The debate over the value of a high-cost college education continued this week with a Newsweek article titled "The Worthless Ivy League?"

The article contradicts a recent study by Kahn Associate Professor of Economics Caroline Hoxby '88 linking expensive colleges and later earnings--but an author of the study on which the Newsweek article is based claims the magazine misconstrued his findings.

Princeton economics professor Alan B. Krueger and Stacy Berg Dale, a researcher at the Mellon Foundation, studied the salaries of college graduates compared to the cost and prestige of their undergraduate institutions.

The study found that among schools in the top tuition tier, prestige was not a factor in determining graduates' salary.

Krueger took issue with the article because, he said, the Newsweek story disregarded the second part of his study, which looked at a wider range of schools, both top-tier and otherwise.

He said that the second part of the study compared schools in the top income bracket to less expensive universities and found that there is a benefit to paying more.

"Students who attend schools with higher tuitions have higher incomes subsequently," Krueger said. "These results suggest that there are economic returns" to attending more expensive schools.

Newsweek reporter Robert J. Samuelson '67 focused his article instead on the part of the study that declares that students make the same salaries regardless of the average SAT score of their classmates. He omitted Krueger's and Dale's finding that students increase their potential earnings by attending schools in higher tuition brackets.