Good news for all Iowa State students fretting over their math courses this fall; In the long run, working hard at math pays off.

This is the message of a recent wage study by economists at the University of Iowa (“Real wages for skilled workers increase sharply,” The Des Moines Register, Tuesday, Aug. 24).

According to this study, real wages for college graduates in technical jobs have gone up 40 percent since 1971.

And the more math, the better the earnings. By contrast, college graduates in non-technical jobs have seen zero real wage gains between 1971 and 1998.

In fact, the researchers projected that eventually high school-educated technical workers will overtake non-technical, college-educated workers if current trends continue.

So swallow hard and work out those math problems.

And take extra math as insurance for the future!

Timo Seppalainen

Associate professor

Mathematics