From City AM:
Graduates earn £9,000 a year more than non-graduates, research released yesterday by the Department for Business, Innovation and Skills shows. That figure covers the entire working-age population – ages 16 to 64. Young graduates, aged between 21 and 30, earn £6,000 more on average than their non-graduate counterparts...
“These figures show that going to university is a great investment,” said Greg Clark, the universities, science and cities minister.
Is everybody else thinking what I'm thinking..?
A common criticism made by economists is that the link is not necessarily a causal one. Students who get a degree tend to be smarter on average before they go to university. The figures do not control for that effect.
Further hilarity at gov.uk:
Born in Middlesbrough, Greg studied economics at Cambridge before earning his PhD from the London School of Economics.
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UPDATE: Mombers says "Would love to see the figures once doctors, dentists, lawyers, accountants, engineers and any other professions that require a degree for entry are stripped out."
That's the sad thing, there is no real requirement for accountants to have a degree, but over the past twenty or thirty years, nearly all Chartered Accountants have made it a pre-condition, even if your degree is completely irrelevant. I've had younger colleagues with degrees in glaciology and ancient history, FFS.
Wednesday, 10 December 2014
Well, duh.
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6 comments:
Another confounding factor is that jobs that have high salaries may have holding a degree in the qualifying criteria for applicants to the position as a matter of course. By that circular logic persons in high paying jobs have degrees.
I don't have any evidence for that but after some thought, it seems like an open and shut case that those statistics would be caused by that alone.
In my field a degree was essential for any job beyond routine bench work, so as Dinero suggests it was a case of circular logic.
The bloke that runs our trade association is a Cambridge University Econ graduate. He'd never ever heard of Austrian Economics or Georgism. He's pretty weak on Hayek and Friedman as well. Nor does he understand that state bureaucrats don't pay tax.
So being smart and getting to Cambridge doesn't mean you learn anything.
Mind you he is paid well, and he is definitely being groomed for the quangocracy....
Would love to see the figures once doctors, dentists, lawyers, accountants, engineers and any other professions that require a degree for entry are stripped out
D, AKH, L, exactly.
M, I have updated article. Glaciology. Seriously.
Mark, in my day it was a degree in PPE from the University of Easy Access (UEA) that was the academic flag of convenience for those who wanted to be able to spend three years dossing on a grant with a degree at the end of it.
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