Education in Pakistan

Education in Pakistan is overseen by the government Ministry of Education and the provincial governments, whereas the federal government mostly assists in curriculum development, accreditation and some financing of research.

The education system in Pakistan is generally divided into five levels: primary (grades one through five); middle (grades six through eight); high (grades nine and ten, leading to the Secondary School Certificate or SSC); intermediate (grades eleven and twelve, leading to a Higher Secondary (School) Certificate or HSC); and university programs leading to undergraduate and graduate degrees.[3]

The literacy rate ranges from 87% in Islamabad to 20% in the Kohlu District.[4] Between 2000—2004, Pakistanis in the age group 55–64 had a literacy rate of almost 30%, those aged between 45–54 had a literacy rate of nearly 40%, those between 25–34 had a literacy rate of 50%, and those aged 15–24 had a literacy rate of more than 60%.[5] These data indicate that, with every passing generation, the literacy rate in Pakistan has risen by around 10%. Literacy rates vary regionally, particularly by sex. In tribal areas female literacy is 7.5%.[6] Moreover, English is fast spreading in Pakistan, with 18 million Pakistanis[7] (11% of the population)[7] having a command over the English language, which makes it the 9th Largest English Speaking Nation[8] in the world and the 3rd largest in Asia.[7] On top of that, Pakistan produces about 445,000 university graduates and 10,000 computer science graduates per year.[9] Despite these statistics, Pakistan still has one of the highest illiteracy rates in the world.[10]

What is the Condition of Education?

The Condition of Education (COE) is a congressionally mandated annual report that summarizes important developments and trends in education using the latest available statistics. The report presents statistical indicators containing text, figures, and tables describing important developments in the status and trends of education from early childhood learning through graduate-level education. The contents of The Condition of Education are organized within the 5 sections shown on the left of this page. In addition to the indicators in these sections, there are Topics in Focus that examine specific issues. The Condition of Education 2011 contains 50 indicators, but additional indicators from earlier volumes are also available on this web site.

The Condition of Education 2010 summarizes important developments and trends in education using the latest available data. The report presents 49 indicators on the status and condition of education, in addition to a special section on high-poverty schools. The indicators represent a consensus of professional judgment on the most significant national measures of the condition and progress of education for which accurate data are available. The 2009 print edition includes 49 indicators in five main areas: (1) participation in education; (2) learner outcomes; (3) student effort and educational progress; (4) the contexts of elementary and secondary education; and (5) the contexts of postsecondary education. from.http://nces.ed.gov/programs/coe/

Rich Students Will Get More College Acceptance Letters in 2010

College applicants in 2010 will get a lesson in the real-world version of the golden rule: the one in which the person with the gold gets to rule.

Admissions officers and counselors say that hundreds of colleges are so desperate for cash this year that they will be reserving more spots for students who can afford to pay full tuition and don't need financial aid.

B students who don't need aid and apply to lots of colleges will likely have more fat acceptance envelopes than ever before. "Full-pay students are getting a break in terms of admission," says Judy Zodda, a private admissions counselor in Framingham, Mass. "If they are borderline admits and full pay, they are getting in this year. That was not true three years ago."

Top students, no matter how meager their college savings, will still be heavily recruited, counselors said. But less-than-stellar students who don't have much money will have a tougher time getting into many types of colleges this year, including some flagship public universities and some private colleges. Thus, there is a danger that the economic downturn could reduce college opportunities for low-income students while giving even more advantages to the wealthy.

The college news isn't all bad, however. Some of the six big trends for 2010 outlined below could give more students new opportunities and could force colleges to do better jobs of teaching and helping students.

[Read the Complete Guide to Admissions.]

1. SATs won't count as much. Students who get good grades but score poorly on tests will have a better shot of getting into their dream schools. More than 815 colleges have stopped requiring most applicants to provide standardized test scores, says Bob Schaeffer, public education director of FairTest. Several more are expected to drop the requirement soon, he says. College officials say more students are taking ACTs. And some college admissions officers say that high Advance Placement test scores wow them more than any other score.

2. Students will likely choose better colleges. The Department of Education will notify students of the freshman retention and graduation rates of each college to which they apply for financial aid. "This will put pressure on colleges to be transparent, and some will need to articulate why these statistics may not be positive," says Sandra Bartholomew, dean of enrollment management at Green Mountain College in Poultney, Vt.

