With the recession in the past years, there is always the question of whether or not an investment in college education would be worth facing mounting debt later on. What with the increasing costs of tuition, room, and board, the price for a college education is almost like paying for someone’s full-time job.

There have been studies that show the starting and mid-level pays of students who have graduated from various schools with a bachelor’s degree. While it is true that there is a high pay-out for those who have graduated from elite colleges such as Harvard or MIT, it doesn’t necessarily mean that the best-paid graduates come from the Ivy Leagues or technical institutes. A state school in Colorado has even ousted Ivy League Dartmouth College in median starting pay at $60,000 to Dartmouth’s $58,000.

Regardless of starting pay, there is no doubt that at the end of the four-year education, college students will have accumulated debt from college expenses. For a bachelor’s degree, the median debt after four years totals around $20,000-$30,000, while 10% of bachelor’s degree students owe at least $40,000 or more. In addition to that, students with bachelor’s degrees have lost a significant amount of time that could have been better spent working and earning money. Instead of students accumulating debt during their college years, they could have worked right after high school and earned money those four years. So why would college be worth it?

For starters, the Census Bureau has provided the details of salaries in 2007. The difference between those who have earned bachelor’s degrees versus those with only a high school education is massive. The estimated salary of a high school graduate totals $26,894 per annum. On the other hand, the estimated salary of a student who has a bachelor’s degree is $46,805 per annum; this is almost a double of what a high school graduate would earn every year. In four years, the high school graduate would earn $107,576, something a college graduate could surpass in three. The debt and its accrued interest can be cleared in a few years, and the graduate would still be earning more money.

The median-paid surgical technician earns $38,000, while the highest paid makes at least $52,550 a year. Nurses can go from as low as $65,050 per annum with a bachelor’s degree and as high as $95,000 after years of experience. Teachers’ median salaries for grades K-12 are $53,635, to a high $89,489. The high-end paying job more than triples salaries accrued by high school graduates.

So is a college education really worth the effort? It most certainly is.