A college education may be more valuable than ever. A four-year degree provided Americans with a 12-percent to 14-percent private rate of return on investment during the 2000s.

Matthew J. Mayhew shared this finding in his latest book, How College Affects Students: 21st Century Evidence that Higher Education Works, the most highly cited synthesis of research in the field.

A leading scholar on the subject, Mayhew joined the college last autumn as the Flesher Professor in Educational Administration. Last year, he and colleagues launched a four-year longitudinal survey of 20,000 students at 130 public and private colleges and universities about their interfaith attitudes and experiences.

More than 70 percent of students said they placed importance on their colleges’ ability to provide opportunities to “get to know” people from different religious and nonreligious perspectives.

The donors of the professorship, William Ray and Marie Adamson Flesher, were both education alumni and college faculty until 1961.