<p>Penny It is clear that we don’t “do a good job of informing students about their options, costs and risks” because their are 1 in 4 college graduates who earn the same as an average high school graduate. There will be about 1.8 million college graduates next year, about 450,000 of those graduates will earn the same as an average high school graduate. That is a lot of graduates who might have not decided to go to college or who might have waited until they were ready for college if they were well informed.</p>
<p>I mentioned low income students because of the discussion of funds, and whose funds, to make the point that students who receive funding could also take on some serious debt, which is a problem if they don’t complete a degree and secure employment. Higher income students- if they did not do well in school- may still have trouble finding a job, but as you say, may not have as large a debt burden. This is relevant to all students of any race.</p>
<p>For Mr. Ewers, we don’t know what percentile of students achievent he was in, but the companies he applied to surely only take a small number of graduates, even high achieving ones. The article left out other pertinent information about securing a job in addition to academics- such as internships, recommendations, personal connections, interviews, and where else he applied. I don’t think we know enough about Mr. Ewers to fully understand why he had difficulty finding a job.</p>
<p>Penny You are correct that there is little information about Mr. Ewers other than he applied to some of the top companies and was rejected and that he graduated from Oakwood University in Huntsville AL. We don’t know his grades, his major, why he didn’t go to a lower costing University of Alabama at Huntsville etc.</p>
<p>Which brings us full circle about the article posted by OP that suggests racism is at play in Mr. Ewers lack of success in finding employment and the unemployment rate data of Whites and Black college graduates. Given what we point out as glaring issues with the article and the fact that graduating college is no guarantee to high paying jobs the article is just bad journalism.</p>
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<p>As a practical matter, those from low SES backgrounds are much less likely to go to college at all, whether or not they are high or low achieving in high school. If there is concern about money for college education being “wasted” on low achievers, one can look at the main source of misallocation, which is that high SES low achievers are more likely to attend and graduate college than low SES high achievers, and low SES high achievers who do go to college are often mismatched to colleges because they may not even know about colleges which may be better matched and less expensive than the local or commuter schools that many attend.</p>
<p>Of course, high school achievement is not a perfect predictor of college achievement. Some high achievers in high school fail to graduate college (even the most selective colleges do not have 100% graduation rates). Some low achievers in high school are late bloomers or otherwise turn things around in college (usually starting at community college) and graduate with bachelor’s degrees.</p>