Yeah, it would be interesting to know how that data was acquired. I was making well into 6 figures when I was 34 which was 16 years ago. I went to a regional campus of a state flagship and my undergrad was supervision. Even if everyone was working towards a PhD and teaching in academia that number has to be suspect.
The problem is the fact that is median income. 50% were making less then that. Maybe not a lot less, but still.
Economics is a popular major just about everywhere. UChicago has relatively few CS and Engineering majors – far fewer than Stanford, MIT and Caltech; not as sure about HYP, Penn and Columbia – which is bound to put a dent in early post-grad earnings.
I liked @groweg 's story in another thread - of the working class kid from her neighborhood who went to Harvard and became the Unabomber. At Chicago it’s different: We take rich kids and turn them into - Loeb and Leopold.
I think looking at outcomes is like looking at the rear view mirror to predict the road ahead. Our kids will enter a job market that will not be what we are used to due to AI, globalization of the workforce, etc. Even high paying jobs are being transformed- my radiologist friends have to compete with computers reading their scans and/or being sent overseas for overnight turnaround. Its like training for the Olympics w/o knowing what sport you will be participating in. Given the uncertainty, whats the best undergrad preparation?
@marlowe1 - Perhaps coming from a highly intellectual South Side family, T.J. Kaczynski would have developed deeper human relationships at UChicago where intellectuality is the focus. Harvard’s arguably greater premium on social status and wealth might have furthered a sense of alienation. Personally, the exposure to research and original thought at UChicago was wonderful for me. To speak to the thread here, I have landed in a comfortable career path where I use the skills UChicago furthered. But that Leopold and Loeb were UChicago students is food for thought!
I was of course joking about Loeb and Leopold, and those events happened a long time ago. Clarence Darrow, who defended those guys and got them off the death penalty, was supposed to have lived in an apartment on 60th, just a couple of blocks or so from BJ, though the dorm itself didn’t exist at the time. His defence invoked deterministic philosophical theories which he had imbibed through his discourse with Chicago profs. However, the philosophy department also appears to have played a less benign role: the two wealthy students had encountered the philosophy of Frederick Nietzsche in U of C classrooms and had managed to convince themselves that they were ubermenschen. A cautionary tale. A true Chicago education tends to humble you in the face of all you do not know.
@marlowe1 - Thank you for the fascinating background on Darrow and one of his most famous cases. As you wisely point out, learning is continuous and never ending. I lived in BJ’s Salisbury house for my sophomore and junior years.
Yes Marlowe1 thanks for the history lesson. I think people would be fascinated by some of the historic figures that have lived and worked in the Hyde Park area. Which brings me to a question for Marlowe: how about Studs Terkel? And would he be possible today? Sorry if this is a bit off topic.
@kaukauna - Studs was of a unique time, place, and subculture. Although he graduated from UChicago’s College and Law School he followed a blue collar, theatrical, writing, and radio show occupational path. As was mentioned earlier on this thread, tuition is now high. It is hard to imagine joining a theater group and becoming a writer after completing college and law school.
Besides listening to him on WFMT, I met him several times when he came to sherry hours at Salisbury House in BJ. He was a very friendly, open, and engaging man. He is an example of what we have talked about here - UChicago attracts or produces many intellectually creative people who do not aspire to traditionally defined status, success, and wealth. He achieved these in his own unique way.
Now there was a true U of C guy. I believe he was born more or less in the tenements, and his mother took in washing for students. Studs himself was very much a kid of the Chicago streets (I believe the name must have come from “Studs Lonigan”, a fictionalized Chicago street boy created by another U. of C. author, James T. Farrell), though Studs (Terkel) went to college at some point and actually got a Chicago Law Degree. I doubt he ever practiced law. I was at the University in the mid-sixties when he published the first of his series of “living history” books - called “Division Street” - based on interviews of real people. That book attempted to capture the plights and personalities of a wide range of Chicagoans in just a few pages in their own words. If a book can be said to have soul, that one did. I still think of it as his best. It really yields a comprehensive portrait through all its many depictions of real Chicagoans of the city as it existed in that period. Frankly, it was a period when the city - and not merely Hyde Park and its environs - seemed teetering on the edge of catastrophe. Yet Terkel always emphasized the ebullience and resiliency of his subjects. He was not a scholar, but I do think he had caught some of the spirit of the great Robert Park UChicago sociological school - focussing on depictions of people as they actually lived in communities. He just kept it at a very vernacular level, and he added his own brand of inspirational uplift. He was always the happy warrior. RIP, Studs.
How’s that, @kaukauna ?
Nice Marlowe, thanks. Hope the potential applicants like it too; it’s something for them to look up. My son became a big fan of Studs while he was at UChicago.