<p>Thank you for clarifying the parameters of P & T’s argument. Then it would seem that the rest of us can go on pondering which individual school is best for our individual students without being reminded that it doesn’t matter, since it does. Whew! </p>
<p>“Tiers” are a handy abbreviation for schools with similar characteristics, a concept easily grasped by most posters on the site. “Top 20” is a similar phrase. Few people really think that the 20th-ranked school is twice as good as the 40th. One may talk about tiers without drinking the USNews Kool-Aid.</p>
<p>Those large salary differences are prima facie evidence that attending Ivy League colleges does have career effects. The burden of proof is to show that the differences are attributable to something other than attending those schools, per se. Some evidence (e.g. from the Krueger-Dale studies) indicates that it is. Other studies (e.g. Caroline Hoxby’s) indicate that even after controlling for test scores and GPAs, not all of the difference is eliminated. </p>
<p>Are the salary differences largely due to the number of Ivy grads choosing lucrative jobs in finance? If so, then if the many anecdotal reports from CC posters are to be believed, this does not appear to be a choice that is equally available to smart, hard-working graduates of every college. High-paying Wall Street firms seem to place a premium on Ivy diplomas. For many other career fields, I would not bet the farm on getting a similar earnings benefit just from attending an Ivy League college.</p>
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<p>This is an important point. There is an absence of good data. The Common Data Set information is interesting, up to a point, but it would be nice to have information like the NSSE “engagement” profiles for more of the pricey, selective schools.</p>
<p>And, following up, here are the things that P&T (p.642) say do have statistically significant impacts on learning:</p>
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<p>Every one of those refers to a collegiate environment that supports those student activities and initiatives that the research shows leads to improved educational outcomes. In other words: what a student does at college is more important than where a student goes … but there are schools that make it easier for a motivated student to engage in those activities. Can a persistent student do those things anywhere - likely yes. But the colleges where they are more prevalent, and more encouraged, are going to have better educational results for the mythical “average” student.</p>
<p>EDIT: and as tk21769 notes in the cross post, the NSSE - which measures many of these factors - is available for some schools. But nowhere near all schools.</p>
<p>Indeed it would. To what do you attribute the fact that these most-selective (and expensive) schools, across the board, decline to participate in NSSE (or release their data if they do).</p>
<p>Do you think it could possibly be that doing so would show, once and for all, that these emperors have no clothes?</p>
<p>“If so, then if the many anecdotal reports from CC posters are to be believed, this does not appear to be a choice that is equally available to smart, hard-working graduates of every college”</p>
<p>The large banks probably spend more time at Ivy league schools and a few other target schools, but you can get into any of them from just about any college if you have done well academically and interview well. </p>
<p>In college, I met a guy that spent the first two years of undergrad at a very mediocre directional state school, and he is now a managing director of investment banking at a prestigious i bank.</p>
<p>I really don’t know why more schools don’t participate (or disclose their data).
Non-participants include other institutions besides the most selective (and expensive) schools. My state’s flagship apparently does not participate. Neither do some of the “Colleges That Change Lives”. Personally, I would expect most highly selective schools to do rather well on these surveys. However, they do have a lot more room to go down than to go up in public perception. So yes, the choice not to participate/disclose might be a hard-nosed marketing decision.</p>
<p>To play devil’s advocate though … The survey includes some items that require a rather subjective response. For example, it asks whether you worked harder than you thought you could to meet an instructor’s standards or expectations. So if I thought my school had exceptionally high standards/expectations, and unusually capable students, I’d be concerned about how the NSSE could fairly compare the “level of academic challenge” from school to school. </p>
<p>Nevertheless it would be interesting and useful to have full disclosure from more institutions on the many objective factors the survey covers, such as the “number of written papers or reports between 5 and 19 pages”.</p>
<p>"[USNWR] based 95 percent of its ratings on college reputation, alumni giving, faculty salaries and other “input” measures because comparative metrics of how well colleges and universities educate their students simply haven’t been available.</p>
<p>Until now. New research and advances in technology in the last several years have led to a host of new ways to measure the performance of colleges and universities—and the new metrics are yielding some surprising results.</p>
<p>An arm of the RAND Corporation created a test in 2002 called the Collegiate Learning Assessment (CLA) that measures how much students’ ability to communicate, think critically, and analyze complex information improves from their freshman to their senior years. Over 250 of the nation’s nearly 2,200 four-year colleges and universities (including Harvard) are using it, and the results have been eye-opening: many of the colleges producing the greatest gains aren’t elite schools but regional public universities that admit almost everyone who applies.</p>
<p>Another new measure, the National Survey of Student Engagement (NSSE) housed at Indiana University, gauges student-faculty interaction, the number of books and papers required in courses, the quality of campus student support services, and other things that research has found to help students learn and graduate. Over 600 schools are now using NSSE and a number of the highest-scoring schools are closer to the bottom of the U.S. News rankings than the top."</p>
