This is from the Career News newsletter (sorry, no link):
According to the U.S. Census Bureau the difference in lifetime earnings between a high school diploma and bachelor’s degree is a million dollars. Add on a master’s degree and you can expect to earn an additional half a million dollars in earnings. Those with professional degrees earn much more – about 4.4 million dollars during their working life.
Jennifer Day, Chief of the Education and Social Stratification Branch at the U.S. Census Bureau says, “In 1999, average annual earnings ranged from $19,000 for high school dropouts, to $26,000 for high school graduates, $45,000 for college graduates and $99,000 for the holders of professional degrees.
The data is almost 10 years old so I can only imagine how it has changed since then. Degrees do equal dollars and I suspect that is why education is the most misrepresented information on a resume.