In most professions more education equals more income. This much is obvious. The not so obvious part is just how valuable an education is if we look at Americans as a whole in non-sales jobs.

All of you parents out there pick your jaws off the floor when you are done reading this and then make a copy for your children.

Using average hourly earning for different professions from the Bureau of Labor and Statistics and assuming the average student attends class 160 days per year and the average worker has a forty year career, we can put a value on every day of school attended. The results follow....

High School: $1560 per day every day in grades 9-12, compared to a High School drop out.
2 Year Grad School: $1128 per day compared to HS graduate.
Four year degree: a whopping $3288 per day compared to a HS graduate.

And an average doctor will make $2778 per day of grad school plus $3288 per day for their degree and $1560 per day of high school adding up to about $5 million in lifetime earnings over the high school dropout. And these numbers are in today's dollars, not inflation or time adjusted.

That's right. Getting a degree is like paying your kids over $3000 per day on top of their $1560 per day for high school.

And you parents out there think education is expensive. It is, but it's more than worth it!

Tomorrow we will look at a profession in which higher education does not necessarily mean higher income.