Sitting the 生員 (Shēngyuán) Exam

I just dropped the Fifteen-Year-Old off at her Local Public High School for her practice 生員 (shēngyuán) exam, her net step in qualifying for the imperial bureaucracy so necessary to give her options to choose a life that she really wants to live in our society. She won't necessarily ace this particular exam--unlike her brother, who was a shoe-in for 案首 status...

Excuse me. Wrong branch of the multiverse. Let me retune my set and focus in on this reality...

Ah. There we are...

Ahem...

I just dropped the Fifteen-Year-Old off at her Local Public High School for her practice standardized test, her next step in attaining the "meritocracy" so necessary to give her the options to choose a life that she really wants to live in our society. She won't necessarily ace this particular exam--AP World History--unlike her brother, who was a shoe-in for a 5. Her turn will come next year with AP Calculus AB--she has more of a pattern-seeing while he has more of an applicable-fact-nugget recalling mind. But both of them are, if I may boast as a father, very kind and thoughtful teenagers and scary-smart in their respective ways--and I say this as somebody who was once the best high school math student in all of Washington DC. (Which may not be saying that much: I learned the next year in my corner of the Weld dormitory that the best high school math student in all of Washington DC was about equal to someone who had been "undistinguished" in math at Moscow Science-Mathematics High School #2--who said his best subject was English. And then there were the stars of Math 55... people like Seth Lloyd... who can only be described as "transhuman"... intelligences vast, warm, and sympathetic... but I digress...)

She is not a shoe-in for a 5 because (a) her world history class was not an AP class, and (b) she does not have the single-minded focus on history, politics, and current events in her outside reading necessary to ensure a 5 in the absence of having covered the AP syllabus in her course. But she has a good shot. And, most important, practice makes perfect. To have done this before when it comes time to take a standardized test where it really counts is an important edge--one of the rules that is not written down anywhere. (One of the rules, moreover, that Princeton has done its best to hide via false fake propaganda for generations about how some of its tests are not achievement but instead "aptitude" tests.)

We economists have been staring in stupefaction and horror over the past generation as the college-high school wage premium in America has risen from 30% to 90% with little if any visible increase in college attendance rates. Incentives do not appear to be having the result in terms of increasing the supply of the educationally-skilled that we economists believe the natural order demands that they must have. There are four potential explanations:

• Myopia--the (growing) up front, cash costs of college and the resulting debt incurred loom much larger in individuals' calculations than they should.
• Aptitude--the ability to reap the economic gains we economists attribute to a modern American college education is in fact much more narrowly concentrated than we economists believe, because of how people's brains grew when they were young. Thus the marginal college student reaps no long-run surplus from attendance.
• Fear--individuals falsely fear that the ability to reap the economic gains we economists attribute to a modern American college education is in fact much more narrowly concentrated than we economists believe, because of how people's brains grew when they were young. Thus the marginal college student falsely fears that he or she reaps no long-run surplus from attendance.
• People don't know the rules.

I'm not sure what I mean by the last. But here is a first cut:

Back in imperial China, if your parents could afford it, and if you were male, you found a tutor to teach you by studying the Confucian classics. You learned the six arts--music, math, writing, ceremony, equitation and archery--the five studies--strategy, law, geography, agriculture, and taxation--and learned how to write your eight-legged-essays. You passed through 生員 (shēngyuán), 舉人 (jǔrén), and then 進士 (jìnshì). At the end you became part of the landlord-bureaucrat-literary intellectual class that ruled China: collecting taxes, collecting rents, advising the emperor, commanding armies, dispensing justice. Those were the rules.

What do today's Americans--the parents of those who are choosing not to go or not to make a great effort at college--think the rules are today? Back in the 1980s Bruce Springsteen in his concerts used to claim that his parents were still following him around the country, telling him that he could still go to college and become (from his father) a lawyer or (from his mother) an author. They understood the rules--the career strategy of trying to live the life you love by becoming a global rock star is not a realistic one, but there are lots of people to be sued and lots of books, manuals, and pamphlets to be written. How many of the parents of today's American fifteen-year-olds are going to do the same?

