I also know several people who went to college not thinking they’d become doctors or lawyers, but have. If they had decided on not going for a degree, they would have been excluded from those high paying professions. For that reason, I think you should include them and not pretend like they don’t exist.

Also could we exclude all the professional athletes, musicians, or celebraties that don’t have degrees because they may not use them in their job (with the exception of many musicians and more than a few actors).

Overall, I’d try to not to be concerned with “what’s possible” and look at “what’s probable.”

You also make a good point about those on welfare or other assisted incomes skewing the averages the other way, I had not considered that. For that matter it is entirely possible that there are college graduates that are below the poverty line or even out of work collecting unemployment.

Great comments. Thanks!

In the finance field, depending on the exact position, in many cases to be considered for a job you need a college degree. But, often it doesn’t matter what your degree is in. Of course that isn’t across the board, but a common trend. That isn’t to say that just because company A’s job posting requires a degree you couldn’t go to company B and get into a similar position without one either.

And I agree with you that professions like doctors and lawyers and such that require a degree to even be in that profession can skew the data, I also would argue that the number of people without degrees and not working can skew the data in the same way. Think of how many people are without a college education or even high school and are on welfare or making well below the poverty line. The number of these types of people far outnumber the doctor and lawyer types that may skew the data.

Of course, most of this is irrelevant without knowing exactly what census data was used to compile these results. The article did not specify. This could mean the numbers they provided are an accurate nationwide average, or they could be certainly skewed in one way or another depending on the exact data set used.

Good arguments on both side though. Clearly it is possible to make as much or more as a college grad even if you didn’t get a degree, just like it is just as possible for someone to spend all that money getting a degree and end up doing something that earns less than the average.