>how much an M.B.A. degree adds to a person's salary, compared with how much it costs to obtain. At Dartmouth's Amos Tuck School, the nation's oldest graduate business college, tuition this year is $11,000, and the average starting salary for graduates is around $43,000. “That four-to-one ratio

I find it interesting that at first that sentence talks about how much the degree "adds to a person's salary", but then pegs the ratio at "four-to-one". Assuming the person entering the MBA program already had a 4 year degree, their salary potential wasn't likely $0, i.e. it didn't move the needle by a 4:1 ratio.

Factor in the interest on the loans, and the fact that the added salary (over their pre-MBA earning potential) would likely be taxed in the higher brackets, and I'd imagine the ratio jumps a lot lower.

And still - intuition tells me that value add of an MBA, from a salary perspective, over a person's career - is still quite good.