<p>@latichever: Well, some keep up. Some sink.</p>
<p>Some folks respond well to competition but some other people are more motivated when they’re a big fish in a small pond.
It really depends on the individual.</p>
<p>@proudfather </p>
<p>Some of your statements completely miss the mark, as far as I am concerned.</p>
<p>
Have you never heard of GIGO, Garbage In, Garbage Out? He never said their data was more accurate, just that if you limited the surveys to the same high paying majors at these other schools, you would get similar results. It would still all be garbage to the extent that these surveys have the inherent flaws pointed out numerous times.</p>
<p>
Well, the use of the word snobs says it all in terms of your biases. But what all this really shows is how useless and arbitrary any ranking scheme truly is, be they based on money or the USNWR, which uses outdated and randomly weighted factors to try and measure something that cannot be measured. It also shows how you have assumed that all undergraduate students have the same priorities, which is easily your most troubling premise.</p>
<p>What bothers me the most is your premise that our colleges should be trade schools, only useful if they teach a particular, narrow skill that results in a high paying job. Sure, there are many that want that, and that is great for them. It doesn’t take a list like this for them to find a school and/or a major that fits them. But to me, at least, a college education is also supposed to present young adults with the opportunity to learn about many things outside of a narrow, career-related world. Things that will allow them to live fuller, more informed, more productive, and more interesting lives. Many other people are not so interested in what pays the most coming out of college, but instead want to teach, help others, be artists, spend their lives exploring even if it means having a very average income. College should be for them as well, and in fact that is how colleges were actually originally designed, to give people a broad base of knowledge and thinking skills before they settled into whatever career they chose, be they lucrative areas such as medicine, law, and business, or lives of exploration and discovery. Otherwise people went to trade school or learned a trade through apprenticeships. Yes, higher education was originally for the upper class, but we have long since moved past that.</p>
<p>Please, let’s not advocate turning the world into a place where there is no art, no history, no literature, no archeology just because they don’t pay as much as petroleum engineering and/or are not relevant to how to write code for an electronic game or create a balance sheet. That’s not what you are saying? Well then where is this going to take place and be nurtured if not at our “snobby” universities?</p>
<p><a href=“Why You Won't Find Babson On America's Top Colleges”>http://www.forbes.com/sites/ccap/2014/07/31/why-you-wont-find-babson-on-americas-top-colleges/</a></p>
<p>The Forbes ranking uses Payscale salary data as one measure of postgraduate success.
It also considers other outcomes.
It winds up with a set of top colleges fairly similar to the ones in the US News “snob” rankings.</p>
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</p>
<p>Neither US News nor Forbes use faculty publication or citation volume as college ranking criteria.
<a href=“http://www.usnews.com/education/best-colleges/articles/2014/09/08/best-colleges-ranking-criteria-and-weights”>http://www.usnews.com/education/best-colleges/articles/2014/09/08/best-colleges-ranking-criteria-and-weights</a>
<a href=“Methodology”>http://www.forbes.com/2010/08/01/best-colleges-methodology-opinions-colleges-10-ccap.html</a></p>
<p>Some of the graduate program rankings do (appropriately, in my opinion). Sharing research findings (through publications as well as through teaching) is an important part of what research universities do. If discovering and sharing new knowledge isn’t important to someone, then a more career-focused school or program might be a better choice.</p>
<p>I predict that; the college experience as we all know it, will be radically different 20 years from now. Most people can’t afford it without loans, (if you don’t have the money? don’t buy it!) despite the pining for “arts” and other perceived enhancements to life… you gotta eat. Quality of life creates the pressure and demand for the “money majors”</p>
<p>20 years will go by in a flash, and the education industry will have to adjust. MOOC’s are the tip of the iceberg. Who’d have thought, 20 years ago, I could make it through a whole Christmas season of gift buying without leaving the comfort of my home? :-? </p>
