A College Degree Could Be Worth $1 million

Earning a college degree directly affects your pocketbook. Over the course of a lifetime, college graduates will earn $1 million more than those who stop their education after earning a high school diploma.

That number is not new, but it’s one of several interesting numbers now easily accessible through the White House’s revamped College Scorecard website. The White House announced over the past weekend that the site will now allow potential college students the chance to compare schools in three main areas:

• Net price after financial aid.
• Graduation rates
• Post-college earnings of alumni who received financial aid

The revamped approach changes the original proposal from 2013, when President Barack Obama said the site would eventually allow people to compare schools on metrics such as access and value. The administration backed off that plan after college administrators voiced concern that the comparisons would not be fair because they would be based based on data that is sometimes flawed, according to The Washington Post.

Encouraging Numbers For Those Considering College

In addition to the new tools for comparing income from certain colleges, the College Scorecard website also prominently features numbers that, while not new, are now gathered in one highly-trafficked website. 

They also offer encouragement for those thinking of going to school. They include the following.

College graduates make $1 million more than those without a degree.  This number, which was reported earlier in a study from the Georgetown University Center on Education and the Workforce, takes into account what college graduates earn over a lifetime compared to the earnings of those with a high school diploma.

The study also found there is a wide disparity between the incomes of those with certain kinds of degrees (such as those in the STEM fields of science, technology, engineering and math) and those who earn degrees in professions such as childhood education, human services and community organization, studio arts, social work, teacher education, visual and performing arts, theology and religious vocations,  elementary education, drama and theater arts and family and community service.

Many are eligible for federal Pell Grants. The amount of money many students can get through Pell Grants is as high as $5,775. These dollars do not have to be repaid.

Many working people go back to school. About 30% of people who go to college are 25 years old and older.