<p>A college degree is merely the price of admission into jobs. Certainly you can work in an industry without a college degree, but eventually the expectation is that one will complete the degree. The only ROI for a college degree is that it sets you on a career track. My husband’s job (he’s now retired) did not require the completion of a college degree 30 some years ago. Now the price of entry is a college degree and you cannot get the certifications without the degree.</p>
<p>
</p>
<p>It’s human nature that those who perceived themselves as successful responds to volunteer surveys in that field, so it might be true that a lot more of high earner respond to these websites but you need to take into consideration most these web site actually shows you reports iff you add your results and in order to get an accurate result you know that you need to add accurate information.</p>
<p>So most people who genuinely interested in knowing where they stand in their financial compensation actually add accurate data about their compensations and that is why these surveys actually reflect quite good picture of the salaries.</p>
<p>Now 1000 data points per college are very meaningful from statistical surveys because we actually make voting prediction even from less data over a larger number of people.</p>
<p>
</p>
<p>If that is true then no one need to go to college and just pay tuition to get the certificate, which is possible at many private institutes. </p>
<p>You learn not only from the classroom but also from outside of a classroom in college. That is what distinguish great colleges from lowly placed colleges. Academic learning is possible from internet too and obtaining a piece of paper that you can call a degree is also possible but what you cann’t learn from all this is the experience you get at college.</p>
<p>This article also does not take into consideration that a student might also take 2 years in community college before transferring to a college or university. In that case, here in California, the ROI for UCLA, UC Berkeley, etc. is much higher. Interesting article, but the research doesn’t seem very thorough.</p>
<p>
</p>
<p>They do, but they do not use Payscale.</p>
<p><a href=“http://radford.com/home/overviews/radford_brochure.pdf[/url]”>http://radford.com/home/overviews/radford_brochure.pdf</a></p>
<p>And the data ain’t free. However, one can get some stuff from Payscale for free. You do get what you pay for.</p>
<p>
</p>
<p>The data shows nothing of the sort. It could be the case that more history graduates (as an example of a liberal arts degree) go on to investment banking (as an example of a higher paying career) from these schools than history graduates from another school lower on the list, who might go into education (as an example of a lower paying career)</p>
<p>What you want these data to show is that if you go to a prestigious university/college, you will earn more money or get a better job–that it is worth it or better for you financially to go to a prestigious university. But they don’t show that. They don’t compare students graduating with the same type of degree and then taking the same type of job. Do history graduates who go into investment banking from Harvard earn more money than history graduates who go into investment banking from the University of Massachusetts? This survey does not tell us this because we don’t know the careers of the people who responded to the survey.</p>
<p>skrlvr, history grads from Harvard who go into investment banking do earn more than history grads from U Mass who (would) go into investment banking–because many investment banks only hire from the Ivies and their peers. I think your general point is great, but investment banking isn’t an apt illustration of the point.</p>
<p>But how much more have H grads in IB cost us as a nation than Um grads?? I hear Trillions.</p>
<p>True and investment banking as it existed in the past two decades is probably not what investment banking will be in the coming two decades so as an illustration it is about as apt as using newspaper journalism. Most of the time ROI is measured on variables not exclusively financial so most of the time when people start talking about ROI of a college education and equating it to income I yawn because that is a simplistic measure.</p>
<p>“Now 1000 data points per college are very meaningful from statistical surveys because we actually make voting prediction even from less data over a larger number of people”</p>
<p>But those are from randomly selected folks, not self selecting respondents. The issue with payscale isn’t the number of respondents, but whether or not they are equivalent to a random sample.</p>
<p>"But how much more have H grads in IB cost us as a nation than Um grads?? I hear Trillions. "</p>
<p>that would depend on such questions as how much the investment banking is really responsible for the financial crisis (arguably its the congressmen who in 1999 took fin dereg too far, the Ibankers were just doing their jobs) how much of that was in each sector of Ibanking (hedge funds, traders, etc vs say, the M&A departments) and how many harvard BA’s (as opposed to MBA’s who went to many different places undergrad) were in those sectors. All of which I think are kind of beyond the scope of this thread. </p>
<p>Dick Armey had a lot to do with financial dereg in the 90s and he managed to avoid attending any Ivy League school “He graduated from Jamestown College with a B.A. and then received an M.A. from the University of North Dakota and a Ph.D. in economics from the University of Oklahoma.”</p>
<p>Should we blame UND and U Oklahoma for the financial crisis?</p>
<p>Anyone with half a brain knows that Harvard, other Ivy and a handful of very selective other colleges dominate WS hiring. It’s the major point of most of the IB threads on this site. Harvard was just shorthand for the entire group.
Just doing their jobs can be used in many circumstances we need not go into. They were doing their jobs BUT should have knopwn much better. Actually given some of the recent emails uncovered, they DID know better. They just cynically screwed their clients–often less sophisticated one in Europe whow ere stupid enough to trust them.
