Where you go to school, does it matter?

Parents Forum
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Last I checked, CC is in the same universe as the rest of the USA, though sometimes I doubt my own senses, since it does seem that some people exist here in an alternate reality.

In the real universe out there, the median income for new colleges graduates is about $50,000. The number may be different in the CC universe, though. It may come as an absolute shock to you, but even in the CC universe, there are a very large number of parents and students looking at all the less “elite” colleges which you pretend do not exist, and even, oh horror of horrors, CCs and trade schools (oh, perish the thought).

There are indeed the same posters who repeatedly post and start threads presenting their absolute obsession with the rankings. There are just as many posters who are very clear in their lack of regard for these rankings. CTCL is cited more times as a source for colleges selection on CC than is USNews rankings, and by more posters.

My “area” is the extended Chicago Metropolitan area - a small region of the country which is hidden away in what people on the coasts often refer to as “flyover country”, though they are a lot more explicit when they get stuck at O’Hare. So not at all that many people, and not an economically important part of the country.

UIUC is that tiny little university in the middle of the corn and soy belt of the USA which is also known as The University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, or simply University of Illinois, if you want to annoy people on other campuses. Not a wealthy private NE college, so little of importance has ever happened there, and its alumni include nobody special.

Places like Williams and Dartmouth will open doors, but mostly for people who are already in the small world of the rich and powerful. I’ve written this before - those colleges were established to educated the kids of the wealthy and powerful, kids who were already set up for high paying jobs, no matter where they attended college. Bush Jr. wasn’t the President because he attended Yale - he attended Yale because he was the son and grandson of Senators, third generation Yale legacy, and as such was already on track for a position of power.

Clinton attended Georgetown, that is true, but Reagan attended Eureka College, and they both ended up as two term presidents.

Yes, poor people who attend those colleges do well, but attending such a college only rarely puts them on par with the wealthiest Americans. On average, a poor kid who attends an Ivy will end up in the top 30%-25% or so. They are not all that likely to end up in the top 5%, or even into the top 20%. Look at the research. On the other hand, a kid from the top 5% will most likely remain in the top 5%, whether they attend an “elite” college or not.

So attending an “elite” college only very rarely “opens doors” to the highest paying jobs for poor kids. Those are still mostly reserved for the kids of the rich and powerful. What it does do is it allows the poor to get the good middle class jobs which would not have generally hired a poor rural White, or a poor African American or Latino. However, so do less “elite” colleges with better upward mobility indices.

I was in academia for over a decade after getting my last degree, and am married to an academic. I also have a very large number of friends and colleagues who are faculty and administrators. I have also, BTW, worked or studied at universities in two countries and three states, and my wife has worked in an additional country and an additional state. So my familiarity with all things academia is a slight bit wider than one obtains from reading USNews rankings and the forums of College Confidential, and extends slightly farther than my “local schools”.

My kid is attending a decent college in the NE (not Williams or Dartmouth), but that is because we got an offer that we could not refuse. So I have a wee bit of knowledge there, though admittedly not much.

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The NYT tax study suggests only relatively small differences in average income between poor and rich students who attend Ivy League colleges. Poor students average top ~28% at age 34 . Rich students average top ~22%

Average Income Percentile at Age 34
Princeton: Poor student: Top 26%, Rich student: Top 20%
Brown: Poor student: Top 27%, Rich student: Top 26%
Dartmouth: Poor student: Top 27%, Rich student: Top 22%
Columbia: Poor student: Top 28%, Rich student: Top 24%
Penn: Poor student: Top 28%, Rich student: Top 20%
Cornell: Poor student: Top 29%, Rich student: Top 23%
Harvard: Poor student: Top 29%, Rich student: Top 21%
Yale: Poor student: Top 29%, Rich student: Top 23%

Instead of parents’ income, a key factor in future income appears to be college major. College major appears to have more influence on future income at Ivies than at larger, less selective publics. The table below compares median income by major among federal FA recipients (either grants or loans) at Ivies, as listed in the CollegeScore database. As you brought up in another thread, sample size is too small for precise values; but there are still clear differences in earnings between the different majors.


 
--MEDIAN FIRST YEAR EARNINGS BY MAJOR AT IVIES--
Major                   Earnings<br>
Computer Science+       $110k<br>
Electrical Engineering   $83k<br>
Mathematics              $82k<br>
Economics                $74k<br>
Nursing                  $74k<br>
Mechanical Engineering   $71k<br>
Engineering (All Majors) $70k<br>
Business                 $62k<br>
All Students             $60k<br>
Political Science        $50k<br>
Sociology                $45k<br>
Psychology               $42k 
English                  $36k<br>
Biology                  $36k<br>
Education                $32k<br>
Chemistry                $31k<br>
+Includes CS + Computer & Information Sciences Major
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@mwolf Just not true. It has been statistically tracked that students from the lowest socio economic levels benefit the most from attending elite schools ( see one example of data above) . In fact, many people who decide to enter specific fields are not from the 1% but do have the elite degree. The whole notion that 1% controls the rest is bunk. Yes, there is a group of billionaires in the US. They are certainly not going to stop someone from else from making $$. IF people focused more on themselves and their own children they would have more success. Not financial success but life success. It has nothing to do with income but everything to do with mindset. The reality is, if people want a job that is focused on something they need to figure out the skills and education needed for that job.
BTW, in nations with no 1% ( communist/socialist) the economic outcomes of most is no better. So going after the “rich” won’t resolve the baseline issues.

