<p>There has been alot of controversy on CC about the real "value" of an Ivy League/Elite University. Some people quote the Kreuger study which believes Ivy League universities provide no inherent advantage, and that kids who go to non elite schools and were accepted to both do just as well.</p>
<p>There is obviously alot of controversy about the viability of the study, however whether or not it is true is not important to the real values of these elite colleges. The real purpose of these colleges is to give the students an education. It may be true that if i go to Princeton instead of the University of Maryland honors program, I won't make any more money; however that is not why I would go to Princeton. I would go there to get the best education. Going to a college to make the most money later in life misses the entire point of college.</p>
<p>Everyone who has interest in this debate needs to read this speech, given at the University of Chicago several years ago, about the aims of a college education.</p>
<p>If you go to college just to get an income advantage, "There’s no real evidence in favor of this reason to get an education and a good deal of evidence against it. All serious studies show that while college-level factors like prestige and selectivity have some independent effect on later income, most variation in income happens within colleges—that is, between the graduates of a given college. That internal variation is produced by individual factors like talent, resources, performance, and major. But even those factors do not determine much about your future income. For example, the best nationwide figures I have seen suggest that a one-full-point increment in college GPA—from 2.8 to 3.8, for example—is worth about an additional 9 percent in income four years after college. That’s not much result for a huge amount of work."</p>
<p>If you go to these elite colleges and all you get out of it is a higher income, you have defeated the very purpose of these colleges. As in the speech,
"The long and the short of it is that there is no instrumental reason to get an education, to study in your courses, or to pick a concentration and lose yourself in it. It won’t get you anything you won’t get anyway or get some other way. So forget everything you ever thought about all these instrumental reasons for getting an education. The reason for getting an education is that it is better to be educated than not to be. </p>
<p>The reason for getting an education here—or anywhere else—is that it is better in and of itself. Not because it gets you something. Not because it is a means to some other end. It is better because it is better. Indeed this statement implies that the phrase “aims of education” is nonsensical; education is not a thing of which aims can be predicated. It has no aim other than itself. "</p>
<p>Read the speach and you will be amazed. It is possible to find an education at almost any college, however inveitably the people who went an education want the "best" education; the best professors, resources, and students.</p>