High Expectations, Low Pay

Median salary in 2009 of students who enrolled in a certificate or two-year post-secondary program in 2003-04, completed the program, and got a job: $26,000.

Dismal. All that effort for just $500 a week. Almost as dismal as the pay is the way these data are presented in the National Center for Education Statistics report, Beginning Subbaccalaureate Students' Labor Market Experiences: Six Years Later in 2009. Let's start with the title: Subbaccalaureate? Who came up with that gem? And as usual in its reports, the NCES likes to throw standard error tables in your face on every other page, rather than consigning them to an appendix. Presentation skills, people!