Laura Rowley Money & Happiness

In my classroom at Seton Hall the other day, we discussed the working poor and the importance of higher education in lifting someone out of a nefarious cycle of minimum-wage jobs. One of the seniors opined than a bachelor's degree doesn't even cut it anymore -- you have to have a graduate degree to compete in today's dog-eat-dog job market.

According to the numbers, at least, it's still the college degree that's the great dividing line in lifelong economic success. Roughly one-quarter of Americans age 25 and older have attained a bachelor's degree, according to the Census Bureau. Their average earnings were $45,400, compared with $25,900 for a high school graduate. Over an adult's working life, someone with a B.A. earns an average of $2.1 million -- compared with $1.2 million for high school graduates. Those with a master's degree earned about $55,641, or $2.5 million over a lifetime, according to a Census analysis.

Talent as an Equalizer

The big talk in this season of college acceptances is how few high schools seniors made it into the elite colleges of their choice. Yale, Columbia University, Stanford, M.I.T., Brown, Dartmouth, University of Pennsylvania all announced record low admission levels. Yale, for example, accepted just 8.6 percent of the 21,099 students who applied.

High school graduates who failed to make the cut can console themselves with the knowledge that, at least economically, they will likely do just as well as their Ivy League peers over time. That's according to a 1999 study conducted by Alan Krueger, a Princeton University economist, and Stacy Dale of the Andrew Mellon Foundation.

While previous research had demonstrated an Ivy League salary advantage, the data were problematic because students who attend more selective colleges are likely to have higher earnings regardless of where they go to school. Putting these motivated self-starters side by side with, say, John Belushi in the movie "Animal House," is not exactly an apples-to-apples comparison.

Krueger and Dale restricted their study to equally talented students who applied to the nation's most elite institutions and started college in 1976. Some were rejected and attended less selective colleges. Two decades later, the graduates were earning roughly the same income.

Apply Yourself

When the study came out, I covered it for CNN. I interviewed a standout senior, Taylor Spearnak, who was graduating from Convent of the Sacred Heart High School in Manhattan. Taylor applied to eight colleges, including the University of Pennsylvania and Dartmouth. Only the Ivy League schools rejected her. At the time she told me: "I got into six other schools, I have a great choice of where I want to go. And I really don't think it's where you go to school now, it's how you apply yourself."

It took about six seconds to track Taylor down on the Internet last week. She had, indeed, applied herself. She graduated from Tufts University in 2004 with a double major in political science and classics and spent a semester interning with her congresswoman in Washington, D.C. She's a second-year law student at Villanova Law School in Philadelphia and recently accepted a summer associate position in New York City with the international law firm Morgan Lewis.

"I know kids who went to Harvard who have no clue what they're doing now," she told me. "I also know people at Villanova who went to state schools in the middle of nowhere, who got a good education because they were focused on what they wanted to take, and made the most of what was offered them."

A Financial Edge for Grad School

With the price tag of an Ivy League education approaching $50,000 a year, one has to wonder whether it's worth it. That's especially true for middle-class families whose talented progeny are also swamped with offers from less elite institutions offering generous financial aid.

Mark Kantrowitz, publisher of the FinAid.org, a college informational Web site, suggests students who plan to go on to graduate school carefully weigh those other options. A recent study found two-thirds of college graduates who continue directly to graduate school finished their undergrad program with no debt. Apparently, undergraduates burdened with student loans feel the pressure to get a job and pay them off. The less elite school with the generous financial aid package will leave a student better positioned to continue his or her studies.

And, as Kantrowitz adds: "If you get a PhD. from Harvard, nobody cares if you got your undergrad from Podunk U."

As for undergrads, Kantrowitz says, "You may have an easier time finding a job if you go to Harvard vs. Ohio State -- on the other hand, Ohio State, UCLA, the University of Illinois, UC Berkeley, and several of the other lower-cost institutions are excellent schools."

Good Lessons

My own experience is a case in point. I knew I wanted to be a journalist when I was 11. Growing up in Chicago, Northwestern University was the Holy Grail, with its prestigious Medill School of Journalism and summer internships at papers such as the Chicago Tribune. I couldn't afford the tuition, which was more than $12,000 a year at the time (now approaching $32,000), and my parents opposed debt of any kind, including student loans.

So I attended the wonderful journalism program at the strongly ranked (and much cheaper) state school, the University of Illinois in Urbana-Champaign. I acquired summer internships at newspapers on my own, moved to New York, and worked in print for several years.

I broke into CNN business news by working as a freelance writer on a morning show from 2 a.m. until 7 a.m., then heading to my day job (which happened to be across the street), where I would sleep on my boss's couch for an hour before putting in a bleary-eyed 9 to 5 day. After a five-month stretch of this insanity, CNN hired me full time as a producer. Not surprisingly, many of my colleagues had Ivy League degrees and started their careers there or at competing networks.

I got in the door with my state college degree -- I just had to knock a little harder. But maybe learning to knock harder early in life is good training for the hard knocks you can face later.

As Taylor told me, "it's all about your own motivation. You may get a job because you had a great resume. But if you're not producing, you can't say: 'But I went to so-and-so school.'"

Do you think persistence and motivation can get you as far as a prestigious degree? E-mail me at laurarowley.column@yahoo.com.