Here is a representative list of schools in the Top, Middle and Bottom categories. It would be helpful if they had another category called “Tippy Top” with just the most selective schools. Maybe there was not enough data.
Examples of Schools in “Top” Category
Clemson University
Cornell University
Georgia Institute of Technology
Indiana University-Bloomington
Suny at Albany
The University of Texas at Austin
University of California-Berkeley
University of Colorado at Boulder
Bates College
Harvard University
Examples of Schools in “Middle” Category
Appalachian State
Bowling Green State University-Main Campus
California State University-Sacramento
East Carolina University
Illinois State University
Montana State University-Bozeman
Northern Illinois University
South Dakota State University
Suny College at Cortland
University of South Florida
Examples of Schools in “Bottom” Category
Black Hills State University
Central Michigan University
Jackson State University
Nicholls State University
Wright State University
Abilene Christian University
Gardner-Webb University
Youngstown State University
Southeastern Louisiana University
Bemidji State University
IMO there is the need for a 4th selectivity category in between Top and Middle. The current Top category examples have acceptance rates that range from 6% to 76%. That’s not a meaningful grouping. The Top category data is highly confounded with data from not-so-top schools. They might find a greater advantage for high-end schools if they chose the groups a little better.
I’d suggest that they could do a more meaningful analysis if they simply went with acceptance rate quartiles: Top = <25%, Strong = 25% - 50%, Middle = 51% - 75%, and Lower = >75%.
This isn’t big news and it’s been a decade since I worked within a Fortune 50 HR departments. We paid our college graduates engineers pretty much the same regardless of where the country they came from or where they attended college. I’ve posted this over and over and over. More recently my jrecently graduated middle kid (comparable and probably middle or even bottom judging by the names of uni posted) just accepted a job side by side with a UofM grad and they are being paid the same starting salary. Even a liberal arts kid, who lands a $40,000 a year starting salary which is very good for liberal arts at 14% more because they attended a Top Tier college is only making at most couple hundred dollars more after taxes per paycheck which isn’t a huge gap. So many posters have said it’s the kid not the school so many times but I guarantee there will be people that try to rip the article to shreds.
Also I really don’t think that in all cases jobs “pay” compensate totally for cost of living. If you take a job in Chicago or St. Louis or Mpls or Milwaukee and you have a pal who takes the same job in NYC or San Francisco I would not take a bet in a million years that the NYC person or the San Francisco is compensated to offset the cost of housing there.
Mark Schneider (former commissioner of the National Center for Education Statistics) found similar results in his research into college graduate earnings. .
“Worry less about which college accepts you and more about your major”
“This isn’t big news and it’s been a decade since I worked within a Fortune 50 HR departments. We paid our college graduates engineers pretty much the same regardless of where the country they came from or where they attended college. I’ve posted this over and over and over.”
That’s my experience too. Within a given firm the pay is the same for a given job once you get hired. But where the income differences might arise is in your chances of getting hired and/or which firm might hire you.
Even with their poorly-drawn categories they see that in business and liberal arts majors. And I think they’d see it to some degree in STEM too using better categories. I mean do we really think that someone with a CS degree from say Black Hill State or Gardner-Webb has the exactly same chances of getting hired in Silicon Valley or some other tech hub as someone with a CS degree from say Berkeley or Cornell?
“Mid career? I know of guys with a MS from MIT working for a guy with a BS from a midwestern school such as U Kentucky.”
When people say things like this, I just want to say … duh. This isn’t remotely newsworthy. I don’t know why people persist on thinking that the hierarchy in companies looks like the USNWR rankings.
During college visits with DD, we discovered that one of Hanover’s 5 annual CS grads went to G*gl the year before, and one of Lake Superior State U’s went to Apple.
So, um, yes. Yes I do. At the very least I am more firmly convinced that the student him or herself is the largest factor in success.
And agree with 50N40W – THAT factor has alot to do with the kid. My son might not have gotten his major and degree from UofM, but he’s great in action and can talk the talk and back it up, it’s quite amazing and I’m not sure where exactly he picked up that skill.
For some kids perhaps they might pick up the skills they need to land the job from a selective uni because they are in a cohort with kids that are socially adept, but for an already socially adept kid, it matters a whole lot less and the degree from whatever college they attend will be enough to get them where they are going. I really and truly believe that. The vast, vast majority of companies (maybe wall street is the exclusion) really don’t give a hoot where you got the degree, if you are the right person and they want you they will hire you for that first job. I told the kids to build a work resume flipping burgers or whatever and be the best worker you can stand to be starting in high school and go to a college where you will be happy and graduate and then pound the pavement and it’s worked so far for the two that have their degrees. I really don’t believe spending $80,000 to $100,000 more per kid would have had any extra value and I’m in a position where that money really is meaningful for the rest of my H’s and my life. If there’s anything left at the end of the line, the kids will get it back then instead of never seeing it in the form of checks to the bursar’s office.
