This paper explores the rate of return to education in South Africa with special focus on the pattern of returns to different levels of schooling. Although a basic assumption of neoclassical human capital theory is that returns to education diminish, past analysis for South Africa suggests that returns are more likely to be convex. Estimates, however, are based on widely differing data and estimation methods so that only tentative conclusions can be drawn. In this paper we undertake a rigorous econometric exercise in which the same parametric and semi-parametric techniques are applied to a number of nationally representative datasets so that the results can be effectively compared.