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Monday, March 04, 2013

30% of community-college graduates, mainly men, earn more than average bachelor's-degree holder

Community colleges have loog been a rural route to higher education, but an assosiate's degree can often bring more money than a bachelor's degree. Almost 30 percent of Americans who hold the two-year degrees earn more than the average for those wiith bachelor's degrees, Jon Marcus notes in The Hechinger Report, an education news service published by the Teachers College at Columbia University.

The main reason, Marcus writes, "is high demand for people with so-called 'middle-skills' that often require no more than an associate’s degree, such as lab technicians, teachers in early-childhood programs, computer engineers, draftsmen, radiation therapists, paralegals, and machinists."

Marcus reports community-college grads in Virginia and Tennessee make more on average than the states' bacehlor'sdegree holders, but the Georgetown University report that Marcus cites as his source for the national figure figure notes a big difference between men and women: "Men with occupational associate's degrees earn $49,000 annually, while women earn $35,000, compared with $41,000 for men with a high-school diploma and $28,000 for women with a high-school diploma." (Read more)

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