by ISAAC CAREY, Hechinger Report
Researchers gave students at participating high schools in Virginia access to a state-backed website called gradpathva.com, which analyzed the average wage earned by graduates and the average cost of enrollment, sorted by university and type of program. The students used the website rarely, and did not seem to base their academic decisions on it. During the three-year study, researchers were able to see where students ended up going to college, and what type of programs they chose to pursue. There was no evidence that access to salary data had a detectable impact. The next step, Blagg said, is to add information about graduates’ salaries to those larger websites students already use. Most freshmen who entered college last fall ranked “finding a good job” among their principal reasons for going to college, according to a survey by the Higher Education Research Institute at UCLA. Information about what they’ll eventually earn is particularly helpful for high-achieving low-income students, the Urban Institute report said.
http://hechingerreport.org/study-potential-earnings-not-factor-high-school-students-college-choices/
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