3. The "public Ivies" will become more competitive. Highly ranked, affordable public universities have become the hottest schools for this year's high school seniors. "In the past, Ivy League/near Ivy schools set the tone for the admissions cycle," says David J. Hamilton, director of college advising at St. Mary's Ryken High School in Leonardtown, Md. "This year, I think state schools may hold the key." Examples of affordable public universities that U.S. News ranks highly are the University of Virginia and the University of North Carolina­–Chapel Hill.

4. Wealthy, good students will be heavily recruited by out-of-state public colleges that are hoping to make up for state budget cuts and endowment declines by getting more students to pay higher tuition. In some­—but not all—cases, the out-of-staters will take seats away from less wealthy in-staters. Many California public universities, for example, have announced plans to reduce the size of their freshmen classes while raising cash by increasing the number of students who pay full out-of-state tuition.

5. Rich international students, especially students from China, will be heavily recruited. In some cases, they will fill seats that would otherwise have gone to less wealthy Americans. Kevin Spensley, director of international marketing, enrollment, and recruitment at St. Michael's College near Burlington, Vt., says that his school is one of hundreds that is scouring the globe in an effort to raise the number of affluent, qualified students paying something close to full tuition. "We don't take people we wouldn't otherwise admit," he says. But he says colleges believe that they have to cast a wider net because the number of American 18-year-olds is declining. And the recession has reduced the number of families who can afford to pay the full cost of a degree at a private institution or a public college.

6. More applicants will lower their ambitions and choose local colleges so they can save money by living at home. Sue Bigg, a private counselor in Chicago, says that a growing number of her clients are "limiting their choices to commuting possibilities only. … The great adventure seems to be set aside for some timeseems to be set aside for some time."from: educom

Fast-food standards for meat top those for school lunches

In the past three years, the government has provided the nation's schools with millions of pounds of beef and chicken that wouldn't meet the quality or safety standards of many fast-food restaurants, from Jack in the Box and other burger places to chicken chains such as KFC, a USA TODAY investigation found.

The U.S. Department of Agriculture says the meat it buys for the National School Lunch Program "meets or exceeds standards in commercial products."

That isn't always the case. McDonald's, Burger King and Costco, for instance, are far more rigorous in checking for bacteria and dangerous pathogens. They test the ground beef they buy five to 10 times more often than the USDA tests beef made for schools during a typical production day.

And the limits Jack in the Box and other big retailers set for certain bacteria in their burgers are up to 10 times more stringent than what the USDA sets for school beef.

For chicken, the USDA has supplied schools with thousands of tons of meat from old birds that might otherwise go to compost or pet food. Called "spent hens" because they're past their egg-laying prime, the chickens don't pass muster with Colonel Sanders— KFC won't buy them — and they don't pass the soup test, either. The Campbell Soup Company says it stopped using them a decade ago based on "quality considerations."

TOUGH, STRINGY: Old-hen meat fed to pets and schoolkids
TABLE: Fast-food safety rules trump those for school lunches
SALMONELLA RECALLS: Call to close meat plant for inspection

"We simply are not giving our kids in schools the same level of quality and safety as you get when you go to many fast-food restaurants," says J. Glenn Morris, professor of medicine and director of the Emerging Pathogens Institute at the University of Florida. "We are not using those same standards."

It wasn't supposed to be this way. In 2000, then-Agriculture secretary Dan Glickman directed the USDA to adopt "the highest standards" for school meat. He cited concerns that fast-food chains had tougher safety and quality requirements than those set by the USDA for schools, and he vowed that "the disparity would exist no more."

Today, USDA rules for meat sent to schools remain more stringent than the department's minimum safety requirements for meat sold at supermarkets. But those government rules have fallen behind the increasingly tough standards that have evolved among fast-food chains and more selective retailers.

Morris, who used to run the USDA office that investigates food-borne illnesses, says the department's purchases of meat that doesn't satisfy higher-end commercial standards are especially worrisome because the meat goes to schools. It's not just that children are more vulnerable to food-borne illnesses because of their fledgling immune systems; it's also because there's less assurance that school cafeteria workers will cook the meat well enough to kill any pathogens that might slip through the USDA's less stringent safety checks.

USDA-purchased meat is donated to almost every school district in the country and served to 31 million students a day, 62% of whom qualify for free or reduced-price meals. President Obama noted earlier this year that, for many children, school lunches are "their most nutritious meal — sometimes their only meal — of the day."

Next year, Congress will revisit the Child Nutrition Act, which governs the lunch program.

