How well off is the average person with only a bachelors degree?

Got into a discussion with my friends earlier today over how well off the average person is with only a bachelors degree from college. Obviously some make millions and some fail at life after college, but how good does the average person do with only a bachelors degree and if you could estimate, what would their average yearly income be? And Im not talking about straight out of college, I mean about 10 years and more after college.|||There's no way to answer this. You'll see a bunch of surveys showing different things, and though one can generalize a graduate degree COULD earn you more money, it doesn't mean in any way that it automatically guarantees you more earnings.





Some professions simply have high entry barriers, requiring a degree beyond a bachelors. Notable ones include being a physician and many other medical specialties such as a nurse practitioner. Engineering R%26amp;D positions (highest paying in engineering) typically require a graduate degree just to have your application looked at. CPAs in most states have the 150 credit rule, which means go beyond the regular 4 year plan. So while these professions are high paying, you cannot even go into them without the added ed.





Meanwhile, there's a ton of graduate degrees that may never lead to higher earnings. In fact, considering the tuition and opportunity cost, it actually places a lot of students into heavy burdening debt for the rest of their lives. This is a serious problem that the US needs to examine, but politicians are too afraid to do so (a bipartisan thing too, so don't need to take sides).





Problem is aggrevated by how you'll see surveys showing income brackets for various majors. This is largely by far utter nonsense since the surveys dont include (or conveniently "reject" due to what they consider spurious data) grads who are hopelessly unemployed or those that are too ashamed to show how they are working for $9.50 an hour at Walmart.|||It really depends on what the degree is in. Engineering and science majors typically do very well. Nurses also typically do well.





Other majors like English, history, etc. typically don't do as well, but still if the right opportunity comes along, they can do well too.





Much of it depends on where the person lives (people in cities typically do better), what industry they are in, whether they got any lucky breaks, how hard they work, etc. etc.