<p>i agree with giterdone. Parents are at some point going to wise up. To spend $150,000 to go to a school for four years in order to be “more informed, more productive, and more interesting lives” by majoring in history, philosphy, political science or Africana studies, and then starting your “career” at Starbucks , is ridiculous. Youd might as well get some skills in the school and then take philosophy, dance, drawing or history in your spare time at a community college. We have a situation in this country now where some 40 percent of college grads live with their folks because they make such low salaries that they cant afford to rent – even in a group house. THey cant qualify for mortgages to buy a condo or townhouse (unless their parents help them), so real estate values in many parts of the country are awful. I actually like what Obama is doing to rate colleges including how kids do in the job market. I like that a lot because all-too-many parents and students who are pampered to believe they are “the best” are hoodwinked by slick college marketing gimmicks and wind up throwing hundreds of dollars down the drain to get rejected by schools they have no chance of getting into, or getting accepted at ripoff schools where they con you into following your “passion” and then wind up after 4 years with a worthless degree. But yes, you will be more worldly making $9 an hour working at Sweet frog and waiting on all your friends who majored wisely in engineering, acccounting or the health professions.</p>
<p>
I’ve criticized every ranking at some point in the last decade, including deficiencies in USNWR, Princeton Review, AWRU, Gourman Report, Laissez Faire, NRC, Washington Monthly, and undoubtedly others I’m forgetting. Rankings are a crutch for those unwilling or unprepared to do a proper college search. </p>
<p>
I like the general approach. The devil is always in the details, though, eh?</p>
<p>The “school quality” column has several problematic factors. Yield is a dubious indicator of quality (e.g. U Alaska). RateMyProfessors is an extremely poor measure of professor quality. Graduation rates can have as much, if not more, to do with financial aid and affordability as college quality. </p>
<p>The “outcomes” column is even more troubling. With the exception of career center staffing (an intriguing metric), all of its criteria are based on salary data from PayScale. What about the unaccounted for students who earn graduate degrees, the students who become nurses, doctors, lawyers, professors, veterinarians, dentists, pharmacists, clergy, and so much more? What about accounting for how many students become influential government officials or esteemed scientists? </p>
<p>Is a college only successful if it produces high earning individuals? Is a college more successful simply because it churns out more engineers than teachers, musicians, or artists? Is a college more successful because it places students in NYC with high salaries rather than Wyoming with lower salaries? Rubbish!</p>
<p>
The relationship between college and career prospects is totally different from the relationship between major(s) and career prospects. The latter is a debate that belongs in the College Life forum. </p>
<p>
A small chance is not the same as no chance. Universities like Yale and Wash U are very difficult to get into, true. Any student applying should be aware this his/her chances are slim. Nevertheless, hundreds of students are admitted to those institutions every year. If your stats are in range, why not apply?</p>
<p>Any person who spends the rest of his/her life POed (s)he was rejected by top schools has some serious issues. Rejection is a part of life. Getting into college can be tough. Getting a job can be tough. Getting a fellowship or grant can be tough. Why encourage kids to settle for the easy road just because they might be disappointed with rejection? Heaven forbid they try and, if met with rejection, learn to recoup and move on. </p>
<p>It’s well-known on these forums that a balanced college list includes multiple match and safety schools, schools where a kid has a very good chance of admission and would be delighted to attend. There’s nothing wrong with adding reach schools on top of that, especially if you’re a low income student who would benefit from the extraordinarily generous financial aid of the most elite colleges. </p>
<p>
Many books and articles (and posts that are nearly such) have been written recently about expensive colleges. Harvard isn’t a golden ticket. MOOCs are the way of the future. Learn English lit at your library. There’s many other spins on the same idea . </p>
<p>Yep, Harvard doesn’t guarantee success in life. Harvard doesn’t guarantee a high salary. An EE major from Mississippi State can make more than a Renaissance Studies major at Western Regional State U. You can earn more money coming from a community college than an Ivy. These are not groundbreaking ideas. Financial aid is out there. Merit aid is out there. If people want or need them, there’s resources to locate them. </p>
<p>I wouldn’t spend a lot of money on a super expensive car, yacht, or cruise, but I don’t begrudge those who do. If people can and want to drop money on a Harvard degree, well, more power to them. </p>
<p>Bottom line: Top colleges (however one defines them) are not the be all, end all. The US is blessed with lots of great colleges, and successful people come from nearly every college – and often from no college at all. Students should be encouraged to look beyond the usual suspects. If this list, however well or poorly put together it is, encourages them to do that, great. </p>