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Existing people and organizations in power in the economy have motivation to erect (sometimes through political lobbying) barriers to entry against new entrants to whatever market they are in, because new entrants are potential threats to their continued success in the market.

Communists and the like came to power (usually violently) because they had enough support from people who believed that they had no economic opportunity in an existing system with very high and mostly inherited economic inequality. Of course, after gaining power, they made things worse in many other ways (a disappointment to many who previously supported them), but they eventually developed their own economic and political elites.

The increasing tendency of wealth and income to be more concentrated at the top, with attendant decline in economic opportunity for most, increases the risk of most people who otherwise see their situation as hopeless desperately supporting noxious ideologies hoping to overthrow the system that holds them down. Communism is one example; racism (based on the idea that those of some other race are unwanted economic competition or are the hated economic elite) is another.

The elite private colleges are still mostly domains of the scions of wealth, with a few of the actual “best and brightest” from less wealthy backgrounds being allowed to join them. But in their own interest, they want to keep marketing themselves as places of the “best and brightest”, even though many of their students got in through inherited boosts (they still have to be pretty good, but not necessarily as strong as those without such boosts).

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No doubt that poor students benefit from the well resourced private institutions if they are lucky enough to attend one. However, the vast majority of the students in this demographic, if they attend college at all, usually attend a CC or local 4 -year commuter college.

I teach at a 4-yr commuter college in the Nj metro area, and although our graduation rate may not be as high as a highly selective college, we still manage to graduate a fair number of students . My university is an eclectic mix of students of various ethnicities- but they are all primarily of low SES background. Many are happy to get a job that’s better than what their parent(s) have. I think this is what @MWolf was pointing out. BTW, I don’t think that even our accounting majors would know what the Big 4 accounting companies are! They’re just happy to get a job at some local business, or be promoted at the store where they were working part time while attending school.

This is not the college universe of many of the parents here on CC, but it’s the reality for many others. And the persistent narrative that the Ivies and their ilk are the best at bringing up those from the bottom tier is simply counter productive as it serves to dilute support for public higher education.

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This type of reference is usually based on the Dale and Krueger studies or others that tried to replicate findings. The full abstract of the original 2002 study is below:
https://cdn.theatlantic.com/static/mt/assets/business/dalekrueger_More_Selective_College.pdf . Note that when the study controlled for average SAT score selectivity of colleges students applied to, not the one they attended, the increase in earnings for highly selective colleges became insignificant (after controls). Applying to selective colleges appeared to be more relevant for future earnings, rather than being accepted to one or attending one (in addition to other controls including individual student score, gender, race, .SES,… ). This might relate to the type of person who applies to highly selective colleges tending to be the type of person who also is more likely to target career fields associated with a higher salary.

“Estimates of the effect of college selectivity on earnings may be biased because elite colleges admit students, in part, based on characteristics that are related to future earnings. We matched students who applied to, and were accepted by, similar colleges to try to eliminate this bias. Using the College and Beyond data set and National Longitudinal Survey of the High School Class of 1972, we find that students who attended more selective colleges earned about the same as students of seemingly comparable ability who attended less selective schools. Children from low-income families, however, earned more if they attended selective colleges.”

The author notes that low income families were an exception and tended to have a small benefit from attending a selective college beyond what could be explained by the controls. He writes the following. I suspect much of this effect relates to some additional missing relevant controls that impact lower income groups more than others, such as net price to families after FA grants.

"For example, based on the self-revelation model in column 3 of Table VII, the gain from attending a college with a 200 point higher average SAT score for a family whose predicted log income is in the bottom decile is 8 percent, versus virtually nil for a family with mean income. "

Also note that this is an older study, and a lot has changed since the class of 1972. They repeated the study in a somewhat newer sample at https://www.nber.org/papers/w17159.pdf , which found similar results.

My more recent dataset example from the NYT tax sample shows relatively little difference in earnings between rich and poor at both elite and non-elite, well known colleges. Some examples of other colleges mentioned in this thread are below. There are significant differences in income at the different colleges, but those differences occur for both rich and poor students. For example, a poor kid at MIT averages 23 percentiles higher than a poor kid at Wayne state, while a rich kid at MIT averages 24 percentiles higher than a rich kid at Wayne state. The difference in earnings is similar for both rich and poor students.

