Rodney

Here's the stuff you want, from the Census Bureau:

http://www.census.gov/Press-Release/...on/000818.html

Briefly, about 30 percent of all people aged 25 to 29 had gotten as far as a bachelor's degree in the year 2002. Overall, 32 percent of the employed civilian labor force 25 years old or higher had a college degree (bachelor's or higher).

On the other hand, frankly, people could definitely earn decent, middle-class incomes without a four-year degree if we had better and more extensive trade schools in this country. I've done business with some pretty competent tradesmen who make good money (while busting their asses, it's true) and never had a college education. College isn't everything; If we train people in skilled trades and small business skills, a lot of them will make as much or more than they would have with the four-year piece of paper.

The real problem is that a lot of jobs that used to not require "the piece of paper," now do. I got a degree in journalism in the '70s. At the time, old-time journalists spit on degrees in journalism; they all learned by showing up at their local papers at age 16 and 17 for jobs as part-time copy boys, and they learned their trade on the job. But most newspapers won't do that anymore, so journalism schools are now where you get trained. And you need the degree to prove you were trained, even though half of all j-school majors can't write their way out of a paper bag.