<p>Assuming that the data was accurate, Webb and Babson are specialized schools in some the highest paying fields. You do not have any “X Studies” or “Y-Z Relations” majors to bring the average salary down (nothing against those majors, some of them probably make a killing if they go into consulting or something, but that is beside the point). I think you would find UMich Ross, Berkeley Haas, or NYU Stern undergrad alumni making more than Babson alumni on average. Please correct me if I am wrong in this assumption. </p>
<p>fallenchemist In a perfect world what you say may be true, but we do not live in a perfect world. Most students go to college to better their lives economically. Parents pay the high costs of going to college in hopes that college will allow their children to obtain good paying jobs. Colleges sell themselves by touting that the average college graduate earns more than the average high school graduate. </p>
<p>Colleges then inundate high school seniors with brochures, emails etc to get these students to apply to their universities. Many of these universities have admission rates under 20% and cost $50,000/yr which is more than how much the average family makes in a year.</p>
<p>Although I do not agree with everything that proudfather states, the vast majority of families must take out loans to send their children to college. I doubt these families want to send their children to school for just personal enrichment to find themselves and accumulate debt that they can never repay. They borrow hoping that their children will find good paying jobs to repay the loans and live comfortable lives. If you want to be well read and gain personal enrichment, the public library is a great inexpensive place to get it, not a $50K/year institution.</p>
<p>The reality is that less than 60% of college freshman graduate in 6 years for a 4 year degree.
<a href=“Fast Facts: Undergraduate graduation rates (40)”>Fast Facts: Undergraduate graduation rates (40);
<p>The bottom 25% of college graduates earn about the same as the average high school graduate.
<a href=“College graduate vs. high school graduate salaries.”>http://www.slate.com/blogs/moneybox/2014/09/08/college_graduate_vs_high_school_graduate_salaries.html</a></p>
<p>The average college graduate has about $30,000 in debt which translates to about $250/mo in debt payments after graduating.
<a href=“Average student loan debt: $29,400”>http://money.cnn.com/2013/12/04/pf/college/student-loan-debt/</a></p>
<p>With the skyrocketing cost of college, a boost of reality is needed and a better ranking system. Better information and disclosure from the colleges wouldn’t hurt such as how much their graduates make by major. </p>
<p>There are many perspectives to balance, each family weighs preferences differently.</p>
<p>Job Training vs. citizen education is one. Do we train for jobs? It’s not a bad idea, but the jobs that exist today will not exist tomorrow. Better that we teach to solve problems. Do we teach what it means to be a part of western civilization? I hope so. Let’s not forget to hand down the traditions of literature, arts, and culture.</p>
<p>School with high achieving students vs. any other school. You can be a standout at a community college, or a mediocre student at an Ivy League school. One’s appetite for struggle makes this decision.</p>
<p>Least Expensive vs. Best Featured. Several years at a community college, and finish at a state school makes great sense financially. This decision can also be framed as … what do I value more, the memories, friendships, life-lessons of college, or being able to afford life as an adult.</p>
<p>Each family moves the balancing point to suit their situation. It’s a hard thing to do. For the fortunate few who can afford their dream school, this decision is moot. Every other family in the world gives away a little of something they value in order to get something they value a little more. </p>
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</p>
<p>What? No. Only students at Harvard, Princeton, and Columbia go to college to “succeed” and make money. Everyone else goes to “learn.” The costs of college are but a peccadillo for an earnest and curious student.</p>
<p>[…]</p>
<p>;) </p>
<p>ElMimino I agree but the problem is that the information needed to make informed decisions is lacking. The rating entities such as USNWR, Forbes, Money, Kiplingers etc are used by parents and students to help them decide. Proudfather started this thread to highlight Money magazine’s ranking of Babson and Webb outperforming MIT, Harvard et. al.</p>
<p>He was just trying to show that weight given to certain factors (in his case average salary) affect rankings. Would you send your child to Harvard with cost of $60K/yr if Harvard sociology grads earned less than those who graduated in the same major from one’s flagship public university costing $20K/yr?</p>
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</p>
<p>Given the current economic state of most households relative to college costs, most college students are basically required to prioritize costs. They do not have the choice to pay extra for the better featured school, since they do not have the up-front money to have that choice.</p>
