And of course a disturbingly high percentage of college students require remediation.

Second, if you examine the historical accuracy of labor market demand projections from the BLS you will see that they have consistently (and in some industries dramatically) under estimated the demand for college educated labor. A big reason for that is the inherent difficulty in forecasting the degree to which technologies will change and be adopted in industries.

Finally, and maybe most importantly, the decline in earnings of high school graduates is the clearest signal of the relative lack of demand for labor that does not have some post secondary education. Thus wether an occupation requires a post secondary degree or not, employers are clearly signaling a preference for labor with post secondary training. A large contributor to that preference is that a HS diploma has largely lost its informational value to employers. It simply does not provide and indication to employers of the skills or abilities of a potential employee thus there is a preference for workers with some college training. The increase in college educated workers (some from outside this country as we move to a more global labor market) has helped offset this increase in demand and helped to keep wages of college educated workers from rising faster.

Do the authors address the school of thought that says we are basically preparing our non-college bound students for nothing in particular? That is to say, there is a school of thought that admires European vocational training in K-12, and has gone so far as to ask the question out loud: what has a general diploma holder been prepared to do if they are not going to college?

The issue isn’t precisely that the country “needs” everyone to go to college.

I think it’s correct to say that the country probably needs more people to go to college here than do in Europe and Asia. Goldin and Katz show that the reason the 20th century was the American century was that America educated more of its citizens than did any other country.

The freaknomics summary of this point is good: Goldin and Katz on Education, Technology, and Growth.

Goldin and Katz also found that higher levels of education produced higher income amongst working class employees.

They are apparently the first to show that thinking of education and earnings in terms of a simple split between white collar and blue collar employment does not hold. More education produces a wage advantage within the blue collar world, or at least it did in the period they studied.