21st century research, to date, indicates that the private and social returns from higher education are substantial. The subtext of both human capital theory and the signaling model is a belief that higher earnings are an indicator of "earned merit"; an assumption called into question, challenging the meritocratic basis for earnings inequality. In this report, the authors argue that the relationship between individual efficiency or productivity and wages is considerably weaker than economists frequently assume. If this relationship is in fact weaker, then the underlying mechanism behind the correlation between educational attainment and individual wages is also less certain. There are three primary issues with interpreting higher wages among those with higher educational attainment as evidence of increased personal productivity presented: (1) The relationship between education and individual productivity is far from absolute; (2) CEO "super-salaries" raise questions about measuring productivity separately from earnings because these "super-salaries" do not necessarily equate to a CEO's productivity output; and (3) Labor market discrimination directly contradicts human capital theory. The authors explore each of these issues in more detail, with particular attention to their implications for the relationship between higher education, productivity, and earnings. Collectively, these issues suggest that using earnings as a marker of the quality of higher education may be problematic.