Sorry, my bad, I read it wrong. It lists the percentage as 0% if it’s less than 1%.
The East Coast numbers are still valid, though.
Here’s the site I was using. Can a mod please delete this if it’s not OK to post:
https://www.■■■■■■■■■■/colleges/Harvard-University/your-fit
Thank you for posting these stats about Yale and Harvard grads. To rank colleges based on how much money ther grads earn seems to miss the point of a college education. Might as well include those who study welding because those welders most likely out earn MIT AND HARVARD grads, at least straight out of school.
Some people would disagree with you. In any case, the whole point of the Economist survey was not to determine which college produce the highest earning majors, but to measure the gap between how much money a college’s students subsequently earn, and how much they might have made had they studied elsewhere. It is about as valid as anyone else’s ranking methodology.
Actually, the point was to filter out some of the usual characteristics of students that correlate to post-graduation earnings (academic strength of incoming students, choice of majors, etc.) to see if there are some schools that have characteristics that lead to over or under performing on the post-graduating earnings front when all of these usual characteristics are taken into account.
Note that the over or under performance shown is not that large for most schools, so the usual characteristics explain a very large portion of the variation in post-graduation earnings.
Post-graduation earnings possibilities (which are not guaranteed) should not be the only reason to choose one’s college or major, but students under financial constraints certainly should try to be as well informed as they can before making such decisions.
Actually, the definition I provided was taken nearly verbatim from the authors of the study. How wonderful it is for you to have a clearer goal of the study that it’s authors.
@Zinhead, appreciate your analysis of the factors involved in the Economist scoring, but you do realize that your description of each factor was actually the opposite of what you stated, i.e., the “dings” are actually plusses, and the “bumps” are actually negatives. So, for example, the Marx-Marley factor for Oberlin actually helps Oberlin’s overall score, because the Economist is excluding the abundance of potheads from the overall salary. Similarly, the religion and business school factors are minuses from those schools because the overall expectation of a business degree graduate’s salary is greater than average.
@spayurpets - The way the Economist presents the data is confusing, but I do not think that is case. The following is the output from the Economist website for Oberlin College, a noted Marx and Marxist school. Follow the math:
$42,751 median graduate income for an average college
Add:
$-5,503 impact of fields of study
$-5,454 Marx & Marley factor
$5,118 SAT scores
$3,856 all other factors
Equals:
$40,768 expected earnings at Oberlin based on the Economist multiple regression
$38,400 actual median income of graduates of Oberlin
$-2,368 Underperformance calculated by the Economist
They start with the $42,751 median graduate income, and clearly subtract $5,503 for fields of study (likely no engineering and light STEM), subtract $5,454 for Marx and Marley, add $5,118 for the high SAT scores and then add $3,856 for other factors. The total is the expected earnings from their model of $40,768. Oberlins actual median earnings are $38,400, from which they calculate Oberlin’s underperformance compared to their model of $2,368. In other words, Oberlin’s actual graduates earned $2,368 less than what their model predicted.
If Marx and Marley actual did positively increase the expected income, one would expect the figure in the Economist results to be positive, not negative.
If you do not believe that, compare the Marx and Marley adjustment with the SAT score adjustment. Oberlin is one of the most selective LACs in the country with very high average SAT scores. It is evident that higher SAT scores are associated with higher incomes. If Oberlin students were getting a positive $5,118 benefit from the high SAT scores, why would they receive a negative $5,454 adjustment for Marx and Marley if that were a positive category as well?
Have a Happy Thanksgiving.
@Zinhead. I think what @spayurpets is pointing out is that what you are calling a “ding” (something that lowers expected earnings) is actually a plus insofar as it gives the school a greater chance of exceeding expectations and therefore over-performing in the rankings.
@foosondaughter - Thanks for the explanation. My reading is taken from the output of the multiple regression. Since a high Marx and Marley score lowers expected earnings, and that will always be a negative or “ding” in my book. Time to play my copy of “The World Turned Upside Down.”
As an aside, I never found the Economist rankings terribly useful. The highest and lowest ranking schools are largely in their positions because the multiple regression model was either unable to account for some feature of the schools in question (Rice and JHU high med school participation) or an error in the model (W&L rural location).
What was much more interesting was the impact of the independent variables on expected earnings. If this were a scholarly paper, the authors would have spent much of the article detailing how they modeled each independent variable. The fact that being a Catholic school added to expected income expectations, while being Baptist detracted was not expected.
