"People who have dropped out of college — about 40 percent of all who attend — earn only a bit more than do people with only a high school education: $38,376 a year versus $35,256."
A small difference between college drop out salary vs high school diploma salary only says that the key is to actually get a degree. half of a degree is worth much less than half of what a full degree is worth. That doesn't say anything about how much a degree is worth really.
"They found that for Americans born into middle-class families, a college degree does appear to be a wise investment. Those in this group who received one earned 162 percent more over their careers than those who didn’t."
Ok great but then they go on: "But for those born into poverty, the results were far less impressive. College graduates born poor earned on average only slightly more than did high school graduates born middle class."
Now they are comparing poor college grads to middle class high school grads. Why not compare to poor high school grads. Poor people may have the choice to go to college or not, but they certainly don't have a choice to be born into the middle class.
"25 percent of college graduates now earn no more than does the average high school graduate." So the bottom quarter of the college grad distribution is lower than the top half of the highschool distribution. This shows the overlap, but again isn't comparing apples to apples. Whats the difference in median incomes?
"Nearly 30 percent of Americans without a high school diploma live in poverty, compared to 5 percent with a college degree, and we infer that this comes from a lack of education. But in 28 other wealthy developed countries, a lack of a high school diploma increases the probability of poverty by less than 5 percent"
For americans they compare poverty rates for highschool grads and college grads. Then for the 28 other countries they compare highschool grads to non highschool grads.
The only stat that actually speaks to the worth of a college degree is that those born into the middle class earn 62% more income if they have a college degree. The rest of the statistics are so inappropriately misrepresented that it seems the author is intentionally being dishonest and the NYT shouldn't publish it, opinion or not.