Lots of people are going to go see the "Sex and the City" movie this spring. How much does it teach anybody about what these people actually do for a living? They look decorative. They suffer from emotional angst. But Miranda has status and options not because she is decorative and perky with red hair and suffers from emotional angst but because of a nonhuman ability to deal with mind-numbing trivia and an iron butt. Samantha has status and options not because she is decorative, flirty, and... well, actually yes, but also because she has a mind for organizational detail and an ability to instantly direct what needs to be done to solve minor crisis of the day #376. Carrie has status and options not because she is decorative--none of her readers can see her, remember, except on the side of a bus--and suffers from emotional angst but because she is very good at putting the fabric of her life into prose on deadline in a way New York readers find interesting. Charlotte has status and options not because she is decorative and suffers from emotional angst but because she has the right manners, the right connections, and a very good eye for visually interesting art. John James Preston--well, it is never clear what he does at all, is it? He likes jazz. He smokes cigars. Cash is not a constraint at all.

Comments

[theophylact]

That's "shoo-in", Brad. (See http://eggcorns.lascribe.net/english/47/shoe/)

[Neal]

One partial possible answer:

From

http://chronicle.com/news/article/4455/new-study-on-college-going-rates-gives-mom-something-else-to-worry-about

(quote)

May 8, 2008
New Study on College-Going Rates Gives Mom Something Else to Worry About
Here’s a novel line for a Mother’s Day card: “Thanks, Mom, for loving me so much I never earned a college degree.”

Implausible as it might seem, a new study suggests that there might be some truth to such a sentiment. Based on the survey responses of more than 13,800 young Texans polled during their senior year of high school and then again a year later, the study concludes that seniors who reported having good relationships with their mothers and fathers were actually less likely than others to enroll in a four-year college.

Yep, it’s true: Parents just can’t win.

One reason such findings are counterintuitive is that a large body of other research shows that children who have good relationships with their parents do better at school. The new study — by Ruth N. López Turley, an assistant professor of sociology at the University of Wisconsin at Madison, and Matthew Desmond, a doctoral student in the department — reached the same conclusion, finding that students who reported getting along well with the folks generally reported having better grades and higher class rankings than their peers did.

How, then, does a strong parent-child relationship hurt college-going prospects? It makes a high-school senior substantially more likely to express a strong desire to live at home during college. And those seniors who said it was important to them to live at home after high school were more than 40 percent less likely to enroll in a four-year college than their peers were.

The study found that many other traits — including socioeconomic disadvantage, being foreign-born, or not having degree aspirations — increased the likelihood that a young person would not want to leave the nest right after high school. Above and beyond the effects of such factors, Hispanic students were more than twice as likely as white students to report that it was important for them to stay home, suggesting that culture also plays an important role.

But, after using regression analysis to separate out the other possible factors, the researchers found that the unwillingness to leave home that comes from having good relationships with the parents has a negative-enough influence on college-going to cancel out the positive influence derived from the higher academic performance associated with such family relations.

In a paper summarizing their findings and submitted to the American Sociological Review, Ms. Turley and Mr. Desmond say: “Through our research, a paradox has come to light: Strong family ties, considered vital to a child’s success in school, can serve as an impediment to a child’s educational attainment. Parents who strive to develop an encouraging and communicative relationship with their children might produce a high-school honors student but not a four-year college graduate.” —Peter Schmidt

(end quote)

[glory]

I think she can pull a 5. The AP World Studies class is probably one of the hardest classes (at least at my high school it was) because it was the first AP class that sophomores were allowed to take. It was like bootcamp. Not that 20000 years of world history in one year is ever easy (as I hear from friends who have taken Professor Karras' IAS45 here). The reading and writing skills demanded were beyond what any typical sophomore usually learns, but it really sets students up for anything to come in the future. And, on the bright side, the test was super easy. I got a 5! Coincidentally, the Document-Based Question we had to write was about Confucianism vs. Buddhism.

