DeVos said that the data will provide “real information students need to make informed, personalized decisions about their education.”
The data have been integrated into the Education Department’s College Scorecard and are also available in raw form for download. The credential levels range from certificates and associate degrees to the doctoral and professional levels.
Comparing the median debt level of graduates in a program to their median first-year earnings yields some interesting, and, for some, troubling, results. Of the nearly 41,000 programs included in the data set, median debt exceeded median first-year earnings by more than $1,000 for 6,520 of them.
Because the earnings data look only at a graduate’s first year in the workforce, some noted their limited ability to characterize a lifetime of earnings. Liberal arts degree recipients, in particular, are likely to make low starting salaries before incrementally increasing their incomes.
“In some fields of study, earnings change quite a bit the first few years out,” said Robert Kelchen, associate professor of higher education at Seton Hall University. “In other fields they may not change as much, because you basically enter at the top of the salary scale.”
Missing from the data set is information about programs with few students, which the department has held back because of privacy concerns. The debt data were collected from students who graduated in the 2016 and 2017 academic years and represent their debt at graduation. The earnings data were collected from students who graduated in 2015 and 2016.
How prospective students (and their parents) will use the new information remains to be seen.
Tod Massa, policy analytics director at the State Council of Higher Education for Virginia, suggested that the data will be more utilized by think tanks and researchers than by prospective students, especially because some similar data have been previously released by state governments.
“I’m not convinced it’s going to markedly affect student behavior,” he said, “except perhaps in states where the data are not available or where students are looking at institutions not typically covered by the states, such as the proprietary institutions.”
Kelchen emphasized the value of the data to college administrations themselves.
“For the first time at many colleges, they know information about the earnings of their graduates,” he said. “This could get colleges to reconsider whether they offer certain programs, especially graduate programs or more vocational programs. I don’t think this affects the core liberal arts.”
The department has been working with Google to make the College Scorecard information easily accessible to the public. When googling a college or university, typically the search engine will display a box with College Scorecard data.
The Education Department has said it will update the information annually, eventually providing earnings figures for 10 years postgraduation.
Tom Schuman is the senior vice president of communications & operations for the Indiana Chamber. He is also the editor of the Chamber’s award-winning BizVoice magazine and has been with the organization for 21 years.