College Degrees Pay Off, Especially For Women
There are plenty examples of people who have made a name (and billions) for themselves without a college degree, but The New York Times argues that the progress women have made over the last 40 years goes to show that higher education is not overrated. The statistics they note are remarkable: Only 25 percent of women received a college degree in the 1960s, while today almost 40 percent will end up with one. During the same time period, between 30 and 35 percent of men graduated from a four-year college.
Overall, educated women have seen their degrees pay off — the average inflation-adjusted weekly pay of women has increased 26 percent since 1980, while men's pay has risen only one percent in the last 20 years. Less gender discrimination has something to do with women being able to seek out higher paying jobs — about half of new doctors today are women, up from just one of every 10 in the early 1970s.
