According to Oswald “Women get about 24% extra income later in life by going to university compared to simply doing 2 A levels at high school and then going into the workforce. Men get about 16% more.”
Which is complicated, however, by women (like myself) often choosing humanities related degrees, which according to Oswald is “slightly worse than leaving school directly into a job” in economic terms.
Oswald is (I hope!) being deliberately provocative, in stating the case in such baldly utilitarian terms to that particular audience(!) But the stats are still a powerful case for the importance of HE in women’s lives.
He doesn’t talk about class. The DELNI report (produced in anticipation of ‘top up fees’ debate) does, and is more detailed and nuanced – finding for example that “Socio-economic class is a statistically insignificant explanatory variable in determining male graduate earnings. Thus, there is some evidence, at least for females, that those from higher social class backgrounds progress into relatively higher paying jobs after graduation, even if the variation is quite small.” Which might suggest that female graduates from the upper middle class gain the biggest economic benefit from their degrees – until you read the small print (pp37-8 + 41) and NB the ‘quite small’ variation.
[One interesting little conclusion btw (p.73) “we establish no causal relationship between preuniversity qualifications and earnings variability”.]
And anyway - leaving the utilitarian, economic value aside – the real value of three years of learning and analysis could, to use a 70s cliché, be described as ‘consciousness raising’ – a more accurate, complicated sense of the world and one’s place in it. The process of reading and working towards my ‘uneconomic’ humanities degrees was priceless to me for that alone. And of particular ‘value’ to any individual from a suppressed group in society – regardless of whether socio-economics or attitudes to gender.
no subject
http://www.delni.gov.uk/graduate_earnings__main_report.pdf
http://www2.warwick.ac.uk/fac/soc/economics/staff/academic/oswald/degreesmay2003.pdf
According to Oswald “Women get about 24% extra income later in life by going to university compared to simply doing 2 A levels at high school and then going into the workforce. Men get about 16% more.”
Which is complicated, however, by women (like myself) often choosing humanities related degrees, which according to Oswald is “slightly worse than leaving school directly into a job” in economic terms.
Oswald is (I hope!) being deliberately provocative, in stating the case in such baldly utilitarian terms to that particular audience(!) But the stats are still a powerful case for the importance of HE in women’s lives.
He doesn’t talk about class. The DELNI report (produced in anticipation of ‘top up fees’ debate) does, and is more detailed and nuanced – finding for example that “Socio-economic class is a statistically insignificant explanatory variable in determining male graduate earnings. Thus, there is some evidence, at least for females, that those from higher social class backgrounds progress into relatively higher paying jobs after graduation, even if the variation is quite small.” Which might suggest that female graduates from the upper middle class gain the biggest economic benefit from their degrees – until you read the small print (pp37-8 + 41) and NB the ‘quite small’ variation.
[One interesting little conclusion btw (p.73) “we establish no causal relationship between preuniversity qualifications and earnings variability”.]
And anyway - leaving the utilitarian, economic value aside – the real value of three years of learning and analysis could, to use a 70s cliché, be described as ‘consciousness raising’ – a more accurate, complicated sense of the world and one’s place in it. The process of reading and working towards my ‘uneconomic’ humanities degrees was priceless to me for that alone. And of particular ‘value’ to any individual from a suppressed group in society – regardless of whether socio-economics or attitudes to gender.