How to win the lottery

Most people would like to win the lottery and why wouldn't they? An extra million dollars or so would help anybody's financial situation. But the statistical odds of winning a state run lottery are astronomically high. In fact, most of the people who play for a lifetime spend more money buying lottery tickets than they ever win. When I ask people why they do it, they all say essentially the same thing: "You can't win if you don't play so at least I have a chance."

But there's another way to hit the jackpot without ever buying a single lottery ticket and the economic payoff is much better than "taking a chance." In fact, it's guaranteed and it's called an education.

According to the United States Census Bureau, the average high school graduate makes $30,000 a year. A person with an associates degree makes $38,000, a bachelor's degree $52,000, a master's degree $62,000 and a doctorate $90,000. Over a lifetime of work, a person with a Bachelor's degree will make a cool million dollars more than a person with only a high school diploma.

And an education is recession proof as well. While our economy is currently in the doldrums and the unemployment rate is close to 10 percent, it's only 3.3 percent for men with a college degree and even less than that for female college graduates.

So with a new school year rapidly approaching, why wouldn't you want to go to college, or go back to college, or send your kids to college? A college degree is the gateway to economic security, social standing and prestige, and the mark of an educated person. It's typically where we find our spouse and where, for perhaps the first time in our lives, we learn to think critically and analytically. As my philosophy professor at the University of Oklahoma said, it's an opportunity to "explode circles"; to look beyond the obvious to the not so obvious and develop the ability to see all sides of the issue.

In addition to the economic and social rewards of a college education, there's a citizenship reward too. Mark Twain wrote that "a patriot is the person who can holler the loudest without knowing what he's hollering about." We live in a society today that is as polarized politically as it has even been and the main reason for that is that no one ever listens to the other side. An educated person attempts to analyze the merits and demerits of all sides of an issue and then reach an informed opinion. Wouldn't it be great if the political ranters and ravers had an informed opinion about ANYTHING?

So if you're debating whether or not it's worth the investment of time and money to go to college this fall, it most definitely is if becoming an educated person and earning an extra million dollars means anything to you.