<p>It’s important to recognize the limitations of any study or analysis. My personal experience disagrees strongly with Carnevale & Strohl’s interpretation of the literature. I have found peer interactions absolutely vital to learning in almost any setting. I have also found factors such as SAT scores and college ‘prestige’ to be almost useless in predicting peer dynamics. YMMV.</p>
<p>Makes perfect sense, noimagination. There is a big difference between correlation and causation.</p>
<p>Funny story I will try to present briefly, so grant me some editorial license. There was a study done a long time ago that looked at olfactory influences on hormonal function in women. The premise, IIRC, was that women who smelled pheronomes would all start to cycle together. They did a study in a women’s prison, and got permission to put items of mens clothing that had been worn by men and therefore smelled like them, into the ventilation system, and then measured womens’ hormonal responses based on the quantity of sanitary products they acquired from the prison store or dispensary. And supposedly, sure enough, about 28 days or so after they put the smelly mens clothes in the ventilation system there was a significant increase in the acquisition of sanitary products. </p>
<p>The researchers wrote up the study and came back to the prison to thank the staff and present the data. The people from the dispensary raised their hands and said, “there is always a huge increase in the request for sanitary products at that time of year. The women used the cotton in the pads to make stuffed animals for Christmas”. </p>
<p>Goodbye study results. Correlation does not equal causation.</p>
<p>That’s a good one :)</p>
<p>There was a study (for lack of a better word) done a while back in which they took top students from a school in a very bad part of Chicago and too them to a school in the suburbs. It was hypothesized that they would benefit greatly from the better schools, better environment conducive to learning, and less taunting for being interested in academics. Apparently it failed miserably, in that these students failed to adjust. Their survival skills that helped them in the inner city caused no end of problems in the suburbs.</p>
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<p>You are responding to scholarly research with hyperbole and appeal to emotion. I find the scholarly research more convincing.</p>
<p>I also note that the researcher in question, Steven Leavitt, sports an elite education background, Harvard undergrad, MIT PhD, and U of Chicago professor, so by belittling his research you simply undermine the notion of the superiority of those institutions.</p>
<p>I preferred the first version of the above post, Bob. It was much more entertaining.</p>
<p>In answer to the numerous posts - leaving aside the vitriolic drivel that some feel the need to spew. </p>
<p>No, I won’t unblock jym. I don’t care to read anything posted by someone whose idea of light humor is jokes degrading my deceased first wife. But if she’s still citing the same tired nonsense about graduates of so-called top colleges making more money or reaching more exalted heights than those of so-called lesser colleges, I’ll simply point out that the studies have shown that ** when you control for the qualifications of the entering freshmen**, the income differences are very small and limited to a few prestige-heavy fields like law and medicine. In other words, ** for a given student** , there’s almost no difference in long-term earning potential attributable to where he or she went to college. </p>
<p>As far as what the data actually shows, yes, the studies have looked largely at standardized tests - as the excerpts I’ve posted from Pascarella and Terenzini have clearly stated. If you want to argue that the conclusions about educational attainment have no validity, therefore, go right ahead - but you’d also better be prepared to argue that the graduate and professional schools that place great weight on these same tests in deciding whom to admit don’t know what they’re doing. </p>
<p>And to the folks who continue to insist that student selectivity must matter, I’ll continue to pose the same question - then why doesn’t the data show it? </p>
<p>G’night all.</p>
<p>"You are responding to scholarly research with hyperbole and appeal to emotion. I find the scholarly research more convincing.</p>
<p>I also note that the researcher in question, Steven Leavitt, sports an elite education background, Harvard undergrad, MIT PhD, and U of Chicago professor, so by belittling his research you simply undermine the notion of the superiority of those institutions"</p>
<p>I’m not sure if you’re serious or joking. Most of us with older kids put our life experience raising our own children and the experiences of our friends and family over any possible “scholarly research,” because you will believe what you have seen with your own eyes over anything else. Now you may call this hyperbole and appeal to emotion, but I call it common sense. And I’ll betcha that even my ultra logical, non-emotional son agrees.</p>
<p>Amusing, even I can recognize irony when you tell me that the Harvard undergrad, MIT PhD, and U Chicago professor is concluding that there is no educational advantage in going to an elite school!</p>
<p>I’m sorry about your wife, annasdad.</p>
<p>Oh puleezze. Give me a break. What a way to completely spin a story into a complete fabrication. Shows a clear pattern of twisting the truth. </p>
<p>There was a thread a long time ago where posters were joking around, teasing each other from rival schools-- I think maybe UIUC and Wisconsin, IIRC. I don’t recall the banter and don’t care to dig it out, but during that banter annasdad made reference to wisconsin and his ex-wive. **HIS EX-WIFE. ** Not his late wife, his ex-wife. I made some joke, playing along with whatever banter was going on with, oh maybe Barrons or someone, and annasdad, who was a relatively new poster, IIRC. Annasdad proceeded to send me a rather nasty PM, explaining that his wife was deceased. I responded that I was sorry for his loss. How was I to know. Most normal people don’t refer to their late spouses as their ex-spouses. But whatever. But I expressed my regret, and he, in turn, proceeded to tell me to “shove it”. Nice guy. What a sweetheart. So if ANYONE should be offended by crass, rude distasteful comments and an unwillingness to converse civilly, I think that right would be mine. </p>
