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Why are my experiences still contradicting the statistics when they apply to wealthy people?

 
 
Reply Wed 9 Mar, 2016 04:04 pm





So I've asked many times why most people I encounter or look had a Bachelor's Degree by the time they were 23, despite these statistics.

http://www.nytimes.com/2014/12/02/education/most-c...-4-years-study-finds.html?_r=0

http://www.politifact.com/wisconsin/statements/201...e-takes-six-years-us-sen-ron-/

http://business.time.com/2013/01/10/the-myth-of-the-4-year-college-degree/

https://nces.ed.gov/programs/digest/d13/tables/dt13_326.10.asp

https://nces.ed.gov/programs/digest/d13/tables/dt13_104.20.asp

No matter who I looked up on facebook, no matter who I randomly surveyed out on the streets, it was very rare to come across someone who didn't have a Bachelor's Degree by 23, or wasn't in the process of doing so. This morning I came across this statistic:

http://www.usnews.com/opinion/articles/2011/02/16/...arn-a-college-degree-by-age-23

According to this statistic, only 1/4 of women and 1/7 of men earned a Bachelor's Degree by the time they were 23. Now, I was told several times that the reason I wasn't getting the results reflected by the statistics was because I was only surveying people in wealthy-white areas. Another thing this statistic says is that only 22.4% of white people had earned a Bachelor's Degree by 23. Also, in the 2nd-bottom statistic I provided above, only 42.6% of white people graduated in 4 years, and in the bottom statistic, only 40% of white people between ages 25 and 29 had a Bachelor's Degree. So even among wealthy-white people, most of them still shouldn't have had a Bachelor's Degree by 23. So what's the explanation now?
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maxdancona
 
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Reply Wed 9 Mar, 2016 06:23 pm
@prpinrni,
You are getting a sampling bias.

You said "no matter who I randomly surveyed out on the streets". This illustrates where you are going wrong. When you "randomly surveying" people on the streets you aren't getting a representative sample. First of all, not everyone is equally likely to be on the streets, and the streets that you are walking down aren't going to be random either. And of course there are people who never are out on streets, and it is at quite possible that they are less likely to have a college degree.

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