Spring is in the air. The days are getting longer. And that means it’s the time of year when tens of thousands of young students decide what college to attend.

The number of young adults facing that agonizing choice is swelling. Young people are more likely to go on to college than in the '60s, '70s, and '80s. These students and their parents have absorbed a critical economic message of the past quarter century—and a Sound Money theme: Despite its high price tag, a college education pays off big measured in income and employment.

The demand for educated workers is strong in an economy that values knowledge, flexibility, and a willingness to learn. These numbers illustrate the trend. In 1999, male college graduates pocketed 58 percent more and women 92 percent more than their peers with a high school diploma. This compares to a much smaller gap of 19 percent for men and 52 percent for women two decades ago.

A college diploma is well worth the cost in time and money. Yet it’s troubling that the return from a college education is highly unequal, above all for black men, black women, and Hispanic women.

A number of forces are at work. Gender and racial discrimination in the workplace may be on the wane, but its still affects compensation. The government has scaled back its commitment to breaking down discriminatory barriers, too.

But the biggest impact comes from the lingering effect of poorly performing elementary and secondary public schools, especially in the nation’s major urban centers. Inner city schools leave too many minority children behind and handicap the achievements of those who end up in college.

The earnings gap between comparably educated whites and minorities won’t close until the public school system, the nation’s largest bureaucracy after the military, is overhauled. What's needed is far greater choice and competition in public school systems, principally in inner cities. The federal government also needs to pony up tens of billions of dollars more for public education, but target the funds at a region’s weakest schools.

Education reform isn’t easy to implement. But it’s vital in an economy where wealth, income, and employment increasingly depend on knowledge and information.