America's Young Adults at 27: Results From a Longitudinal Survey Summary
bls.gov
bls.gov
"By 27 years of age, 32 percent of women had received a bachelor's degree, compared with 24 percent of men. "
This is a rather strong antidote to the idea that everyone gets a college degree:
"At 27 years of age, 28 percent of individuals had received their bachelor's degree while 38 percent had attended some college or received an associate's degree."
Also interesting:
"At 27 years of age, 34 percent of young adults were married, 20 percent were unmarried and living with a partner, and 47 percent were single, that is, not married or living with a partner."
Canada, considered the most educated nation, has, if I recall correctly, 64% of the population with some post-secondary achievement. But note that includes university, community college, trades, etc.
"Nearly 41 percent of young adults had their own or their partner's child in the household at age 27."
"Sixty-five percent of married individuals had at least one child in the home, compared with 21 percent of single individuals"
And because of the huge inertia in political discourse, the gap will have to reach something like 50% vs 20% before it even becomes acceptable to raise this as an issue.
Thankfully while real, those are fringe groups. So I guess my point is that there will probably always be resistance/people who reject bringing it up out-of-hand.
That doesn't mean that we're not failing our young boys; we certainly are. But it's always useful to break it down by race and class, especially in the States.
A deeper question is why? If our culture is biased against boys, you might expect the gap to appear in all racial and economic classifications. My hypothesis is that we're in the midst of a giant pauperization: technology is eating most real jobs. In recent decades, however, there's still been a relative abundance of salaried jobs that require stability and organizational and interpersonal skills, which women, either by genes or socialization, are better at. So there's a real difference in investment payoff for a woman to go to college than a man, given their existing skill sets [1]. So more women go to college [2].
For now, at least. Give it a decade or two and I'm predicting an even lower proportion of men and women both going to college, particularly those in marginalized communities whose labor wouldn't be improved to the point that capital needs them to to make more real profits.
[1] One way to confirm that would be whether a man with a college degree makes less money than a woman with an equivalent degree. Which I think is the case but want to find a real cite for it.
[2] Another hypothesis: traditional male archetypes are falling by the wayside. Discarding those is a strategy people are using, consciously or no, to try to build up the interpersonal skills of men. I don't know how to test this, however.
Let's look at the gender wage gap. Assume someone looks at the statistics that say that overall women earn less than men and says, why aren't race and class considered as factors? Why would someone say that, and what possible conclusions could they reach if they were to slice up the data for those demographics? They could say that some demographics are equal or in favor of women, but overall it would still be in favor of men, so what sort of point could they make there?
Sort of. At least, that's the net result. But it isn't because gender privilige is truly reversed- it is because they are weighted down by things like incarceration, which impacts men more than women, and gang violence, which also impacts men more as more men join gangs!
That is, suppose white men and women (for the sake of argument I'm excluding other races) are on a completely level playing field. But, black men are going to college far less than black women, because of incarceration or gang violence and whatever other factors. How can that be purely an issue of gender and not race?
Another choice is that there are more attractive opportunities for a non-college educated male than a non-college educated female. Working construction, landscaping, or other dirty physical jobs is a way for a young male to work and make money without the necessity of college.
The gap in achievement at later levels of schooling on an aggregate basis has been an active discussion for years already - we don't yet understand why, but it's an active area of interest, discussion and research.
As has the fact that the recession hitting those with lower levels of education harder are hitting men disproportionately.
Because you haven't heard about it doesn't mean it doesn't exist.
Also, the distribution is quite bimodal, a small number of US MSAs have tons of college grads (Boston, SF, NYC) vs. huge tracts of the US with few graduates at all.
[1] "Coming Apart" by Charles Murray, highly recommended.
Statistically speaking, I'm 27, over-educated with a BA degree, single and not living with a partner, making an 25th percentile salary relatively to the US average. Saving less than I should of my disposable income but in the 10th percentile relatively to my peers due to my working professionally for 5.5 years while most of my other over-educated peers in other fields are still enrolled in post-graduate training. Working in IT and living in an over-priced metropolitan area.
Anecdotally speaking, I'm ambivalent about marriage and career advancement. Personal experiences have informed me that relationships are less about true love and unfailing commitment than being able to compromise, communicate and having the financial and mental wherewithal to deal with (inter)personal issues. Unlike my younger self, I'm less anxious about "coupling" and more keen working on myself and working out my bad habbits/addictions.
