Early in this century a good friend, that rarity of a professor who in neither boring nor leftist, took his daughter on the summer college tour, looking for the right place for her to spend the next four years. One of the stops included Wake Forest University, the alma mater of the recently retired Tim Duncan of San Antonio Spurs fame.

The patriot conducting the campus tour boasted that almost all Wake Forest grads found jobs or were admitted to graduate school. He then put out the shocking stat that the average salary of recent Wake Forest graduates was about $600,000 per year.

Sensing that this bodacious claim was getting the fish-eye it deserved, he conceded that the average might be somewhat lower if it did not include Duncan’s $20 million.