The Worthless Ivy League?

Parents Forum
1

<p>OK, I plagiarized that title from a Newsweek article published in 1999, but I think it gets attention – especially among people who frequent these boards.</p>

<p>The Newsweek article was by Paul Samuelson, and in it, he summarized the results of a 1999 study that showed that attending an elite school is not what will make a student successful in life and is, in fact pretty much irrelevant when looking at future income. Quoting from Samuelson’s article (entire article at the following link - <a href="http://www.crashwhite.com/conceptual/administration/whyworkhard.html%5B/url%5D):"&gt;http://www.crashwhite.com/conceptual/administration/whyworkhard.html):&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p>

<p>"We all "know" that going to college is essential for economic success. The more prestigious the college, the greater the success. It's better to attend Yale or Stanford than, say, Arizona State. People with the same raw abilities do better and earn more by graduating from an elite school. The bonus flows (it's said) from better connections, brighter "peers," tougher courses or superior professors. Among many parents, the terror that their children won't go to the "right" college has supported an explosion of guidebooks, counselors and tutoring companies to help students in the admissions race."</p>

<p>"The trouble is that what everyone knows isn't true. Going to Harvard or Duke won't automatically produce a better job and higher pay. Graduates of these schools generally do well. But they do well because they're talented. Had they chosen colleges with lesser nameplates, they would (on average) have done just as well. The conclusion is that the Ivy League -- a metaphor for all elite schools -- has little comparative advantage. They may expose students to brilliant scholars and stimulating peers. But the schools don't make the students' success. Students create their own success; this makes the schools look good."</p>

<p>"Evidence of this comes in a new study by Alan Krueger, an economist at Princeton, and Stacy Berg Dale, a researcher at the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation..."</p>

<p>If you are interested, you can reference the full 50-page study at the following site: <a href="http://www.irs.princeton.edu/pubs/pdfs/409revised.pdf%5B/url%5D"&gt;http://www.irs.princeton.edu/pubs/pdfs/409revised.pdf&lt;/a>. </p>

<p>So if your child worked hard to achieve success in high school, but for one reason or another did not get into his or her #1 choice or had to “settle” for their safety, don’t worry about them. This is really just an interim step. They probably demonstrated the drive and skills necessary for success in the end, and that is what is really important.</p>

2

<p>I'll go further, several people I know who hire newly graduated students are quite suspicious, and often do not hire, Ivy league graduates. There is a growing perception that though the students where bright going in, there was a good chance they coasted through. Fair or not, the Ivy's reputation for runaway grade inflation is beginning to have an affect.</p>

3

<p>I disagree. You can always tell a "Harvard man".
...
Of course you can't tell him much.</p>

4

<p>:) patuxent - you've described my brother.</p>

5

<p>No, no...you've described MY brother--but he went to UCB!</p>

6

<p>All roads lead to the same, single, unreplicated study to reach this conclusion. It's an interesting idea, and it might even be a true idea, but I would like to see more study of the issue with more data before betting my children's future on it.</p>

7

<p>I did not do an indepth analysis. However, my experience has shown that attending a top undergraduate school ( and this is not necessarily ivy, it could be tufts, MIT, top LAC, or other schools popular with recruiters) does open some doors over that of attending another school. Obviously there are exceptions. For example, getting top grades at a good but not top school may be even more important in opening some doors. </p>

<p>However, after the first opportunity, all playing fields become even. Bottom line: Samuelson's statement doesn't shock me for the reasons given.</p>

8

<p>I'll believe it when I see the data. And what about the intellectual-types at elite institutions that major in obscure majors because they are comfortable in the college name? Shouldn't this bring average income down? There should be fewer of these people at the other institutions because capable students there may feel pressured to accomplish something more substantial because they may be a little "behind" when applying for jobs. The study needs to be done major-by-major.</p>

9

<p>I think the fact is that most of the Ivy Leaguers, at least historically, come with the connections they allegedly get there. i.e. dad (or mom) is a Wall Street investment banker or an undersecretay of whatever or a VP at a Fortune 500 company.</p>

<p>Two things I have noticed about the very wealthy over the years. They like to hang out with other rich people in pleasant surroundings and they don't particularly want to share with the riff-raff.</p>

10

<p>


</p>

<p>It may have been true historically, but it has not been true in a long while. If 70% of Harvard students are on finaid, they are the kids of investment bankers and the like. </p>

<p>My S's very diverse public school is sending about 11 kids to H this year, including some URMs and recent immigrants. Not a single one of them is the child of a Wall Street investment banker or any of the kinds of people you instance.</p>

11

<p>perhaps the ivies are losing their appeal. On the Duke board it seems that all (those posted) turned down Cornell to go to duke.</p>

12

<p>Hey, I like being with the riff-raff! In fact, as my daughter will probably tell you, I am one of the leading riff-raff.</p>

13

<p>
[quote]

"We all "know" that going to college is essential for economic success. The more prestigious the college, the greater the success. It's better to attend Yale or Stanford than, say, Arizona State. People with the same raw abilities do better and earn more by graduating from an elite school. The bonus flows (it's said) from better connections, brighter "peers," tougher courses or superior professors. Among many parents, the terror that their children won't go to the "right" college has supported an explosion of guidebooks, counselors and tutoring companies to help students in the admissions race."
"The trouble is that what everyone knows isn't true. Going to Harvard or Duke won't automatically produce a better job and higher pay."

