Why jobs require a college degree

1. Earn More Money on Average

Those with a bachelor's degree paid $524 more each week than workers with just a high school diploma, according to the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS), a gain of more than $27,000 per year.

If you have a professional career that lasts 40 years, you may make $1 million more than a worker without a college degree.

2. Reduce the likelihood of unemployment

Aside from the possibility of earning more money, obtaining a college degree may also lead to greater professional security. According to BLS statistics, 5.5 percent of employees with a bachelor's degree are unemployed, while 9 percent of workers with just a high school diploma are unemployed.

3. Have Higher Job Satisfaction

According to a 2016 Pew Research Center research, 77 percent of employees with a post-graduate degree and 60 percent of workers with a bachelor's degree say their profession offers them a sense of identity, compared to just 38 percent of those with a high school education or less.

Workers with a bachelor's degree or more were 70% more likely to perceive their employment as a career, compared to just 39% of workers with no college education.

4. Improve Your Financial Acumen

According to a 2016 Lumina Foundation survey, working-age persons with bachelor's degrees are 9.4 times more likely to hold a bank account than those with a high school diploma as their greatest level of education (Lumina PDF source)

Adults with a college education were likewise less likely to have utilized pricey types of credit. In the previous year, just 2.3 percent of college-educated individuals took pay-day and tax return loans, compared to 9.2 percent of high school graduates without a college degree.

5. Purchase a Home

According to a First American research, homeowners are becoming more likely to be college-educated. In 1997, the difference between homeowners with a high school education and those with a college degree was 11%; by 2017, the margin had grown to 20.5 percent, favoring college graduates.

6. Boost Your Happiness

According to the Lumina Foundation survey, 94 percent of individuals with a bachelor's degree or above reported being satisfied or very pleased with their lives, compared to 89 percent of those with no college education.

7. Get Married (and Stay Married)

According to a Pew Research Center research, 65 percent of persons aged 25 and older with a bachelor's degree or above were married in 2015, compared to 53 percent of those with less education.

A degree may also signify a longer-lasting marriage. Researchers at the National Center for Health Statistics (NCHS) predict that 78 percent of college-educated women who married for the first time between 2006 and 2010 can expect their marriages to continue at least 20 years, compared to only 40 percent of women with a high school degree or less (NCHS PDF source).

8. Maintain a Healthier Lifestyle

According to the Lumina Foundation, college degree holders had healthier behaviors than non-degree holders.

According to the survey, the number of people who smoke daily decreases dramatically with education, from 20.3 percent of high school graduates with no college education to 5.2 percent of those with bachelor's degrees and just 3.1 percent of employees with graduate degrees.

The study also discovered a high link between educational achievement and eating fruits and vegetables, exercising, and wearing a seat belt.

9. Extend Your Life

According to the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences (PNAS), persons with at least a bachelor's degree live longer, "more prosperous lives" than those without an advanced education. The life expectancy disparity by educational level has steadily increased from 1990 to 2018 — the years studied by PNAS.

10. Be a More Responsible Citizen

Earning a college diploma may also enhance the lives of others around you. According to the Lumina Foundation survey, 40% of working-age persons with a bachelor's degree volunteered in their community in the previous year, compared to just 17% of high school graduates with no college education.

According to the Lumina Foundation, college graduates gave three times more money to charity than non-college graduates, were 1.5 times more likely to regularly vote in local elections, and were more than twice as likely to engage in a school, community, or religious group.