@Jssaab1 While that may be true, not everyone can be exceptional enough to succeed anywhere. Therefore it is best to go to a place that offers better chances to become exceptional.
@cappex not really my point, in fact exactly the opposite. As you can see from the data ( and I recommend EVERYONE read the paper not just the interpretation here: http://www.economist.com/blogs/graphicdetail/2015/10/value-university
What the data indicate is that the college you attend DOES NOT make you exceptional if you are not already when you get in.
That is the whole point of the results of the analysis, schools don;t help. ( well maybe in your resume)
Schools like WUStL (22nd %tile) Emory (10%tile) are ranked near the bottom and highly STEM
YOu can search Schools here http://www.economist.com/blogs/graphicdetail/2015/10/value-university
@cappex don’t try to save face…
Additionally noteworthy, the data is taken from those who applied for loans ( so info about demographics - income status when entering school is know) and TAX RETURNS 10 years later @jackrabbit14 ( again correlated to info supplied when applying for the loans when entering college) not reported income.
Limitations are explained but they tried hard to normalize the data
A few things I saw, magnate universities ( Like PSU, my alma mater) are far away from high earning centers but attract many students who will return there to work skewing data upwards
I love the economist, very fair and academic analysis there, been reading it for years.
The Brookings Institute also coincidentally published its own Value-Added College Ranking on the same day:
http://www.brookings.edu/research/reports2/2015/10/29-earnings-data-college-scorecard-rothwell
Some hi-level points from the Brookings analysis:
- Graduates of some colleges enjoy much more economic success than their characteristics at time of admission would suggest.
- Four college quality factors are strongly associated with higher earnings for alumni.
- Value-added measures are fairly reliable over time.
Caveats offered by the Brookings researchers:
The Brookings Institute top value-added colleges:
** Score = 100 **
Albany College of Pharmacy and Health Sciences , N.Y.
MCPHS Univ , Mass.
Univ of Texas Health Science Center at San Antonio , Texas
Maine Maritime Academy , Maine
Massachusetts Maritime Academy , Mass.
LIU Brooklyn , N.Y.
Univ of the Sciences , Pa.
SUNY Maritime College , N.Y.
California Maritime Academy , Calif.
Univ of Colorado Denver , Colo.
Babson College , Mass.
United States Merchant Marine Academy , N.Y.
Palmer College of Chiropractic-Davenport , Iowa
Rose-Hulman Institute of Technology , Ind.
Harvard Univ , Mass.
** Score = 99 **
Kettering College , Ohio
Worcester Polytechnic Institute , Mass.
Brigham Young Univ-Provo , Utah
Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute , N.Y.
Clarkson Univ , N.Y.
Duke Univ , N.C.
Stevens Institute of Technology , N.J.
Lehigh Univ , Pa.
Alliant International Univ , Calif.
Bentley Univ , Mass.
Kettering Univ , Mich.
Georgetown Univ , D.C.
Washington and Lee Univ , Va.
Columbia Univ in the City of New York , N.Y.
Colorado School of Mines , Colo.
** Score = 98 **
Devry Institute Of Technology , Ohio
Baptist Memorial College of Health Sciences , Tenn.
Massachusetts Institute of Technology , Mass.
Univ of the Pacific , Calif.
Bucknell Univ , Pa.
Lafayette College , Pa.
Polytechnic Institute of New York Univ , N.Y.
Jefferson College of Health Sciences , Va.
Princeton Univ , N.J.
Missouri Univ of Science and Technology , Mo.
New Mexico Institute of Mining and Technology , N.M.
D’Youville College , N.Y.
Georgia Institute of Technology-Main Campus , Ga.
Villanova Univ , Pa.
Pace Univ-New York , N.Y.
CUNY Bernard M Baruch College , N.Y.
** Score = 97 **
Bryant Univ , R.I.
Mount Carmel College of Nursing , Ohio
Embry-Riddle Aeronautical Univ-Daytona Beach , Fla.
Devry Institute Of Technology , N.Y.
Univ of Pennsylvania , Pa.
Allen College , Iowa
Case Western Reserve Univ , Ohio
Manhattan College , N.Y.
Virginia Military Institute , Va.
Trinity Washington Univ , D.C.
Union College , N.Y.
Embry-Riddle Aeronautical Univ-Prescott , Ariz.
Illinois Institute of Technology , Ill.
Xavier Univ of Louisiana , La.
Carnegie Mellon Univ , Pa.
** Score = 96 **
Fairfield Univ , Conn.
Vaughn College of Aeronautics and Technology , N.Y.
Duquesne Univ , Pa.
Cornell Univ , N.Y.
CUNY John Jay College of Criminal Justice , N.Y.
Oregon Institute of Technology , Ore.
California Institute of Technology , Calif.
Univ of Notre Dame , Ind.
SUNY at Binghamton , N.Y.
Michigan Technological Univ , Mich.
Devry Institute Of Technology , Ga.
Tufts Univ , Mass.
