A lot of people have biases against public schools. You see it with high schools as well. Parents spending significant amounts of money (less than private college though sometimes not by much) when very good (and many times better) public options are available. You see it in statements to the effect that public schools in the US totally suck (though in reality its large inner city and some rural schools that have issues).
My child attended an HBCU which are looked down upon by many. She got into a a top tier university but chose the HBCU. She had her pick of great internships on both coasts. She took a contract job in the Bay Area upon graduating which has since ended. Within two weeks she had 7 interviews and 3 job offers. The moral of the story is, one shouldn’t always rely on school stats. On paper, HBCUs are never ranked high, yet her network and opportunities have been abundant.
Again this isn’t about any particular student not being able to do well. There are tons of students that will do well at almost any college they attend. That is not the point.
@saillakeerie most confuse outcomes with salaries, and while it can be an important factor, it’s not the only measure of success. This is why I personally disreguard any rankings where outcomes (salaries) are a big factor. If you want the best ROI then major in engineering at an in state college, that’s all you need.
The top privates will have a higher concentration of wealthy students compared to public schools. So, if a student is interested in making connections with other affluent students that is one advantage to the top privates.
Surprisingly, the median family income at Michigan (and a few other top public schools) rivals the median family income at some of the Ivy league schools. So, there will be a large number of affluent students at a few public schools. The wealthy will be concentrated at the top privates though.
But, for a public university, is perpetuation of an aristocracy of inherited wealth (though filtered by academic achievement and allowing a small number of high-achieving “outsiders” in) really consistent with the goals that a public university should have?
Probably more like (extremely) overrepresented, rather than concentrated, since many of the scions of wealth, despite all of their educational advantages through high school, do not reach the academic achievement levels necessary to be admitted to the most selective colleges.
It takes some degree of cognitive dissonance to believe A and B. If you accept Krueger’s conclusion that whether you go to the University of Arkansas or Harvard makes no difference in your future success, then why should applying to Harvard indicate ambition or thinking further ahead, after controlling for other factors? E is likely true to the extent applying to schools of which you have almost no chance of being admitted demonstrates a willingness to gamble(at least your time and the app fees) on lottery-type odds.
Yes, the wealthy are overrepresented at the top privates compared to the publics. At Dartmouth and a couple of the other Ivies 20% of the class comes from the top 1% (Median family income > $630,000 per year).
At the list prices these schools charge, who else but the very wealthy can afford to be full pay? This is like complaints that people who shop at Hermes are too wealthy.
Krueger didn’t conclude that it didn’t matter if you went to Harvard or Arkansas. Krueger did have data that showed that the small difference between going to Harvard and going to Michigan or Virginia didn’t justify any significant price differential.
And, of course, money isn’t everything. What I was suggesting was that people who see themselves as a future President, or Secretary of State, are (on average) more likely to apply to Harvard rather than just to be satisfied with guaranteed admission at State U. (And one of the truly tiresome aspects of Harvard or Yale is that on Day 1 so many of the newly admitted 18-year-olds are already plotting their political careers. It happens at State U., too, of course, but not in the same concentration.)
Did Krueger run their analysis by student major? I think if you are going to be a teacher or social worker it doesn’t matter whether the student goes to Harvard or Hofstra. If the student is going to be an investment banker or business consultant then the Harvard pedigree helps. See the book Pedigree: How elite students get elite jobs by Lauren Reviera.
If we’re going to nitpick, Harvard and Virginia weren’t included in the Krueger studies. Did Krueger include too narrow of a range of public colleges? Maybe, but not to the extent you’re implying. Going by school average SAT scores, which is how Krueger ranks colleges, UNC-Chapel Hill, Penn State, and Miami University were barely above average in 1978. Krueger only included four public colleges in the first study and three public colleges in the second. More to the point, in his conclusions, Krueger(2011) admits his sample over-represents selective schools, but rejects the argument it meaningfully changed the results in terms of the economic return to school selectivity.
I didn’t go back and look, but the study I am thinking of had four different tiers of colleges. One was very selective privates (which didn’t include Harvard, and did include a bunch of colleges people here don’t consider such great shakes, but which were at the time bona fide prestigious, selective colleges) and the second was top-quality publics. There were two lower tiers of publics, and I don’t remember exactly how they were hacked up. There was some kind of meaningful outcome gap between tier 1 and tier 3 – although maybe not enough to overcome the price difference – but there was not a meaningful outcome gap between tier 1 and tier 2. I was using “Harvard” and “Virginia” as metaphors (synechdoches, I was thinking, but as you point out they weren’t actually part of the pool, so that probably disqualifies them for that trope) for the top two tiers.
^Are you sure you aren’t jumbling multiple studies together? The only tiers that Krueger looked at were the Barron’s four selectivity tiers and those aren’t separated into separate public and private categories.
Here is the 2011 study.
http://www.nber.org/papers/w17159.pdf
From page 8:
The schools in the earlier study are listed on page 9:
It is a pretty narrow range of schools.
@roethlisburger : You’re probably right; I’m probably wrong. I have never seen the 2011 paper before, so I sure wasn’t referring to that. I have seen the earlier paper, but you’re right that it doesn’t use the tiers. I don’t remember what I saw.
You are probably remembering this paper:
https://news.vanderbilt.edu/2014/11/13/regardless-of-an-elite-graduate-school-degree-undergraduate-prestige-greatly-impacts-salary/
https://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=2473238
The four tiers defined in the paper are:
- A selection of private research universities (e.g. Harvard, Syracuse).
- A selection of private LACs (e.g. Amherst, Albion).
- A selection of public research universities (e.g. Virginia, Alabama - Birmingham).
- All others (e.g. Dartmouth, Harvey Mudd, Alabama - Tuscaloosa).
@blevine I feel for you since I am a full pay who is about to send my kid to Stanford (he is admitted and taking a gap year). He also could have gone to an Honors Program at a state school for free (or nearly free) on a merit scholarship. However, it was his choice. I told him he can use the money and buy a small apartment or use the money to attend Stanford, and he chose to spend the money to attend Stanford. Honestly, I can’t say this or that will turn out to be the best decision for our kid, but I do believe Stanford was the best school for him, and it was number 1 choice for him. THAT was a big factor. If he really liked the public state school, or the state school had a great program in his interest area, it would have persuaded us to send our kid to the public school but that was not the case.
For us, this decision as made a lot easier by knowing that public state schools do not allow gap years. You have to apply again for admission and also re-apply for any merit scholarships. Also, he was fortunate to receive a great free scholarship to study language abroad for one year during his gap year, so at least he’s getting something good for free.
My wife and I were saying the best scenario would have been to get into Stanford and have education paid by grants and financial aids, but we were deemed to be making too much money or have too much assets.
I can see where having a good in-state option could make the decision making process more difficult. In our case, we did not have a good in-state option. Additionally, we knew we were going to be full pay. I found it interesting that full pay tuition at flagship public schools were not much different than privates.
Choice of major is a big factor. For example, if my child was focused on medical school, he would have done better staying in-state, for free.
Web, what is your son interested in studying?