NPR has a story on the college payoff, showing that while students pay much more for a college education in the U.S. than they do in most other countries, they also get a bigger return on their investment. But for me the big story is the enormous gender difference in that payoff. Wow! There continues to be a huge premium for maleness across the globe, but it is striking indeed how much more being male in America gets you:
And what explains why college costs more for women in the U.S., Germany, and Canada? It can't be a base price differential along gender lines, I would think (lawsuit, anyone?), so is it that men are given more scholarships?
The story points us to this study from Indiana University with more detail on the gender gap, including this chart showing that women must obtain associate's degrees to match the salary levels of men with high school degrees:
I certainly degree with the analysis that the huge payoff gap between men and women in the US is striking. The cost difference in the men's favour in the three countries you mention are less of a story, however - the difference is less than 1% in the US and Germany and barely 2% in Canada. It appears much more interesting and equally inexplicable (at least to me) that the cost of studying is considerably higher for men than women in countries like South Korea (10% higher), Japan (20%) and, say, France and Spain (ca 4%), where, also interestingly, women get a higher return from a degree in Spain than men.
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