Arizona State and Local Government Documents Collection
The State and Local Arizona Documents (SALAD) collection contains documents published by the State of Arizona, its Counties, incorporated Cities or Towns, or affiliated Councils of Government; documents produced under the auspices of a state or local agency, board, commission or department, including reports made to these units; and Salt River Project, a licensed municipality. ASU is a primary collector of state publications and makes a concerted effort to acquire and catalog most materials published by state and local governmental agencies.
The ASU Digital Repository provides access to digital SALAD publications, however the ASU Libraries’ non-digitized Arizona documents can be searched through the ASU Libraries Catalog. For additional assistance, Ask A Government Documents Librarian.
Publications issued by the Morrison Institute for Public Programs at Arizona State University are also available in PRISM, in the Morrison Institute for Public Policy - Publications Archive collection.
Filtering by
- All Subjects: Educational attainment
- Creators: Battelle Memorial Institute. Technology Partnership Practice
Education decisions are among the most important choices people ever make. So we were surprised and disappointed to see an article so loosely reasoned and reckless in its conclusions as “Five Reasons to Skip College” published in Blank Slate at Forbes.com on April 18, 2006. The article never provides a numerical assessment of the costs and benefits of going to college, uses statistics inappropriately and in a way that biases the conclusions against college, contains conceptual errors on how to evaluate the return on a college education, and greatly exaggerates the only substantive criticism of typical evaluations of the financial worth of a college degree.
The educational attainment in 2000 of the entire 25-or-older population in Arizona was similar to the national average and ranked in the middle of the states. Arizona compared less favorably to two sets of comparison states: “competitor” states defined by the Greater Phoenix Chamber of Commerce and “new economy” states identified by the Milken Institute. In 1990, however, Arizona’s educational attainment had exceeded the national average. Arizona ranked among the bottom 10 states in the 1990 to 2000 gain in educational attainment. Among both the entire population and those active in the labor force in 2000, the
educational attainment of Arizona residents 55 or older exceeded that of their peers nationally.
Universities provide numerous benefits to the community in which they are located. This report focuses on three of the financial/economic benefits. 1) Individual Financial Benefits of Higher Education; 2) Social Financial Benefits of Higher Education; 3) The Economic Benefits of University Research.
The educational attainment of Arizona’s workforce is less than the national average and has deteriorated over time relative to the U.S. average. Job quality and average earnings in Arizona also are below the national average. These three factors — job quality, earnings, and educational attainment — are interrelated. On average, the higher the educational attainment of a worker, the higher are his or her earnings. The largest increase by far occurs with the completion of a university degree. In Arizona, the average earnings of those with a college degree are approximately $28,140 (73 percent) higher than those with only some college. Thus, working individuals financially benefit from enhancing their educational attainment.