A college degree matters, the college it's from is not that important

Parents Forum
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<p>The</a> Real Problem With College Admissions: It's Not the Rankings - Derek Thompson - Business - The Atlantic</p>

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in the long run, which elite college you attend just isn't all that important. Longitudinal studies show that the success of the country's smartest students depends more on where they apply than where they attend. ... Why should we care that people go to college? Because in a world of immense risk, higher education might be the last slamdunk bet. Seven of the ten fastest growing jobs in the next 10 years require a bachelor's degree or higher. Each additional level of education correlates with lower unemployment rates and higher earnings.

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<p>That article includes a link to this one: What's</a> the Best Investment: Stocks, Bonds, Homes ... or College? - Derek Thompson - Business - The Atlantic</p>

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Critics will ask, if half the country is going to work in jobs that don't require college anyway (retail workers, food preparers, janitors), why force them to pay thousands of dollars on a degree? ... another answer is that college exists not only to train for the jobs we expect to fill, but also to built the next batch of innovative thinkers and smart employees who will create new industries with new jobs.<a href="emphasis%20added">/quote</a></p>

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<p>He’s right - which elite college you attend doesn’t much matter. For most purposes Stanford will work just as well as Yale. </p>

<p>But whether attending an elite vs non-elite college is important a rather different question…</p>

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<p>Yes, and some would argue, based on data, “probably not.”</p>

<p><a href=“http://www.nber.org/papers/w7322.pdf[/url]”>http://www.nber.org/papers/w7322.pdf&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;

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<p>Not having any stats in front of me, but i’ll bet big money, that ‘on average’, graduates from Ivies outearn any comparable sized state school</p>

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<p>And one more time. Could we talk about this in terms of “elite schools” versus “not elite schools” instead of elevating these particular 8 to some kind of dream-world status?</p>

<p>And coureur is right (as usual). Attend Stanford, attend Yale, whatever - no meaningful difference beyond personal preference.</p>

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<p>I would like to add a slight wrinkle to this discussion. Numerous statistical studies have clearly demonstrated the compensation differences between college graduates versus those without colege degrees. So, as the OP said, college matters. There appears to be a growing albeit weak consensus that there is no mid-career or long term difference in earnings based upon which college was attended. Some of the Payscale studies are particularly interesting in this area. Now for my wrinkle - I believe that a combination of WHERE you went to college (which college) and HOW WELL you did in college does matter in a non-linear fashion. The WHERE and HOW WELL answers do provide added benefits for the first job/position (e.g., probability of employment, entry level compensation package). After that, there is a lingering but decaying impact. Performance on the job will become more dominant for subsequent positions.</p>

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<p>Yes, graduates of highly selective colleges make more money than graduates of less selective colleges. No argument. But the question is, how much does the selectivity of the college have to do with it? The same student who turns down Yale - or Northwestern, or Williams - to go to say, UIUC, because that’s what her family can afford - will that negatively affect her lifetime earnings? (Much less the overall quality of her life?) The linked study suggests that, at least in terms of the economic impact, it would not. </p>

<p>People who go to highly selective schools do better economically mainly because they are smarter, more accomplished people to begin with, not because the schools are better - that’s what the data suggest.</p>

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<p>^^^Agreed^^^^^</p>

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<p>annasdad </p>

<p>Your comment effectively concluded that graduates from more selective colleges will earn more. That is just what most studies say. It is a comment about averages. Speaking about any one person is a study about individuals. There will be graduates from schools with low averages that will do spectacularly well. There will be graduates from schools with high averages that will fail miserably. This is a given set of realities when we talk about averages. When all is said and done, a graduate from a more selective college is LIKELY to do better.</p>

<p>As my earlier post said, I believe the college you attend (ed) will have its greatest impact in effecting your first job. Over time, the level of your performance - based upon your individual skill and motivation - will have a much more profound impact. In the short term, college attended has a strong impact. In the mid-term, it may be a wash. In the long term, the individual will matter the most through her/his performance.</p>

