Vol. 6, No. 1266W -- February 6, 2000

The figures, as cited in an editorial in The State of Columbia, S.C., say that graduates who attended colleges where the average freshman SAT score was 1200 wound up earning an average of $76,800.

In contrast, graduates who had been accepted by the elite schools but chose instead to attend schools where the average SAT was 1000 wound up earning an average of $77,700 about $900 more annually.

The figures, of course, are a bit spare to build a thesis upon, but the editorial writers and lots of Ivy League enviers had fun swiping at the snobbery of the Boola-Boola-Hasty-Pudding crowd.

The State's editorial, which noted that an Ivy League education costs upwards of $120,000 (and is rising), put much emphasis on individual student talent and motivation, concluding: "It seems a good student can get what's needed for now-and the future-without insisting on ivy."

I parenthetically insert that I am not a graduate of an Ivy League school, though I did take a Harvard extension course in Japanese before moving to Tokyo over a decade ago.

It has been noted elsewhere that The Washington Post, New York Times, and - to a lesser degree - The Boston Globe and Philadelphia Inquirer, hire an inordinate number of graduates of these institutions in proportion to the newspapers' total work forces, and every journalist knows that the best money for reporters and editors flows at these "major metropolitan dailies."

At the same time, it's noted some of the great leaders of these newspapers have come out of schools such as Ohio State and Northeastern University, whose halls are coated more with chalk dust and urban grime than with ivy.

The faulty thinking in this folderol over $900 more per annum is that money should be an issue at all in evaluating education. There seems to be a bit of a hangover here from the government's typical "stay in school" campaigns, which may be just as faulty in their approach to promoting education.

"College graduates earned $268 more a week than high school graduates," the literature of the New York State labor bureau claims. It notes that high school graduates earn more than $125 per week than dropouts.

Do we believe that education has an inherent value apart from its expense and monetary rewards?

It may be difficult to assess what value education has to a modern young person, but one thing surely is that such value is rarely if ever measured in dollars.

In fact, many studies indicate that education is less a determining factor in raising one's salary than is the decision to move into a management position or to risk an entrepreneurial investment.

In an 1999 article on the worth of education to advancing the careers of information technicians, Margaret Steen wrote in InfoWorld, that although "people with bachelor's degrees earn more money than those without them, this doesn't necessarily mean that the degree itself leads to higher pay."

The question remains: is higher pay the appropriate goal or measuring rod of education's value?

As we confront the continuing economic growth and materialism of the 21^st Century, we may discover our measuring instruments are wrong.

The authentic payoffs of education may come in the categories of justice and social awareness; in philanthropy and moral reasoning.

I sense that in those categories, the institution that presses them home, be it cloaked in ivy or soot, will be the true bearer of "higher" education.