[Mr Punch]

My take, based on some experience --

Myopia: Yes, noting that foregone earnings are another major cost. But bear in mind that financing is a big issue -- (a) no one, at a first approximation, understands financial aid, and (b) the pricing/aid system is now more aimed at helping upper-middle-income people than low-income people with college, as enrollment trends since the start of the Regan years indicate.

Aptitude: No much of a problem per se. On the other hand, a lot of smart kids get very bored in high school -- dropouts aren't all dumbbells, by any means.

Fear: There is certainly some of this, though I think it's declining; the "not college material" looms less large than it used to before higher education became a surplus good. It's all balled up with race, gender, etc.

Not knowing the rules: Yes, in two respects; some families just don't know the rules of American life, and some don't understand how the rules have changed. We are all aware that immigrants from, let's say, peasant backgrounds may not understand much about education -- I know a son of immigrant parents who pressured him to drop out of high school to go to work (the single worst move you can make), and a daughter who was forced to turn down a scholarship to Stanford to attend the local community college. But the school superintendent of a declining industrial city with very few immigrants told me that in settled working class neighborhoods there, no one actually knows anybody who achieved success through education -- they really don't know the options.

[AndrewBW]

"We economists have been staring in stupefaction and horror over the past generation as the college-high school wage premium in America has risen from 30% to 90% with little if any visible increase in college attendance rates."

I can think of a fifth explanation. All protestations to the contrary, this country doesn't really care about either children or education. Claims that it does are hypocritical and only serve to prop up our self-satisfied egos.

[PGE]

I think part of it is that most kids don't realize that college is likely to be the best time of their lives: most of the benefits of being an adult combined with very few of the responsibilities. And that it's probably the only opportunity they'll have in their lives to have the kind of freedom that means.

[PaulC]

Interesting post, but the rambling segue into Sex and the City caught me off guard. I didn't realize the show went to such lengths to explain where the characters got their money. I'll take Beverly Hills 90210, which covers that part of the back story in a sequence of five decimal digits.

I also didn't realize AP World History was a core requirement for anything. Maybe it's because I focused on science and engineering way back, but I would have assumed students took an AP social sciences course because they liked it.

[save_the_rustbelt]

Let's see:

Teachers unions have turned many of our public high schools into places for organized video watching and dealing with a never ending stream of substitute teachers.

The US is the only country I can find in which high school sports is more important than high school academics.

A large number of guidance counselors have the first name "coach."

College professors do everything possible to avoid teaching, and the professors' guild thus requires UAW-style featherbedding, which drives up college costs.

Colleges cannot seem to exist without vast cadres of memo shuffling associates-to-the-assistants functionaries, who do very little real functioning.

I could go on...........

[a]

I think financial aid and means to a better life are not available to people of no means or difficult background (eg, felons before age 18). The means to give aid in a rehabilitative and constructive manner remains a development opportunity for america. we may prosecute some crimes and deviant behavior more than others - not sure as this is beyond my formal expertise. any perspective?

[PaulC]

save_the_rustbelt: Not sure if I agree with most or even much of your explanation, but I never will understand the emphasis placed on high school sports. As long we treat forensics, chess, and math competitions as marginalized activities for nerds and treat the football players as local heroes, we're sending a mixed message about academic achievement. I cannot change what the parents are really interested in, but they should not be surprised if their kids develop the same set of priorities.

[jerry]

I think STR nails it. Regarding "one of the rules that is not written down anywhere", I think you're wrong. Practicing for tests is about all our schools do now with NCLB.

My third grader came to me about three weeks ago, all worried about her NCLB testing that entire week. Where did her worry come from? Well, from the school teaching her to the test and practicing that sort of testing again and again and again.

Anyway, good to know that UC Berkeley no longer requires the SAT, or GMAT, or LSAT, or ....

[smaug]

Seems a shame that 15-year olds (finishing sophomore year)are taking AP exams, even practice ones. I took two AP exams in the late 1980s -- junior, Chemistry (2); senior, English (5). The latter enabled me to place out of both semesters of freshmen composition (thank God).

