<p>The Krueger & Dale study at the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation Research Center found that although graduates from elite colleges make significantly more money, that there is no significant difference in income between those who had been accepted at those schools but had chosen to go elsewhere. The database used was the "College and Beyond Survey" of 75,000 students who enrolled in 34 colleges in the years 1951, 1976 and 1989. In particular, the study concentrated on 23,500 students who had entered college in 1976 and the 75% of that group who had responded to surveys conducted in 1995 and 1997.</p>
<p>yea ive heard about that study and i think that point really needs to get through to a lot of the people on this website. if you're an intelligent, driven person, you don't need to rely on the the rep wherever you received your degree to succeed</p>
<p>yea, I agree</p>
<p>just like how smart, well-rounded students can get into harvard from a regular public school or from a top private school. a smart, well-rounded student is a smart well-rounded student.</p>
<p>I don't understand. Elite colleges do not want well rounded students.</p>
<p>true, but either way, that is not exactly what we are saying. the point is your ability to succeed does not depend on the COLLEGE you attended. trust me, i personally know a 1600 genius who went to harvard and is doing absolutely nothing interesting and barely making any money</p>
<p>I've seen that point made before. In "Harvard Schmarvard", Jay Mathews says that a fellow alum from his graduating class at Harvard sent in his 35th annual report to the alumni club from a state prison in Fishkill, NY saying that his life had been "an uninterrupted saga of frustration, failure and loss."</p>
<p>The Krueger study has been popularized in the press but I think the study has been shaded (by the paper authors no less!) to give this conclusion.</p>
<p>In the preface the report states "We find that students who attended more selective colleges do not earn more than other students who were accepted and rejected by comparable schools but attended less selective colleges." This is the part widely quoted in the press. What isn't mentioned is they go on to write"college selectivity is typically measured by the average characteristics (eg. SAT score) of classmates". In other words, all they're saying is that if you're accepted to a basket of schools, the avg. SAT of the students at the school you choose is unrelated to your future income.</p>
<p>Furthermore in a draft of the paper the very next sentence says "However the Barrons rating of selectivity and the tuition charged by the school are significantly related to the student's subsequent earnings". See the draft at <a href="http://www.irs.princeton.edu/pubs/pdfs/409.pdf%5B/url%5D">http://www.irs.princeton.edu/pubs/pdfs/409.pdf</a></p>
<p>In the body of the draft on page 26 they write "The effect of the Barrons rating is more robust to our attempts to adjust for unobserved school selectivity than the average SAT score. Based on the straightforward regression results in Column 1, men who attend the most competitive colleges earn 23% more than men who attend the very selective colleges, over variables in the equation being equal. The estimated effect ... is even more robust for women".</p>
<p>BTW if you're wondering what Barron's has to do with all of this, the study looked back to students entering college in 1978 and at that time the US News and other popular rankings didn't exist. Barron's was the place to turn if you wanted independent rankings of selectivity.</p>
<p>Somehow in the officially published version of the paper all the reference to this impact of selectivity got dropped (see the official version at <a href="http://www.terry.uga.edu/%7Edmustard/courses/e4850/x-Dale.pdf%5B/url%5D">http://www.terry.uga.edu/~dmustard/courses/e4850/x-Dale.pdf</a>)</p>
<p>It should be kept in mind that Krueger is well known for his populist approach to economics; for example he is also a advocate of raising the minimum wage and claims that raising the minimum wage has no effect on employment of those workers (contrary to virtually all other studies and econ texts). Hence it would not be surprising that he would want to find that pricy elite colleges don't help future earnings.</p>
<p>In fact their study found that selectivity did matter. Crude measurements like equating selectivity to SAT average didn't reveal it, but when you used judgement to decide where schools fell on the range of selectivity (such as those in the Barron's list) they found a huge effect due to selectivity, 23% for male earnings. Oops!!! So they buried this result. There is nary a mention of Barrons or alternative measures of selectivity in the final paper.</p>
<p>My take is that the body of research (including Krueger's study) shows there is a significant impact to attending a more selective college. Virtually all other studies have found this effect, and even the pre-publication version of this study acknowledged it and labeled it as "significant". Whether it is the smaller classes, higher expectations of the faculty, just having access to more opportunities by virtue of being surrounded by privileged students, or some other factors, it is impossible to say. But it seems there are economic reasons as well as other more personal reasons to prefer to attend a selective college.</p>
<p>mikemac:
I don't see what you are getting at. The way that the study is always interpreted is that people who attended the selective universities make a LOT more money. However, people who were accepted to the selective universities but attended somewhere else (for whatever reason) make the same money as the people who were accepted and did attend. The moral is that a person's lifetime income is based on the person's personal characteristics and not on where they attended college.</p>
<p>What you have posted is simply the part about how people who attended the selective universities make a LOT more money. That part is pretty obvious. It is in the "duh" category. The rest of the study is what is significant.</p>
<p>I'm sorry if my post seemed unclear to you. The problem I'm getting at is that interpretations such as the one you give, "The moral is that a person's lifetime income is based on the person's personal characteristics and not on where they attended college", are not supported by the evidence in their study.</p>
<p>The first problem is they used a faulty definition of selective; a college with higher average SAT scores of enrolled students was deemed more selective than one with lower scores. They used this definition in their study (at least the published part), so their conclusion is baseless. As they say, GIGO.</p>
<p>The 2nd problem is they removed from the study evidence that contradicts their conclusion. In fact when a ranking (compiled by Barron's) of selectivity was used, the college attended corresponded with higher income for both men and women. Since this was done in a regression study, which is a statistical method removes the effect of all other variables when measuring the contribution of any single variable, this means that a person by choosing to go to the most selective college has a 23% higher income than if they choose the next most selective. Simple as that.</p>
<p>
[quote]
What you have posted is simply the part about how people who attended the selective universities make a LOT more money. That part is pretty obvious. It is in the "duh" category.