"If there are higher quality and safety standards, the government should set them," says Rep. George Miller, D-Calif., chairman of the House Committee on Education and Labor. "Ensuring the safety of food in schools is something we'll look at closely."

Officials with the Agricultural Marketing Service (AMS), the USDA agency that buys meat for the school lunch program, insist that schools get top-notch products.

AMS standards for meat sent to schools have been "extremely successful in protecting against food-borne pathogens," AMS Administrator Rayne Pegg says in a written statement. She notes that AMS oversight, inspections and tests of that meat exceed those required for meat sold to the general public.

The AMS also has a "zero-tolerance" policy that requires rejection of meat that tests positive for salmonella or E. coli O157:H7, pathogens that can cause serious illness or death.

Still, after USA TODAY presented USDA officials with its findings, Agriculture Secretary Tom Vilsack promised an independent review of testing requirements for ground beef that the AMS sends to schools. The review, set for next year, is meant "to ensure the food served to our school children is as safe as possible," Vilsack says in a statement.

Tougher standards for school meat would better protect students, experts say. Today's AMS program "is a sort of snapshot of the way things were in (2000), whereas the industry has continued to clamp down," says James Marsden, a Kansas State University professor who advises the meat industry on safety. "It needs to be modernized."

The difference

USA TODAY examined about 150,000 tests on beef purchased by the AMS for the school lunch program. The agency buys more than 100 million pounds of beef a year for schools, and the vast majority of it would satisfy the standards of most commercial buyers. But USA TODAY also found cases in which the agency bought meat that retailers and fast-food chains would have rejected.

Like the AMS, many big commercial buyers reject meat that tests positive for salmonella or E. coli O157:H7. But many fast-food chains and premium retailers set tougher limits than the AMS on so-called indicator bacteria. Although not necessarily dangerous themselves, high levels of the bacteria can suggest an increased likelihood that meat may have pathogens that tests might miss.

From 2005 to this year, the AMS purchased six orders of ground beef that exceeded the limits some commercial buyers set for indicator bacteria. The meat came from five companies: Beef Packers of Fresno, which filled two of the orders; Skylark Meats of Omaha; Duerson Foods of Pleasant Prairie, Wis.; N'Genuity Enterprises of Scottsdale, Ariz.; and Palo Duro Meat Processing of Amarillo, Texas.

Palo Duro is the largest provider of ground beef to schools. Beef Packers is one of the most troubled; it has been suspended as an AMS supplier three times, and Rep. Rosa DeLauro, D-Conn., called this week for the plant to be closed temporarily in the wake of two recalls.

From late November 2008 through January this year, the AMS bought nearly 500,000 pounds of ground beef from Beef Packers and Skylark with unusually high levels of an indicator bacteria known as "generic E. coli." The organism is considered an indicator of whether potential contaminants from the intestines of cattle have gotten into slaughtered meat — a source of the far more dangerous E. coli O157:H7.

The indicator bacteria are measured in CFUs, or colony-forming units. Jack in the Box, which pioneered many of the safety standards now used across the fast-food industry, won't accept beef with generic E. coli levels of more than 100 CFUs per gram. The AMS, on the other hand, will buy beef for the school lunch program with generic E. coli counts of up to 1,000 CFUs per gram — 10 times the Jack in the Box limit.

"That's a significant difference," says Marsden, the professor and beef industry adviser.

The shipments of beef that the AMS bought a year ago had generic E. coli levels up to four times higher than what Jack in the Box would accept. "Most higher-end companies certainly would reject that," Marsden says. Those bacteria levels "would be a yellow light (that) something's not right."

E. coli isn't the only indicator bacteria that the AMS allows at higher levels. The government also accepts beef with more than double the limit set by many fast-food chains for total coliform, which is used to assess whether a beef producer is minimizing fecal contamination in its meat.

"We look at those (measures) to gauge how a supplier is doing," says David Theno, who developed the safety program at Jack in the Box before retiring last year. If shipments regularly exceed the company's limits on indicator bacteria, "we'd stop doing business with them," he says.

AMS officials say the differences between the agency's bacteria limits and those of private industry are inconsequential. They note that there isn't even a requirement that beef sold in a typical grocery store has to be tested for the organisms.

"We remain confident, based upon past benchmarking activities, that our testing and standards are similar to or exceed those of most major large volume buyers," AMS chief Pegg says.

