While it might be fashionable to declare that getting a college degree is “no longer worth it,” the data remain pretty clear that bachelor’s degree holders continue to see a significant wage premium on their investment over their lifetime. As a result, it remains important to track both increases in bachelor’s degree attainment and disparities in who earns a BA in each state. Higher education serves many purposes, but one of them should be driving social mobility. If access to higher education remains blocked to many, BAs can end up having the opposite effect by increasing income inequality.
Figure 1 below shows that bachelor attainment has improved in all fifty states. It is important to note that this is a metric that is always going to move relatively slowly, since earning a BA was significantly less likely among older generations. In-state migration of people with bachelor’s degrees can help increase that attainment rate without reflecting what is happening in a state in terms of improving degree completion. Figure 2 below shows that BA attainment is not evenly distributed in many states. As a result, what should be counted as a social good can also have negative social effects. An increase in bachelor’s degree attainment can end up exacerbating racial income and wealth disparities and make uneven access to power among different racial and ethnic groups even worse. Several of the states with the worst disparities are Blue.
Figure 1
Figure 2