I expect the bulk of this 23-24 percentile difference between MIT and Wayne State relates to individual student characteristics, rather than attending the school itself. One such characteristic is student quality, so I listed ACT score. Students with higher ACT scores tend to have higher average earnings, and MIT has more high ACT score students than Wayne State. Student quality can also be a barrier for certain higher salary fields, such as pursuing a MD. As highlighted in my earlier post, one of the most influential factors is college major and planned career field. MIT likely has a larger portion of students pursuing CS/engineering and other fields associated with a higher salary than Wayne state. I could list many other relevant factors.

Average Percentile Income at Age 34
MIT: Poor student: ~76th Rich student: ~82nd – ACT = 34/36
Ivies: Poor student: ~72nd, Rich student: ~78th – ACT = ~32/~35
U of Michigan: Poor student: 69th, Rich student: 76th – ACT = 30/34
U of Illinois: Poor student: 65th, Rich student: 75th – ACT = 26/32
UNC: CH: Poor student: 63rd, Rich student: 71st – ACT = 27/33
Wayne State: Poor student: 53rd, Rich student: 64th – ACT = 21/27

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Smart kids every single day are going to community college, great places like Wayne State, usually based on finances and location.

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@Data10 Thanks. A lot to consider in your citations. Certainly, the intangibles always matter the most on a per person basis. Each of these studies usually can yield at least one insight. Often the writer has bias. Sometimes the writer/data set is incorrect in their summary. I do still like to read about it. Times have definitely changed. I can’t read all of those articles.
I wasn’t thinking of Kreuger per se. I’d imagine one could find multiple studies via abstract to support any side of the socio-economic connection to income for various SES groups. I think I will read the Atlantic version as I find those to be fairly balanced and often well written.

Kids are no longer attending college so they can learn to think well. They want a strong degree that they can put to use in the working world. Yes, there are still a tiny number of kids studying for learnings sake but as prices increase ROI gets more consideration. From personal experience, I can tell you that a low income SES kid is going to jump high for the brass ring to escape the poverty they know well. That kid is going to also lean into a higher paying job. I’d like to see a study that explores paths that low SES kids take for college and why. How many are going into social work v. investment banking and why?

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As a practical matter, most students from lower SES families who do make it to college attend less selective ones, often local ones that they can commute to. Compare the percentage of Pell grant students in highly selective private colleges to those of commuter-based local public universities and community colleges, for example. The highly selective private colleges take half of their students from the top 3-4% families (i.e. those with no financial aid), so they function more as ways for the families of wealth to propogate some form of eliteness to the next generation than they do as ways to expand opportunity across the SES spectrum.

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Nobody said they weren’t. My post said, "Students with higher ACT scores tend to have higher average earnings, and MIT has more high ACT score students than Wayne State. " There is no doubt that MIT has a higher concentration of “smart kids” and/or high scoring kids than Wayne State. Using specific numbers, 4% of students at Wayne State had math SAT scores above 700, while 100.0% of kids at MIT had math scores above 700. A similar pattern occurs for all other scores and subscores – a much higher concentration of high scoring kids at MIT. This difference in student quality impacts future earnings.

The more interesting question is what would happen if there was an experiment in which 100 randomly selected students from the freshman class at MIT attended Wayne State instead? These 100 students would have typical MIT stats, typical MIT career goals, and typical MIT family backgrounds. I suspect average earnings at age 34 would be reasonably similar between the two groups, after controlling for major selection and cost of living differences. And these 100 kids would have far higher average earnings than the Wayne State class as a whole.

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According to the NCES, only ~14% of low SES kids complete a bachelor’s degree. The bachelor’s degree rate is low even among high achieving lower SES kids. Among the minority who did complete college, few low SES kids attended HYPS… selective colleges where a large portion of students go into investment banking and such. Instead if they attend college, it tends to be a local non-selective one. One example study is at https://www.nber.org/papers/w18586.pdf . The abstract begins

“We show that the vast majority of very high-achieving students who are low-income do not apply to any selective college or university. This is despite the fact that selective institutions would often cost them less, owing to generous financial aid, than the resource-poor two-year and non-selective four-year institutions to which they actually apply.”

Whether the minority of low SES kids who do complete college are more or less likely to pursue higher salary fields depends on choice of controls and how the question is framed.

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Of course MIT has a bunch of 700+ math kids. Heck, both my kids had 700+ math scores and didn’t
go to MIT
and are still doing well.

