Return on Investment Analyzed Abstract
5  P. Krugman increasing wage premium for higher education over
6) L. Thurow small payoff from little bit more education
7) F. Pryor and D. Schaffer poor graduates got low level jobs
8) C. Murray more investing in our best and brightest
9) A. Greenspan education reform will take many years

5) Paul Krugman  "When asked to make economic comments as if he were looking back on 1996 from 2096..." Paul mentioned "...the devaluation of higher education."    "Or consider the panic over downsizing that gripped America in 1996. As economists quickly pointed out, the rate at which Americans were losing jobs in the nineties was not especially high by historical standards. Why, then, did downsizing suddenly become news? Because for the first time white-collar, college-educated workers were being fired in large numbers, even while skilled machinists and other blue-collar workers were in high demand. This should have been a clear signal that the days of the ever-rising wage premium for people with higher education were over, but somehow nobody noticed." The Accidental Theorist and Other Dispatches from the Dismal Science 201
6) Lester Thurow stated "Education is a very lumpy investment where often there is little or no payoff from having a little bit more."  ..."There are big returns to the first years of education (the education where one gains literacy) and big payoffs to the last years of education (a college or graduate degree where one distinguishes oneself from the pack) but only small payoffs to those years of education that move the individual from somewhat below average to somewhat above average." 283 The Future of Capitalism: How Today's Economic Forces Shape Tomorrow's World
7) F. Pryor and D. Schaffer feel "It is those college-educated workers with functional literacy little better than the average high school graduate..."   "... who end up in these lower-level jobs." from Whose Not Working and Why
8) Charles Murray tried to encourage more investing in our best and brightest in his 1994 book Bell Curve: Intelligence and Class Structure in American Life. He later reinforced this meritocratic system with "HALF OF THE CHILDREN ARE BELOW AVERAGE, TOO MANY PEOPLE ARE GOING TO COLLEGE, AMERICA'S FUTURE DEPENDS ON HOW WE EDUCATE THE ACADEMICALLY GIFTED, ABILITIES VARY."
9) Alan Greenspan wrote we can't forget about the middle.  "The cost of educational egalitarianism is doubtless high and may be difficult to justify in terms of economic efficiency...". Some achieve  more easily at far less cost, than others. "Yet there is a danger in a democratic society in leaving some children out sync with its institutions. Such neglect contributes to exaggerated income concentration, and could conceivably be far more costly to the sustaining of capitalism and globalization in the long run. ." "Much of our skill shortage can be resolved with education reform. But that will take years."  The Age of Turbulence: Adventures in a New World published in 2007 by Penguin Group, pages 406 and 407