NYT Blog: Revisiting the Value of Elite Colleges

[ucbalumnus]

<p>An interesting blog about a research paper about the effect of the eliteness of the college one goes to.</p>

<p>Revisiting</a> the Value of Elite Colleges - NYTimes.com</p>

<p>

@David Leonhardt in New York Times Economix Blog

A decade ago, two economists — Stacy Dale and Alan Krueger — published a research paper arguing that elite colleges did not seem to give most graduates an earnings boost. As you might expect, the paper received a ton of attention. Ms. Dale and Mr. Krueger have just finished a new version of the study — with vastly more and better data, covering people into their 40s and 50s, as well as looking at a set of more recent college graduates — and the new version comes to the same conclusion.

</p>

[rmac399]

<p>Interesting, it really depends on the SAT of the student, not the avg SAT of the school according to that study. Now that Honors programs are abundant and have been around for a little while, it would be useful to see if being in them has any income (or happiness) impact as compared to elite schools.</p>

[livesinnewjersey]

<p>Loved the researcher’s advise : </p>

<p>Don’t believe that the only school worth attending is one that would not admit you. That you go to college is more important than where you go. Find a school whose academic strengths match your interests and that devotes resources to instruction in those fields. Recognize that your own motivation, ambition and talents will determine your success more than the college name on your diploma.</p>

[cosar]

<p>Which schools of the ones they studied did they consider “elite” and which not “elite”? When I look at the list for the latest study, there are only four schools that I would consider “non-elite” - Miami of Ohio, Morehouse, Penn State and Xavier. And they found that there was an income disadvantage to attending Morehouse v. an “elite” school. If there are other schools on the list that they categorize as “non-elite”, then I think that would mess up the study, as one would expect comparably qualified students at any of the other schools to do equally well in terms of opportunities for high-paying jobs. I also wonder how they controlled for the students at elite schools who go on to make a career in academics, which is relatively low-paying, when they presumably could have chosen more lucrative careers. Finally, I think reducing the college experience to earnings power is pretty narrow-minded.</p>

[cosar]

<p>I also find it interesting that Harvard - which is particularly known for its high-income alums - didn’t participate in the study. I wonder how much of an impact that might have had on the findings.</p>

[starbright]

<p>Cosar, they do not group schools into elite or non-elite, but instead focus on several school characteristics. Moreover, it was not operationalized as a dichotomous variable but treated, rightly so, as continumous. The word “elite” is something coming from the journalists, not the article itself. </p>

<p>There is a pdf link to the original article in the NYTimes piece, if you can read it. But here is the info on how they operationalized college characteristics:</p>

<p>

Each college’s average SAT score and Barron’s index of college selectivity (as reported in the 1978 and 1992 Barron’s guides) was linked to student’s responses to the questions concerning the schools they applied to.</p>

<p>Because there were only one or two colleges in some categories of the Barron’s index, we represent the index with a continuous variable. The schools in our sample ranged from ―Competitive (coded a 2 on our continuous measure) to ―Most Competitive (coded 5 on our continuous measure).

</p>

<p>As for the sample, a range of 27 schools across 19,000 students seems pretty robust. And while there is something to be said for outliers, I highly doubt adding Harvard to the 27, which includes Princeton, Stanford, Columbia, Penn and Yale, is going to change the overall pattern!</p>

[BillyMc]

<p>

I also find it interesting that Harvard - which is particularly known for its high-income alums - didn’t participate in the study. I wonder how much of an impact that might have had on the findings.

They probably believed they would come out ahead but didn’t want to risk it. If it was a conscious decision, that is.</p>

<p>

Loved the researcher’s advise :</p>

<p>Don’t believe that the only school worth attending is one that would not admit you. That you go to college is more important than where you go. Find a school whose academic strengths match your interests and that devotes resources to instruction in those fields. Recognize that your own motivation, ambition and talents will determine your success more than the college name on your diploma.

I agree, it’s sound advice, and something that a lot of people on this website need to learn.</p>

<p>

Now that Honors programs are abundant and have been around for a little while, it would be useful to see if being in them has any income (or happiness) impact as compared to elite schools.

I would like to see a happiness survey; many want high income, but isn’t that just a road to happiness that could be better achieved otherwise?</p>

[starbright]

<p>

I also find it interesting that Harvard - which is particularly known for its high-income alums - didn’t participate in the study. I wonder how much of an impact that might have had on the findings.

