I ran into a great article in The Blaze that very succinctly explains, with graphics, how much more money you will make if you:

  • Get a high school degree rather than drop out
  • Get an Associate’s degree after your high school diploma
  • Get a Bachelor’s degree after your high school diploma
  • Get a Master’s degree after you Bachelor’s degree
  • Det a PhD after your Bachelor’s degree

It also explains how much additional money you will make for each lecture you attend and what will change if you get A’s and B’s rather than C’s and D’s. It breaks it down by degree type, not surprisingly the hard sciences and engineering have the biggest economic impact on ones lifetime income. The people who did this are from eBay. Pretty impressive. Here is how the research is described in the article that points to the eBay work:

Using data from a variety of sources, including the Census Bureau and the Bureau of Labor Statistics, the team at eBay Deals produced an infographic breaking down exactly how different degrees — and even individual grades — correlate to extra earning potential over the course of a lifetime.

Now if they could only break lifetime income down based on whether you got your high school diploma from a homeschool, government school or private school.