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<p>I think 10 years from now college quality will matter even more. It just takes time to filter through the system. The rewards for getting into the very best jobs are FAR more compared to the average job than they were in the past.
“This growing stratification is about what happens not only while students are in college, but also after. Those at the top of the postsecondary system, in more-selective four-year institutions, are tracked into professional and managerial careers that bring high earnings, as well as greater autonomy on the job and in society as a whole. Those in less-selective four-year colleges are tracked into good mid-level occupations, such as K-12 teaching, health care, and state and local public administration. Students tracked into the two-year-college system become more narrowly skilled workers, often in technical roles. They make decent pay but with less security, and they fall in the middle range of both earnings and autonomy on the job.”</p>

<p>COHE This week
[Our</a> Economically Polarized College System: Separate and Unequal - Diversity in Academe - The Chronicle of Higher Education](<a href=“Our Economically Polarized College System: Separate and Unequal”>Our Economically Polarized College System: Separate and Unequal)</p>

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<p>I think we have to remember that the colleges that top students typically attend when they can’t afford the most highly ranked private schools are still highly respected institutions. </p>

<p>The student who turns down Yale or Northwestern or Williams to attend UIUC is still at a major research university with an impressive reputation. And perhaps that is enough.</p>

<p>It’s the students who attend small local colleges or lesser institutions within their state system who may find that they have fewer opportunities than graduates of Williams or UIUC.</p>

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<p>Students who were attend flagship Us for financial reasons with stellar backgrounds and who are interested in learning & maximizing their opportunities CAN have outstanding opportunities. Our HS val went to state flagship with full ride because she got into many top LACs w/o sufficient merit awards. She is now in her 2nd year of med school at Mayo in Rochester where she has not had to pay a dime for her 1st year due to significant merit awards.</p>

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<p>Penn/Wharton 2009 grad, here. </p>

<p>Success doesn’t depend on where you go to school. Before you call me a hypocrite, let me explain.</p>

<p>People tend to confuse the two variables because so many people from selective schools tend to earn decent money after graduation. But that’s because they were already smart to begin with, largely because of coming from well-to-do families with intellectual/financial resources and an emphasis on education, and they tend to be better-connected. This is especially obvious when I look on my Facebook newsfeed from time to time and see what kinds of backgrounds my peers are coming from.</p>

<p>Institutions of higher education also have the network advantage of on-campus recruiting (OCR). Lots of top firms specifically come to selective schools to cherry-pick candidates. Some firms won’t even hire you if you’re not from a top-10. Investment banking, for example, is largely full of Ivy grads. I got my current job through my school’s OCR network (albeit being off-campus at the time). </p>

<p>This isn’t to dismiss or discredit the hard work students pour into their studies and careers, but simply point out that resources beget resources, and lacking resources means more barriers to get around and less opportunity to leverage. To be fair, selective schools tend to be tougher because your peers are more competitive, meaning you are held to a higher standard of learning if you want to do well, even if the material you learn isn’t much different from what you’d find at a less-selective uni. Simply getting into a reputable school isn’t enough when you have to work your ass off to ensure that you beat the class average by at least a standard deviation for the A.</p>

<p>Success is almost always a combination of luck, resources, networking, hard work, and brains. Simply vying for a college of prestige, all else equal, means you’re trying to rely on luck. You’re hoping a firm will look at your college name and hire you. You may still need the network to get you the interview, and even if you get the interview, you need the brains and hard work to pass – but sometimes it’s easier to get those traits if you’re from a family with resources or educated parents.</p>

<p>It’s a fairly messy interrelation of variables, but I urge students to really reconsider their position before they launch into any one particular college decision, especially if you have to pay for it yourself (like I am). Where the degree comes from does matter, but it doesn’t matter as much as you think. You have to really figure out if that extra prestige and networking is worth the money. Most of the time, it isn’t (especially if you’re already smart). There are just too many peers of mine who have great jobs who didn’t come from top schools. If you decide to take on the costs, you better be sure you take advantage of the network.</p>

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<p>I agree that crushing debt will limit the options of WHOMEVER is going to have to pay and pay and pay the debt off.</p>

