Median Starting Salary For College Graduates Dropping
The job market is tough already for college graduates these days, and here’s more bad news. Not only are just 4 in 10 college graduates finding jobs, those that do find jobs are making less.
The median starting salary for students graduating from four-year colleges in 2009 and 2010 was $27,000, down from $30,000 for those who entered the work force in 2006 to 2008, according to a study released on Wednesday by the John J. Heldrich Center for Workforce Development at Rutgers University. That is a decline of 10 percent, even before taking inflation into account.
Of course, these are the lucky ones — the graduates who found a job. Among the members of the class of 2010, just 56 percent had held at least one job by this spring, when the survey was conducted. That compares with 90 percent of graduates from the classes of 2006 and 2007.
Now, imagine graduating from college and having the national average of roughly $24,000 in student loan debt and…no job. Or, at best, a job where you’re making just $27,000/year.
Keep in mind that most of these student loans (and all student loans going forward given that student loans have been nationalized) are backed to one degree or another by the federal government. As these students who can’t find jobs, or can’t find anything but low-paying jobs, starting facing their student loan payments a lot of them aren’t going to be able to make it.
We have a massive student loan bubble in this country thanks to government subsidies for student loans. Not only has that inflated the price of college education dramatically (439% from 1982 to 2007), but it has created another subprime loan market.
Meanwhile, higher education bureaucrats and administrators keep getting richer.
Tags: higher education, student loans bubble
