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<p>He could have a PhD in finance from his school and that would not change his expertise in personal finance one way or the other. This is a person that has been very successful as a young entrepeneur and very successful in tooting his own horn on sites that are particularly known to attract a discriminating audience. </p>
<p>What does he know? A lot less than he thinks he does! But that is still a lot more than the people who will read his book and find it … valuable.</p>
<p>As no one has yet cited the Krueger Dale study, that I was first exposed to in a chapter of the book “Harvard, Schmarvard”, I’m inserting a link to a discussion of this study here:</p>
<p>[Who</a> Needs Harvard? - Brookings Institution](<a href=“http://www.brookings.edu/articles/2004/10education_easterbrook.aspx?p=1]Who”>http://www.brookings.edu/articles/2004/10education_easterbrook.aspx?p=1)</p>
<p>to grossly summarize, students accepted into the tippy top elite schools, but who matriculated instead for a variety of personal reasons into much lower ranked schools (but still top 100 is what I infer… i.e. State Flagships), earned about 98% as much over the ensuing 25 years as their cohort who were accepted into these elite schools and did in fact matriculate.</p>
<p>The conclusion I reached is that the advantages of actually attending a super elite school – more stimiulating discussion in and out of the classroom, access to their cohort’s successful parents’ networks, the signaling effect of an elite school name, etc. all sum to a palry 2% advantage in the real world where work ethic, creativity, personableness, effectiveness, doggedness, etc. are far more causitive of career and life success than the name on a diploma, or the various effects of socialization with a “superior/elite” cohort.</p>
<p>Bottom line, super elite schools are like holding tanks… they neither improve nor diminish an attending student’s financial opportunities in life. Kids who are accepted have proven they are likely to be successful in life (already are in fact), and will be comparatively inordinately successful financially whether they actually attend an elite school that has accepted them, or instead attend a much lower ranked school.</p>
<p>The exception to this conclusion, as noted by Krueger Dale, is the likely experience of an historically socially disadvantaged student… such students benefit more than the mere 2% from having actually attended the super elite school. For such an historically disadvantaged student, the imprimateur of the elite school creates a necessary validation (or more necessary signalling effect) that said student belongs, or has earned a right, to be among the socially elite, as well as a socialization into the elite world that would have escaped them in their home environment.</p>
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<p>Although I could pretend that the last part of my sentence was sarcastic, it wasn’t. What I meant was “This is a person that has been very successful as a young entrepreneur, and very successful in tooting his own horn on sites that are NOT particularly known to attract a discriminating audience.”</p>
<p>I have never seen if or how Krueger Dale adjust for differences in fields of study or in personal charecteristics for the cross admits.</p>
<p>I would expect, for example, that among those admitted to both Columbia and Penn State, say, there would be more engineers picking Penn State, and more would be political activists picking Columbia. That there would be more folk with a belief they had the personal qualities to maximize their opportunities in a large school environment picking a Penn State over a Columbia. Etc, etc. </p>
<p>Thats really not a simple methodogical issue (esp on the personal traits). It may sound like Im nitpicking, but when I see a result that goes so much against my Bayesian priors, so to speak, I am inclined to wonder about the methodology.</p>
<p>see also the hoxby study mentioned in the brookings cite.</p>
<p>I think the article’s points are on target. I teach at a very well regarded and “nationally ranked” high school and some of my students go on to do very well and others don’t. I can usually tell which ones are going to really succeed in college and after by getting to know them in high school. In other words, there are some people with certain behavioral traits and innate smarts that propel them ahead of others even though they are all in the same rigorous high school college prep program.</p>
<p>Probably the only reason the elite colleges tend to be known for more success stories is because of their highly selective admission process. Put an average kid in a Harvard class and they will probably end up like an average kid elsewhere. Put a superstar at the local public and they will probably end up a superstar like the Harvard superstar.</p>
<p>^ That may be true, if your only metric is average future earnings. What if your metric is future contributions to a challenging academic field such as mathematics?</p>
<p>tk,</p>
<p>The beauty of the Krueger-Dale structure is its simplicity. It is easy to measure earnings over a 25 year period. I don’t know how one would measure the “value” of an elite college graduate having earned a position as the Director of an important non-profit, vs. the graduate who instead attended Flagship U, and became editor of Rolling Stone magazine.</p>
<p>“Success” is impossible to define, but I do not see how measures of success other than financial should end up differently than the 2% delta in monetary earnings.</p>
<p>Hey! I posted this first! :P</p>
<p>The “College Journey” matters – a journey that can last from 4-8 years. And for some that journey matters a great deal.</p>
