A college education may not be worth as much as you think.

    For years, higher education was touted as a safe path to professional and financial success. Graduates, it has long been argued, would be able to build solid careers that would earn them far more than their high-school educated counterparts.

    The numbers appeared to back it up. In recent years, the nonprofit College Board touted the difference in lifetime earnings of college grads over high-school graduates at $800,000, a widely circulated figure. Other estimates topped $1 million.

    But now, as tuition continues to skyrocket and many seeking to change careers are heading back to school, some researchers are questioning the methodology behind the high projections.

    Most researchers agree that college graduates, even in rough economies, generally fare better than individuals with only high-school diplomas. But just how much better is where the math gets fuzzy.

    The problem stems from the common source of the estimates, a 2002 Census Bureau report titled 'The Big Payoff.' The report said the average high-school graduate earns $25,900 a year, and the average college graduate earns $45,400, based on 1999 data. The difference between the two figures is $19,500; multiply it by 40 years, as the Census Bureau did, the result is $780,000.

    'The idea was not to produce a definitive 'This is what you'll earn' number, but to try and give some measure of the relative value of education attainments,' says Eric Newburger, a lead researcher at the Census and the paper's co-author. 'It's not a statement about the future, it's a statement about today.'

    Mark Schneider, a vice president of the American Institutes for Research, a nonprofit research organization based in Washington, calls it 'a million-dollar misunderstanding.'

    One problem he sees with the estimates: They don't take into account deductions from income taxes or breaks in employment. Nor do they factor in debt, particularly student debt loads, which have ballooned for both public and private colleges in recent years. In addition, the income data used for the Census estimates is from 1999, when total expenses for tuition and fees at the average four-year private college were $15,518 per year. For the 2009-10 school year, that number has risen to $26,273, and it continues to increase at a rate higher than inflation.

    Dr. Schneider estimated the actual lifetime-earnings advantage for college graduates is a mere $279,893 in report he wrote last year. He included tuition payments and discounted earning streams, putting them into present value. He also used actual salary data for graduates 10 years after they completed their degrees to measure incomes. Even among graduates of top-tier institutions, the earnings came in well below the million-dollar mark, he says.

    'Averages don't tell the whole story,' says Lauren Asher, president of the Institute for College Access & Success, a nonprofit group based in Berkeley, Calif. She points out that incomes vary widely, especially based on majors. 'The truth is that no one can predict for you exactly what you're gong to earn,' she says.

    And that includes the College Board, which recently said on its Web site: 'Over a lifetime, the gap in earning potential between a high-school diploma and a bachelor of arts is more than $800,000. In other words, whatever sacrifices you and your child make for [a] college education in the short term are more than repaid in the long term.'

    The $800,000 number, it turns out, was pulled from a footnote of the College Board's 2007 'Education Pays' report that explained lifetime earnings. The report's author, Sandy Baum -- an emeritus Skidmore College economics professor who didn't write the promotional text -- says that $450,000 is actually a more reasonable estimate of the difference in lifetime earnings, something she's said in interviews for more than a year.

    Steve Talbott, a journalism professor at Cleveland State University, who is researching the cost of education, says he urged the College Board to take down the 'misleading use' of the $800,000 number a year ago.

    A College Board spokeswoman says it doesn't have a record of when the content was written and that 'it's possible that during an update of the content the writer misinterpreted the data.' She also says the text represented old data and reflected 'a different methodology.' The $800,000 figure was removed from its Web site in December, once the group learned of the error, she says.

    大學(xué)教育的價(jià)值可能沒(méi)你想的那么高。

    多年來(lái)，高等教育被吹噓為通向事業(yè)和經(jīng)濟(jì)成就的陽(yáng)關(guān)大道。人們長(zhǎng)久以來(lái)認(rèn)為，相比僅受過(guò)高中教育者，大學(xué)畢業(yè)生有能力打下堅(jiān)實(shí)的職業(yè)基礎(chǔ)，掙的錢(qián)也要多得多。

    大學(xué)畢業(yè)生和高中畢業(yè)生之間的收入差距并不像此前報(bào)導(dǎo)得那么明顯。相關(guān)數(shù)據(jù)似乎也佐證了這種觀點(diǎn)。近年來(lái)，非營(yíng)利機(jī)構(gòu)College Board聲稱(chēng)大學(xué)畢業(yè)生一生比高中畢業(yè)生多掙80萬(wàn)美元，這個(gè)數(shù)字被廣泛引用。其他一些估計(jì)超過(guò)100萬(wàn)美元。

    但如今，在學(xué)費(fèi)繼續(xù)一路飆升、許多想轉(zhuǎn)換職業(yè)的人回到學(xué)校之際，一些研究人員卻在質(zhì)疑上述宏偉前景背后的方法論。

    大多數(shù)研究人員都認(rèn)為，大學(xué)畢業(yè)生通常比只有高中文憑者過(guò)得好，即便在經(jīng)濟(jì)不景氣時(shí)也是如此。不過(guò)好到什么程度則沒(méi)那么容易算得清楚明白。