@foosondaughter thanks for saying it in a way that explained my comment better. @zinhead, I think we understand each other. I was just trying to say, that what you called a “ding” (i.e. a negative) to income expectation in the Economist method, is a plus on the school’s overall ranking. A negative of a negative makes a positive to the overall rank. Otherwise your analysis was spot on.
I don’t think the Economist really expected masses of students to use its ranking system. Most
American HS students & adults don’t even know the Economist exists and/or is a news magazine.
It’s the colleges themselves that might be more likely to look at the list and think about the relative value they produce.
The Economist promotes itself pretty heavily as an appropriate gift to college students. And I think it has made enormous gains in circulation in the past 5-10 years, due to the virtually complete collapse of American weekly news magazines. It looks like the Economist’s U.S. circulation is around 800,000.
Which doesn’t make any of what @GMTplus7 said untrue.
@JHS
If the Economist is targeting college students for readership, then it’s a wee bit late for those students to “use” the ranking.
I think this college ranking is just another one of its academic exercises like its annual Big Mac Index:
http://www.economist.com/content/big-mac-index
Its funny how GA Tech’s graduates earn so much, but the college is only ranked 302, yet you go to any other site and/or individual who is knowledgeable on Universities and their value to an independent student, and they’ll all have it AT LEAST ranked top 50 in the nation, and top 5 in engineering.
this article is a total joke. one could drive a train through the assumptions. the income reporting is based on very small sample sizes, so the analysis is completely unreliable. for example, some wannabe colleges boast high incomes of their graduates. invariably, when one looks closely at their data, only in small print do colleges reveal that a very tiny percentage of grads report income and this income is not verified. thus, only some students with jobs tend to report, many exaggerate, and report income that is speculative. for example, babson, villanova and others notoriously have very small reporting percentages and include speculative income claims of students. these wannabe colleges do this to garner headlines, but their info is based on manipulated information from a small portion of its graduates.
Here is an article from WSJ on the issue:
It probably isn’t a coincidence that some low-ranked schools (St. Johns, Earlham, Yale, Swarthmore, Caltech, Reed, Carleton, UChicago) also tend to rank high in per capita PhD production, Peace Corps participation, or both. However, we really don’t know if the same students would have followed similar paths after graduating from different colleges. It may be the case that those colleges, for whatever reason, tend to attract students who aren’t highly motivated by income. Or, it may be the case that those colleges provide experiences that motivate their students to value other things. IOW we don’t know if the survey is capturing selection effects, treatment effects, or a combination.
I guess I’m interested in knowing why Scorcese classifies Babson (founded 1919) and Villanova (1842) as wannabe colleges. Seems like typical CC snootiness. Perhaps it’s as simple as Babson offering a business-only curriculum or Villanova’s strongest programs being in business and engineering – both solid earners traditionally. In any case, these schools, along with W&L, were not gaming rankings as is often the case with USNWR. They were evaluated based on the Economist’s criteria. Find fault with that, rather than the schools.
Goodness Gracious.
Otis is #6 and Yale is #1270.
@scorcesefan - I regret to inform you that based on your analysis you would probably be roadkill at Babson (I am not familiar with Villanova’s grading policy) and at Harvard you would probably be lucky to earn a “gentleman’s B” for your work.
You see, if you had actually read the “fine print” you would have seen that the income data for graduates was generated by the US Government, which linked the federal student aid database to the federal tax return database.
As far as I know, Babson and Villanova do not prepare their alumni’s tax returns, so they are not in a position to attempt to “garner headlines”. I also have a feeling that the alumni of Babson and Villanova are probably not going to either exaggerate their income or include speculative income on their tax returns.
If you had actually “looked closely” at the data behind the ranking you would have seen that of the top ranked schools, Harvard is the only school whose ranking is based on “a very tiny percentage of its grads” - not Babson or Villanova.
This is not because Harvard is attempting to game the ranking, it is because Harvard has a “no-loan” policy for financial aid. As a result only 3% of the students take out federal loans. For Babson the percentage is 37%, and for Villanova it is 44%.
One has to be careful how one interprets the Economists analysis/ranking, but not for any of the reasons that you state.
Sorry to be so blunt, but for some unknown reason you felt the need to attack two great schools using fabricated information.
I would warn CC readers to think twice before boarding any train that you are driving…
https://collegescorecard.ed.gov/assets/UsingFederalDataToMeasureAndImprovePerformance.pdf
https://collegescorecard.ed.gov/school/?166027-Harvard-University