<p>OP: College is not about making money but experiencing a life long change. It is the journey that count and not just the end result. Still it depends on the study you look at but looking at the following two studies </p>
<p>If one comes from an upper middle class background,college is just a place to find meaning and to self actualize.If however you are from the lower class,adopting this idealistic aims is mistaken.You will need to take care of your family,your relatives,be a role model in your community.And poor folks take you a lot more seriously if you can leverage an elite education with an elite paycheck.</p>
<p>I never expected my PhD in English to yield significant economic benefits as compared with many other careers I could have pursued, especially when I factored in lost income during years of study and time required to write a dissertation.</p>
<p>Even so, it was the right decision for me, and I have been very happy with my career.</p>
<p>I feel the same way as quite a few posters – first expressed by Garland I think. I did not pay for my kids’ schools to ensure an economic return. Each had an intellectual thirst that was satisfied by their experiences.</p>
<p>For example, my S is very interested in mythology. For a variety of reasons he took a summer course at Stony Brook in the subject and received an A+ for work that he doesn’t think would earn him a C at his own institution. He was pushed to perform at a level that allowed him to participate in and discover a slew of exciting and meaningful things. That was the reason I was willing to pay for his schooling. It wasn’t easy for us, but I am thrilled that I was able to provide both my children with that kind of experience.</p>
<p>I think one thing that is often left out of this discussion is that income is only one measure of success in many fields. Indeed, in quite a few fields it is not a very important measure at all. It seems to me that graduates of the most elite schools may be disproportionately choosing careers (or jobs within careers) that don’t pay all that well. For example, a college that produces a lot of Ph.D’s may not stack up that well against one that produces a lot of MBAs. But who’s more successful, an assistant professor at Mount Holyoke, or the CEO of a midsize business in Dayton, Ohio? Who’s more successful, a new legislative assistant for a Senator, or a new associate in the biggest law firm in Richmond?</p>
<p>^^^^^^Maybe, but what I am seeing among young people is that many of the brightest, at least from that “dead zone” in the upper middle class where a family might not qualify for financial aid, but cannot afford EFC without endangering the financial stability of the family or well-being of other family members, are CHOOSING to forgo that elite school education IF their primary goal is giving back to the community. Many reason (correctly or not) that if they are not saddled by loans or a need to rebuild a financial cushion, they can afford to practice in a branch of medicine that is needed but does not bring in the biggest bucks, or (for engineers) work for a small company that cannot afford to pay top dollar but produces what they consider a socially valuable service, or participate in basic scientific research, or become a public school teacher, or participate in a variety of other enterprises that generate social capital without heed to paying back loans or making up for tuition costs. JMHO</p>
<p>One can only talk about intellectual fulfillment and such, when you have a roof over your head and food on the table. For a lot of folks, growing up in a trailer park and parents are living in a paycheck-by-paycheck environment, the priority is different from those who grew up in the house of Bill Gates.</p>
<p>Yes, money is not that important after you have enough to live by.</p>
<p>The students who want to make money will obviously make way more money, at least on average. People who go law/elite finance/elite consulting outearn engineers/pharmacists (the money oriented career paths available to graduates of most schools) by a huge margin. </p>
<p>The issue is that a lot of people at Harvard/Yale/Princeton aren’t aiming for high salaries. A philosophy professor could easily make less than the average teacher, yet the job is highly sought after.</p>
<p>I think that a Harvard degree can be very helpful when it comes to managing one’s career – i.e. smoothly moving from one low-paying job to another in the rewarding field of one’s choice. If I’m a nonprofit administrator or something like that, none of the jobs are going to pay well. But chances are, I find some of them much more appealing than others. Having the Harvard degree can make it easier to be noticed in a crowded field of job applicants. That can mean more interviews and potentially more choices and more control over one’s path. At each job transition, it’s great to have any advantage that makes it just a little easier to land on one’s feet.</p>
<p>This is a tangible, though not quantifiable, benefit of the degree. It’s not solely about personal fulfillment and getting more pleasure from life.</p>
<p>What a lot of people here don’t get, I think, is that they are part of a very small percentage of the population that 1) Can pay big $$$ for a fancy private and 2) Can have the luxury of going to college for intellectual fulfillment or a unique experience. The majority of people are not that lucky, particularly in this economy. The study applies to those that as posters have said before need to put money on the table after they get a degree and cannot shell big bucks without huge loans and sacrifices and that need to make some money when they graduate because they don’t come from an upper middle class family like most people here.</p>
<p>Also, I have taught at a fancy private school and at a state flagship with an honors program. The students get the same unique experience, have super smart peers to learn from, small classes, etc. The only difference is that the ones in the state school are more self-made, and less of them come from upper middle class families like most people on CC.</p>
<p>Money is not important only for people that have money.</p>
<p>These threads come up again and again, I suppose because there is a strong desire to believe that super-selective schools are a waste of money. Well, they probably are for some people. Certainly, they are a luxury, and people can obtain success in life in all respects without going to one of them. But they do provide a lot of benefits that many people are willing to pay for, and (most amazingly) many other people are able to get those same benefits at a substantial discount or even for free.</p>
<p>Unfortunately, that’s the part of the underlying study that got garbled in Kotlikoff’s rush to piggy-back Dale and Kreuger’s conclusion (that controlling for such things as SAT scores and income, a harvard education doesn’t pay much more than one from Wesleyan) with his own rather biased conclusion (that college is a waste of time.)</p>