    問(wèn)題的根源在于上述預(yù)計(jì)所使用的同一份資料──2002年美國(guó)人口普查局（Census Bureau）的一份名為《巨大的回報(bào)》（The Big Payoff）的報(bào)告。報(bào)告說(shuō)，高中畢業(yè)生平均年薪2.59萬(wàn)美元，大學(xué)畢業(yè)生平均年薪4.54萬(wàn)美元，其依據(jù)的是1999年數(shù)據(jù)。二者平均年薪的差額為1.95萬(wàn)美元，再乘以40年（人口普查局就是這么干的）,結(jié)果就是78萬(wàn)美元。

    人口普查局的研究員、該報(bào)告作者之一紐伯格（Eric Newburger）說(shuō)，報(bào)告并不是要給出一個(gè)"你賺的就是這么多"的數(shù)字，而是試圖衡量教育背景的相對(duì)價(jià)值。它并不是對(duì)未來(lái)情況的表述，只是表明當(dāng)前的情況。

    華盛頓的非營(yíng)利研究機(jī)構(gòu)美國(guó)研究協(xié)會(huì)（American Institutes for Research）副主席施耐德（Mark Schneider）說(shuō)，這是個(gè)價(jià)值百萬(wàn)的誤解。

    他覺(jué)得上述估計(jì)數(shù)字的一個(gè)問(wèn)題是，它們沒(méi)有減掉所得稅或算上中斷就業(yè)的情況。另外它們也沒(méi)有計(jì)入債務(wù)，尤其是學(xué)生貸款，近年來(lái)公立和私立大學(xué)的這類(lèi)貸款都不斷膨脹。除此之外，人口普查局報(bào)告使用的收入數(shù)據(jù)是1999年的，當(dāng)時(shí)四年私立大學(xué)的學(xué)雜費(fèi)總計(jì)為每年15,518美元。2009-10學(xué)年，這一數(shù)字已經(jīng)增加到26,273美元，而且還在以高于通脹的速度繼續(xù)上漲。

    施耐德在去年撰寫(xiě)的一份報(bào)告中估計(jì)，大學(xué)畢業(yè)生一生中多掙的錢(qián)僅為279,893美元。他將學(xué)費(fèi)和未來(lái)收入折現(xiàn)的情況都包括進(jìn)來(lái)，使之以當(dāng)前價(jià)值來(lái)體現(xiàn)。他還使用了畢業(yè)生完成學(xué)業(yè)10年后的實(shí)際薪水?dāng)?shù)據(jù)來(lái)衡量收入。他說(shuō)，即便是最好學(xué)府的畢業(yè)生，其平均收入也遠(yuǎn)遠(yuǎn)不到100萬(wàn)美元。

    加州非營(yíng)利組織Institute for College Access & Success的主席阿什爾（Lauren Asher）說(shuō)，平均數(shù)不能說(shuō)明整體情況。她指出，薪水差距很大，尤其是不同專(zhuān)業(yè)。她說(shuō)，說(shuō)真的，沒(méi)人能精確預(yù)測(cè)你到底能賺多少錢(qián)。

    College Board也無(wú)法準(zhǔn)確預(yù)測(cè)。該機(jī)構(gòu)不久前在其網(wǎng)站上說(shuō)，持高中文憑者和文科學(xué)士一生收入的差距超過(guò)80萬(wàn)美元。換句話說(shuō)，無(wú)論你和你的孩子在短期內(nèi)為上大學(xué)而做出何種犧牲，從長(zhǎng)遠(yuǎn)看都是超值的。

    結(jié)果發(fā)現(xiàn)，80萬(wàn)美元這個(gè)數(shù)字是來(lái)自College Board在2007年的《教育回報(bào)》（Education Pays）報(bào)告中的一個(gè)腳注，該報(bào)告解釋了終生收入。報(bào)告作者、斯克德摩爾學(xué)院（Skidmore College）榮譽(yù)經(jīng)濟(jì)學(xué)教授鮑姆（Sandy Baum）說(shuō)，45萬(wàn)美元是上述兩個(gè)人群終生收入差距的更合理估計(jì)，她一年多以前接受采訪時(shí)就提出過(guò)這一點(diǎn)。上述宣傳文字并不是出自鮑姆之手。

    克利夫蘭州立大學(xué)（Cleveland State University）新聞學(xué)教授塔波特（Steve Talbott）在進(jìn)行教育成本方面的研究，他說(shuō)他敦促College Board撤銷(xiāo)一年前對(duì)80萬(wàn)美元這個(gè)數(shù)字的誤用。

    College Board發(fā)言人說(shuō)，該機(jī)構(gòu)沒(méi)有記錄這一內(nèi)容的寫(xiě)作時(shí)間，有可能作者是在更新時(shí)對(duì)數(shù)據(jù)產(chǎn)生了曲解。她還表示，上述文字反映的是以前的數(shù)據(jù)和"不同的方法論";該機(jī)構(gòu)知悉這一錯(cuò)誤后，已經(jīng)于去年12月將80萬(wàn)美元的數(shù)字從網(wǎng)站上拿掉。