James Heckman, the Nobel Prize-winning economist, has examined how the returns on education break down for individuals with different backgrounds and levels of ability.

诺贝尔经济学奖得主詹姆斯·赫克曼（James Heckman）研究了不同背景和能力水平的个人得到的教育收益有何不同。

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A degree signals prior ability as well as the skills that have been learnt, she notes; and returns to education depend partly on a country's labour-market structures.

学历代表更好的能力和学会了一些技能，她强调；对教育投入的回报在一定程度上取决于一个国家的劳动力市场的结构。

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But there is another obvious way to increase the returns on a college education: make it cheaper.

还有另一个明显的解决方法能够增加大学教育收益，即降低学费。

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The returns on higher education are rising: the median earnings in 2000 of Americans with a bachelor's degree or higher were about double those of high-school leavers.

ECONOMIST: Lexington: Poison Ivy | The

The externality argument is in many respects just a highfalutin way of expressing revulsion that anyone should be so profane as to attempt to measure the returns on something as ineffable as education.

FORBES: Are We Spending Too Much On Education?

But it also suggests that increased spending by individuals would be uneconomic--and raises the question of what the returns are on government investment in higher education.

FORBES: Are We Spending Too Much On Education?