But I'm confused by the aptitude/"because of how people's brains grew when they were young" bit. Most of the college/no-college lifetime earnings gap data that I've seen report the average (rather than the median) earnings. So if someone choose "art history" or "religion" as a major v. "economics" or "computer science," they are far less likely to end up with a high salary compared to no-college workers. But this would be captured by an explanation that people do not believe, rightly or falsely, that the average benefits will accrue to them. Do we have data on the distribution of college earnings advantages among grads?

"Aptitude" would work in denying people entry to college because they would be unable to qualify for admission even if they wanted to attend -- as the earnings from college increase, demand *does* increase but supply does not grow proportionately so a greater portion of the population does not get in because only those with greater aptitude get in.

How many economists argue that tertiary education garners higher income by making people smarter so that they can better earn money rather than credentialing them in a competitive marketplace so employers will look at them. Just being smart does not mean your skills will be in lucratively high demand -- ask many a philosophy major.

[smaug]

"College professors do everything possible to avoid teaching..."

Really, DeLong does not seem to shirk it, despite administrative duties, and along with an active publishing record. Nor does John Taylor at Stanford. Many larger depts do allow those with outside grants to "buy-out" their teaching time, but that is in pursuit of specific research goals -- which is the primary duty of a research university faculty member.

[Student]

One could google up the estimable Daniel Davies on college financing and Kelly Bets.

Or it could be that they're right about the value of college education and you're wrong. I'm sure this is true when various right-wing economists try to explain the enormous difference in income gains between the top .1% and the second .1% (or even the top 1% and the second 1%) as "increasing returns to education" while the rest of us keep hearing stories of highly educated people unable to get a good job. Perhaps the return is no to education but to something else.

And you didn't even mention credit constraints. Are they known to be insignificant?

[Kaleberg]

College is a two track system. There are the liberal arts, so named because they are the arts expected of a free person, that is, someone who does not have to work for a living. Then there are the sciences, engineering and professions which are generally looked down on as "vocational training". McGill, the engineering school in Montreal, had Kipling write them a poem, The Sons of Martha and The Sons of Mary which addresses the situation.

If you are from a poorer family, college can provide a path to better earnings, if you choose vocational training. Look at the typical immigrant success story and you won't see a lot of MFA degrees. Jewish immigrants used to joke that a fetus is not considered viable until it has graduated from medical school.

If you are from a better off family, college is a class marker. In practice, you have all sorts of advantages aside from the possibility of attending college that can improve your earnings. You have connections, friends of the family; you have middle class sensibility and at least know the conventions; you have heard of things like checkbooks, CDs, small business loans, accountants, government grants and the like. College attendance is a public way of stating that you understand the shibboleths, and you and your family have groomed you properly for your place. You don't even need to graduate, but it helps.

Basically, anyone can get into college. There are hundreds of schools with 90% acceptance rates, many of them state schools with more modest tuitions. Still, college is expensive. It costs a lot, and it takes time and energy that you could spend earning money. Much as a brightly colored crest or broad antlers indicates fitness in the ability to fight parasites or accrue surplus nutrients, college serves as an important indicator of lifetime fitness.

The fact that college offers two options, liberal and vocational, keeps it from being a simple class isolation mechanism, like upper class girls being presented to the queen at sexual maturity. There is still the unfortunate dichotomy in that vocational graduates take a class hit, even if they are from upper or middle class backgrounds, because of their association with the lower orders. The Sons, and Daughters, of Martha deserve better.

There may be other mechanisms that can account for the college premium besides vocational training and class identification, but I think that those two can account for most of the difference.

[rev]

Jerry, STR does *not* nail it at all. My wife is a public school teacher. No teacher at her school likes the pressure to focus on preparing the students for standardized tests. Teacher unions *opposed* the NCLB. The pressure to teach to the tests is *not* the fault of teachers or teacher unions.
Teacher unions also do *not* want a never ending stream of substitute teachers teaching classes instead of a properly hired permanent teacher. I don't know where STR gets such a notion. It's like the situation in colleges where the administration hires lowly paid adjuncts with no benefits instead of regular faculty. It's not the faculty that advocates such a practice.

