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.

    大學教育的價值可能沒你想的那么高。

    多年來，高等教育被吹噓為通向事業和經濟成就的陽關大道。人們長久以來認為，相比僅受過高中教育者，大學畢業生有能力打下堅實的職業基礎，掙的錢也要多得多。

    大學畢業生和高中畢業生之間的收入差距并不像此前報導得那么明顯。相關數據似乎也佐證了這種觀點。近年來，非營利機構College Board聲稱大學畢業生一生比高中畢業生多掙80萬美元，這個數字被廣泛引用。其他一些估計超過100萬美元。

    但如今，在學費繼續一路飆升、許多想轉換職業的人回到學校之際，一些研究人員卻在質疑上述宏偉前景背后的方法論。

    大多數研究人員都認為，大學畢業生通常比只有高中文憑者過得好，即便在經濟不景氣時也是如此。不過好到什么程度則沒那么容易算得清楚明白。

    問題的根源在于上述預計所使用的同一份資料──2002年美國人口普查局（Census Bureau）的一份名為《巨大的回報》（The Big Payoff）的報告。報告說，高中畢業生平均年薪2.59萬美元，大學畢業生平均年薪4.54萬美元，其依據的是1999年數據。二者平均年薪的差額為1.95萬美元，再乘以40年（人口普查局就是這么干的）,結果就是78萬美元。

    人口普查局的研究員、該報告作者之一紐伯格（Eric Newburger）說，報告并不是要給出一個"你賺的就是這么多"的數字，而是試圖衡量教育背景的相對價值。它并不是對未來情況的表述，只是表明當前的情況。

    華盛頓的非營利研究機構美國研究協會（American Institutes for Research）副主席施耐德（Mark Schneider）說，這是個價值百萬的誤解。

    他覺得上述估計數字的一個問題是，它們沒有減掉所得稅或算上中斷就業的情況。另外它們也沒有計入債務，尤其是學生貸款，近年來公立和私立大學的這類貸款都不斷膨脹。除此之外，人口普查局報告使用的收入數據是1999年的，當時四年私立大學的學雜費總計為每年15,518美元。2009-10學年，這一數字已經增加到26,273美元，而且還在以高于通脹的速度繼續上漲。

    施耐德在去年撰寫的一份報告中估計，大學畢業生一生中多掙的錢僅為279,893美元。他將學費和未來收入折現的情況都包括進來，使之以當前價值來體現。他還使用了畢業生完成學業10年后的實際薪水數據來衡量收入。他說，即便是最好學府的畢業生，其平均收入也遠遠不到100萬美元。

    加州非營利組織Institute for College Access & Success的主席阿什爾（Lauren Asher）說，平均數不能說明整體情況。她指出，薪水差距很大，尤其是不同專業。她說，說真的，沒人能精確預測你到底能賺多少錢。

    College Board也無法準確預測。該機構不久前在其網站上說，持高中文憑者和文科學士一生收入的差距超過80萬美元。換句話說，無論你和你的孩子在短期內為上大學而做出何種犧牲，從長遠看都是超值的。

    結果發現，80萬美元這個數字是來自College Board在2007年的《教育回報》（Education Pays）報告中的一個腳注，該報告解釋了終生收入。報告作者、斯克德摩爾學院（Skidmore College）榮譽經濟學教授鮑姆（Sandy Baum）說，45萬美元是上述兩個人群終生收入差距的更合理估計，她一年多以前接受采訪時就提出過這一點。上述宣傳文字并不是出自鮑姆之手。

    克利夫蘭州立大學（Cleveland State University）新聞學教授塔波特（Steve Talbott）在進行教育成本方面的研究，他說他敦促College Board撤銷一年前對80萬美元這個數字的誤用。

    College Board發言人說，該機構沒有記錄這一內容的寫作時間，有可能作者是在更新時對數據產生了曲解。她還表示，上述文字反映的是以前的數據和"不同的方法論";該機構知悉這一錯誤后，已經于去年12月將80萬美元的數字從網站上拿掉。