Did The Value Of Your College Degree Just Drop $350,000?

How much is a college degree worth compared to a high school diploma?
Does $800,000 sound about right? This figure gets bandied around a lot because the College Board has been suggesting for years that college grads typically enjoy an $800,000 lifetime earnings advantage over high school graduates.

But hold on: It looks like the earnings advantage for a bachelor's degree has been wildly exaggerated. Maybe by $350,000 or more.

As it turns out, the College Board based its earnings calculations on a report using 1999 Census Bureau numbers. But someone who was responsible for producing that 2002 report told The Wall Street Journal that the bureau never intended those figures to be extrapolated into lifetime earning projections. What's more, the earning figures don't reflect college costs today and the debt that students must face after earning their diplomas.

So how much is a bachelor's degree worth? Sandy Baum, senior policy analyst at the College Board and a professor emeritus at Skidmore College, suggests that a realistic figure is $450,000. A report by the American Institutes for Research argues that the earnings advantage is only $279,893.

As for the $800,000 projection, someone at the College Board told The Wall Street Journal that this erroneous figure was removed from its website in December. Maybe the folks there should double check. This is what I found it with a simple Google search.

What do I think of this college-degree earnings inflation? I'm feeling a lot poorer today.

Lynn O'Shaughnessy is the author of The College Solution and she also writes a college blog for TheCollegeSolutionBlog. Follow her on Twitter.