<p>This is from last year, but I thought it might be helpful for those deciding where to go:</p>
<p>That’s handy. Half these colleges weren’t even on my radar a few weeks ago. I feel quite myopic.</p>
<p>Self reporting surveys are barely worth the paper they use. I had never heard of Payscale until that survey came out. Better to use real data from the school’s placement office.</p>
<p>ignoring people with higher degrees makes no sense. You end up looking at incomes of a small proportion of graduates who have no higher degree 15 years out of college. universities where more top students go on to grad school are punished through payscale measurement. Self-reporting also makes the statistics close to useless.</p>
<p>Firstly, you’ve got to control for the aptitude of the student at a given school, else this is completely meaningless.</p>
<p>Secondly, such a study has been performed by by academicians… the Krueger/Dale study.</p>
<p>It is true that the most prestigious of schools will enable a GIVEN student an advantage in realized earnings… per the Kureger Dale study, about $10k (if I recall correctly) over a 25 year period. NOT $10k per month, NOT $10k per year, but less than $10k per 25 year earnings period.</p>
<p>The key is that Krueger/Dale controlled for student aptitude…that is, students who were granted admission to Top 10 schools, but for financial, emotional, family, pure personal preference, or other reasons instead matriculated into, and graduated from, top publics like Michigan, Berkeley, Viginia, etc.</p>
<p>The conclusion is that, with a very notable exception of historically disadvantaged kids, the kid makes the university, not the other way around. The most prestigious schools simply keep their students alive and well until they are released to pursue their life’s passions… not different from elite State U.</p>
<p>All data like this are based on self reported survey data. I think there could be a bigger skew due to universities reporting on themselves- in my job, we always take anything anybody reports on themselves with a grain of salt. I like tha this study gives a broad perspective and allows you to compare across universities - then if you are interested you can dig into any particular college in more detail and compare the income data for particular schools.</p>
<p>I do get the point that the data do reflect the student body each college attracts and not just the academics. And the point about grad school graduates not being included. But I still think this data is worth looking at. (In my opinion it has more behind it than some of what is stated here on CC.)</p>
<p>nice, Santa Clara is up there!</p>
<p>
Hardly. Like barrons said, it’s rubbish.</p>
<ol>
<li><p>It’s self-reported.</p></li>
<li><p>It doesn’t factor in students with graduate degrees.</p></li>
<li><p>It doesn’t account for the cost of living. Schools in California and New York will be vastly inflated (e.g. Santa Clara).</p></li>
<li><p>It doesn’t account for differences in majors offered. Schools with engineering will be vastly inflated.</p></li>
</ol>
<p>…and so on.</p>
<p>
</p>
<p>These are real issues but I would not go so far as to say the statistics are useless. People with higher degrees are ignored deliberately. Otherwise, how do you separate the impact of the higher degree from the impact of the original degree on earnings?</p>
<p>Engineering school numbers are labeled as such. They are separated.
And the earnings patterns for engineering v. liberal arts are exactly what I would have predicted. Engineers start out strong but plateau. Liberal arts graduates catch up with, then surpass their earnings.</p>
<p>I prefer the Baccalaureate-to-PhD numbers as quality metrics, though they have their own problems.</p>
<p>
Look again.</p>
<p>Princeton, Penn, Duke, and others have hefty engineering populations (1/3 at Duke), but they are not listed as such. I don’t doubt that Swarthmore and Lafayette’s lead over Williams is due to the lack of engineering at the latter.</p>
<p>Note that Colgate (1/3 major in econ or poli sci) made the LAC list, while Hampshire (60% major in arts/humanities) is nowhere to be found.</p>