Suspect samples

The biggest disparity between the AMS and other big buyers of ground beef may not be in the levels of bacteria they allow but in the effort they make to detect such contamination.

On a given manufacturing day, AMS workers testing ground beef bound for schools sample the meat eight times, regardless of how long the production lines are running. Those samples are combined into a single composite sample for testing.

Jack in the Box, McDonald's, Burger King and other more selective buyers sample the ground beef on their production lines every 15 minutes. Some, such as Jack in the Box, combine those samples to create a composite sample for testing every hour during the production run. Others, such as McDonald's and Burger King, combine those samples to create a composite sample for testing every two hours.

That means Jack in the Box would test at least 10 composite samples during a typical 10-hour production run, which could yield 100,000 pounds or more of ground beef. The AMS would test just one sample for the entire 100,000-pound run.

The AMS approach to sampling "is not robust enough to find anything," says Mansour Samadpour, a Seattle-based food safety consultant and microbiologist.

Fast-food chains aren't the only ones with better sampling. Other beef buyers, such as Costco and afa Foods, a Pennsylvania firm that supplies beef to restaurants, use similar programs.

AMS officials say the agency accounts for less frequent sampling by being more aggressive in rejecting meat that fails to meet its standards. When a test shows salmonella, for instance, the AMS rejects all the meat produced by that supplier during that production run — tens or even hundreds of thousands of pounds.

But the AMS approach doesn't resonate with some scientists.

"AMS is saying once they detect, they take drastic action," says Ewen Todd, a professor at Michigan State University, "but if they are less likely to detect, the risk is still higher."

Adds Theno: "If you do more sampling and you do it on smaller lots, you have a better chance of finding problems."

Theno helped pioneer the sampling and testing standards now used widely in the fast-food world after he arrived at Jack in the Box in the wake of the industry's most notorious safety lapse.

In 1993, an outbreak of E. coli O157:H7 at Jack in the Box restaurants left hundreds sick and four children dead. Victims, most from the West, won more than $50 million from the company and its suppliers. Reverberations from the event rippled across the fast-food industry.

In the aftermath, Theno says, Jack in the Box asked him to build a food safety program that would "set a new (industry) standard."

Today, most fast-food companies and premium grocery chains have safety programs built on the same pillars Theno set up at Jack in the Box: frequent sampling requirements, tight limits on indicator bacteria, and zero tolerance for dangerous pathogens.

Food safety officials from fast-food chains and other big beef buyers share ideas and information about their programs, says Dane Bernard, vice president for food safety at Keystone Foods, a ground beef supplier to McDonald's. "Our testing programs are constantly evolving. We watch the science closely."

Raising the bar

The AMS could "very easily" raise the standards for federally purchased school lunch meat, says Barry Carpenter, a former AMS official who helped set up the current sampling and testing requirements in 2000. "If I was still at AMS, I'd say, 'Where are we (with today's rules) and where do we need to tighten them?' "

Carpenter, now head of the National Meat Association, notes that raising AMS standards "wouldn't cost much," and it would help combat perceptions that the school lunch program is "a market of last resort" for meat that can't pass muster with commercial buyers.

That perception could be reinforced by the reality of how AMS makes its purchasing decision: Contracts go to the lowest qualified bidders. Orders are placed on a computer system that can be accessed by all of the agency's suppliers — those certified as able to meet the special sampling and testing requirements set for school lunch food. When an order is placed, suppliers enter bids into the system, and the computer automatically awards contracts to low bidders.

Industry experts say tougher standards would not significantly add to the agency's costs for school meat. Theno says the safety requirements set by Jack in the Box added less than a penny a pound to its beef costs. Other big buyers outside the school program say it's a worthwhile investment in safety.

"It's not about transactional cost; it's about value," says Justin Malvick, a vice president at Keystone, the McDonald's supplier.

Carpenter says the meat industry that he now represents would have no problem with a decision to modernize — and toughen — AMS standards for school lunch meat.

Most major beef suppliers and processors already have procedures in place to ensure that their products can satisfy the tougher sampling and testing requirements set by many commercial buyers, he adds. If the AMS followed, he says, "I don't think the industry would have any hiccup at all."

Some lawmakers say a change is overdue. "Why are we even looking at giving (schools) … food that wouldn't be accepted by a restaurant?," asks Rep. Carolyn McCarthy, D-N.Y. "That's absolutely crazy."

from :usatoday

Obama education chief Duncan to push schools reform

U.S. Education Secretary Arne Duncan plans to challenge educators, civil rights groups and others to put aside "tired arguments" about education reform to help him craft a sweeping reauthorization of federal education legislation by early 2010.