[TommyG]

I think I got this URL

http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2008/may/11/spain.france?gusrc=rss&feed=networkfront

from this blog, but I read a bit so maybe not. In any case, my question is, is "the college-high school wage premium in America" really all that worthwhile compared to the cost? Or at least to the perceived cost? I know that college graduates make more; I certainly did since I have no real trade aptitude at all :) But have students given up on getting ahead? When nearly all of the last great increase in productivity in this country was captured by those already wealthy, it may be that the young have truly come to to believe in the words of the song

The only way to win is cheat
And lay it down before I'm beat
and to another give my seat
for that's the only painless feat.

[Maynard Handley]

(1) "There are four potential explanations:"

[Maynard Handley]

Once again, Brad, WTF is wrong with your comment system?
This is my second comment in two days that has had everything after the first sentence chopped off.

[bigTom]

One of my fifteen year old twins is taking AP history. Last we we were playing around in front of a world map -informal geography test. I was pretty amazed. Even questions that I suspect only 1% of the population would get like "where is Corsica?" were no problem -and he knew Napolean was born there. I did manage to stump him with SpitsBergen, but unless you are a student of polar exploration rather than world history that one will probably stump you. So now I know why he has vanished into his room for hours every evening.

Not so sure I like his motivation: "If I pass the AP test I can save $3000". Implying I guess that the college is supposed to give him actual course credits towards a degree. I'm of the opinion that that isn't such a good thing, as I started college a few credits short of being a softmore. Rushing into grad school poorly prepared after a rushed 3 year undergrad degree was probably the undoing of my academic career. But it did save my parents a year of tuition & room & board.

[save_the_rustbelt]

"which is the primary duty of a research university faculty member."

I wonder if the admissions counselors are telling this to high school students and the parents (adults with checkbooks).

[Student]

Maynard:

Please repost. I always enjoy you comments.

[jerry]

(1) "There are four potential explanations:"

...

And an almost fanatical devotion to the pope.

[Leila]

I like Kaleberg's analysis: "College is a two track system. There are the liberal arts, so named because they are the arts expected of a free person, that is, someone who does not have to work for a living. Then there are the sciences, engineering and professions which are generally looked down on as vocational training."

The trouble is, many of us from liberal middle/upper middle class families who got ourselves beautifully educated with liberal arts degrees have trouble figuring out how to survive in the kinds of jobs you can get with those degrees. Luckily I married a guy who did a u-turn from almost-4-years-of-art-school into a (state u) computer science BS - so even though he's artistic, musical and dreamy, he supports us. (Thank you CSU & Silicon Valley) If it had been up to me with my fabulous mind & lovely Good College history, we'd be serfs.

I know far too many recent college grads from Good Schools who are working at low pay with no benefits and no career path, and living with a parent. WTF? The best option seems: suck it up and go to law school (or take classes in IT and become a tech writer, but how long will the tech boom last now that India can do it so much cheaper?)

Seems to me that my immigrant relatives who studied pharmacy (starting salary 100K+, women pharmacists set their hours, work p/t and have kids, etc.) or electrical engineering have the right idea, despite the perceived class hit. (and yes, they all think that the cousins who went to medical school are indeed higher status) Unfortunately their kids are now getting the beautiful liberal arts educations which prepare them for those non-profit jobs at 25K per year, no benefits.

And PS, those proofreading and copyediting jobs that fed a generation of educated artists in the big city? I hear those have been outsourced to India, too. I don't know how Oberlin grads with a passion for interpretive dance make it in NY anymore, barring huge parental subsidies.

[Zora]

There are some proofreading and editing jobs that cannot be outsourced. I do cookbooks and Hawaiiana. I don't believe that there are any copeditors in India who know Hawaiian and Hawaiian history; there might be a few who are conversant with the finer points of baguette-making, but I don't think there are many.

Based on reports from other copyeditors, the secret seems to be finding a profitable specialized niche. Helping non-English speaking doctors and scientists polish papers for journal submission seems to be a good niche for those with medical and scientific backgrounds.

