Career and education choice play a central role in individual’s long-term financial planning. In this study, we focus on answering the question of whether higher education is still financially valuable. We define an individual’s wealth in terms of human capital (expressed as the present value of future earnings) in the function of overall wealth. We argue that human capital accounts for the majority of an individual’s wealth portfolio in most cases. By including human capital in the traditional portfolio choice framework, we show that the choice of career and education level has a significant effect on the Sharpe ratio of an individual’s overall wealth portfolio. We conclude by finding the present values of future earnings streams for individuals of various education levels from a number of occupations. The calculations are meant to provide some guidance on both career and education level choices.