<p>In much of the world (e.g. France, UK, Australia, Germany, etc.) the book that’s being discussed is mostly irrelevant. The universities are public, and students are streamed to those public universities that are their best match. The “costs” are low – free in some countries. CC notwithstanding 90+% of American student go to their state system, and they do as well as their international counterparts.</p>
<p>The American university system is unique in that it offers the private option. Not many students choose that route. And for many, and perhaps most, the private route makes little sense. For most students in the private system the rationale is not economic but more a matter of lifestyle.</p>
<p>The ranking are all useful for those who choose the private option, or an out-of-state public school. They provide insight. In some cases they are amusing, and perhaps inapplicable.</p>
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<p>Does the simplicity of the study mask its lack of relevance to our overall system of college education? </p>
<p>Here’s the starting point: </p>
<p>*To overcome the problem, Ms. Dale and I restricted the comparison to students who applied to and were accepted by comparable colleges. Some students chose more selective schools; some less selective ones. *</p>
<p>Does Mr. Zac really writes about people were ACCEPTED to selective schools but selected less selective schools? Or does he write about people who did not have that option for the simplest of reasons, namely that they were NOT accepted in the more prestigious schools. The students described in the Kueger-Dale study are NOT necessarily students who applied to Zac’s schools and decided to attend. </p>
<p>Should we not evaluate the size of the population of this famous group? How many of the students who applied to the USNews top 25 schools were BOTH accepted and decided to attend a lower ranked school? Considering the average yield at the schools and the number of non-unique applications, I’d say that the number ought to be pretty low. </p>
<p>Now let’s compare THAT number to the total number of students who attend one the 3 or 4,000 colleges and universities that are hardly considered most or more selective. What might that ratio be? Incredibly small! </p>
<p>The study is indeed simple, but most of the conclusions reached by untrained and inexperienced readers a la Zac B. tend to be overly simplistic. Yes, students who were admitted to highly selective schools WOULD do well at less prestigious schools and continue to do well. But that does not mean that the same conclusion applies to the 90+ percent that was not admitted to higher ranked school.</p>
<p>How different is this from claiming that Michael Phelps would win as many medals at the Olympics were he to swim for Nepal? He would. But that does not make any of the Nepalese swimmers able to be on the US team nor make the Nepal team remotely comparable to the US team!</p>
<p>Rankings are interesting, but shouldn’t be taken too seriously.
“University of CC is ranked three places higher than CC University, so I should go there.”
Is an example of taking it too far.</p>
<p>[Where</a> the Fortune 50 CEOs Went to College - TIME](<a href=“http://www.time.com/time/nation/article/0,8599,1227055,00.html]Where”>http://www.time.com/time/nation/article/0,8599,1227055,00.html)</p>
<p>link back from 2006 where the Ceos from fortune 500 companies went to. 22 went to publics</p>
<p>There is a lot of fail in that article. Points 1-4 just address issues with some currently existing rankings. They in no way support the thesis that “Every Single College Ranking Is a Pile of Crap” <em>emphasis mine</em>.</p>
<p>I’m not sure what #5 is meant to prove. IIRC, the correct context for that remark was within a proposal for new standardized exit exams for college students. It may make a bit more sense when considered in that light.</p>
<p>@xiggi: You point in post #30 is correct, but for a prospective student the Krueger/Dale study is still relevant in making a choice.</p>
<p>Don’t you guys know anything about attracting audiences with headlines? Of course it’s sensationalist with the “every single” phrase; headlines and book titles aren’t composed for accuracy. They’re composed to attract readers.</p>
<p>I agree with some of the points but disagree with the basic premise. As Hunt said, the college you go to becomes part of who you are. So yes, it’s only one small puzzle piece in the rest of your life - but honestly, the college you decide on also determines who your friends are for the next four years; people who will become your alumni network later. It determines where you live and the kind of environment in which you are immersed, what kinds of people and experiences and ideas you are exposed to at a formative period of life.</p>
<p>I’m usually the first one on the boards to say that borrowing large amounts of money to attend a school just for prestige is ridiculous. But I will say - I went to undergrad at a small liberal arts college ranked at #68 and now go to an Ivy League ranked at #4 (so everyone knows what it is, right? LOL) for graduate school. The differences are marked. First of all, this place is more ethnically diverse (the school I went to was a historically black women’s college). I’ve met far more people from more places across the world. The resources are also incredible - my alma mater shared a library with two other schools; this place has 20 libraries. The research being done here is cutting-edge and known the world over. And I can see the change in people’s faces when they ask where I go to school and I tell them. Sometimes, I don’t even have to look for a change - they say something about how impressed they are or make a noise. Also, in general the students who attend here have high aspirations.</p>
