[SloughFeg]

These sorts of articles always conflate the most basic premise of success- the quality of the people.

Sure, you can point to statistics about how people who graduate from college earn more over a lifetime, but does that really tell you having a degree accounts for their success?

If, tomorrow, we took away all diploma's from people who had graduated from college and gave them to people who hadn't, do you really believe wages would follow?

[sanxiyn]

A diploma's value comes from being a verifiable and reasonable proxy for the quality. Your hypothetical would destroy that value, so no.

On the other hand, I do believe if you give a diploma to a person who doesn't have it, it will have positive impacts on the wage. Do you disagree?

[leoedin]

Education definitely plays a role in creating high quality successful people. I agree that there's some fundamental aspects of people which will strongly influence their success in life, but it's disingenuous to suggest that quality people aren't created in part by their education (which is strongly influenced by their upbringing and their families economic situation.)

[cafard]

Quality is ambiguous here--some portion of what you call quality I'd define as "born in the right zip code." I'd settle for "ability", providing we remember what goes into rendering one able to do this or that.