<p>Its quite plain to see that AD just wants to use this twisted version of reality as his sad excuse to continue to ignore the data that refutes his one horse pony. If thats what he needs to do, I truly feel sorry for him. And I appreciate that he will not read my posts. </p>
<p>Everyone can see it for what it is. And his sad twist of reality makes the deficits in reading and writing skills quite clear.</p>
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Called that one many posts back. So peredictable. So very, very predictable. </p>
<p>And I still await an apology from AD. I immediately expressed my sorrow for his loss even though I had NO CLUE, since he used the term ex-wife. But no such courtesy has been returned. Instead I get told to “shove it”. Who is the ill mannered one in this scenario? Not I, AD, not I.</p>
<p>No condolences sought or required - it was a very long time ago.</p>
<p>And to think you didn’t read my posts ;)</p>
<p>So apologize for telling me to “shove it”. It was a rude and inappropriate insult. And totally uncalled for. And then let it go. It was a long time ago. And please stop fabricating nonsense. I made no disparaging remark about your wife. I believe I complimented her. Would you like me to find the post? I would rather not waste the time, so please stop twisting the truth into knots. It might be interesting to converse about the literature about higher education, rather than you hiding behind the obvious fallacy that you claim you dont read my posts. Really now.</p>
<p>Here it is: My error- he didnt say ex-wife, he said former wife (not late wife, former wife). He said he was “formerly married to a UW-Madison grad”. No, I did not take this to mean that the former wife was deceased. Most folks would not assume that. There was some banter about the good ol’ US news rankings, and several posters were poking fun at each other from their rival schools, IIRC. It was silly wordplay. No harm intended anywhere. So from this post he claims I “degraded” his first wife? Really? Time for some new reading glasses, pal. I did compliment her. It was all in fun. But someone misunderstood. My post said:
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<p>Get over it AD. You were wrong.</p>
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<p>Elevating personal anecdotal evidence over broader controlled research is not common sense, it is simply myopia. I know a lady who bought a Lexus that turned out to be a lemon. She will swear to you up and down that Lexus cars are garbage. This is her experiential “common sense”. Smart consumers ignore her and rely on valid dispassionate reliability analysis such as Consumer Reports.</p>
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<p>If you think Dr. Levitt is being ironic you are mistaken. </p>
<p>But if you want to talk about true irony, true irony is dismissing the research of Harvard/MIT product Levitt because it doesn’t conform to the elite school mantra, and embracing the college ranking formula of Cincinnati/Michigan State product Morse because it does conform to the elite school mantra.</p>
<p>^^Okay Bob, go ahead, explain it. Because most of us here have absolutely no idea what research you are talking about with Levitt and Morse, no idea. You have just mentioned it briefly. So instead of arguing without details, specifically, of what you are referring to…why not explain it?</p>
<p>And your example of the Lexus lady does not quite correlate. So perhaps if she’d been driving Lexus’s for TWENTY ONE YEARS, and knew hundreds, perhaps thousands of people who did…and declared from that experience that Lexus’s were lemons, yep, people would believe her. But obviously, from driving one car, you cannot make such an assumption.</p>
<p>Well, lookie. In that thread from a year ago where my post quoted in post # 114 is originally from, Annasdad said this:
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<p>Insulting UW Madison, making a derogatory comment about one of the smaller UW schools, and then complimenting Northwestern?!?! Pizzagirl. Time to eat ones hat!! Heck, he says it again in post # 6!!</p>
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In some cases this makes sense, and in others it does not. For example, I tend to reject the research claiming that peer effects do not matter because a) it does not correspond with my personal experience, and b) I have examined the studies in question and established that they may not catch the full picture.</p>
<p>On the other hand, some things are far more concrete and measurable. Take income after graduation. Unless you have a legitimate beef with the methodology employed by Krueger & Dale, that article is a much better basis for decision-making than anecdotal experience.
Well, I wouldn’t go that far. Maybe I’m just missing your message because several of your sources contradict each other, but I haven’t seen much evidence that would really serve to refute the P&T analysis.</p>
<p>(Off-topic: I was around here when that other discussion took place, but I don’t recall it. Seems like something better discussed via PM or perhaps with the moderating staff.)</p>
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<p>Most? Us? Do you represent some group or committee? And have you polled that group to know exactly what the majority do and do not know?</p>
<p>I gave a link to an interview with Levitt, quoted the relevant portion of the interview, and listed the school where he teaches - I thought that was a reasonable level of information, especially compared to others who provide no evidence or backing whatsoever for their postulations. Nevertheless, since this proved insufficient, the study is detailed in Levitt’s book Freakonomics.</p>
<p>I said nothing about research by Morse. What he does is quite the antithesis of research. Given the extent to which his rankings are exalted here on CC it’s surprising he isn’t more of a celebrity figure.</p>
<p>Here’s a start for learning about Mr. Morse and his fabulous rankings:
[What</a> College Rankings Really Tell Us : The New Yorker](<a href=“http://www.newyorker.com/reporting/2011/02/14/110214fa_fact_gladwell]What”>The Trouble with College Rankings | The New Yorker)</p>
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<p>Indeed, myopia is exhibited by the myopic.</p>
<p>Great, Bob, so your opinion is completely made up by reading one study done over 8 years ago, merely about the Chicago Public School system, and the fact that the kids who won lotteries to choose the public school they wanted to go to, didn’t do any better than the kids who didn’t. That doesn’t sound very convincing. To us, the group, the committee of parents who read this thread. Yes, I speak for them all.</p>