According to the Department of Education 40% of middle-class college entrants who were high school graduates in 2004 had obtained bachelor's degrees by 2012. This implies that the ability to maintain status quo or achieve upward social mobility on the economic ladder is endangered. A college degree used to be a stepping stone to the middle class. Today had become a prerequisite to sustain the status.
The reasons for the failure were not known as researchers focus were on lower-income children getting through college. The Department of Education tracks high school graduates for the year 2004 whose families earned between $46,000 and $99,000 for the first case periodically check on them until 2012. In the second study they kept track of freshmen in 2003 from families with incomes between $60,000 and $92,000 and check on them until 2009. Both stats found that fewer than half leaving with a bachelor's degree. The first case recorded 40 percent graduated while the second chalked 45 percent.
Anthony Carnevale, director of the Georgetown University Center on Education and the Workforce said bachelor degree holders earn $2.3 million over their lifetime, on average. That's $600,000 more than someone with an associate degree and $800,000 more than those who left college with no diploma. "It's a lot harder to maintain your middle class status without a degree," Carnevale told CNN Money on 25 March 2015.
