Economists who have studied the relationship between education and economic growth confirm what common sense suggests: The number of college degrees is not nearly as important as how well students develop cognitive skills, such as critical thinking and problem-solving ability.

Derek Bok

After 9/11, the amount of applicants the FBI received increased exponentially. Whereas you used to require a college degree, and it was a small group of people who were just out of college, after 9/11, it changed.

Aaron Tveit

You don't need a four-year college degree if you have burning ambition or a great plan.

Alan Gerry

The obsessive focus on a college degree has served neither taxpayers nor students well. Only 35 percent of students starting a four-year degree program will graduate within four years, and less than 60 percent will graduate within six years. Students who haven't graduated within six years probably never will.

Alex Tabarrok

Really, the potential for, first of all, any college graduate today is enormously good. These are good times for anyone with a college degree today, particularly African Americans. With a college degree today, you really breach the unemployment rate.

Alexis Herman

My college degree was in theater. But the real reason, if I have any success in that milieu, so to speak, is because I spent a lot of years directing, I spent a lot of years behind the camera.

Alton Brown

This year, we must address the Colorado Paradox. We have more college degrees per capita than any state. Yet we lag the nation in the percentage of students who go on to higher education.

Bill Owens

My whole life, they said, 'Do not act. You need to get a college degree'.

Billie Lourd

It is virtually impossible to compete in today's global economy without a college degree.

Bobby Scott

For me specifically, it was important to graduate. In my family, I was one of the first graduates. My mom did not have a college degree. My dad did not have a college degree.

Brian Acton

Even though my mom was talented and had a college degree, she lived in the era when the conventional wisdom in Dallas was that my dad worked, she was supposed to stay home and take care of the kids, and that was that. There really weren't other opportunities for her, and most of them were volunteer opportunities.

Cecile Richards

I don't have a college degree. I started working at 19 on a tiny newspaper. I've covered everything from weddings to crime to criminal weddings.

Celia Rivenbark

When I'm talking about the white working class, here's what I'm defining: high school degree, no more, and working in a blue-collar job or a low-skilled service job. When I'm talking about the white, upper-middle class, I'm talking about people who work in the professions or managerial jobs and have at least a college degree.

Charles Murray

Working with George Miller was an education. It was eight college degrees in character development and directing all at once.

Cory Barlog

Universities used to prepare young adults for the real world. I dare say the graduates today go in without a clue and graduate without a clue. It's time to acknowledge the college degree is not worth what it was in the past. Times are changing, and so is the way we prepare our youth to survive in a competitive world.

Dale Archer

A college degree is the key to realizing the American dream, well worth the financial sacrifice because it is supposed to open the door to a world of opportunity.

Dan Rather

My parents told me that education was the path to success - and they showed me, taking me to Head Start while they were pursuing their own college degrees.

Denise Juneau

Economists who have studied the relationship between education and economic growth confirm what common sense suggests: The number of college degrees is not nearly as important as how well students develop cognitive skills, such as critical thinking and problem-solving ability.

Derek Bok

What I hear every day on talk radio is America's lack of education - and I don't mean lack of college degrees. I mean lack of the basic art of democracy, the ability to seek the great truths that can come only by synthesizing the small truths possessed by each of us.

Donella Meadows

At AT&T, I learned an awful lot about people, and how important it is to have the right people in the right jobs. And when I say 'right people,' I'm not talking about their college degree or work history; I'm talking about things like bearing - How does this person interact with other people? Can he or she talk to you and not tick you off?

Edward Whitacre, Jr.

While there have been news reports of recent college graduates living with their parents because they have been unable to find a job paying a salary sufficient to move out, their near and long-term career prospects remain far brighter than for those without a college degree.

Elaine Chao