Personal experiences have also informed me that IT careers esp. if you're not working at a Fortune 500 company are quite transient. Programmers (maybe other professions as well?) are treated more as sub-contractors entities than tenured employees - meaning that the company will keep you around if you're contributing efficiently to the bottom-line and cut you without sentiment otherwise.
Whereas my younger self aspired to "apply to YC, work at Google," I'm less keen on the promises of potential prestige and fortune but focused more on the longer term of angling more for more domain specific positions (e.g., Computational Biologist vs. Software Engineer on Genomic Data Platform) and more work-life balance (summer hours, regular 9-5 schedule) to pursue my other hobbies outside of coding.
Everyone is very different but I'd love to hear what stage other young adults on HN are (not talking about the wide-eyed CS undergrad still dreaming about The Social Network), both statistically and anecdotally speaking.
Out of college I thought I wanted to go the Amazon/Google route, but coupling placed geographic limitations on the job search. I'm now glad because I would have gotten sucked into the machine of the Valley and burned out coding.
I always thought I'd want a Masters, but after a few years in industry I fail to see the value for my particular career goals - experience + salary seems to trump time away from industry + added debt in my mental calculus.
Goal now is to find good work-life balance to focus on my kids while ensuring that I'm growing and challenging myself professionally.
Perhaps most interesting part that I'm seeing from my stage of life is that my wife and I seem to be way ahead of the curve. Parents of our children's friend (aka your new social circle once you have children) are 5 to 10 years older than us. Our college friends are just now getting married and/or having kids, where I now have a 6 and 3 year old.
I've checked off the list of college, marriage, house, kids, career and although I love my situation, it's odd that society has run out of "goals." There's no gold star you get once you check them all of - just a day-to-day routine. I'm not suggesting that you should pursue these things, but if you don't have them all yet and are striving for them, know that it's the journey, not the destination, that counts here.
... Pretty sure I'm pretty weird. :P
The grad school dean seemed to think the answer to my question lay in "What do you want to be doing in 10 years?" and cast aspersions on the idea of anyone under 40 being able to have horizons that long ahead. One professor tried to promise me "you'll get a six-figure salary in academia...eventually"
Sorry, what? I don't see the difference between the two sets of things you listed ;-).
Is that what you wanted to say? "10th percentile" means you're close to the bottom (not the top) of the distribution.
Anyways, interesting to note that women of all races get some college or a Bachelor's degree at a higher rate than their respective male counterparts.
Also interesting is the correlation between highest attained education level and likelihood of having a child by 27. Anecdotally, all friends in my various circles are college educated and only started having kids after the age of 29.
What makes you say that? They said it was a nationally representative sample, which I would assume includes a substantial number of Asian Americans.
"Despite being in the labor force a greater percentage of weeks, individuals held fewer jobs from ages 23 to 26 than they did from ages 18 to 22. While ages 18 to 22, individuals held an average of 4.3 jobs and were out of the labor force 26 percent of weeks. From ages 23 to 26, individuals held 2.7 jobs while being out of the labor force 16 percent of weeks."
I spent 18-22 enrolled at one university earning a degree in the major that I listed on my application packet, but I interned at a different company each summer. If I'd worked during the academic year, I'd probably have had several additional jobs during the period: folding towels at the gym, computer laboratory attendant, resident advisor, off-campus food service and off-campus retail.
Similarly, one could argue that people accumulate debt 18-22 because their immature brains are too stupid to understand cause and effect, ignoring more salient facts like: 1) 18 year olds have not had time to establish specialized professional experience so their earning potential is low due to no fault of their own 2) Immigration and trade policies have deliberately and drastically reduced the earning potential of unskilled labor (which includes basically all 18 year olds, including future MD's and PhD's) 3) Housing costs and especially education costs have skyrocketed in the past 40 years 4) Education is increasingly financed through debt rather than loans.
This is not as much fun as "kids today are so stupid!", but IMO a far more accurate explanation for why a current college student will incur more debt than a Boomer who could earn enough each summer hauling hay or working in a unionized factory to pay a year's tuition at State U.
EDIT: Even more interesting, 41% of single (living alone) women at 27 have a child.