Graduate school is the new Bachelors: 1990 to 2007

Before we start today's post, I have discovered that The Formula that Shall Not Be Named, along with not working well in general, doesn't work well in specific in openoffice, since it seems to only want to give me the ABSOLUTE VALUE. This came up when I was doing a bit of work on South Carolina, but that is going to be like Queen Beruthiel's cats for a while.

So, instead, we will look at two diagrams that both don't need any formula to be clear. The both deal with education, and the fact that (at least from my subjective viewpoint), bachelor's and graduate degrees are the new high school diploma and bachelor's degrees, respectively. (And while that sentence might be confusing, the situation is even more so.)

But, is the change across the country, or are all these overeducated people just a New England and Pacific Northwest thing?
As we can see, Bachelor's degrees seem to have increased fairly uniformly across all regions of the country, with about the same rate of increase, and with no significant outliers. This is one of the strongest correlations I have found to date.

So how about the more expensive and exclusive graduate degree? Is this, so to speak, not playing in Arkansas?


And it looks like I forgot to label my graduate school chart. Not that it matters: there are, once again, no outliers. Massachusetts is in the top right though! So it looks like the growth in graduate school is also pretty uniform, across the states.