This ROI data tool provides an overview of the median ROI among certificate, associate's, and bachelor's degree-granting institutions, at the 10-, 15-, 20-, 30-, and 40-year time horizons. An interactive table allows viewers to compare ROI across institutions, by degree type, state, and the control of the institution (public, private nonprofit, or…

Is law school worth it? A Juris Doctor (JD) offers high median earnings and a substantial earnings boost relative to a bachelor's degree in the humanities or social sciences--two of the more common fields of study that lawyers pursue as undergraduate students. However, graduates of most law schools carry substantial student loan debt, which dims…

Majoring in business typically pays off. While graduates' earnings and federal student loan debt vary by institution and degree level, the majority of business programs lead to median earnings that are roughly 10 times graduates' debt payments two years after program completion. "The Most Popular Degree Pays Off: Ranking the Economic Value of…

College typically pays off for low-income students, but not as much as it does for their peers. Low-income students, whose families earn $30,000 or less per year, comprise more than one-third of college students. "The Colleges Where Low-Income Students Get the Highest ROI" finds that low-income students have a lower return on investment…

This report and the accompanying interactive web tool are a first step toward helping students sort through the 37,000 programs in the College Scorecard data to learn which programs offer a pathway to good earnings and which threaten more debt. Part 1 examines earnings differences across different institutions. Just as there is overlap in…

In the post-World War II period, workers with a high school diploma or less were able to attain jobs with middle-class wages in American industry. Good jobs were available in manufacturing and other blue-collar industries that employed large numbers of high school-educated workers. But as automation, globalization, and related phenomena have led…

Between 1991 and 2016, employment among White, Black, and Latino workers grew by 20 percent, while employment in good jobs soared by 35 percent. Yet the opportunities and benefits of the modern economy have not accrued evenly across the three groups. Discrimination and a history of racial injustice in this country have led to Whites gaining a…

This is the executive summary for the report, "The Unequal Race for Good Jobs: How Whites Made Outsized Gains in Education and Good Jobs Compared to Blacks and Latinos." Between 1991 and 2016, White workers built on their past educational and economic privileges to attain bachelor's and graduate degrees in historically high numbers and…

A college education is widely recognized as a gateway to economic opportunity and intergenerational mobility in the United States. Children from households with highly educated parents are three times more likely to get a Bachelor's degree than children from households in which the parents did not attend college. Today, at least some postsecondary…

The steady job growth and falling unemployment rate offer some reassurance that the economy is on the right track. Yet, the long-term structural changes accelerated by the cyclical impact of the Great Recession have resulted in a very unequal recovery. During the recession, the worst economic downturn since the Great Depression, workers without…

This is the executive summary for the report, "Women Can't Win: Despite Making Educational Gains and Pursuing High-Wage Majors, Women Still Earn Less than Men." Gender wage disparities have always been an intractable problem in the workforce. Women are doing all the right things to close wage disparities--going to college in greater…

The gender wage gap, the disparity in pay between men and women, has narrowed to 81 cents in 2016 from 57 cents on the dollar in 1975. Nevertheless, the gap persists. Over the course of a career, the gender wage gap results in women earning $1 million less than men do. To close this gap, women have relied primarily on the advantages conferred by…

Colorado has the second most-educated adult populace, but largely because it imports college-educated labor from other states. Almost 56 percent of Coloradans have a high-quality certificate, associate's degree, bachelor's degree, or higher. Yet at the same time Colorado has the fifth lowest high school graduation rate in the nation. The state's…

Since 1980, the Black college-going rate has nearly doubled, while the Latino college-going rate has more than doubled. As a result, the Black and Latino share of public college enrollment has grown from 15 percent in 1980 to 35 percent in 2015. However, those impressive college-going gains are not being matched by gains in college completion.…

This is the executive summary for the report, "Our Separate & Unequal Public Colleges: How Public Colleges Reinforce White Racial Privilege and Marginalize Black and Latino Students." America's selective public colleges should be among the great equalizers in our society. Funded primarily by taxpayers and carrying a relatively low…