<p>Plenty of people have already spoken to the fact that different students/families can have different preferences or priorities for what college is “for”, but I do see something valid in the practical perspective that proudfather is basically espousing.</p>
<p>Namely, it just takes a whole lot of privilege to go to college for the primary purpose of things like (not to pick on ElMimino specifically…it’s just, that’s the message I last saw when I was writing this post) “citizen education,” learning “what it means to be part of western civilization,” etc.</p>
<p>I mean, in the past, the folks who went to college (and more particularly, the folks who went to these elite schools) were the folks who didn’t really have to worry for a job, so it makes sense that those universities don’t focus on these things. But more troubling is that this ideal is not neutral. Talking about “what it means to be part of western civilization” in a university system that has historically had plenty of issues with race and ethnicity (e.g., Jewish exclusion/discrimination at Ivy League schools in the past)…it’s problematic to say the least.</p>
<p>But the point here is that the applicant body looks increasingly different. Now more students are attending university – but they don’t have the same backgrounds as in previous decades or centuries. Now, we have mostly replaced the high school diploma with the undergraduate degree as the bare minimum requirement for most jobs. It is not unreasonable to expect universities to pay for their price – either by not charging exorbitant costs that will just saddle students with student loan debt…or by ensuring students will be hired to the sorts of jobs that will pay enough to allow them to pay off those debts.</p>
<p>These days, most universities have general education requirements. You don’t begin your major-specific courses until junior year. So, people already are learning “what it means to be part of western civilization” or what it means to be a citizen because every student has to take general education courses – even if they will concentrate on finance or mechanical engineering. It’s not as if the preprofessional track students will have no understanding of the literature, arts, and culture. It’s not as if preprofessional track students will not have “memories,” “friendships,” “life-lessons of college.” They will have these and a paying internship offer. Or they will have these and a job offer.</p>
<p>For whatever it’s worth, I think the benefit of elite schools such as the Ivies (or similar “traditionally” ranked schools around them) is not in nebulous concepts like “citizen education,” but in its network and opportunities. I can say as a former student of Texas A&M that there is a strong Aggie network in a great many fields. This mostly applies to the major Texas cities (Houston, Dallas, etc.,), but I know that if I wanted to work on Wall Street, there was “Aggies on Wall Street” for that. But I’d have to hustle. I’d have to work to get one of those slots. (As an accounting, and not a finance major, I had no interest in that…but I knew it was available.)</p>
<p>I contrast that with, say, Stanford Law, where my brother is attending. He went to A&M for his undergrad too, but he can say that he never met any Rehnquists (i.e. relatives of former Chief Justice Rehnquist…) at A&M. He can say that he never saw Ruth Bader Ginsburg (lovingly referred to simply as RBG) speak at A&M (although A&M tries its best to get great speakers, etc.,). And yes, a lot of his classmates are stunningly privileged, but now he <em>knows</em> them. Who knows what that will bring in the next 20 or 30 years? Maybe it’s not simply “citizen education” but “elite upper crust citizen education” (which isn’t a bad thing to get…and absolutely is a better thing to get if you didn’t <em>start</em> out in that upper crust but now have the opportunity – just maybe – for some of it to rub off through association.)</p>
<p>I mean, I would definitely say that I have a good, stable career. For something like accounting, the elites aren’t critical – as a field, accounting is comparatively more…equitable? Democratic? I dunno. But I realize that for some other careers, some other possibilities, I would probably be missing out by not attending a more elite university.</p>
<p>BUT, as was mentioned by plenty of others, most of this conversation is moot, because PayScale apparently doesn’t even track graduate/professional degrees like law?</p>
<p>I think a major reason parents and students, and probably some bad guidance counselors, rely on these rankings so much is because they reinforce the traditional view that a “name degree” on a resume “opens doors” I admit that when I started hte college search process with my kids in their junior years, I was very focused on the prestigious schools, but they had superlative counselors who identified other schools we never thought of – based on their interests and their SATs, GPa and extracurriculars . So, they did not apply to Ivies or elite colleges, except one , and ONLY because it had the best program of its kind for my son (he did not get in), and this program has a 30% acceptance rate. But with today’s electronic resume machines the way they are, many, many employers are NOT so