I’m not saying that a CS grad from Lake Superior State CAN"T get hired in a tech hub, only that the odds are not the same. Every trend has exceptions. We all know someone who got a great job or rose to high level coming from a school of modest reputation. That’s a great success story. That’s where the applicant’s personal qualities really come into play. But those sexy tech companies go and recruit at high end tech schools. Their graduates often get the tech hub inside track if for no other reason than because the companies come to them.
An example: A few years ago I was getting off the Boston T subway red line at the Harvard stop and saw that Google had posted a large ad on the wall of the station tunnel leading up from the trains that showed a complex math problem. The caption said something to the effect of “If you can solve this problem call us at Google. We like to hire people like you.” That ad was not even all over Boston much less out in the sticks. The only place I saw it was at Harvard. Google chose to put that ad up at the Harvard stop for a reason. I doubt very much that they posted the same ad on say a freeway exit for some Local Directional State U.
In addition to several issues already mentioned, I notice a few more.
From the article: “a survey of thousands of college graduates and looking at what they were making a decade after they got out of school.”
First they did not assess the students who started at each college. They used graduates. This ignores a huge factor in favor of top schools, that their graduation rates are much higher.
Second, since they are using Pay Scale data, I think it is based on people reporting the salary at their current job. That probably excludes or at least undercounts unemployed workers, and underemployed workers. So top colleges get no credit for having higher placement rates.
It is true that major is more important than the college you attend. However, they would have to provide a lot more information to convince me that where you go does not matter at all. In the mean time, I think they are doing the cc crowd a favor by convincing the rubes that their whiz kid will do just as well at community college.
"We all know someone who got a great job or rose to high level coming from a school of modest reputation. That’s a great success story. That’s where the applicant’s personal qualities really come into play. "
“We” all know LOTS of people like that. Unless “we” are sheltered and naive.
I think there is a tendency for people in the few career fields that are heavily school-brand- name oriented to think that the world consists of fields just like that, and to be relatively clueless that plenty of their fellow graduates are working side by side with, or for, people from “lesser” schools. And in perfectly good careers, too. I don’t know how people get so insular but it happens.
Meanwhile, I value an elite school education in and of itself, not for whether it will bring one dollar more income than my state flagship.
“few years ago I was getting off the Boston T subway red line at the Harvard stop and saw that Google had posted a large ad on the wall of the station tunnel leading up from the trains that showed a complex math problem. The caption said something to the effect of “If you can solve this problem call us at Google. We like to hire people like you.” That ad was not even all over Boston much less out in the sticks. The only place I saw it was at Harvard. Google chose to put that ad up at the Harvard stop for a reason. I doubt very much that they posted the same ad on say a freeway exit for some Local Directional State U.”
Yes, and Google has exactly one ad that they can use for all their recruiting. Plus, Google is the only employer in the country.
Although one may question how the schools are classified in the paper, acceptance rate does not reliably indicate selectivity. In http://colleges.usnews.rankingsandreviews.com/best-colleges/rankings/lowest-acceptance-rate , Alice Lloyd College and College of the Ozarks make the first page with low acceptance rates, but their entering frosh high school academic credentials are not particularly high. Acceptance rate does not mean much without considering the strength of applicants and admits.
“Meanwhile, I value an elite school education in and of itself, not for whether it will bring one dollar more income than my state flagship.”
Same here. And sometimes it’s the same for employers too. Employers may not actually believe that stocking the staff with a lot of graduates from elite schools will directly pay-off in more and better products with resultant higher revenue, but that won’t necessarily stop them from valuing, or perhaps over-valuing, elite education just the same. They like to brag to themselves and to others about the high quality of their employees, and having graduates from elite schools can be seen as evidence of that. It’s not hard to see how that can open up more career opportunities for graduates from those elite schools
My own company embarked on just such a program for engineers about 10 years ago. They created a special 1-year high-perk, high-salary fellowship program with guaranteed permanent job offer after the year was up. An they openly bragged about how they were going recruit and hire for that program only from the very top engineering schools - MIT, Stanford, etc. No more relying on merely setting up a card table and passing out brochures on Career Day at the local state U for them. They were going for the best. And they did in fact pay them a higher salary than the “regular” hires from state U. They did manage to land some talented engineers from top programs, some of which have stayed on for long-term careers. But the main thing I learned from that adventure is that companies can be just prestige-smitten as people are.
Thus when someone tells me that hiring/employment prospects are exactly the same for STEM majors no matter where they went to school, I say well, sometimes yes but sometimes no. I’ve seen too much evidence to the contrary over the years n both recruitment and hiring within the industry to accept that statement at face value.