Times have certainly changed in the last 40 years. I was a first generation college student from a working class family decades ago that actually ended up in social work as an LCSW . Many of my female classmates ended up in teaching, nursing, or didn’t go to college at all. Some of the guys ended up in science, engineering type jobs but many of them also didn’t graduate from a four year college. From what I remember, there was little test prep, little emphasis on elite schools in my high school, little emphasis on worrying about diversity and little emphasis on first generation issues. The landscape in college admissions seems to have changed dramatically for students since my days in high school. I was always in the advanced type classes with math and science but there was not the frenzy about classes, excessive prep that seems to exist today . There have always been families that gravitated toward “elite” schools of course , but that seems to have intensified in more recent years . There seems to be no end in sight with all this application angst.

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So sorry I mentioned Wayne State ?.

@sevmom. This was exactly my path for these exact reasons.

So to the rest. There are so many sociology studies on some of what is being said. If you take X student and put them in the group with higher grades and expectations with the right resources they will rise to the occasion and match that group. So they will be more competitive and hence make more money /success etc.

Go Tartars! ?

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I did say that the advantage for the handful of poor kids who attend the most prestigious colleges is the best, because the kids from the top 1% have all the advantages that they need, and attending an elite college will rarely provide any additional benefits. However attending an elite college does not put a poor kid on par with a kid from the top 1%.

This a typical red herring for people who attack any attempt at reigning in the wealthy. they immediately start screaming “The Commies Are Coming!!!”. This is fear-mongering which has been used to suppress any attempts by the poorest Americans to get out of poverty.

The fact is that the very wealthiest Americans maintain and increase their wealth by making sure that their profits are high, by keeping labor costs low. This means keeping a large proportion of the people who actually work in poverty - to be able top pay the l;ow wages required for high profits you need to pay low wages, but make sure that the workers have no other choices. Since the the corporate executives hold a lot more power, the only way that the low paid workers can have power is as a group.

So, from the point of view of the executives, any organization which helps the workers work as a group endangers their power and their profits. That is why they vilify any philosophy which encourages organization by workers. That is why they fear and hate anything resembling socialism.

From the 1920s, corporate news and publications have been spending billions on propaganda against any group that provides support for low wage workers at the expense of the power and profits of the wealthiest Americans.

Regarding your claims, most social-democrat countries, such as Finland, Sweden, Netherlands, etc, have a very wealthy 1%, so stop making up your own statistics.

The economic outcomes of social-democratic countries is far better than those of the USA.

Moreover, the so-called “communist” countries were almost never communist, and they also had, and have, a very wealthy top 1% - look at the number of super-wealthy families in China. Most “communist” countries were actually totalitarian dictatorships. The Soviet Union followed its own supposed philosophy no better than the USA has done. China is a country run by its bureaucracy, the same as when it was an empire.

Finally, stop putting words in my mouth - I am NOT your straw man.

The difference between me and the big worshipers of unbridled capitalism is not that I want to get rid of the rich. I don’t. It is that I want to get rid of the poor, while they have a vested interest in keeping a large proportion of the population poor, so as to reduce labor costs, and reduce the power of the low income workers.

I have no problem with the fact that the top 1% have more than 1,000 times the money as the bottom 20%. I have a problem with the fact that they have 1,000,000 times the wealth, and are trying to increase that. I have a problem when the top 1% already own 40% of everything, and are paying to pass laws which will increase that percent. I care when the top 0.1% are putting millions into laws to ensure that they keep on increasing their percent of the economy, and to ensure that the lower income Americans will not get any richer.

I do not care that Bill Gates or Warren Buffet have billions. I care that some of the billionaires are using their money to manipulate the legal system to further increase their money.

Maybe you are either in the top 1%, or have bought into the propaganda that this is the way that it should be in the best of all possible worlds. I have not.

PS. I don’t believe in communism because it cannot work. Not because it is a bad system, but because it only works if every member of society is 100% committed to it. It is very easy to subvert and has no way to protect itself from people who abuse the system, and use it as a way to rise to power and hold it.

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@itsgettingreal17

from Posse

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@sybbie719 You missed my point entirely. It’s still a merit scholarship. Is leadership somehow now not a merit scholarship characteristic? No. The full name of the Stamps Scholarships is Stamps Leadership Scholarship. It’s still a merit scholarship. The distinction you are trying to create seems intended to make the Posse scholarship seem less than. It’s not. It’s a merit scholarship awarded for outstanding/extraordinary leadership potential.

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Perhaps I am looking at when you and Mwolf say merit that you are referring to academic merit.

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Many try to limit the definition of merit to academic stats, and that is in large part the disconnect between those who don’t understand/like holistic decisions and those who are proponents of holistic decisions. Merit isn’t limited to academic stats. It encompasses any attribute a school or organization values - eg, athletic ability, talent in the arts, leadership ability, extraordinary community involvement, to name a few. So when I see someone try to equate merit only with academic stats, i find it problematic.

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The thread has gone far off=topic by users who have been around long enough to know the rules. The faux outrage exhibited by some is beyond the pale. Closing thread.