Convert Alphanumeric variable into Numerical Variable

[student1]

I have a categorical variable labeled "education" which assigns "high school" or "college" to each observation to indicate level of education achieved (I'm simplifying the coding for the sake of explanation). I want to convert "high school" to the value 1 and "college" to the value 2.

How can I achieve this in eviews? Another forum suggested the @val function, but I cannot figure out how this works.

[EViews Gareth]

Lookup valmaps in the user guide

[EViews Glenn]

There's also a Proc/Make Mapped Series off of an alpha series that will automatically make a numeric series with an attached value map.