West Virginia Univ Institute of Technology , W.Va.
CUNY Brooklyn College , N.Y.
Milwaukee School of Engineering , Wis.
Stanford Univ , Calif.
** Score = 95 **
St John’s Univ-New York , N.Y.
Capitol College , Md.
Univ of Phoenix-St Louis Campus , Mo.
Alderson Broaddus Univ , W.Va.
Harvey Mudd College , Calif.
College of the Holy Cross , Mass.
New Jersey Institute of Technology , N.J.
Florida Institute of Technology , Fla.
Texas A & M International Univ , Texas
California State Univ-Bakersfield , Calif.
Virginia Polytechnic Institute and State Univ , Va.
Univ of Pittsburgh-Johnstown , Pa.
George Washington Univ , D.C.
Creighton Univ , Neb.
Univ of Phoenix-Cleveland Campus , Ohio
** Score = 94 **
Cal Polytechnic State Univ-San Luis Obispo , Calif.
Drexel Univ , Pa.
Northeastern Univ , Mass.
California State Univ-East Bay , Calif.
Providence College , R.I.
St Francis College , N.Y.
Boston College , Mass.
Univ of Scranton , Pa.
Univ of Phoenix-Tulsa Campus , Okla.
Pennsylvania State Univ-Worthington Scranton , Pa.
Suffolk Univ , Mass.
Univ of Phoenix-North Florida Campus , Fla.
Univ of Pittsburgh-Greensburg , Pa.
Univ of Utah , Utah
South Dakota School of Mines and Technology , S.D.
Interesting that both Rose-Hulman and Wash & Lee are big winners on both the Economist & Brookings rankings.
The Brookings rankings do not seem to adjust expectations for the mix of majors, since engineering-heavy schools are heavily represented in the top scores. Of course, that does not help a student who wants to study something other than engineering. (They also make the common erroneous assumption that all of STEM results in higher pay.)
It does look like some well known for-profit schools score highly in the Brookings rankings.
Neither appear to use “fast track to Wall Street”, “old boy network”, or students being more career-oriented as a criterion for expectations, but stuff like that is mentioned in http://www.economist.com/news/united-states/21677231-new-federal-data-reveal-which-colleges-do-most-their-graduates-pay-packets-they-are as possible reasons for W&L and Harvard exceeding expectations.
It’s just refreshing to see AN ATTEMPT at a value-added ranking, than rankings heavily weighted on size of endowment or number of research paper citations.
No–the data indicate that the college you attend does not make you exceptional in terms of earnings if you are not already exceptional in terms of specific benchmarks when you get in.
The distinction is meaningful.
"AMERICAN universities claim to hate the simplistic, reductive college rankings published by magazines like US News, which wield ever-growing influence over where students attend. "
But… we’re going to go ahead and do it anyway. Never underestimate print media’s desperation to stay relevant, no matter what the cost.
I have hired Ivy league graduates and for-profit school graduates. I would even put some of the best autodidact programmers in the mix for fairness. Honestly I could not care less where you graduated from, as long as you have the skills. In my field, I would probably prefer someone who graduated from a lesser known, yet challenging, state school over someone who has $50,000 in student debt but an Ivy degree.
The one and only reason (and I say this out of full disclosure) to go to an Ivy league school is to be connected to the alumni or classmates. These are the people who are sorting through resumes at the big investment firms, etc. I have graduated from several state schools, however, and have never had a problem finding someone doing exactly what I wanted to do who just so happened to be a fellow alumni.
In the end, the disparity (if any) between the “brand name” of your degree is negligible. Again, full disclosure, if you want to be on the Supreme Court, you probably should attend an Ivy undergrad and grad, but that’s a discussion for another day. I encourage anyone interested in this topic to read about Veblen goods (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Veblen_good) or any book by Veblen.
Each rating system appears to provide a different way of evaluating schools. So the one most helpful for any particular student is probably one that includes things that student values in its formula and that weighs each variable in a way that reflects the student’s own values. Looking at the indices that are used to generate the numbers is therefore important. But thinking about the meaning of the ratings for actual students is important for deciding what the rating system adds to decision making for a particular student.
To me, the “value added” or the “return on investment” ratings are less compelling than many of the others because they seem somewhat irrelevant for most students. Does it really matter if schools that we normally think of as great don’t add much earning potential because the students who go to them are often wealthy to begin with? What does that tell a less wealthy student about the advisability of attending that particular school? I guess you can feel better if you don’t get in because maybe it does not matter in terms of earning potential. But was that really why the student wanted to go there?
If we find that students from certain schools generally believed to be excellent don’t make as much as those graduating from schools that we generally believe to be less good, what does that mean? Does it mean that employees see the name of the school and back off in terms of hiring? Does it mean that those in places that graduate students who earn more are somehow pepping up their students to be high earners or does it mean they are helping students to make great connections, unbeknownst to the general public who might rate those schools lower and don’t think most CEOS are coming from those schools. More likely it means that more graduates moved to higher cost areas where incomes are also higher. Or it means they graduate more men who hit the job market in expensive places whereas other schools have more women (lower income and more likely to continue in school) and those who don’t. I’m not sure what else it can tell you. Does it tell you that some school somehow train students better? I think some schools do, but not necessarily the ones that surprise us by showing up high on this type of list when we know they are probably mediocre at best.
