No matter who I looked up on facebook, no matter who I randomly surveyed out on the streets, it was very rare to come across someone who didn’t have a Bachelor’s Degree by 23, or wasn’t in the process of doing so. This morning I came across this statistic:
According to this statistic, only 1/4 of women and 1/7 of men earned a Bachelor’s Degree by the time they were 23. Now, I was told several times that the reason I wasn’t getting the results reflected by the statistics was because I was only surveying people in wealthy-white areas. Another thing this statistic says is that only 22.4% of white people had earned a Bachelor’s Degree by 23. Also, in the 2nd-bottom statistic I provided above, only 42.6% of white people graduated in 4 years, and in the bottom statistic, only 40% of white people between ages 25 and 29 had a Bachelor’s Degree. So even among wealthy-white people, most of them still shouldn’t have had a Bachelor’s Degree by 23. So what’s the explanation now?
I can’t view most of your stats, but it sounds like you are looking at race/age but not income/class and rural/urban divides. Fewer people in rural areas have college degrees–if the work available doesn’t require a degree, fewer people will get one. You are probably educated yourself and socialize/work/live with other educated people. Do your own survey: go to a small town, stand at the door of the local Walmart and ask people if they have a college degree. Go to a poor urban neighborhood and survey people at the local 7/11/gas station. You might have to get out of your own neighborhood to find people who don’t have degrees. These are people you wouldn’t ordinarily have any contact with if you live in a world of educated/high income people.
Because you live in a wealthy, white, educated neighborhood.
There, I just answered all of your questions.
I live in a middle to upper income city that is predominantly white. I’d say less than half of my friends had degrees by 23 (or even now, when we’re in our mid-20s). Most of their parents made it to middle to upper class by working at Ford on the assembly lines, No degree needed. (And my friends don’t have degrees because their parents couldn’t afford college and they themselves can’t find decently paying jobs.)
If I did this inquiry anywhere near where I work, I would see the same results you are seeing. But that’s in a city with a major university located right nearby, and a high concentration of jobs in the medical and high tech fields requiring 4-year degrees (or more).
If I did the same where I live, I wouldn’t see nearly as high of a rate of people with a degree at age 23. The public high school has a 67% graduation rate. And then not even half who graduate high school on time go on to college, and many of those students have to interrupt their education to work and save money. Many folks never even earn their GED. Some who do earn degrees don’t finish until their late 20s or into their 30s. It’s an old mill town, so much the same dynamic as @romanigypsyeyes described with the Ford plant. For generations families worked at the mills making good money. Then the mills moved to Mexico. But the mindset didn’t change, and the family finances got worse, so no money to pay for college for the generation that needs it now.
One of my best post-college friends came from a small Western Massachusetts town which is majority White and working/lower middle class.
Due to the depressed state of the local job market, the vast majority of those who graduate in the top half of his and prior HS graduating classes who end up going to 2/4 year colleges or enlisting in the armed forces end up never returning after graduation/finishing their enlistment.
A similar pattern also existed in several towns around my Midwest college town during the '90s when the county it was located in was considered one of the 2 poorest counties in Ohio.
One factor for the extremely poor town-gown relations between my undergrad and the mostly White working class/on public assistance local town residents was because the shutdown of several local industrial factories in the '70s and '80s which provided most employment for those without a college degree…or any college, the largest employer left in the area was my LAC. Most of the LAC jobs…including entry-level/staff jobs required a minimum of a 2/4 year degree or higher.
Those stats you list are for all white people, not wealthy white people. Not all white people are wealthy. Presumably, the places you are asking are skewed toward wealth or educational attainment.
Your other posts indicate that you are a student at CSU Northridge. Presumably, most of the people you interact with there are either instructors or students, providing you with a very skewed selection of people to survey.
Who are you asking? Are you asking the guy ringing up the cigarettes and lottery tickets at the gas station? How about the guy stacking produce at Safeway? Are you asking the store clerk at the Radio Shack or the Hallmark store? Are you asking the person who is cleaning the floor of the McDonald’s, or the person making your sandwiches at Panera? The guy who sells hot dogs and popcorn at the sports stadium?
Or are you just asking your white collar educated neighbors and then concluding “everyone”!has a bachelors degree?
Another factor is that you’re probably mostly surveying younger people, who are more likely to have earned a bachelor’s degree. Survey senior citizens and you’ll find that many of them, even people who had successful professional careers, don’t have a bachelor’s, because they weren’t as necessary to secure a good job as they are today. To some extent a bachelor’s has now become what a high school degree was 50 years ago and a graduate degree has become what a college degree once was.
The NCES data show that over 62% of all white students, and 58.7% of students of all races, who started college in 2006 graduated within 6 years. Even over the span of the NCES survey the percentages steadily creep up from 55.4% of all students in 1996 to 58.7% in 2206 and from 58.1% of white students in 1996 to 62.1% in 2006.
You’re also mixing apples and oranges. You cite published statistics for the number of students who have graduated by the age of 23 but you’ve surveyed people who have earned a degree or are on the the way to doing so by the age of 23.
When I was first in college (many many years ago) I was shocked to learn how few people had college degrees. Where I grew up, wealthy and Jewish area, everybody I socialized with went to college. My parents went to college. My grandparents went to college ( my grandmother got a degree in Chemistry in 1926). My grandfathers who were a dentist and a doctor went beyond college. My parents had post graduate degrees. All their friends were highly educated. My mom had some friends from her teaching days who weren’t White but they were teachers so they too had of course all gone to college and chose spouses who did too.
The first time is saw statistics like yours I was shocked. I hadn’t realized how narrow my experiences were.
Why does it matter? And, you must have a LOT of time to waste.
I'm from the 'hood and couldn't afford to pay my tuition without taking breaks. Most of the 'hood couldn't afford it or, life got in the way. (Parents to support because of illness, layoffs, distance, a family member being shot or killed; weak preparation for college level work, etc). Try standing in front of a 24-hour taco shop and asking that question, but be prepared to run.
Some kids were born in November/December and started school a year behind, like my dd and son. My dd graduated at 24 because of her 5 yr program. Son will also do an extra year because of a change of major and will hopefully graduate at 24.
I finally graduated with my bachelors at 26 and my masters at 30.
Your thread’s title: Why are my expereiences contradicting the statistics even when they apply to wealthy people?
speaks volumes about how you don’t understand non-representative sample sets
Yes. 6 years, not 4 years. Another thing I don’t understand is that some of these statistics say that most people take longer than 4 years(including white people). So even of the people who do go to college, most should not have their Bachelor’s Degree before turning 23.
So,what if thy don’t get their bachelors degrees until age 23?
There are many students in this country who don’t how the financial resources to go to a four year residential college full time. So wht if they take 5 or 6 years to get their degrees? It may be that they needed to work to earn the money to pay the next term bills. Or maybe they are at a school like Northeastern wher almost everyone does the co-op program…and yes…it takes five years to graduate. Or maybe they are at Oberlin double majoring in music at the conservatory and English in the college…which also takes five years.
Some other possibilities for taking longer to complete college include taking time off to pursue professional art/music projects or political activism full-time or getting called up for deployment by one’s national guard/military reserve unit*.
This happened to some friends/college classmates of younger friends for OIF/Afghanistan because they happen to enlist as a national guard/military reserve soldier and their units were called up for deployment.