It has gotten increasingly harder for students to work their way through college, especially for low-income students who face steep challenges when combining work and learning. Students from higher-income families tend to benefit as they work fewer hours in jobs directly related to their fields of study. Low-income working college students often…

Over the past half century, the relationship between working and learning has changed in profound ways that have made it more difficult for students, especially students from low-income backgrounds, to attain the right mix of work experience and schooling necessary to qualify for entry-level jobs with a future. The need for formal postsecondary…

Researchers from the Georgetown University Center on Education and Workforce, Anthony Carnevale and Nicole Smith, examine the challenges working students face and the impacts of these challenges on completion and debt. Working and paying tuition and fees "as you go" is no longer an option for the majority of America's college students;…

The gender wage gap, the disparity in pay between men and women, has narrowed to 81 cents in 2016 from 57 cents on the dollar in 1975. Nevertheless, the gap persists. Over the course of a career, the gender wage gap results in women earning $1 million less than men do. To close this gap, women have relied primarily on the advantages conferred by…

This is the executive summary for the report, "Women Can't Win: Despite Making Educational Gains and Pursuing High-Wage Majors, Women Still Earn Less than Men." Gender wage disparities have always been an intractable problem in the workforce. Women are doing all the right things to close wage disparities--going to college in greater…

This report examines the relationship between authoritarianism and postsecondary education, including liberal arts education. This analysis rests on the idea that authoritarianism is part of human nature, but its influence waxes and wanes according to circumstances. Having entered a new era defined by the COVID-19 pandemic, the evidence suggests…

Over the past half century, postsecondary education has taken on an increasingly important role in career preparation in the United States, with profound effects on the life experiences of young adults. Having a college credential has become both more valuable in the labor market and more expensive, with much of the burden falling directly on…

This report analyzes the growing need for qualified nurses. The study projects that the economy will create 1.6 million job openings for nurses through 2020. Yet, there will not be enough nurses to fill those openings. this report projects that the nursing workforce will be facing a shortfall of roughly 200,000 nursing professionals by 2020. One…

Economic projections show that skills-based technological change across industries and occupations will support rising demand for postsecondary education and training. By 2025, the Georgetown University Center on Education and the Workforce projects that 68 percent of the jobs in Iowa will require some level of postsecondary education. A key…

For decades, the popular conception of a college student in this country has been the full-time residential financially dependent student who enrolls in a four-year college immediately after graduating from high school. That student has not been the norm at U.S. postsecondary institutions for more than 30 years. Such students exist but they are…

In this report, we present the results of a thought experiment in which we estimated the potential costs and benefits to society of achieving equality in educational attainment and related workforce outcomes by race/ethnicity, class, and gender. We conducted this thought experiment to clarify the role that education can play in reducing…

Many Americans would agree that all people should have equal educational opportunity and equal pay for equal work. And yet, inequality in postsecondary education access, college completion, and post-college outcomes such as wages stubbornly persists, along with the impression that achieving equal outcomes would be too expensive and would take too…

In partnership with the Postsecondary Value Commission, we conducted a thought experiment on the costs of inequality in the US education system. Our simulation found that the US economy misses out on $956 billion dollars per year, along with numerous nonmonetary benefits, as a result of postsecondary attainment gaps by economic status and…