<p>Thanks Sally, I had not seen that article. In the study reported in “Academically Adrift,” there was a correlation between the percentage of students who reported themselves engaging in high-payoff activities on the NSSE and the percentage of students making statistically significant improvements in the CLA in the first two years of college.</p>
<p>Not a surprising result since they are comparing improvement in those skills and not their absolute level. And they are measuring it by means of a standardized test (CLA) to boot. </p>
<p>High-end colleges skim off the top of the applicant pool at the outset, applicants that have already demonstrated fairly well-developed communication, thinking, analysis, and standardized test-taking skills. And for colleges their average CLA score has been demonstrated to be highly correlated to their average SAT/ACT scores. There is far less room for improvement when you are already at or near the top of the standardized test-taking scale. </p>
<p>To make up a hypothetical example, a kid whose communicating, thinking, and analyzing standardized test score goes from say 90 to 95 over the course of four years hasn’t shown much improvement. But a kid who has moved from say 30 to 70 has shown a huge gain. But which kid would have the actual greater level of skills (assuming you believe in the test)?</p>
<p>Nice try, but that was one of several dozen variables controlled for. Students with like SAT/ACT scores at different institutions were compared. (“Academically Adrift,” p. 149 and Table A.2.1)</p>
<p>It was obvious from the very beginning of their educations that both my daughters were high performers. And as they grew older and moved into high school there developed an unspoken but clearly understood agreement between us that if they would put in the work necessary to get admitted to the top schools, I would figure out a way to pay for it. They both kept up their end of the bargain and so did I.</p>
<p>I didn’t discourage the girls from going to high end colleges, but for reasons that little or nothing to do with prestige or expectations of later earnings or success. What I wanted was for them learn a lesson in aiming high. Aim high and then be willing to put in the work to earn your goal. </p>
<p>If they didn’t want to aim high or weren’t willing to work hard, fine. If that had been their nature or decision I would have been happy to send them to the local mediocre U and be satisfied with it. That certainly would have saved me a lot of money. But if, after years of hard work and a very successful K-12 performance, I had said to them “I know you have worked very hard and thus are qualified for the selective high-end colleges, but Pascarella and Terenzini have published that going to college there won’t improve your later outcomes. So sorry, but you are going to have to go to the non-selective local college where all your high school friends who worked less than half as hard as you did, who slid through on minimal effort, are also going.” </p>
<p>Somehow, I think that telling them that Pascarella and Terenzini mostly looked at “juried” publications would not be very compelling or consoling. Sometimes picking a college comes down to simply delivering an earned result.</p>
<p>If you can afford to write the check and you value having your kids go to high-prestige colleges that is, of course, what works for you. </p>
<p>But to me, it’s fundamentally wrong to claim, against all evidence to the contrary, that attending one of these schools will result in a better education or significantly enhance employment prospects or lifetime income. Because that entices people who CAN’T afford them to go into debt in the anticipation of benefits that simply won’t be there.</p>
<p>coureur, absolutely, it’s great that your daughters were high achievers and hard workers and got the results they wanted. But there are not only two choices: “top” schools and everything else (“the local mediocre U”). And not all students like your daughters end up at the Ivies or other elite universities–many of them don’t apply in the first place. Not everyone wants to be on the east coast, or at a very competitive institution, or at a university where undergraduate teaching is not the priority. And if they are especially non-conformist, they are going to seek out alternatives that are either off most people’s radar or that speak to them in a particular way. As hard as it is for some visitors to this site to comprehend, an Ivy League diploma is not everybody’s dream.</p>
<p>Rutgers: 43% response rate, 25% plan to attend graduate school, 26% report having a job at the time of graduation. 35% report salaries of $40,000 or higher, 26% report salaries of $50,000 or higher.</p>
<p>Princeton: 99% response rate, 61.6% has accepted employment, 22.5% has pursued further education. Average salary $62,423.</p>
<p>And as somebody who knows a couple dozen kids (or their parents) who have attended the “local mediocre U” (a state directional with a middle 50% ACT range of 20-24), I can attest that many of those kids have done well and are employed in professional-level jobs. Not all of them - many dropped out, but those were the kids whose preparation or study habits were inadequate. For the rest, their college served them very, very well. And at far less cost than pricier alternatives.</p>
<p>oldfort, show me statistics that compare the starting salaries of graduates after controlling for the characteristics of the students enrolled, and I’ll be impressed. Of course, on average a Princeton student will have more prospects than a Rutgers student. That’s because the average Princeton student is smarter than the average Rutgers student. </p>
<p>But for a given student, there is not a statistically significant difference - with the limited exceptions I’ve cited elsewhere. And a parent is not deciding where to send an average student - a parent is making a decision where to send a given student.</p>
<p>I don’t understand why that’s such a hard concept.</p>
<p>If you are a smart kid and have the opportunity to go to Princeton or Rutgers, which one would you go to to have a better chance of getting a job? If a company is not even going to recruit at Rutgers, what would it matter? THAT is something you do not comprehend.</p>