[sm]

Save the Rustbelt should read some blogs by younger academics before parading his/her ignorance of university life. It sure beats digging ditches, but your working conditions -- meaning teaching conditions -- are controlled by non-academics concerned first, last and always by budgets.

[save_the_rustbelt]

SM:

I have read much of what you recommend.

Any younger academic beat down by the tenured perfumed princes should think about a really tough job, say nightshift nurse in an ICU or shoveling asphalt.

That academia has to respond to budgets is just a horror - been there done that teaching by the way - again not too much sympathy. Lots of people have to answer to the siren song of budgets, I'm a bit of an expert on that horror.

[jim]

Add risk aversion. Yes, on average, there's a big premium to college attendance. But that doesn't necessarily mean that every college graduate experiences that premium. Paying for college is a bet. It's a bet that's likely to pay off, but it's still a bet. Now you with the eighteen year old will be, and I with my daughters was, able to write the large checks that Reed (for your eighteen year old) will demand and Sweet Briar (for my youngest) demanded. What else would we do with the money anyway? But youths whose parents can't write those checks must borrow. Must borrow for a bet. A bet which may not pay off.

[MTC]

You are missing the shi ("gentleman") character in the jinshi degree.

[David Lloyd-Jones]

My partner's education consists of thirteen years around the campfire in southern Sudan, then two years of finishing school in preparation for her first marriage, at fifteen.

Recently she was for some reason subjected to a Canadian mathematics test, which she aced. The social worker expressed some surprise, but Ajok airily dismissed the question. "You see we are a cattle worshipping animist society, so every night I would count our cattle's legs and then divide by four to know if they were all there. North American children are deprived of these opportunities to learn..."

[David Lloyd-Jones]

My partner's education consists of thirteen years around the campfire in southern Sudan, then two years of finishing school in preparation for her first marriage, at fifteen.

Recently she was for some reason subjected to a Canadian mathematics test, which she aced. The social worker expressed some surprise, but Ajok airily dismissed the question. "You see we are a cattle worshipping animist society, so every night I would count our cattle's legs and then divide by four to know if they were all there. North American children are deprived of these opportunities to learn..."

[Robert Waldmann]

Also note that said former Moscow Physics-Mathematics High School #2- student (claimed he) gained admission to the high school by showing up at his former school and saying he was picking up his documents and then delivering them atMoscow Physics-Mathematics High School #2. That is, he admitted himself. Knowing the rules is useful. Daring to rewrite them is better.

[meno]

"or take classes in IT and become a tech writer, but how long will the tech boom last now that India can do it so much cheaper?"

Bollards.

I'm currently helping out with a local pressure group in my home country to try and get our govt to realise there's a crisis lack of IT workers coming up in the next decade. They think they can avoid it by relaxing our immigration laws, but that won't work because the shortage will be global.

IT enrolments are down in almost every western nation compared with what they were 5 years go. India's not got the education system to take up the slack (yes they graduate lots of IT engineers, yes their best college is good, but most of their colleges are not good and their high school system is 3rd world (surprise!) so they can't just turn themselves into a zillion IT engineers overnight). And many jobs just have to be done locally (by the way investment banking could be done more cheaply in India: but do you see Wall Street or the City of London emptying out?).

My little consultancy is paid about $200K US a year for my IT services by overseas clients (yes, we're one of those overseas consultants stealing you IT jobs - but no, it's not because we're cheap).

[John Howard Brown]

It seems to me that one part of the answer to the paradox of limited response to the skill premium is a little item known as price. Most economists claim some familiarity with it. The real cost of a college education has risen significantly over the past couple of decades. [Thanks very much to the past generation of students for my almost upper middle class life style. (Hey, I'm only at a lower tier state school not a cool place like Berkeley)] Of course, nominal tuition is only the list price and most people receive discounts. However, those discounts have shifted from grants-in-aid and scholarships to loans. So list price is going up and discounts are being reduced, movement up the demand curve anyone?