[/quote]
</p>

<p>I'd like to end the promiscuous use of Ivy when what is really meant is "highly selective private college or university." </p>

<p>Please note that the author uses the examples of Stanford and Duke as well as Yale and Harvard to suggest that going to a prestigious school gives a student a better chance to obtain a higher paying job. So, for what it's worth, if students turn down Cornell for Duke, they're not exactly "slumming."</p>

14

<p>Bright going in....bright coming out. </p>

<p>You can dismiss the Ivy name, but not the talent of the kids. There's no two ways about it.....these are smaaaart kids.</p>

15

<p>Stand, Old Ivy, stand firm and strong
Stand, Old Ivy, hear the cheering throng
Stand, Old Ivy, and never yield
Rip, rip, rip the Chipmunks off the field!</p>

<p>(there I go again.....)</p>

16

<p>Some interesting points to consider.</p>

<p>From a Brookings Institution (2004) article:</p>

<p>"...Or consider the CEOs of the top ten Fortune 500 corporations: only four went to elite schools. H. Lee Scott Jr., of Wal-Mart, the world's largest corporation, is a graduate of Pittsburg State, in Pittsburg, Kansas. Or consider Rhodes scholars: this year only sixteen of the thirty-two American recipients hailed from elite colleges; the others attended Hobart, Millsaps, Morehouse, St. Olaf, the University of the South, Utah State, and Wake Forest, among other non-elites. Steven Spielberg was rejected by the prestigious film schools at USC and UCLA; he attended Cal State Long Beach, and seems to have done all right for himself. Roger Straus, of Farrar, Straus & Giroux, one of the most influential people in postwar American letters, who died last spring at eighty-seven, was a graduate of the University of Missouri. '[Students] have been led to believe that if you go to X school, then Y will result, and this just isn't true,' says Judith Shapiro, the president of Barnard. 'It's good to attend a good college, but there are many good colleges. Getting into Princeton or Barnard just isn't a life-or-death matter.'" </p>

<p>From the Atlantic Monthly (2001):</p>

<p>"Almost all the parents I dealt with believed that an elite college would give their children the best education, the best chance of success in their chosen fields (particularly in the most remunerative fields), and a set of incalculably valuable "connections" that would open doors (the phrase "the way the world really works" was often employed in this context) for the child long after the parents had gone on to their own reward. On at least one count they were perhaps misinformed. As James Fallows points out elsewhere in this issue (citing a study for the National Bureau of Economic Research), "the economic benefit of attending a more selective school [is] negligible." Do the most highly selective colleges really offer a better education than less selective ones? This would be a much easier question to answer if the University of Chicago weren't such an unfashionable place among so many undergraduates. There it sits, with its dreamy Gothic architecture of the precise type that kids nowadays go in for, its bumper crop of Nobel laureates (the most in the nation), its hugely impressive student-faculty ratio, its demonstrably extraordinary programs and departments. But the kids don't really like it. Why? It's too intellectual. What, then, do they mean by the term "good education"? Good but not too good, I guess. It's the kind of education you can get at certain places but not others—at Georgetown but not at the University of Washington; at Duke but not at Chapel Hill. It's the kind of education you can get definitely at Stanford, less so at Berkeley, much less so at Michigan, hardly at all at Wisconsin, and not at all at the University of Illinois. That kind of thinking has always bewildered me. Even though Rachel Toor has genuine respect for Duke, she finds herself unable to provide a rational explanation for the school's current enormous popularity with students eyeing elite colleges. During admissions presentations for the university she would, for example, dutifully conclude her remarks about the faculty by saying that "the best-known professors are teaching our youngest students." But other facts gave her pause. She writes, It's also the case that we have not one Nobel laureate on our faculty. We have fewer than two dozen members of the National Academy of Sciences ... What we have are a lot of very competent—and a handful of excellent—academics. And Duke is a place where many of Toor's friends on the faculty complained "that their students never challenged them, that the kids tended to imbibe information dully and without questioning"—a place that a politically active and aware Berkeley girl might find "oppressively politically apathetic." The perception of what constitutes an "elite" school often has little to do with academic excellence. After all, one important measure of a university's quality is how many of its faculty members belong to the National Academy of Sciences, the National Academy of Engineering, and the Institute of Medicine. The ultra-selective Brown counts among its faculty sixteen who are members. Duke, the object of many a prep school student's swoon, has thirty-five. But the University of Washington has seventy-one, Wisconsin sixty-four, Michigan fifty-eight, Texas fifty-four, and Illinois fifty-three."</p>

17

<p>Tokenadult said:
"I would like to see more study of the issue with more data before betting my children's future on it."</p>

<p>I don't think anyone would bet their children's future on this, but if they don't get into one of the top 25 hot, hot "gotta get into" schools, its not the end of the world and their lives aren't over.</p>

18

<p>I'm reminded of something the principal of my kids' elementary school said at an orientation assembly years ago:
"Thirty percent of the kids who leave this school will test out as gifted."
[pause, murmurs of approval, followed by wry grin from speaker]
"Of course, thirty-five percent tested as gifted when they first came here..."</p>

19

<p>
[quote]

Or consider Rhodes scholars: this year only sixteen of the thirty-two American recipients hailed from elite colleges; the others attended Hobart, Millsaps, Morehouse, St. Olaf, the University of the South, Utah State, and Wake Forest, among other non-elites.

[/quote]
</p>

<p>
[quote]

Wagner's Harvard led the class of 2004 -- the 100th year of American Rhodes Scholars -- with four of the 32 American scholars.

[/quote]

<a href="http://www.cnn.com/2003/EDUCATION/11/24/rhodes.scholars.ap/%5B/url%5D"&gt;http://www.cnn.com/2003/EDUCATION/11/24/rhodes.scholars.ap/&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p>

20

<p>The Rhodes scholarship is a bad example. It's based mostly on leadership accolades, accolades which are more difficult to achieve on a campus full of leaders.</p>