Obtaining your bachelor’s degree used to be a way for students to stand out from others in a highly competitive job market. In the last five years, however, the number of job postings requiring the minimum of a bachelor’s degree has increased significantly. This new standard shows that job applicants having a bachelor’s or an even

When discussions take place about first-generation college students, often the focus is on how disadvantaged they are in comparison to their peers whose parents went to college. Research we recently conducted shows that first-generation college students experience another form of disadvantage that lasts long after they graduate – and that is: how much they earn. We are sociologists who

After earning bachelor’s degrees in engineering and sociology, I was determined to do what I love. I headed straight to graduate school to investigate the social problems that frightened and fascinated me. For almost a decade, I told everyone I encountered – students, cousins, baristas at the coffee shop I frequented – that they should

Studies have long shown that a college student’s odds of achieving financial security and a better quality of life improve when he or she earns a degree. But what are some of the obstacles that prevent degree attainment? At the Wisconsin HOPE Lab, we study the challenges that students from low- and moderate-income households face in attaining

Since the cost of going to college is an important concern for a large segment of voters, the 2016 presidential candidates are all advocating policies aimed at making a college education more affordable. The Democrats want to use government resources to offer more financial aid and lower the interest rates on federally guaranteed student loans. The Republicans,

Documents released in a federal lawsuit against Trump University have put presumptive Republican presidential candidate Donald Trump on the defensive. Democratic candidate Hillary Clinton is now highlighting the fraud that is at the center of the case. In the process, many commentators are identifying the Trump University business model as further indication of the fraudulent activity seen to be endemic

August is here, and many families are preparing their children for the next academic challenge – a college education. By and large, a college degree is viewed as an important credential for gainful employment and professional success. At the same time, college is costly, and college financing strategies are complex. Students and their families use

Students are bombarded with an array of competing opportunities during college, all with the promise that each will lead to a better job or higher earnings upon entering the “real world.” One such option is the double major, in which a student earns two bachelor degrees at once, sometimes in entirely different disciplines. But will

The unemployment rate has plunged to about the lowest level in half a century. Yet at least one group of Americans is being left behind: men who didn’t go to college. Just 78 percent of men aged 25-54 who never went to college were employed in 2016, the latest year for which data are available in the American