They probably believed they would come out ahead but didn’t want to risk it. If it was a conscious decision, that is

</p>

<p>Not at all. Surely the learned folks at Harvard, reknowned for research, know that any empirical study such as this is neither focused upon individual data points, nor would be reporting such data points at the college level. The focus is upon the aggregate statistical results: findings from the sample, not the data points. The overall trend. This is not a newspaper article about particular schools, but simply a scientific study that could use a myriad of schools to test the same model.</p>

[midmo]

<p>cosar, I will guess that the reason these researchers are focused on income is because they are economists, and economists focus on things that can be measured, and reported relatively objectively. I will also guess that, being economists, they assume that most people view higher education as an investment that will yield a positive return ($) over time.</p>

<p>That doesn’t mean economists don’t appreciate the less measurable aspects of education, but they won’t be writing papers about the subjective benefits of formal higher education. (Well, maybe for an op-ed, but not for a research paper.)</p>

[menloparkmom]

<p>“Don’t believe that the only school worth attending is one that would not admit you. That you go to college is more important than where you go. Find a school whose academic strengths match your interests and that devotes resources to instruction in those fields. Recognize that your own motivation, ambition and talents will determine your success more than the college name on your diploma.”
Wiser words were never spoken…</p>

[Hat]

<p>At least 14 of the 18 schools studied are T20 or close (like Tufts). Only 4 are not that “elite”. Therefore, the study had to look for students who had applied to and been accepted by one of the “elites” and had graduated from one of the non-elites. Its not hard to see cross-acceptances at UMich and Yale, but Miami of Ohio and Yale? Penn State and Penn make sense, but Penn State (OOS) and Stanford? I would definitely see Morehouse as an exception, because most Morehouse applicants would get a URM boost from most of the elites and could easily be cross-admits. But Morehouse was identified as one college where going to the “elite” college did help. I can’t say that I see a lot of value in the study.</p>

[xrCalico23]

<p>

@rmac399

Interesting, it really depends on the SAT of the student, not the avg SAT of the school according to that study.

</p>

<p>But the article didn’t say that. What it specifically said was:</p>

<p>

The starting point is the obvious fact that graduates of elite colleges make more money than graduates of less elite colleges. This pattern holds even when you control for the SAT scores and grades of graduates. By themselves, these patterns seem to suggest that the college is a major reason for the earnings difference.

</p>

<p>The unexpected variable discovered in the research study was that it is the students who applied to and/or were accepted to elite universities but somehow chose not to attend that ended up with the same lifetime earnings as those who were accepted but did attend:</p>

<p>

He points out that the average SAT score at the most selective college students apply to turns out to be a better predictor of their earnings than the average SAT score at the college they attended.

</p>

<p>In other words, there seems to be a correlation between the ambition to attend an elite school and lifetime income of the person. The ambition in the end mattered more than the school that the person attended.</p>

<p>

Someone who applies to Duke, Williams or Yale may be signaling that he or she is more confident and ambitious than someone with similar scores and grades who does not apply. Someone who is accepted by a highly selective school may have other skills that their scores didn’t pick up, but that the admissions officers noticed.

</p>

<p>In any case, aren’t there things more important than how much money you’re going to make in life? Isn’t there more value to education and learning than a positive return in lifetime income? :/</p>

[sunnyflorida]

<h2>

The unexpected variable discovered in the research study was that it is the students who applied to and/or were accepted to elite universities but somehow chose not to attend that ended up with the same lifetime earnings as those who were accepted but did attend.</h2>

<p>In other words, there seems to be a correlation between the ambition to attend an elite school and lifetime income of the person. The ambition in the end mattered more than the school that the person attended.

</p>

<p>Very interesting. Not really that unexpected. Nice to see it in writing</p>

[TheGFG]

<p>Regrettably, a study like this is never interpreted properly. It will be heralded by mediocre students with limited ambition who attend average universities as meaning that they are just as good as students at those snotty elite schools. Furthermore, it will lull parents into thinking that their little Johnny–who isn’t taking a single challenging course in high school and who spends his afternoons playing x-box; while his harder-working, more motivated, and more intelligent classmates are studying their brains out for their AP classes late at night, after they get home from doing research in a university lab–is just as bright and talented as the students who get into an Ivy, Stanford, MIT, or other elite college, and will be just as successful after graduation. It just ain’t so, folks.</p>

<p>All this study is saying is that being smart and motivated are more important to success than the college attended. Well, duh! The Harvard slacker is still a slacker. This is not news.</p>

[bovertine]

<p>My conclusion - I should have applied to a couple more places 30 years ago, and I need to ask for a raise now. ;)</p>