We survey the literature on the Risk Augmented Mincer equation that seeks to estimate the compensation for uncertainty in the future wage to be earned after completing an education. There is wide empirical support for the predicted positive effect of wage variance and the negative effect of wage...

While uncertainty abounds in almost any decision on investment in schooling, it is mostly ignored in research and virtually absent in labour economics text books. This paper documents the scope for risk, discusses the tough disentanglement of heterogeneity and risk, surveys the analytical...

We apply a recently proposed method to disentangle unobserved heterogeneity from risk in returns to education. We replicate the original study on US men and extend to US women, UK men and German men. Most original results are not robust. A college education cannot universally be considered an...