Historically, attending college has been about a simple concept—the pursuit of knowledge. People studied systematic and rational information about the world in order to become better-informed citizens. Yet in our modern age, it is no longer just about becoming enlightened: some people plan their education based on earning potential.
Recently, a New York Times article entitled “Gaps in Earnings Stand Out in Release of College Data” showed the different earning potentials of students after graduating. According to the U.S. Department of Education, the average national salary is about $34,000.
On their site, College Scorecard, one can search for any school and find a predicted earning potential. For example, if one attends Cornell, the average graduate’s expected salary ten years down the line is $70,900, for Ithaca College students, it is $50,400, and at TC3—which is only a two-year college—$29,900.
But what do these statistics really tell us? Like all ranking systems, this one substitutes numbers for a complex social reality. For instance, this data doesn’t account for all the different majors. Cornell has thousands of students in its well-known law and medical schools, both fields that produce highly-paid professionals. Surely this should be accounted for in the statistics, as there is generally a gap between the earning capacities of, for instance, an English student and a Law student.
How much you earn is very context-dependent; aspects such as living expenses, what you study in college, and gender all play a role. The data on College Scoreboard does include gender and confirms that no matter what school you go to, the earning potential is almost always higher for men than women.
It seems to me that one’s college choice shouldn’t be based on a bunch of numbers as they decontextualize the complexities of how much you earn. Yet for the people who have economic rationality as their prime motivation and are already being forced to take out loans upon entering college, it seems sensible that they can access these statistics on their projected earning potential.
Perhaps my perspective is skewed; I am a middle-class IHS student who still, perhaps naively, thinks that one should choose a college based on a variety of factors. My definition of success is not to have a high income, but to feel fulfilled and satisfied with what I am doing.
Against my better judgment, however, it’s hard not to be influenced by the numbers. So maybe I’ll be applying to Cornell after all.
