Lifetime Income Distribution Estimates by College Major
Douglas A. Webber, a professor in the Economics Department at Temple University, has explored a wide range of issues related to higher education over the last several years, from the student debt crisis to the dubious value of a name-brand degree. His primary focus, however, seems to lie in the intersection of education and economic benefit. Webber has a compiled an exquisite data set analyzing various aspects of expected lifetime earnings for different majors. Anyone interested in a deep dive into this data will find ample opportunity to immerse themselves on Webber’s site, but the first stop should be the brilliant Tableau graph depicting College Majors and Lifetime Income Distribution Estimates created by Jon Boeckenstedt. This graph makes analysis of different majors and earning distributions easy to analyze. While everyone should experience the delight that comes with plays around with a well-designed data visualization, I’ve pulled out a few key…
Expectations and Reality for College Grads
Mark Twain though that to succeed in life, you need two things: ignorance and confidence. Unfortunately, for American college grads entering the work world, an abundance of those traits may not be enough to ensure professional success. Accenture polled two different groups to contrast expectations and realities of the working world. The results are hardly a surprise to anyone who has already been working for a while. Those who have not graduated college, on the other hand, may be a bit shocked: As fascinating as this infographic is, the findings are based on a rather small pool of subjects. Accenture surveyed 1,001 students graduating from college in 2015, and 1,002 participants who graduated college in 2013 or 2014. Yet, even this mere slice of the overall population probably reflects larger trends that current and future graduates should pay very close attention to. The fact that 64% of the recent grads…
Average ACT Score By INTENDED College Major
Back in November 2014, I explored the implications (and refuted a misinterpretation) of the data presented in the 2014 SAT Report on College & Career Readiness. The newly released ACT report, The Condition of College & Career Readiness 2014, deserves a similar analysis. This report provides a series of graphical pictures highlighting the college and career readiness of the ACT-tested high school class of 2014, based on ACT College Readiness Benchmarks and scores. The portion of the report most people will gravitate towards is the ACT College Readiness Benchmark Attainment for Top Planned College Majors: 2014 Graduates: The use of College Readiness Benchmarks rather than ACT scaled scores obscures the implications of this data. Let’s clear things up by pegging the benchmarks to scores: The ACT College Readiness Benchmarks for English, Reading, Mathematics, and Science are the minimum section scores that ACT, Inc. associates with a 50% chance of earning…
Average SAT Score By INTENDED College Major
The 2014 SAT Report on College & Career Readiness published by the College Board is a treasure trove of information. Unfortunately, when this much data intersects highly charged issues, some misinformation leaks out as well. Such is the fruit of the labor that went into Here’s The Average SAT Score For Every College Major published by Business Insider. This is not to say that the article is not worth reading, but rather that its central premise is fallacious: the College Board tracked prospective majors, not actual college graduates. Nonetheless, we can learn a lot from the article and the research that supports it with the right perspective: 1. Multi-/Interdisciplinary Studies attracted the highest average composite SAT scorers. This major describes a wide range of programs in which students are not restricted to a single area of study or occupational field. One wonders if the students who selected this…