Is College Still Worth It Economically?

Yes—but who it benefits most is constantly changing.

By Dorothy GambrellMarie Patino for Businessweek | Higher Ed March 25, 2025

The US higher education system—a complex web of public and private colleges and universities bestowing bachelor’s degrees—has long been considered the best in the world. Fueled in part by the GI Bill, college became the engine of class mobility in the 20th century. Almost 40% of Americans have a bachelor’s degree or higher, data from the US Census show, up steadily over the last seven decades.

But with student debt ballooning, prospective undergrads and their parents have been wondering: Is college still worth it? Crunching the data, it’s clear degrees still matter—but to different extents, and to different groups, than in the past.

In 2023, the last year for which data is available, 25- to 34-year-olds with a bachelor’s degree earned exactly 200%—or twice as much—as people from the same cohort without one did. That’s a nice chunk of change, sure, but as more of the population earns a degree, that premium is getting smaller. In 1960 young adults with a degree saw the premium in their earning power peak at 237%.

There are variations by race and gender, too. As more women have collected four-year degrees, for instance, their earnings premium has declined. Men with a degree, meanwhile, largely saw their income rise compared with their non-degreed counterparts, before stagnating in recent years.

Overall, students of Asian descent tend to get the biggest paycheck perks for holding a degree versus their non-degreed peers, while Hispanic men report some of the smallest income gains. Hispanic women, Black women and boomers earn college degrees at lower rates but get a higher-than-average financial return on that degree.

But every group saw a lifetime of gains. As for whether a degree is still worth it—you bet.