Today’s Wall Street Journal has an article entitled “What’s a Degree Really Worth?” The writer explains that the widely quoted figure of $800,000 in additional lifetime earnings has come in for a great deal of criticism.

Indeed it should. Casually tossing around big numbers like that is apt to have the same effect as billboards touting the huge payoff if you win the lottery. It lures in unsophisticated people who don’t think carefully about benefits and costs. The truth of the matter is that obtaining a college degree may put many marginal students in a financial hole, just as if they blew a paycheck buying lottery tickets. And it’s not just that the economy is in the doldrums right now, making it hard for graduates to find good jobs. (The piece mentions a Berkeley graduate working for a small newspaper and making $34,000 per year — well below what she needs to service the $60,000 in loans she needed to get through college.) The phenomenon of college graduates spilling over into “high school” jobs is nothing new. I first encountered mention of it in the 1999 book Who’s Not Working and Why by Frederic Pryor and David Shaffer.

Higher education can be very beneficial to some people, but it can be a complete waste of time and money for others.