Now economists tend to believe that the holder of a bachelor's degree from an American college is increasingly approaching a high school graduate in terms of salary. This is rather strange, since the last two American presidents – Clinton and Bush Jr. – paid special attention to the development of college education. Grants were allocated for this, and various programs were developed in large numbers. Indeed, even today college graduates earn on average 45% more than their non-degree-holding colleagues.
But it turns out that this difference hardly increased during the 1990s, as did the number of bachelor's degree holders, which remained at 30% of the number of graduates. "It's not just about the presence of educated specialists and the demand for them," say economists from Princeton University. "We forgot that the level of college graduate salaries fluctuates; now we have been forced to remember this."
According to experts' calculations, the growth in salaries of high school graduates in the 1990s was equal to the growth in salaries of college graduates. Economists see the reason for this in the increase in demand for services within the country. Such a situation calls into question the value of a bachelor's degree. Therefore, some experts consider it necessary to reduce the salary gap.
"The obsession with obtaining an education has become a mantra that protects us from making tough political decisions," believes Harley Shaiken from the University of California. In his opinion, education alone is not enough. The state must commit itself to reducing the gap in salaries between these two categories of the population by raising the minimum wage and tightening legislative regulation of employment contracts.
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