There was an interesting article recently in The New York Times of the value of Education.  

The Times offers this thinking for determining if education makes sense:

Start with what economists are confident about: the payoff to individuals. By measuring the relationship between the number of years of schooling and income earned in the job market, economists think that they have a good idea of what it’s worth.

Alan B. Krueger, an economics professor at Princeton, says the evidence suggests that, up to a point, an additional year of schooling is likely to raise an individual’s earnings about 10 percent.

For someone earning the national median household income of $42,000, an extra year of training could provide an additional $4,200 a year. Over the span of a career, that could easily add up to $30,000 or $40,000 of present value. If the year’s education costs less than that, there is a net gain.

This is a good place to start but there are also intangibles that must be considered.  These include:

• The value of the network associated with the educational experience.
• The value of the self awareness that comes with a rigorous academic experience.
• The value of new creative thought process that comes with stretching ones intellectual capabilities. 

Remember that not everything that matters can be measured. 

Filed under: Learning
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