1. Don’t be a fool, stay in school! This is the basic state of the chart. The earnings of a median high school graduate are shown in orange, against, in pink, the earnings of a median college graduate.



It’s common knowledge that people who go to college usually end up making significantly more money those who don’t. But people who go to college also end up spending huge sums of money -- quite possibly north of $100,000 — at a time when they could otherwise be out in the marketplace, earning a respectable income.



The high school grad, straight out of school, is earning $25,252 per year, while the college student is just getting started on writing tuition checks. By year 4, the high school grad has earned $115,046, and has an annual income of $31,155, while the college student is $95,000 underwater. That’s a difference of $210,000.



Then things turn around. In her first year after college, the college grad is earning $40.405, while the high school grad, even with four years in the workplace, is only earning $33,245. (In other words, that college education is paying off from day one.) That’s not to say the high school graduate’s four years’ headstart means nothing: It takes until 15 years after high-school graduation -- more than a decade after college graduation -- for the college grad’s lifetime earnings to finally overtake those of the high-school grad. At that point, the college grad is earning $71,839 per year, while the high-school grad is earning only 60% of that sum -- just $43,045.

2. See how college grads zoom past high-school grads Select the high-school graduate’s line, click on the “range” button, and you’ll see a chart that looks like this.



This is what’s known as a fan chart. The yellow line in the middle is unchanged: It represents median earnings, where 50% of high-school graduates earn more, and 50% earn less. The bottom of the fan marks the bottom decile: The point at which 90% of high-school graduates earn more, and only 10% earn less. And the darker area in the middle is the interquartile range: The area that encompasses the middle half of high-school graduates’ earnings, from the 25th percentile to the 75th percentile.



What we learn from this chart is that, even after accounting for the cost of college, the median college graduate will have total earnings, 18 years after graduation, greater than 75% of high-school graduates.

3. The last time that men and women are equal is when they graduate. This chart shows total earnings for male and female college graduates, and demonstrates the wage gap between men and women quite starkly. By the time she’s 40, the median female college grad is earning $69,000 per year -- compared to $97,000 per year for her male classmates.

4. It’s amazing how much more you earn, when you have a penis The fan chart of male against female earnings for four-year college graduates is, if anything, even scarier. It demonstrates that men, over the course of their careers, consistently earn more than 75% of women with equal educational attainment.

5. The art of earning more money? Don’t study art. Here are the earnings of arts grads versus science grads: Unsurprisingly, science grads tend to make more money. At age 30, the median arts grad is making $60,000 -- but the median science grad is making $70,000.

6. This chart has not been doctored in any way The gap is even bigger for PhDs, where the median 35-year-old science PhD is already making $100,000 per year, even as her arts-graduate counterpart is earning just $63,000.

7. Who earns more: Female scientists, or male arts grads? What’s more important in terms of earnings -- being a science graduate, or being a man? The answer: being a man. Here’s the chart of male arts graduates versus female science graduates: the male arts graduates clearly do better. And that’s not because the women aren’t working: the chart only shows the salaries of full-time female employees.

8. What’s the Rx for being paid less than men? This story is seen over and over again. For example, female med-school graduates make a lot of money, but the median male med-school graduate still makes more money than roughly 75% of his female counterparts.

9. Don’t drop out of college -- especially not if you’re a woman At the less rarefied end of the professional spectrum, we see almost identical gender disparities, just with smaller numbers. Look at how the median male college dropout makes more than 75% of female college dropouts.

10. Women with degrees struggle to keep up even with college dropouts Most strikingly, perhaps, the median male college dropout makes more money even than women who graduated college! Here he is charted against women who went to community college; for-profit colleges; and even regular four-year universities.

11. The cost of two years’ extra education can be substantial One way in which this tool can be very useful is in terms of working out whether it’s worth spending the time and money to get a graduate degree. For instance, this chart shows the earnings of a four-year college grad (in purple) against someone who spent an extra two years to get a Master’s degree (in orange). The person with the Master’s degree out-earns the college grad, but still has to wait until age 38 to catch up on those extra two years of earnings. And that’s assuming that the cost of education is zero.

12. Getting a Master’s: Not always a smart move Here is the same chart, but with educational costs accounted for: we’re assuming that the Masters degree costs an extra $105,000. Now, the graduate with the Masters degree earns just as much as before, but hasn’t caught up with the 4-year college grad even by age 42, when the chart ends.