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Self-assessed lifetime financial benefits of the respondent's current or most recent educational program compared with its costs, asked of adults whose highest education is some college without a degree or a certificate or technical degree.
AI-matched An AI model grouped these questions and mapped their answers onto shared categories, and a second AI review checked and corrected the grouping and mapping. No person has checked it: compare the question wordings and the answer mapping below before reading the lines against each other.
Latest: 16% answered “Benefits much larger” in Fed SHED: Lifetime financial benefits of education versus its costs, 2022.
Shares of people whose answer maps onto these categories (non-answers and answers outside the scale are left out), because surveys differ in whether they offer “don’t know.” Each column is one survey wave, evenly spaced rather than to scale in time; hover for exact shares.
Shares of people whose answer maps onto these categories (non-answers and answers outside the scale are left out), because surveys differ in whether they offer “don’t know.” Each point is one survey wave at the middle of its field period. Lines from different surveys are never spliced together.
Groups differ from everyone by 7 points on average across all answers, in Fed SHED: Lifetime financial benefits versus costs of education program.
| Line | Question | Match | How answers map |
|---|---|---|---|
| Fed SHED: Lifetime financial benefits of education versus its costs | Lifetime financial benefits of education versus its costs Overall, how would you say the lifetime financial benefits of your (current/most recent) educational program compare to its costs? Caveat: Slight wording change: 'its costs' without 'financial' | equivalent | Financial benefits are much larger → Benefits much larger; Financial benefits are somewhat larger → Benefits somewhat larger; About the same → About the same; Financial costs are somewhat larger → Costs somewhat larger; Financial costs are much larger → Costs much larger |
| Fed SHED: Lifetime financial benefits versus costs of education program | Lifetime financial benefits versus costs of education program Overall, how would you say the lifetime financial benefits of your [current/ most recent] educational program compare to its financial costs? Caveat: Covers current or most recent program | identical | Financial benefits are much larger → Benefits much larger; Financial benefits are somewhat larger → Benefits somewhat larger; About the same financial benefits and financial costs → About the same; Financial costs are somewhat larger → Costs somewhat larger; Financial costs are much larger → Costs much larger |
Groups differ from everyone by 6 points on average across all answers, in Fed SHED: Lifetime financial benefits versus costs of education program.
Subgroup charts are picked automatically. Of every breakdown in the data (party, ideology, age, sex, race, education, income, region, religion, and community type), these two put their groups furthest from everyone’s answers: the gap is averaged across all answer categories and waves, with each group weighted by its share of respondents. Party and ideology count as one choice, so the second chart shows a different kind of split. Groups with an effective sample under 50 in a wave are left out of that wave.