The Great Ghost of the River Valley

In this essay, the author

• Analyzes how richard vedder, an economist at ohio state university, argues that for many an a college education is not worth the investment.
• Describes the correlation between education and class in american society: how it really works.
• Explains that the united states lags substantially behind western european nation in social mobility. the fulfillment of an education level above that of one’s parents is a way to move upward on the socioeconomic ladder.

• Analyzes how richard vedder, an economist at ohio state university, argues that for many an a college education is not worth the investment.
• Describes the correlation between education and class in american society: how it really works.
• Explains that the united states lags substantially behind western european nation in social mobility. the fulfillment of an education level above that of one’s parents is a way to move upward on the socioeconomic ladder.
• Concludes that a college degree leveled the playing field of socioeconomic origin in the competition for social status, at least when success is measured as class position. mobility among ba holders did not decrease as this level (the proportion of the population holding bachelor’s degree) expanded over the last quarter century.
• Opines that the washington post article is not wrong, it is incomplete. professor vedder argues that college education is decreasing, while kaufman's article fails to mention the nature of a bachelor’s degree.
• Analyzes how professor vedder points to the unemployment rate among those with bachelor's degrees as the primary evidence for decreasing worth of said degree.
• Explains that unemployment rates are accurate, but they do not tell the full story. a decrease in the importance of a college education does not amount to causation for this increasing similarity in unemployment rate between college graduates and the overall population.
• Analyzes how torche's article illustrates that only 15.1% of americans possessed a college degree, while 29.35% of american women and 30.4% of men were college graduates.
• Analyzes kaufman's summary of professor vedder’s argument, stating that in 2008, the median annual earnings of young adults with bachelors degrees was $46,000 and $30,000 for those with high school diplomas or equivalencies.
• Opines that while these statistics may be accurate and the comparison between these two statistics is apt, they again fail to convey the full story.
• Analyzes professor vedder's argument about earnings specifically. he refers to the income received due to college degree versus the costs of said degree and the debt incurred. professor torche compared the average earnings of parents, when their child was between 14 and 22.
• Analyzes how professor glanville discussed the conflict perspective critique of a "credential society", in which education is used to maintain differences between social classes.
• Analyzes professor torche's article, which found that a bachelor’s degree is intrinsically valuable. the decrease of unemployment gap between college graduates and the general population does not necessarily indicate an increase in the economic value of college degrees.