If we are using stats that equate across variables like SATs (to determine what these schools offer in terms of income outcomes above the level of intellect these students arrive at college with), then of course we are negating a variable that may make a huge difference in the experience that students have at college. When we adjust other variables to account for the huge association SATs have with other important variables, graduates of “Great School A” have incomes that don’t trump those from “No-Name Mediocre Public U”? What does that give us? Lets say that we find that Cal Tech is low on these value added lists (didn’t check to see but lets just say so for the purposes of discussion). Well maybe we learn that Cal Tech grads wouldn’t do as well as State Public U" grads if they had equal levels of intellect since Intellect and variables associated with intellect are an overwhelming reason that Cal Tech students learn what they learn and do what they can do when they graduate. It wasn’t the school that was responsible for their huge income, It was the brilliance they came to Cal tech with (that is regressed out along with related variables in analysis). I assure you that if you really substituted students without those SAT scores and sent those with 600s to CalTech, the income levels for Cal Tech would drop precipitously. Because you can use a statistical methodology does not make it meaningful in real life.
Well, dah. We are back to square one. Further, there is a huge difference in the experience of attending a school where it is uncommon not to have scored 800 on at least one test compared to those where most scored at or around 600 on all. Naturally scores are not the “be all and end all” but a student population filled with students at the very top of the scale is quite different from one that is average. These methods equate the two and eliminate the variance in other variables that are correlated with standardized scores. So we can say, a student with a 600 who graduates from Cal Tech may earn as much as one who graduates from LIU? Well a student with 600s at Cal Tech ain’t graduating…ain’t attending Cal Tech.
An interesting take by The Economist. Didn’t read the analysis completely. At first glance, I think it may have been better to rank the schools not by the absolute increase/decrease in expected earnings but rather to normalize the increased/decreased earning to the expected earning.
School A: $50,000 expected earnings; $55,000 actual earnings; $5000 increase; =10% change
School B: $100,000 expected earnings; $110,000 actual earnings; $10000 increase; =10% change
These schools would have an identical ranking based upon the normalized % change in expected earnings.
(On the other hand, I don’t think earnings is the be all/end all of the value of college.)
The value of this list is dubious at best but the real take home lesson is how absurdly overpriced even top colleges are. The average earnings of a fireman(HS grad) in San Diego is 150k and this is true for many many government jobs. Just go google the salaries of the government workers and you will be shocked at how many uneducated or relatively uneducated people far out earn average top college grads. This is the real scandal. Today in America uneducated regular cops and fireman will over a lifetime far out earn most of the graduates from the elite colleges.
I did the analysis suggested in post #31 (too much free time and I like data…). There was some movement, but, as could have been expected, the results are pretty much the same.
Top 10
Otis College of Art and Design
Washington and Lee University
Alderson Broaddus University
Texas A & M International University
Babson College
Appalachian Bible College
California State University-Bakersfield
Blue Mountain College
Holy Family University
University of Saint Joseph
Bottom 10
McPherson College
North Central University
Mitchell College
Saint Augustine’s University
Point University
Cooper Union
Drury University
Earlham College
Kansas City Art Institute
St John’s College
Gallaudet University
deleted.
Just because a job pays well doesn’t make it universally desirable. Multi-national companies, NGOs & the diplomatic corps offer a very rich pay premium for professional staff to take assignments in “dangerous” countries, but these organizations still have trouble finding wiling staff to go to those places.
Read the book called “animal farm.” they are just dogs.
I worry that this sort of list downgrades those colleges that encourage public service work—contra a post upthread, government work tends to pay less than equivalent private-sector work. (This is particularly visible at the upper end of educational requirements: Consider public vs. private college faculty, or public-sector vs. private-sector lawyers—though that one seems to have narrowed somewhat the past few years, due largely to problems in the private sector—, or medical doctors employed by governmental organizations vs. those employed elsewhere.)
So i look at the ranking of a place like Earlham College, which has pretty high inputs but ends up sending a disproportionate amount of its graduates into things like the Peace Corps, which isn’t really the basis for making a whole bunch of money, and i start to wonder if there’s some way to tweak this to take that sort of thing into account.
(Probably not, though, at least not without doing violence to the overall methodology.)
@SAY -
Where did you get that figure? Google is not corroborating it for me.
For example:
[Men make up the majority of Fire Fighters in the United States, bringing in about $44K annually. Earnings generally vary between $26K and $72K per year.](Fire Fighter Salary in 2024 | PayScale)
[The median annual salary for a Fire Fighter in San Diego, CA is $46,364 with a range usually between $34,774-$57,956.](http://www1.salary.com/CA/San-Diego/Fire-Fighter-salary.html)