Higher Education Can Pay Off for a Lifetime

"All the skills I learned out there — including trying to persuade married men to use condoms when they are with prostitutes — have helped a lot," she says. "When it really comes down to it, learning how to speak in another person's language is what P.R. people do with their clients."

Added-Value Learning

At a minimum, experts say a bachelor's degree makes sense whether prospective students covet the corner office or just a comfortable life.

"Today a college degree is as essential to a successful career as a high school diploma was years ago," says Jeff Heath, president of New York City-based Landstone Group/MRI, an executive search firm.

Ranking among the most popular, and most profitable undergraduate majors, says Robert Franek, editorial director of test prep firm The Princeton Review in New York, would be any business, technology and health-related course of study — management, accounting, computer science, nursing and biology.

The more liberal arts-based majors, like English, communications and education, are also in high demand, but tend to be harder to quantify, he adds.

Add an MBA, JD or MD into the mix, and an individual's marketability rises.

An MBA, for instance, can help the right person become even more successful by teaching a complete business vocabulary, offering access to new career opportunities, developing leadership skills and greatly enhancing professional networks, explains Jon McBride, co-founder of the Jungle Media Group, a career and lifestyle magazine company in New York.

Adds Heath, "Think of education as an insurance policy. Unless you open your own business and it takes off, you're going to be working for a company. And education works in the workplace."

Take This Job and Keep It

A higher level of education not only tends to make finding a job easier, it helps retain a job, especially in trying economic times, according to Ronald Bird, EPF's chief economist.

Someone who finishes a degree is more likely to have job security and find jobs more easily, he adds.