<p>The fact is, according to the original Kreuger study, students from lower-income backgrounds actually stood to gain the most from attending an elite college. The authors explian the irony this way: students from upper-middle class backgrounds already possess the kind of social skills and networking resources that lower-class students typically would attend an elite college to obtain, so the differential is not so great between the son or daughter of a doctor as it would be between the son or daughter of a postal worker. Also, on many elite LACs and universities a low-income student can graduate with little to no loan obligations</p>
<p>I do agree with Hanna that a big brand on the resume can be a tie-breaker for getting interviews, particularly for grads in early phases of their career.</p>
<p>Coolweather, private high schools are one more step removed from one’s career, so I’d say the pure economic justification is fairly weak. That doesn’t mean they can’t provide a great experience, but the ROI in terms of future salaries is likely even more tenuous than for an elite undergrad school (after controlling for student ability). Of course, tuition varies widely, and if one is looking at local options only then the comparison will be to the local public high school, which could be great or terrible.</p>
<p>The intellectual stimulation of my S’s very elite LAC led him to a career path he would never have thought of have he attended another college. I could be more specific, but it’s not really relevant to this thread. So my me, the question isn’t will he makes buckets of money, but will he make money. Had he had more direction, he might have done just fine at State U. However, the “normal” careers just didn’t appeal to him although he had the smarts for most of them.</p>
<p>My daughter’s elite LAC demanded a thesis that the students began in junior year. Now in law school, (not an elite law school but a respected on in her field of interest, and one that is very reasonable financially) her thesis has led to a very prestigious internship and a prestigious research gig.</p>
<p>So I don’t think we can estimate the contribution of an elite education.</p>
<p>I went to a State U and did well; my husband went and could never find his niche. I think an education at a more elite school would have been a godsend to him.</p>
<p>I as a student want to shift the value of “college worth” over a bit. I noticed before that somebody had said something about whether the college makes the students or if the students make the college. Maybe it’s not that the Ivies have the #1 professors or absolute best and popular connections. Instead, it’s that elite LACs and big research universities (such as the one I will be attending) are “better” because they’re full of students that want to learn so badly, that they WILL pay the big bucks and apply ED and take that chance for a reach school. They admit those with the highest GPAs in their schools, who know what they want to do and are willing to work hard throughout college. </p>
<p>The reason I focused my search on that top 25 is because I didn’t want a repeat of high school - football and parties, unmotivated classmates, a big distribution requirement of meaningless classes, and sub-par facilities. The college I’m going to admits people that have already proven they really want to learn and want to be successful in the future, while I’d be bored and underwhelmed at my SUNY state schools (which offer in some cases just as good an education, don’t get me wrong, but most of the students just aren’t at that caliber and the research is nowhere near the level).</p>
<p>Their big names and high price tags also pay for the greatest labs and hospitals, more educated researchers and professors (that DO have connections), and a chance for me to do more because I can afford it or because others that can get in by intelligence and dedication can get a good financial aid package. In essence, you’re paying for economic investment in the future AND a good time as a student to help you grow as a person.</p>
<p>The irony of this statement, as others have already alluded to, is that the college professor who made this statement ought to know full well that educations and careers are not judged merely by raw earnings figures alone. After all, practically every college professor would be making far more had he chosen a different career path. Nobody enters (or at least nobody should enter) academia for the money; you enter academia for the lifestyle that it offers, and in particular (at least for many professors) for the guaranteed secure paycheck that tenure provides. Surely many of us who have felt first-hand the trials and tribulations of the private sector economy in the last few years would gladly take a lower salary in return for the tenure guarantee of * a secure job for life*. </p>
<p>The truth is, once you’ve reach a middle-class lifestyle, another $10-20k, or heck, even $50k-100k per year isn’t really going to change your life by that much. Sure, you can buy a better house, better car, better clothes, but at the end of the day, your life is going to be basically the same. What matters now is your quality of life. Again, that’s why many people, including surely that college professor who proffered the aforementioned quote, chose careers in academia.</p>
<p>If the only thing you care about is maximizing your overall income (net of college debt), then don’t go to Harvard. And don’t go to any other college either unless they offer you a full ride with stipend. Instead, learn some computer/IT or handyman skills (i.e. plumbing, auto repair, carpentry, etc.) while you’re young and enter the workforce right out of high school. Let’s face it - those skills can be attained while still a young teenager; I know a kid who in his spare time had already learned how to masterfully overhaul cars before he was even legally allowed to drive them. Frankly, from a pure marketability standpoint, those types of skills are far more practical than, say, diligently learning how to deconstruct Hamlet in high school senior-year English.</p>
<p>I am a college professor, and I did it to spend a life in which I could read poetry aloud every day and get paid for it, and I can draw connections between Darwin and George Eliot, for example. Well, you get the idea. I can wear what I want, glory in the summer and spend the school year sharing what I love with folks who don’t care as much as I do, but benefit from it anyway, or so I have to believe.</p>
<p>I do believe that cultural literacy and actually literacy are valuable.</p>
<p>And no, I don’t earn buckets of money.</p>
<p>OTOH I never had to pay nannies or buy fancy clothes.</p>
<p>I have copied and forwarded your post to my children. I wish, we have more people like you around us to remind us about the meaning of happiness!</p>
<p>Does the full price tag at Harvard pay off in comparison with a much cheaper price at, say, Rice or Vanderbilt? In my opinion, no.</p>
<p>But does a top-ranked school with highly selective admissions pay off in terms of future income/quality of graduate school? In my opinion, yes.</p>
<p>It’s worth noting, however, that the most successful, wealthy, recognized, and ingenious people in this country follow a general trend of taking the road less traveled (dropping out of college, attending a lesser known institution, etc.)</p>