In a speech to be delivered Thursday in Washington to more than 150 education, business, civil rights, charitable and social services groups, Duncan plans to invoke the Rev. Martin Luther King's 1963 letter from a Birmingham jail that made the case for non-violent civil disobedience as state and local governments dragged their feet in integrating schools and communities. Duncan will tell the group that after 50 years of school reforms, court rulings and "watershed" reports, "we're still waiting for the day when every child in America has a high-quality education that prepares him or her for the future."

The planned speech, provided to USA TODAY on Wednesday, also will challenge the groups to focus on getting "great teachers and principals into underperforming schools" and giving schools a testing system that "accurately and fairly measures student growth and uses data to drive instruction and teacher evaluation," among other measures.

"Let's build a law that respects the honored, noble status of educators — who should be valued as skilled professionals rather than mere practitioners and compensated accordingly," Duncan says.

Education Department spokesman Peter Cunningham said Wednesday that Duncan hopes to hand lawmakers a viable bill in early 2010.

"This is up to the White House and Congress, but our goal is to be ready sometime early next year," he said.

The "stakeholders' forum," which has met monthly since last summer, represents 162 groups with wide-ranging interests. They include the USA's two biggest teachers unions, the American Federation of Teachers and National Education Association, as well the NAACP, National Governors' Association, United Way of America, the Children's Defense Fund and the Business Roundtable, among others.

According to the speech preview, Duncan will urge the group to "bring a greater sense of urgency" to the task of reforming U.S. education, saying a reauthorized Elementary and Secondary Education Act, better known in its current form — No Child Left Behind — offers the perfect opportunity to "end the culture of blame, self-interest and disrespect that has demeaned the field of education" and "build a transformative education law" that promotes a well-rounded education "worthy of a great nation."

Mary Kusler, a lobbyist for the American Association of School Administrators, welcomes Duncan's bid at "re-energizing" No Child Left Behind reauthorization, which has slowed in Congress over the past year because of a "lack of consensus" on several questions.

But she worries about pushing the process along too quickly.

"While we like the idea of getting it going," she says, "we don't want to sacrifice quality for speed."

Approved by Congress in 2001 and signed by President Bush in 2002, No Child Left Behind pushed public schools to improve basic instruction for low-income, minority and disabled students, among others. But critics — including Duncan, a former Chicago schools CEO — say it prompted states to lower standards and concentrate too much on children who had the best chance of improving enough to pass state skills tests.

Congress approved the law overwhelmingly, but it has since shed many of its supporters. In the speech, Duncan notes that many teachers "complain bitterly about NCLB's emphasis on testing" while many parents "just view it as a toxic brand that isn't helping children learn."

He notes that it deserves credit for exposing achievement gaps and focusing on education outcomes but says it was underfunded, doesn't tie teacher compensation to student performance and doesn't hold schools to high standards — in the process, he says, it increases the USA's dropout rate.

"It's one reason our schools produce millions of young people who aren't completing college," Duncan says. "They are simply not ready for college-level work when they leave high school." from: usatoday

The Surprising Causes of Those College Tuition Hikes

Why has college tuition been rising so high and fast? Will college costs ever drop back to more affordable levels?

Those questions have been frustrating parents and students for years. A new report provides some surprising answers that will, unfortunately, probably only frustrate and anger them even more. At public colleges, tuition has generally been driven up by rising spending on administrators, student support services, and the need to make up for reductions in government subsidies, according to a report issued by the Delta Cost Project, a nonprofit based in Washington, D.C.

In some cases, such as at community colleges (which educate about half of the nation's college students), tuition has risen while spending on classroom instruction has actually fallen. At public colleges especially, the current economic troubles will likely only accelerate the trend of rising prices and classroom cutbacks, says Jane Wellman, the author of the report. After analyzing income and spending statistics that nearly 2,000 colleges reported to the federal government, Wellman concludes: "Students are paying more and, arguably, getting less in the classroom."

Among the more surprising findings:

    The main reason tuition has been rising faster than college costs is that colleges had to make up for reductions in the per-student subsidy state taxpayers sent colleges. In 2006, the last year for which Wellman had data, state taxpayers sent $7,078 per student to the big public research universities. That's $1,270 less (after accounting for inflation) than they sent in 2002.