I also have read that the generation of young males who matured around the millenium are less academically motivated and less likely to begin and complete college. Certainly true of my millenial son. A long-term effect of being exposed to video games at an early age???

[Leila Abu-Saba]

Hey Meno, I'm not saying the tech writing jobs have gone overseas. I know plenty of smart liberal arts grads with no IT college training who are earning handsome sums as tech writers in the Bay Area. Since so many other tech jobs went offshore, and even copy editing and proofreading (and radiology reports) have gone that way as well, I worried that tech writing might go next.

I'm happy that you think there will continue to be a market for such persons if they continue to want to work in the USA.

If your point is that Americans won't train themselves for vocational tech jobs needed here, well, point taken. I continue to be amazed that we have a shortage of pharmacists in this country and must import them from elsewhere. Meanwhile the smart college grads who don't want to go into finance complain that they have to pull caffe lattes or tutor the children of the rich for not enough money and no benefits.

Were I a young thing trying to survive today, I might just study pharmacy AFTER getting that nice liberal arts degree. I could then work p/t filling RXs, making good money while doing interpretive dance or sudden fiction or environmental art installations.

But as the original poster said above, pharmacy is one of those "vocational school" professions, so an honorable liberal arts grad might rather wait tables or paint houses than don a white jacket and commit to a lower-status occupation. Somehow painting houses is so far down the scale that it's better than working for Walgreens as a highly paid professional. I don't quite get it.

[John Howard Brown]

Rechecking my previous post, I realize that I will be flamed for not noting that the ballooning skill premium represents a factor resulting in an outward shift in the demand curve. Even so, the increased real price will discourage demand.

[Anon]

I got a 5 in AP World History in the late 70s without having taken a world history class - did it just by reading - so it should be possible.

[PSP]

As a graduate of a liberal arts school who took the law school default option, I'd recommend a union plumbing or electrical apprenticeship. More money and better working conditrions than practicing law.

[wendy]

My husband recommends that I get a second BS in pharmacy now that the kids are grown. I always thought that it required very strong Math and Chemistry skills. Too many of us have been raised to be math phobic, but that earns you a 20K per year sales job and no respect at all.

[David Spitzley]

Speaking as a holder of a Masters in Public Administration and a PhD in Economics who still makes a living developing databases and web apps based on self-taught skills and high school programming classes, I'm rather taken with the explanation:

Aggregation: The ability to reap the economic gains we economists attribute to a modern American college education is in fact much more narrowly concentrated than we economists believe, due to the divide between earnings accruing to degrees in law, medicine and business on the one hand, and all other disciplines on the other. Analysis disaggregating based on degree type would likely show that the lack of change in college attendance represents rational decision-making.

In other words, I suspect that 80%+ of the college-high school wage premium is attributable to JD, MD, and MBA degree holders, and thus the Fear and Myopia explanations are much more understandable: if the expected payoff is lower, the known costs and uncertainty around payoff are much more daunting.

[dissent]

Computer science enrollment is down by 70%. Could outsourcing be an issue with kids choosing college? They not only face debt, which is scary, but the very real prospect that they won't have stable secure jobs with which to pay off that debt.

We're supposed to be all gung ho about globalization's benefits. But if you're not in the elite, it's a lot more risk than reward.

If society wants the benefits of a well-educated workforce (if those elites want that) they better pay up. Pay up or shut up.

[Doug K]

"the college-high school wage premium in America has risen from 30% to 90% with little if any visible increase in college attendance rates."

More data please..

How was that premium measured ?
The data I can find with a preliminary google indicates 25% to 43%
http://www.epi.org/datazone/06/college_premium.pdf
and it's currently dropping, not increasing,
http://www.epi.org/content.cfm/webfeatures_snapshots_20060222

The 'wage premium' presumably measures only the difference in wages. A calculation that includes lost wages during college, the cost of college, and the cost of repaying student loans: over the same time period: would be interesting.

What is the 'wage premium' for undergraduate degrees versus high-school ?
What is the median 'wage premium' ? - as I suspect the quoted numbers are an average.