The statistics would be a lot more informative if they broke out the educated segments of the population by field or college major.
I don't think many in the 21st century would expect a bachelor's or associates degree in english or history to provide many opportunities for additional income.
Seems to me like there's a top tier of 3 highly technical majors (EE, CS, ME), and then a big cluster of 9 pretty decent majors (10 of the 12 at this stage might reasonably be called "STEM"). Communications is in the decent tier for women but not men. And then there are a bunch of weaker majors.
The only thing that's even remotely surprising to me is that Chemistry isn't a little higher.
Yeah, I wonder why so many people keep repeating "study STEM" instead of "study Engineering or Finance or Medicine", considering the fact that "S" (Biology/Chemistry) and "M" (Math) seem to be pretty weak.
Right, Math being "pretty weak" was a bit of an overstatement.
I meant that for a major that's generally considered to be hard and lead to a lucrative career (it's part of "STEM" after all), it's not that different from Pol Sci or Business (and it does worse than Accounting or Economics, both of which are non-STEM), which most people probably wouldn't expect.
I find it shocking that accounting and economics aren't considered STEM. (Though at least some subsets of economics are on the official DHS list.)
I would expect (but do not have data to support) that those who do accounting/econ who take a more math-oriented approach do better than those who take a less math-oriented approach.
Anecdotally, all my friends who sprinkled a few economics and finance courses onto their math degree, are doing much better than all my friends who sprinkled a few math courses onto the economics degree.
I would consider medicine to be a subset of Science, and finance to be at least related to Math (with some disciplines being very heavy math.)
STEM as a whole is basically the entire top half of that chart. Even math, which you call "pretty weak", is (taking the average) as close to CS as it is to communications, and much closer to the top cluster than it is to the bottom cluster.
So I think "study STEM" is perfectly good advice, particularly given that there will be shifts in the value of various degrees based on subtle economic changes.
I'm fuzzy on how the college premium is measured/calculated, but it seems like these premium data contradict the data in the OP’s article which are claimed to show that college education does not inhance earning ability. Am I wrong?
I don't think many in the 21st century would expect a bachelor's or associates degree in english or history to provide many opportunities for additional income.