<p>It’s not an argument; it was a rhetorical question.</p>
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<p>Yeah, their results are from a survey of students taken one year after graduation - when the school still knows their current or recent home address and when many students are still highly connected connected to and emotionally invested in their school and often still interacting with the Career Office. Even then fewer than half cared to disclose to anything to the school, and many of those that did said they were enrolled, accepted, applying, or planning to apply to various graduate programs. Not surprising at all for students one year after graduation from a highly-selective Ivy League college. </p>
<p>But more to the point, if we are going to use money as a “gauge of success,” where is Dartmouth’s similar report of the alumni who graduated 10, 20, or 30 years ago - those who have gotten grad/professional school out of the way and are fully engaged in the workforce? Those whose incomes are at or near their peak and most representative of what sorts of “success” a student can expect from a Dartmouth education? Those data aren’t reported because they don’t exist. They are a whole lot harder to come by.</p>
<p>courer, you are correct the stat report is lame. But at least Dart puts out something… </p>
<p>With all resources (money, outside consultants, sales coaching, PR placements, complicated algorythyms) top tier, Ivies , flagships devote to managing stats increasing yield, maintaing selectivity, one would think they could spare some $$ to track results. </p>
<p>Why not collect data to “market” what really matters–results? I find it hard to believe that these schools don’t care about grads’s success. </p>
<p>Heck, even in my pedestrian line of work, I check in with customers post sale. Make sure everybody’s happy, get a referral or two… Doesn’t it make good business? Honda keeps track of re-sale value. I wonder why a school which collects a quarter million (MSRP) per head, wouldn’t feel compelled to track results. </p>
<p>I realize you think it’s just too many alum to follow. The feds can track (via tax return) for grads with loans. Couldn’t a few of the uber smart HYP guys/gals figure out how track grad samples. I can think of few ways to increase responses rates just off the top of my head.</p>
<p>Just because you wish to measure results by $ doesn’t mean Dartmouth wishes to. Perhaps they look at other measures. Engagement with the world. Making a difference.</p>
<p>Pizzagirl, The link is provided. Dartmouth showed four pages of results with a varity of data points. A half page dedicated to $$$. The problem, as cousrer pointed out, is that they only tracked data one year post graduation. Also I would like to see, for my own edification, some breakdowns or controls for SES. This would be important to me. “engagement with the world” is an interesting catagory, how do you proposed to measure? </p>
<p>Why is the concept of schools tracking students after graduation so offensive?</p>
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The info at these links made me think of another wrinkle to this. The articles note that higher percentages of graduates of certain selective LACs go on to get PhDs, and then derive from that the idea that going to one of those schools makes it “easier” to get into grad school. I wonder, though, if the ethos of the college you attend may affect what you choose to do after college. I can attest that going to law school was a big thing among my college classmates, and it is probably one of the main reasons I ended up going to law school. I certainly didn’t go to college with any idea of going to law school.</p>
<p>If you really wanted to measure outcomes, you’d have to measure how successful graduates are at whatever they choose to do–and the measure of success would vary a lot depending on what field they go into. A person who is a tenured professor at a college may be much more “successful” than a person earning three times as much money in a law firm.</p>
<p>^ agreed. tracking grads across a spectrum of fields definitely makes sense. As we can assume that the remuneration for engineering is greater than enduacation. Post graduate work is also more common in education than engineering. Controlling for SES is another important factor.</p>
<p>Our Harvard class does a big survey of alumnae at the major reunions. 670 out of a class of 1600 responded in 2003. Less than 20% don’t go on to get at least some more education. 70% earned over $100,000 but 30% of women were earning less than $50,000 (I imagine that includes a good number of SAHMs.) Household incomes were substantially more. Oh and for those who are curious, 16% are beneficiaries of some sort of trust fund. 70% of the class was married, 9% of the class had never been married (and half of those said because gay marriage was not allowed in their state.) 74% had never been divorced. 75% of the class reported being happy. </p>
<p>Does this prove Harvard did a good job educating? Or just a good job picking applicants?</p>
<p>good data mathmom. and great question.</p>
<p>"MiamiDAP: I have a hard time believing that my CS son would have had the opportunities he did, had he gone to OUR flagship. There was more than one right college, just not in-state. "
-I have a great job. I have found several jobs in very economically depressed city (has been this way for decades), most of them from ads in local newspaper (it is believed that the chance of it is about 2%). I have graduted from the local unknown non-ranked college. I was taking classes there while working full time and various employers paid for my education all the way thru me getting an MBA. I have been in IT for over 30 years. Worked in many totally unrelated industries, on many different computers, used different computer languages. You got to learn at each place. No program will prepare you for the wide range of computers, languages, software, customers, industires. I am dialing with the entire globe currently. The culture difference alone creates a certain challenge for communication. Nobody tells you what to do, nobody designs anything, you have to determine everything communicating with the customers and the users of your system. There is NO program out there that will tell you how you talk to people in France, Spain or Michigan. And this is the huge key to success.</p>
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<p>I don’t find it offensive at all. I just find it to be impractical to collect accurate, comprehensive data. And I think lousy, incomplete, and inaccurate data are not very useful for measuring “success.”</p>