    Public universities have been reining in overall spending per student in recent years. Flagship public universities' spending per student has risen from about $12,400 in 1995 to $13,800 in 2006 after accounting for inflation. But since 2002, spending at public colleges has generally not exceeded inflation.

    Increases in spending were driven mostly by higher administration, maintenance, and student services costs. Public universities spent almost $4,000 per student per year on administration, support, and maintenance in 2006, up more than 13 percent, in real terms over 1995. And they spent another $1,200 a year on services such as counseling, which was up 23 percent. Meanwhile, they spent about $8,700 a year on classroom instruction for each student, up about 9 percent.

    Big private universities, powered by tuition and endowment increases, have increased spending dramatically while public schools have languished. Total educational spending per student at private research universities has jumped by almost 10 percent since 2002 to more than $33,000. During that same period, public university total spending was comparatively flat and totaled less than $14,000 a year.

That growing gap between rich schools and poor schools worries observers like Wellman. The cost of attending a public university, even after subtracting out aid and inflation, rose more than 15 percent in the last five years, according to the College Board. But almost all of the recent price increases at public universities are "backfilling for cuts in state funds," Wellman says.

Some college presidents say the report shows they haven't been raising prices irresponsibly.

"Virginia Tech" explained David Hodge, president of Miami University of Ohio. "Everybody expects us to do a lot more security. Students are coming with more physical disabilities and emotional needs. There are greater expectations for career services," he says. And that kind of administrative and support spending "is a really good investment. It helps the students."

In addition, public schools tend to serve many low-income students and minority students who need more remedial classes and extra counseling services than better-prepared students who attend elite private universities, says F. King Alexander, president of California State University—Long Beach.

One of the reasons that Duke University costs about $51,000 a year is that the elite schools are in a bidding war for top faculty and better services for students, says college spokesman Michael Schoenfeld. In addition, competition for the best students forces schools to offer bigger and bigger scholarships, which means few students actually pay the full sticker price, he notes. Duke's record-breaking flood of applications for the next academic year shows there's still plenty of demand for what private universities offer, he says.

But as more and more states facing budget crises consider further subsidy cuts and tuition hikes for public schools, parents and students are increasingly objecting to price increases for any reason. "Enough is enough," says James Boyle, president of the College Parents of America. A tsunami of applications at lower cost schools such as the California State University campuses shows that students and parents are voting with their feet. "The changing market for higher ed will cause colleges to hold down their expenses and state legislators to increase their subsidies," Boyle predicts. from:usnews

How Much Is That College Degree Really Worth?

As the price of a college degree continues to rise, there's growing evidence that the monetary payoff isn't quite as big as often advertised. The best estimate now is that a college degree is worth about $300,000 in today's dollars—nowhere near the $1 million figure that is often quoted.

"That $1 million number has driven me crazy!" says Sandy Baum, a Skidmore economist who studied the value of a college degree for the College Board last year.

Baum's research showed that college graduates earn, on average, about $20,000 a year more than those who finished their educations at high school. Add that up over a 40-year working life and the total differential is about $800,000, she figures. But since much of that bonus is earned many years from now, subtracting out the impact of inflation means that $800,000 in future dollars is worth only about $450,000 in today's dollars.

Then, if you subtract out the cost of a college degree—about $30,000 in tuition and books for students who get no aid and attend public in-state universities—and the money a student could have earned at a job instead of attending school, the real net value in today's dollars is somewhere in the $300,000 range, a number confirmed by other studies.

But, especially these days, that still makes a college degree one of the most lucrative investments a person can make, Baum notes.

Better yet, college graduates can go on to earn advanced degrees, which return even bigger payoffs. The average holder of a bachelor's degree earns about $51,000 a year, Baum calculates. But those who've gone on to earn MBAs, law degrees, or other professional degrees earn about $100,000 a year.

In addition, Baum found that there are plenty of other rewards for a degree. The quality of the jobs college graduates get is far better, for example. College graduates are more likely to get jobs with health insurance. And it is easier for them to find and hold jobs. The unemployment rate for college graduates was just 2.2 percent last year, half the unemployment level of those with only high school diplomas.

There are lots of other nonmonetary benefits as well. College graduates are healthier, contribute more to their communities, and raise kids who are better prepared academically, studies show.

Other researchers have found that the payoff of a degree is especially lucrative for students from low-income families, since the education and credential give them a chance to break out of low-paying careers.