Today, December 3 — also known as “#Giving Tuesday” — you can help build the economy of the future, help some younger people get ready to take the reins, and help many of us in our golden years of retirement.
Just before the Thanksgiving Holidays, I gave my First Year Experience college students a challenge: Figure out the value of a college degree for a student over a lifetime. To calculate that, I had our students the annual earnings of a college student between the ages of 22-70, and compared that to the earnings of one with a high school diploma over a lifetime, between the ages of 18-70. In addition to giving the high school graduate a four-year head start, I also had our students subtract the cost of college tuition over four years. They were hooked.
Even with having to pay college tuition, and having four years fewer in earnings potential, a college graduate can expect to make, on average. over $500,000 more over a lifetime more than someone who has a high school diploma and went into the workforce.
Of course everyone knows stories of college dropouts who make millions. That goes into the data as well.
I also had the students similarly calculate the value of a graduate degree or professional degree, over one’s lifetime. That amount came to almost $900,000 more over a lifetime on average, even with graduate school costs and fewer years of earning. Those numbers got everyone’s attention.
I’ve often cited a Georgetown study that shows that nearly two-thirds of jobs in the future will require the education of a college degree, or the equivalent of it, to perform. Currently, America only has a third of its population earning a college degree, which also includes retirees.
Something’s gotta give if we expect our workforce to be ready.
At this point, I get some people responding that there are plenty of jobs that don’t require a college degree. You bet. According to that Georgetown estimate, that’s at least a third of all jobs in the USA economy, which is quite a lot. Some pay a lot too. My wife’s uncle, who is a plumber, makes much more than I do. He also had to do a lot of studying at his trade apprenticeship to get that and he’s as sharp as a tack and a super hard worker, something I remind people of when they think there are a lot of high-paying “easy” jobs out there.
I am sure every reader of this column will attest to the need to be a hard worker to succeed in your profession, whether you have a college degree or not.
I’ve talked with my LaGrange College graduates who work jobs that the media says do not require a college degree. Almost everyone says that the college degree matters so much. “I don’t see how you can do my job without a college degree,” one remarked. That’s the sentiment of every one of our political science graduates who comes back on campus or online to speak to our majors.
Some of our graduates have amazing professions, for which they didn’t study the details at a university. But at colleges like ours, you often learn how to learn, so you can skate where the puck is going, not where it currently is, to borrow a phrase from hockey legend Wayne Gretzky.
So please see what you can do to help college students get their degrees on #GivingTuesday, or even after December 3. Our future economy may depend on having a workforce that’s ready and trained to do these jobs, some of which haven’t even been created yet.