Even as President Obama proposes some steps for student debt relief, real wages for college graduates continue to plunge. In the third quarter of 2011, full-time workers with a bachelor’s degree and no advanced degree earned 3.5% less, in real terms, than a year earlier.* Male college graduates saw their real wages fall by 5.3% over the past year, while female college graduates had a 1.4% decline.
This continues a long term trend of declining real wages for college graduates. I discussed the plight of young college grads here. Because real wages are declining, it’s much harder for grads to pay back their loans.
*Median weekly earnings, full-time workers 25 years and older with a bachelor’s degree only. See the BLS press release here).
Mandel on Innovation and Growth 
Would love to see alongside a chart of median incomes for everyone (grads and non-grads). Then I’d like to see a regression to determine the amount of variation in grad-incomes that is explained by fluctuations in broader median incomes.
Demand and supply.