[/quote]
Thanks for the gratuitious insult. I'll refrain from responding in kind, because I've read many of your posts and generally think they are quite helpful. Read thru my post again. The question at issue is whether attending an elite school instead of a lower-ranked one will increase lifetime income. The evidence they removed supports that exact conclusion. Furthermore their claim that if you're the caliber of student to get into a more selective school you'll have the same income no matter which school you choose is fatally flawed because their definition of more selective is flawed.</p>
<p>I didn't mean any insult by the "duh" remark. It is just that somebody will do a statistical study every so often trying to verify something like the fact that teenage boys think about sex alot. Duh. I think it is pretty obvious that graduates from elite colleges have statistically higher lifetime income.</p>
<p>I still don't completely understand your objections. In (1), they had to use some measurable attribute for selectivity, and I don't have a problem with using the SAT. In (2), this sounds just like the "duh" type of thing that I mentioned above. If the study only correlated selectivity with income, it wouldn't have been very important. It showed that there was no significant statistical difference in lifetime income between two groups. The first group being people accepted to ivies and who attended. The second group being people accepted to ivies and who attended less selective (yes, based on SAT) colleges.</p>
<p>dufus3709, we're the only ones posting in this thread so I think interest is diminishing and I'll make this my last post. You write as if (1) and (2) are different approaches, but in fact they use the same approach. They differ only in how the selectivity of the colleges in the study is determined.</p>
<p>You write "I think it is pretty obvious that graduates from elite colleges have statistically higher lifetime income." but the point of the studies is to ask why. If due to some effect of the colleges then if a kid decides to go to these schools they raise their income; if it's because the colleges were just the first to identify potential then it really doesn't matter whether they go to the elite or not. Krueger uses regression techniques to answer this exact question. Among the variables included in the regression is whether the student was accepted to an elite school (even if they didn't enroll there). If these variables are associated with income and the one for college attended is not, then it is potential that matters. They termed this approach the matched-applicant model in which they identified 6,435 students who applied and were accepted/rejected by a similar set of colleges.</p>
<p>The conclusion played in the press from Krueger's study is that once you take into account the potential of students (as measured by their ability to get into elite colleges, even if they didn't attend them) attending a more selective college doesn't affect income. Their income is the same as their brethren who were accepted to an elite but chose to enroll elsewhere. This conclusion, however, is based on using SAT averages of the colleges as proxies for selectivity ("eliteness", if you will).</p>
<p>This is the flaw in the study. SAT scores are not the best measure of selectivity. In the draft on page 24 they note the problems themselves. They write "Interestingly, the Barron's ratings do not bear a monotonic relationship with school SAT scores. Notre Dame, for example, is ranked higher in the Barron's ratings than many schools with higher average SAT scores" So it is not surprising that this regression did not find a relationship between attending an elite and income because they incorrectly identified which schools are the elite.</p>
<p>In the draft they also report what they found when they used a different method of determining which colleges are the elite, the Barron's ratings. Again they used the same method as when they used the SAT scores to determine the elites, taking into account in the regression whether students were accepted by elite schools even if they didn't enroll. However this time the found going to an elite matters! They write "an F test of the null hypothesis that the Barron's ratings jointly have no effect on earnings is rejected at the .05 level in the matched applicant model for men". In other words, if you use a better way of identifying which schools are more elite then it does matter where you go.</p>
<p>In sum, they used the same methodology both times but when SAT scores are used to identify how elite a college is they didn't see a residual income difference based on what college was actually attended. When they used a list based on human judgement to identify how elite a college is (the Barron's list) there IS an income difference.</p>
<p>I see what you mean in the last paragraph. Thanks for the info.</p>