Are We Overestimating the Returns from a College Education?
Published May 1, 1972 · E. Renshaw
The School Review
2
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Abstract
Since the publication of Glick and Miller's article "Educational Level and Potential Income" in 1956,1 much attention has been paid to the pecuniary benefits associated with a college education.2 The mean income of U.S. males, aged 25 and over with four or more years of college, was 54 percent greater than the income of high school graduates in 1946, 52 percent greater in 1956, and is estimated to have been 53 percent greater in 1968.a In the latter year college graduates received $4,500 more income per year, on the average, than high school graduates. The remarkably stable relative income differentials which have been associated with a college education can be converted into a gross rate of return on the economic costs of acquiring a higher education. The "economic costs" are usually considered to include income foregone while attending college plus the more direct cost of providing the student and his college with books, classrooms, professors, staff, and maintenance personnel. Room and board are not included in economic costs on
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