Not only that, a more accurate statement would have been "People who obtained college degrees forty five years ago earned significantly more than those who didn't."
I'm not at all convinced that will be true for the current generation. The job market used to have room for pretty much anyone with a degree. Even your degree in 17th century French literature was good enough to get you a sales or local government position at an employer who required a degree but wasn't picky about the major. These days there are so many graduates the sales manager can wait for someone with a degree in economics and the local government guy can wait for a candidate that's similarly (sort of) related.
Plus there was always law school. You can still get into law school; it's just that there's no job waiting for you when you get out.
What also goes unsaid: 45 years ago, many fewer people earned Bachelors degrees (edit a smaller percentage of workers had degrees). Using past performance as an indicator of future performance is often fraught with peril.
> Using past performance as an indicator of future performance is often fraught with peril
It's a useful turn of phrase, but not good reasoning. It would be unwise to ignore decades of history because of a lack of certainty. Arguably, college degrees and intellectual skills will become more valuable in the future, as more and more jobs demand it. Demand for unskilled labor is decreasing.
Also, my analysis is that people who spend four years in a guided program to acquire knowledge and skill among the resources of a university (experts, teachers, labs, etc) will be more knowledgeable and skilled. I don't think that's controversial.
What you have to watch out for is the debt to expected earnings ratio. A lot of the data from previous years was based on low (or zero) tuition rates.
Getting stuck with a six-digit loan while being underemployed would still support the "college graduates make more money" statement, as to get that barista job a college graduate probably ranked higher in the resume stack than people with high school degrees, but I doubt anyone is gloating.
By similar measure, getting a mortgage to buy a house and then pay it off was a decent deal for most of the century until people started overpaying by purely believing in the principle, but not running the actual numbers.
Do you have data to back up any of that? The data I've seen says that, right now, unemployment is much higher and income is lower for people who lack college degrees.
I'm not at all convinced that will be true for the current generation. The job market used to have room for pretty much anyone with a degree. Even your degree in 17th century French literature was good enough to get you a sales or local government position at an employer who required a degree but wasn't picky about the major. These days there are so many graduates the sales manager can wait for someone with a degree in economics and the local government guy can wait for a candidate that's similarly (sort of) related.
Plus there was always law school. You can still get into law school; it's just that there's no job waiting for you when you get out.