Following on a report released in May quantifying the monetary value of many college degrees, Georgetown’s Center on Education and the Workforce has released a new report detailing how race and gender continue to affect lifetime earnings across various education levels.

The report, titled “The College Payoff: Education, Occupations, Lifetime Earnings,” disturbingly notes that female, Black, and Latino degree-holders continue to earn less than their Whites and men with the same level of educational achievement.

Per the report’s executive summary, “[...] over the course of their lifetime, women who
obtain a Bachelor’s degree make over $650,000 less than men with the same level of education.” The disparity is even greater for women with professional degrees, who make nearly a million dollars less over the course of a lifetime than male counterparts.

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Attention upperclassmen and graduating seniors: wondering how far that English Lit degree is going to take you in terms of employment? A study from Georgetown’s Center on Education and the Workforce may have the answer.

The study makes use of a large amount of newly-available census data in order to track the worth of 171 college majors across several broad fields. The center’s report focuses particularly on the worth of and undergraduate degree in terms of earnings potential and likelyhood of employment, while also analyzing the effects of race and gender on degree selection, employment, and earnings potential.

According to the press release accompanying the report, “while there is a lot of variation in earnings over a lifetime, the authors find that all undergraduate majors are ‘worth it,’ even taking into account the cost of college and lost earnings. However, the lifetime advantage ranges from $1,090,000 for Engineering majors to $241,000 for Education majors.”

Read more of the report’s findings and view the press release after the jump.

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