Rich Students Go to Graduate School to Get Richer
More Americans are pursuing graduate degrees, but students from wealthier backgrounds are most likely to earn the degrees that pay the most, a new report published by the Urban Institute shows.
“I think that the idea that people from low-income backgrounds are so unlikely ever to get to medical school or law school is definitely a problem,” said Sandy Baum, a scholar on the economics of higher education and a co-writer of the report.
Between 1993 and 2008 the overall number of bachelor’s degree holders who enrolled in a graduate program within four years of completing their undergraduate studies ticked up from 34 percent to 39 percent.
Despite making up just 14 percent of the current higher-education population, graduate students represented 40 percent of the $1.3 trillion dollars-worth of student-loan debt in 2014.
