Is Going to College Worth It? [Interactive Tool]

Thanks the NPR's Here & Now for bringing this interesting interactive tool to my attention.  The tool called, Take the Plunge, was designed by Fusion.  Other than the depressing personal reality that male college dropouts on average will have higher lifetimes earnings that female PhDs, the tool is very useful and helps students visualize the idea of going in to debt before climbing higher than those who have no student loans.

You can access the tool here: http://static.fusion.net/lifetime_earnings/

The online tool uses data from PayScale to show the median lifetime earnings for people based on their gender, level of education, degree type, and gender.  If you want more information about the data, click on the Methodology link on the lower left hand corner or the Analysis section on the menu bar located across the top of the screen. If you would like to see some examples, check out the "Featured Charts" on the same menu bar.



Some of my thoughts on this

• Figuring out how to add new people to the chart was a bit confusing at first, but I eventually got the hang of it. Don't  get discouraged.  
• It would have been great to also see Race/Ethnicity on here. I didn't really see any mention of why it was not there -perhaps it is not something that PayScale collects?
• I had some questions on using past data to predict future outcomes.   Fusion Senior editor Felix Salmon gave his take on that in the NPR Interview (Listen Here). I'm not sure if I agree but this would be a great discussion point for more advanced methods courses.
• Despite all of that, I think this is a great visualization and I hope it will get students talking about the cost of education.s