Think of your child's college education as an investment. An investment in your child's future. In fact, a college education is one of the best investments you can make, because it offers the closest thing to a guaranteed return in terms of your child's quality of life as an adult.

According to a 2002 report from the Census Bureau, "The Big Payoff: Education Attainment and Synthetic Estimates of Work-Life Earnings," each succeeding level of education after high school adds thousands of dollars to a person's annual income, and millions of dollars of total earnings over the course of a working life.

The study found that, over an adult's working life, high school graduates can expect, on average, to earn $1.2 million; those with a bachelor's degree, $2.1 million; a master's degree, $2.5 million; a doctoral degree $3.4 million; and a professional degree $4.4 million.