Read any of the major expose books on WS and tell me they are just fine with you in the way they operate.</p>
<p>If this is the same study everyone else has been writing about recently, it includes some additional limitations that make it even less accurate in valuing degrees. Not only does it exclude everyone with a graduate degree, it also excludes everyone whose income comes from self-employment (which would include being a partner in a partnership of any kind) or investment. It excludes people who were so successful that they were able to retire early, even if their success was mainly reflected in salary. The result is tremendously distortive. Let’s say a group of alumni is in a real-estate development field, where the career pattern is increasing salaries for a number of years, then partnership, then early retirement. The wages of the younger alumni will be included in the study data. But their older colleagues will drop out of the data altogether. So the notion of a career path that the study implies is that at 25 people do a wide mix of activities, but at 55 they all work for the government, nonprofits, or large corporations.</p>
<p>And, on the other hand, the study doesn’t (and couldn’t) filter out situations where graduates receive high salaries from businesses their relatives own. I have a law school friend who no doubt is not included in the study, because he IS a law school friend, even though he practiced law for about 18 months. Apart from that, his entire career has been spent working for the business his grandfather founded, and that he now runs. He has done very, very well. Is that typical of graduates of his hyper-experimental, tiny liberal arts college? I suspect not. He’s a great guy, and smart, too, but the institutions that educated him have had almost nothing to do with his career.</p>
<p>“Anyone with half a brain knows that Harvard, other Ivy and a handful of very selective other colleges dominate WS hiring. It’s the major point of most of the IB threads on this site. Harvard was just shorthand for the entire group.”</p>
<p>I have a full brain thank you very much. Its clear that if you want to go straight to WS with a BA only, you are much better off going to one of a handful of selective schools. Anyone who knows anything about WS hiring knows they also hire MBA grads, mainly from very selective B schools. And SOME of those went to standard basic State schools undergrad. </p>
<p>“Just doing their jobs can be used in many circumstances we need not go into. They were doing their jobs BUT should have knopwn much better. Actually given some of the recent emails uncovered, they DID know better. They just cynically screwed their clients–often less sophisticated one in Europe whow ere stupid enough to trust them.
Read any of the major expose books on WS and tell me they are just fine with you in the way they operate”</p>
<p>I think the job of an Ibanker is to make money, legally, given the existing regulations. Its the job of the GOVERNMENT to regulate the fin markets and make sure that those activies add to the economy. During the period in question regulation was very inadequate, and at least one of the people at fault (you can find many “expose articles” about it, was a graduated of Jamestown, UND, and U Oklahoma.</p>
<p>barrons</p>
<p>The last CEO of Lehman Brothers got his MBA at NYU. he got his BA degrees (BA AND BS) at - guess what - University of Colorado. </p>
<p>Anyone with any brain can look up things like that before spouting nonsense.</p>
<p>bernie madoff graduated from Hofstra, after attending U Alabama</p>
<p>James Cayne, last CEO of Bear Stearns, attended Purdue though he did not graduate</p>
<p>Angillo Mozzilo of Countrywide had a degree from Fordham</p>
<p>Plenty of blame to go around, not just the Ivies.</p>
<p>You and I have very different ideas about how educated licensed professionals are supposed to act both with the public and clients. Trying to skirt and/or outflank the laws is not high on my list. I’d bet that 75% of rank and file WS large firm professionals are form the schools I suggested. While the CEOs are certainly partly responsible few probably had direct detailed knowledge of what their people were doing. It took armies of sales people to market those securities to unsuspecting investors.</p>
<p>data, barrons?</p>
<p>I have given you names and schools. My guess is that there are plenty of folks at lower levels who went to schools no better than those at the top, esp in sales and trading (do you know anything about the relative prestige of different subfields in I Banking?) Unless you have data, dont quote me numbers out of your orifices.</p>
<p>You also seem to have a very odd view of the responsibilities of elected officials as well, if you think that private business ethics is a substitute for good regulation. </p>
<p>All of which is offtopic to this thread by the way. But I guess Ivy bashing is always fun, cheap populism.</p>
<p>I refer you to any discussion of getting hired at Ibanks. Please show me YOUR numbers to refute my claims then. Also the people designing the securities in question were not the same as the sales staff but all should know what they really have.</p>
<p>Actually my view of ethics is based on being in business and subject to ethical standards for 30 years. And my up front and personal experiences with folks from several top IBs underwriting securities. </p>
<p>There is no regulation that a person with the will cannot find a way to either subvert, ignore, or paper over. We also rely on the general good will of the people not to commit all sorts of crimes as there are not enough police to catch every criminal is the broad populace does not act legally in most regards. IBs seem to have the opposite approach–we’ll do whatever we can get away with and pay the fines when caught.
Hardly cheap populism when we know the guilty parties. Too bad the reform regulations were still watered down by WS over-reaching influence. Yes, there were other parties that share in the guilt but WS was the bulk of it and the end of the chain.</p>
<p>You can find general support for my conclusions in any of the several books recently published and included here:</p>
<p>[Amazon.com:</a> The End of Wall Street (9781594202391): Roger Lowenstein: Books](<a href=“http://www.amazon.com/End-Wall-Street-Roger-Lowenstein/dp/1594202397]Amazon.com:”>http://www.amazon.com/End-Wall-Street-Roger-Lowenstein/dp/1594202397)</p>
<p>"I refer you to any discussion of getting hired at Ibanks. Please show me YOUR numbers to refute my claims then. "</p>
<p>You are making the claim (that harvard grads in particular have cost the economy) its up to YOU to provide the evidence. I do not have to prove a negative.</p>
<p>I have given you the names of several top people individually held at fault for aspects of the crisis who were not from Ivy or other very selective schools. Now you give me some data supporting your position. </p>
<p>and dont just point to threads on CC about which COLLEGES are best for getting into an Ibank, while ignoring hiring of MBA’s. and esp not CC threads that lack supporting data.</p>
<p>As for bankers ethics, I think there will always be I bankers pressing the rules. Thats why Glass Steagall was passed to begin with - the structure of the financial sector matters. Good aggressive regulators, armed with flexibility to update regs as practices change are our best bet. </p>
<p>The people who gutted that regulation, are the ones most at fault, and many of them went to unselective schools as well. I dont care if you have a book that attacks WS while giving Dick Armey a pass.</p>