<p>At my alma mater most of the students were middle-class and they wanted middle-class things - some were training to be physicians, engineers, and lawyers; if not, then they were looking at teaching, nursing, university professor, middle-management, other kinds of middle-class positions. Here at Columbia, where most of the kids are upper-middle-class, the students have overlapping but generally higher aspirations. They want the doctor/lawyer/engineer thing, but they also want to be CEOs, politicians, entrepreneurs, policymakers, top professors, work on Wall Street…the atmosphere is a lot more…not competitive, but motivating I guess is the word. You see everyone around you aiming high and achieving high and you’re like “Mmm, maybe I can be a top whatever, too” instead of just assuming you’re going to be middle-of-the-road.</p>
<p>However, is that saying that life would be better if I hadn’t gone to my alma mater? Not necessarily. I think I’d be in a different place in my life - would’ve made different choices - if I hadn’t gone to my alma mater. For one thing, the faculty here isn’t very diverse - there’s only one black female professor in one of my departments, whereas at my alma mater more than half of the professors are black females, so I got to see role models that looked like me with PhDs and that greatly influenced my decision to get one myself. For another, in my experience the faculty here are bad teachers, whereas the faculty at my alma mater were exceptional teachers.</p>
<p>Another thing is that my undergraduate degree is going to matter a lot less once I finish my PhD.</p>
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I was under the impression he was arguing against the general practice of ranking colleges.</p>
<p>DunninLA, it is possible to measure many post-graduate outcomes other than earnings. For example, do students who turn down ultra-selective schools to attend much less selective schools earn doctorates in equal numbers? Do they publish in academic journals at equal rates? Do they win Pulitzers, MacArthur grants, and Nobel prizes at equal rates? </p>
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<p>There may be more than a 2% delta for the kinds of achievements I mention, or there may not be. That’s a matter for research to determine.</p>
<p>I wish articles like this received more exposure. As others have already said, rankings in general hold some truth (ex. Harvard would most likely have better professors than let’s say ABC Community College). However I think it is terrifying that students would pick one university over another simply because it is 15 ranks higher than the other on some arbitrary list.</p>
<p>"This article hits the right note. As a first year college student with high scores and grades, I have been spending the last six months explaining this to people and justifying why I did not attend the best USNWR ranked college that accepted me. What school you choose is a complex decision based on personal aspirations, financial considerations, personality, future trends, etc. I’m not saying Wright State in Dayton, Ohio, is anywhere close to Harvard, but it’s insulting to our intelligences to produce a list of colleges based on general excellence. " --311710rvmt</p>
<p>Hearing fellow students who decided to attend a “lesser ranked” school always makes me happy. I remember feeling at times physically nauseated when recollecting my decision to go to a school ranked 30 instead of 15 because of the nagging questions I received from classmates (seriously, that’s the pressure high schoolers face these days). But in the end, I’m positive I made the right choice.</p>
<p>Another person on this thread put it best when they said that the college you decide to attend “becomes a part of you.” Students should understand that when you pick a college, you pick a lifestyle choice. So when you pick a school, consider what best fits you and not a semi-calculated list.</p>
<p>The kid has a book coming out that has been featured in major publications and websites some of which he’s a contributor to. Go ahead and scoff at the kid but he’s going to finish college with no debt, a big bank account, and a bright future. </p>
<p>Meanwhile, how many people dissing on him are still paying off their student loans or have kids who just signed their lives away on a ton of them?</p>
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We don’t actually know any of these.</p>
<p>We can maybe assume from the title that he’s telling the truth about not having loans, and therefore he has no debt. But consider the title of his book:</p>
<p>“Debt-Free U: How I Paid for an Outstanding Education Without Loans, Scholarships, or Mooching off My Parents”</p>
<p>If he didn’t take out loans, didn’t get any scholarships, and didn’t get any money from his parents, what does that leave? A job? Playing the stock market? I</p>
<p>Four years of UMass Amherst will run you $75-80K if you are in-state, a lot more if you are not. If he earned that much, kudos to him, but that is extremely atypical.</p>
<p>It will be interesting to see exactly how did he pay for college, but I don’t have much hope of him saying anything groundbreaking. There are no magic bullets for paying for college. I really hope this “5 reasons” article is more than a lead-in to “go to community college for two years and then transfer” or “go to the cheapest in-state school that has your major”.</p>
<p>Does he have a bright future? I hope so, but I wonder how much of his fame is due to the novelty of his age, not his actual body of work. If he’s 30 and writing this book, how much free publicity does he get?</p>
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<p>There is a difference between dissing the kid and not agreeing (or being impressed) with his conclusions. Would we enjoy reading the opinion of a rich trust fund baby telling that all the people who decide to borrow money to offer their children a solid education are … “suckas”? </p>
<p>For what it is worth, one could applaud his drive, his prematurity in success, and also doubt that he has accumulated enough data and experience to tell the world how wrong it is when it comes to education.</p>