Jaison R. Abel and Richard Deitz: “Not so long ago, people rarely questioned the value of a college degree. A bachelor’s degree was seen as a surefire ticket to a career-oriented, good-paying job. Today, however, many people are uncertain whether going to college is such a wise decision. It’s easy to see why. Tuition costs have been rising considerably faster than inflation, student debt is mounting, wages for college graduates have been falling, and recent college graduates have been struggling to find good jobs. These trends might lead one to believe that college is no longer a good investment. But when you dig into the data, is this really true? This week, we examine the value of a college degree in a four-part blog series. In this first post, we do the basic math and show that despite what appears to be a set of alarming trends, the value of a bachelor’s degree for the average graduate has held near its all-time high of about $300,000 for more than a decade. To estimate the value of a bachelor’s degree, we measure the costs and benefits for the average college graduate—calculations outlined in detail (with appropriate caveats) in our recent article in the New York Fed’s Current Issues series. The costs of college are the average tuition and fees paid by undergraduates plus the “opportunity costs,” or the wages one gives up while in school, estimated as the average wages of someone with only a high school diploma. The benefit of college is the “college wage premium”—the extra wages one can expect to earn having obtained a college degree, estimated as the average wage of college graduates compared with the average wage of those with only a high school diploma, summed up over a working life of more than forty years.”