<p>There are folks who do great from local Us as well as those who do poorly even with an ivy degree. Education is what you make of it and the opportunities you created and work at rather than some magic cachet that is conferred upon you for attending PRESTIGIOUS U. That said, you may have more amazing opportunities with less work (but also a more competitive cohort of classmates) from better-known Us with bigger budgets. D has been amazed at some of the opportunities she & her classmates at USC have been afforded, largely because it’s USC and all the connections the school has nurtured over the years.</p>

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<p>The above quotation is not exactly the same as:</p>

<p>“We find that students who attended more selective colleges do not earn more than other students who attended less selective colleges.”</p>

<p>Fwiw, “accepted and rejected” does not represent much of a category! It’s close to meaningless.</p>

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<p>Yes, but precisely because the average graduate from a more selective college is LIKELY to be a stronger student on average on the day he or she matriculates as a freshman, not because the quality of the education is necessarily better.</p>

<p>My individual comment is apt because individuals, not averages, make decisions on where to go to college. If you’re a 36 ACT / 4.0 student and choose to go to, say, Penn State instead of, say, Penn, will your life be affected negatively by that decision? The study I linked to suggests it really doesn’t matter.</p>

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<p>My points exactly.</p>

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<p>Actually the most recent study indicates just the colleges applied to is important. Also finds a value for growing groups of people.</p>

<p>"We find that the return to college selectivity is sizeable for both cohorts in regression models that control for variables commonly observed by researchers, such as student high school GPA and SAT scores. However, when we adjust for unobserved student ability by controlling for the average SAT score of the colleges that students applied to, our estimates of the return to college selectivity fall substantially and are generally indistinguishable from zero. There were notable exceptions for certain subgroups. For black and Hispanic students and for students who come from less-educated families (in terms of their parents’ education), the estimates of the return to college selectivity remain large, even in models that adjust for unobserved student characteristics.</p>

<p><a href=“http://www.irs.princeton.edu/pubs/pdfs/563.pdf[/url]”>http://www.irs.princeton.edu/pubs/pdfs/563.pdf&lt;/a&gt;
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<p>Actually, the Dale/Kruger study does not say at all. What it does imply is that within a group of schools with similar selectivity the choice may not matter much. The study has been frequently criticized in academic circles for trying to make points the data simply does not support.</p>

<p>The biggest problem is that sample included hardly any students who actually turned down the most selective colleges for a lower rated school. The vast majority of students admitted to HYPSM actually attend another top elite not Penn State. So there is no way to compare the achievement of a top student who was admitted to but turned down Princeton for a less selective college versus a student who actually enrolled at Princeton. Such students are extremely rare and there are virtually none in the study sample. The study has nowhere near the statistical power to draw any conclusion on such cases. </p>

<p>Even in the group ranked as highly selective, which is the next group down below most selective, a reported 90% of students who turned down a school in that category still selected a school in the same selectivity category.</p>

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<p>That’s exactly what it says.</p>

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<p>(emphasis added)</p>

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<p>Surprise, surprise. A study that casts doubt on the most cherished myths of the academic elite comes in for frequent criticism.</p>

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<p>I did find the 1999 working paper from the Industrial Relations Section at Princeton University that led to the publication of the article of the same name in 2002 (Dale, Stacy Berg and Alan B. Krueger, ―Estimating the Payoff to Attending a More Selective College: an Application of Selection on Observables and Unobservables. Quarterly Journal of Economics, 117(4), pp. 1491–1528, November 2002.). The major conclusions of this study were: </p>

<p>“We find that students that attended more selective colleges do not earn more than other students who were accepted and rejected by comparable schools but attended less selective colleges. However, the average tuition charged by the school is significantly related to the students’ subsequent earnings. Indeed, we find a substantial rate of return from attending a more costly college. Lastly, the payoff to attending an elite college appears to be greater for students from more disadvantaged family backgrounds.”</p>

<p>I think there has been an emphasis on the first portion of these conclusions without taking the qualifying comments adequately into account. What if we take a different conclusion out of context:</p>

<p>“Indeed, we find a substantial rate of return from attending a more costly college.”</p>

<p>So we see that the higher the tuition, the better the college (with respect to return). It would only be logical to conclude that Flagship U. is simply not the equal of the far more costly private colleges.</p>