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<p>IMO they probably did both.</p>
<ol>
<li><p>I know the Penn career services office is trying to see whether it can produce a meaningful report on alums 5 and 10 years post-graduation. But it’s a monumental task. (If you have ever looked at their annual reports on what graduates are doing, you know Penn is miles ahead of everyone else in terms of what data it collects and tracks.)</p></li>
<li><p>A few months ago, I was at my Yale 35th reunion. There were plenty of extremely wealthy people there, but among the class “celebrities” – the people lots of other people wanted to greet and pat on the back – were
– a career 6th grade teacher (and former all-Ivy defensive lineman)
– a former environmental lawyer who had spent seven years sailing around the world with his wife and two young children on a 33-foot boat, and who was now teaching high school
– a career Foreign Service officer who had been an ambassador to an Arab country during the Arab Spring
– a U. S. Senator
– the author of the best-ever advice book for teenage girls
– the music director for a large church in Washington state
– a number of career medical researchers
– the former head of the Social Security Administration
– a prize-winning poet</p></li>
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<p>None of those people would show up on a list of high incomes, but they had all done immensely interesting and satisfying things while supporting themselves perfectly well. The same is true, of course, of some of the immensely rich people, too.</p>
<p>Great examples, JHS. This is what were trying to tell you, momneeds2no, about the futility of using money as a proxy for success. </p>
<p>In my cohort, I can think of 4 people who had the same unique major - political science and mathematical methods in the social sciences. </p>
<p>V became a lawyer (same law school) and does a lot of pro bono work for a certain underserved urban community. Passionate firebrand, activist, and speaker. Lives out her progressive liberal principles, walks the walk. Probably still lives on Spaghetti Os, but loves what she’s doing. Middle class background. </p>
<p>D became a lawyer (Michigan law school), also got PhD, went into diplomacy. Served under Madeline Albright. Heavily involved in Kosovo negotiation process. Now a career diplomat with specialty in Balkan relations. He is the son of a janitor with an 8th grade education.</p>
<p>C went to grad school, now a polit sci professor at a small LAC in her rural hometown. Middle class background.</p>
<p>K followed a “traditional” law school to lawyer to big firm trajectory, now a partner, easily earns more than the other 3 (possibly combined, for all I know). Upper middle class background. </p>
<p>Which of these 4 is “most successful”?
If these were all grads of 4 diff colleges versus the same one, what would you conclude about which college was “better”? </p>
<p>Fwiw, D “traveled the farthest” from his background. But would you call him even more successful if he had taken K’s path?</p>
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Speaking for myself as a graduate of one of these elite schools, and as somebody who sent my kids there as well, I’m just not that interested in the results of such a survey. I don’t need to be convinced of the value–and there are plenty of other people who also don’t need convincing. Indeed, even if the results showed me that my own kids would likely be just as successful if they went to the state flagship for a lot less money, I wouldn’t care, because I value aspects of the experience that can’t be measured in that way. I can see why other colleges might want such a study, though.</p>
<p>I personally think that bad data is worse than no data.</p>
<p>Someone chucks a corporate career at age 55 and decides to coach basketball at an inner city school or teach math in a prison. Is this a reflection of his success or not?</p>
<p>What will it tell you about outcomes when someone who took his company public (and according to the Wall Street Journal got a $30 million payout) is now earning $35K per year? Does the data include his capital windfall or just his salary? Or the physician who walked away from being top dog at a medical device company and is now inoculating babies for the WHO?</p>
<p>IRL the world isn’t divided into neat tiers of who earns what on their W2 every year. There are people who have enormous financial success at a relatively young age and then go off and have a second, non-renumerative career. I have a neighbor who was a partner at a big law firm and is now a hospice specialist (she works with families on their end of life legal issues). She probably makes $40K per year- maybe took home $800K in her worst year once she made partner.</p>
<p>What box will you shove her in??? All so you can decide if Williams or Oberlin is “worth it” vs. U Mass or U Texas?</p>
<p>“why other colleges might want such a study”
-Yes, we are aware that “smart” are minority and everybody else does not feel good about this fact, envious, aren’t they?. And “smart” are only those who attended Ivy/Elite…others were not “smart” enough to apply.</p>
<p>What might be a better (although clearly still imperfect) mark of family affluence is parental giving to the annual fund.</p>
<p>“Great examples, JHS. This is what were trying to tell you, momneeds2no, about the futility of using money as a proxy for success.”</p>
<p>I’ve got all those success stories too (including the serial rapist who became a high-ranking…)</p>
<p>Then there are the other ones:
- My roommate was murdered one block from Harvard Square a year after graduation - he was a true alcoholic in college (never partied, though, but had to have a drink by 11 a.m.)
- Two heroin addicts (that I know of - one died, and one disappeared).
- Two gay suicides
- Two imprisoned for embezzlement; one for insider trading
- One a lifetime of mental health problems, living with his mother off food stamps (he was - and is - a really good guy!)
- One, a very wealthy tobacco company exec who lied to Congress</p>
<p>We don;t find these on the pages of the alumni magazine.</p>
<p>We had a very small graduating class.</p>
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What I meant was that other colleges might want to show that they provide equal or better value in terms of income as compared to the more selective colleges. Your insistence on taking offense at such comments is getting a bit embarrassing.</p>
<p>Give it a rest, Miami. No one has said that there aren’t smart kids at non-elite schools.</p>