THE WAGE PREMIUM TO A UNIVERSITY-EDUCATION IN CANADA, 1971-1991

Using micro data from the Canadian Survey of Consumer Finances, 1971-9 1, we investigate the return to a university education. Our conclusion s are that while there appears to have been some decline in the return to a university degree during the 1970s in Canada (similar to the Uni ted States), the return did not rebound much during the 1980s except a mong the youngest experience (age) group. There is, however, considera ble noise in the ratios from year to year so that one is likely to dra w misleading inferences if only a few years of data are used.