much looking at where you got your degree, but what you majored in and your work experience and skills. Job descriptions for so many professions these days are so detailed and so exacting, that if your resume and appliction dont have those “key words,” youll never make the cut. But parents forget this and they think a real human being is looking at paper resumes and the name “Princeton” will just automatically put their kids’ name on the top of the pile! Yes, these elite schools have "old boy " and "old girl"networks. No doubt. But again, an engineering degree at Harvey Mudd College is going to (for some reason) put your kid ahead of the pack and for less cost if they struggle at some elite school for engineering. Many thanks for voiceofreason66 for explaining my meaning in these posts.</p>
<p>To a large degree, my post is being misunderstood. I never said anyone should take on large amounts of debt to get a college education, whatever their purpose for getting that education. I have always advocated that is a huge mistake. I agree the cost of attending many schools is far too high, but there are more reasonably priced alternatives, along with a lot of financial aid that doesn’t require repayment. That has nothing to do with the idea that @proudfather is advocating, which in essence is that everyone should major in engineering, accounting, computer programming, or whatever is paying well and offers good employment prospects. Besides the obvious short term vision that represents, in simple economics of supply and demand, not to mention changing needs of job markets, it also represents a sterile world devoid of areas the make it an interesting place to be. That, at least, would be the inevitable consequence of what is being advocated. The idea that we would have those things in the world at anything resembling a high quality level if people just do those things “in their spare time” is ridiculous.</p>
<p>It is easy to throw up the $9 an hour Starbucks examples, but most college graduates do end up in jobs that pay reasonably well after a year or two at most. Numerous data support that, especially now that the economy is improving. Amazing that people are willing to throw away a tried and true model of education that has put this country at the forefront of innovation and prosperity because things are a little tough when first leaving school. Anyway, it doesn’t really matter because any model that only chases the “high paying jobs” couldn’t possibly work. Just ask the glut of lawyers that now cannot find good jobs in their direct field. Not all that long ago their job prospects looked just like the engineers of today.</p>
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<p>And, for the largest part, we could say … thank you for that, and especially when the rankings purport to fairly represent the experience of undergraduates during their four years. While not unimportant, the type of research covered in the methodology amounts to an entirely perfunctory exercise. Despite the claims to the contrary the rankings offered by the pseudo-scientists in China and in the UK suffer from a very narrow scope and deliberate exclusion of many schools. The voters, even when attempting to be honest, are simply led to foregone conclusions. </p>
<p>All in all, those “citations” rankings miss the mark by a mile and a half for the overwhelming majority of US undergraduates that will see any impact of that “research” </p>
<p>Now, as far as rankings that attempt to steal the thunder of USNews, for whatever motives, they all pretty much the same. A rankings whose results are also “pre-established” by the chosen criteria. The recipe is to have a few outliers for shock value and then a bunch of the typical “top” schools to give the rankings a semblance of reality and integrity. </p>
<p>Nothing stop someone to like one better than USNews --typically because a favorite school will be ranked way higher than by USNews-- and move on with a smile. Others, usually more astute or educated in what rankings measure, might point out to the deliberate bias of the various rankings, be it the annual Mother Teresa or the “What is the low cost” concocted by Vedder and his acolytes. </p>
<p>The results that has yielded gems such as ranking an academic wasteland such as the UT in El Paso at the level of Harvard … speak volumes! </p>
<p>To each his own!</p>
<p>Note: My previous post was not a response to fallenchemist. I agree with him (or her). I was mocking the crowd that says that Harvard and its ilk are for prestige-hungry twits and that “substantial” people go to certain LACs, as if those LACs did not charge as much as Harvard.</p>
<p>@Exodius: FWIW, I didn’t read yours as a response to me.</p>
<p>FWIW… I lobbied for my son to study petroleum engineering at the state flagship,but he’s studying film and computers on the east coast. He’ll blend ‘what I want’ (film) with ‘what I need’ (marketable skill). </p>
<p>
That used to be true. I’m afraid the tables have flipped. In an increasingly challenging world, more people have to get post secondary schooling in order to compete. As you can see, an ever larger number of students and their families value money over a broad education.</p>