Curious to know how many of those of you close to the university have checked the website newly rolled out by the government. In the metric of “graduates earnings”, Yale is lagging behind most of Ivy League peers, significantly compared with Harvard and Princeton. Any thoughts why?
@panpacific, I haven’t really looked, because I’m convinced that Yale is not in fact behind most of its Ivy League peers. I remember reading something about how the samples were chosen for the statistical analysis, and something to the effect that it only included students who had taken out some particular federal assistance. Obviously I don’t recall clearly, and wasn’t paying close attention at the time.
Thanks. Now I’m engaged in this, and will probably spend some time researching it.
I actually made the “statistically invalid” comment in another thread. However, they are still comparing “apples with apples” across if you will, and it’s hard to not notice the pretty big gap between Yale and some other colleges including not only almost all Ivy League peers but also Stanford, Georgetown, Duke etc… I really can’t see why that is so, and that’s why I posted this question here.
Perhaps Yalies graduate with sufficiently low or no debt as to not need to work on Wall Street or for the consulting firms. DS sees many of his strapped HS classmates make career choices based on need.
I have no basis for this, but from what I understand, a single digit percentage of Yale students qualify to be included in the study (iirc, 7% of Yale, 3% of Harvard).
Fwiw, Yale vs Duke vs Harvard was not the focus of the study. They’ve got bigger fish to fry.
Well, the whole thing is about students WITH debts or coming from low income families (eg Pell grant receipients), so the choices based on needs argument may not stand here.
Agree the focus was not elite colleges. Most of them nonetheless did well in the scorecard. Yale came out as a bit of surprise in at least one metric, considering its name recognition.
This type of discussion isn’t really my bread and butter, but I think I disagree. Let’s take two groups of low income students. One group attends notYale and feels compelled to earn high incomes after graduation in order to cope. The other group attends Yale and feels free to teach or do counseling, without feeling an overwhelming need for high income.
Did the Yale group lag far behind in your reckoning? I would say the contrary. As I said, this isn’t my wheelhouse, but I wouldn’t jump to conclusions, especially on a single digit percentage of the students at the Ivies.
@lxnaybob: there’s no compelling reason to believe Yale students receiving federal financial aid have less “need” to work in profitable fields than Harvard students. I think HYPS have similar financial aid programs. Do you think Y’s is better? Why should these Yale students on debt “feel free” to do things their counterparts in other schools feel like luxury? I don’t understand.
It seems the database includes students who received federal grants as well, so we are looking at around 20% of graduates instead of single digit percentages. Still the minority but the sample sizes are perhaps bigger than we originally believed.
I was wondering about those numbers too. Assuming it’s an apples to apples comparison across schools - though it sounds like it only covers a small percentage of graduates at Yale and similar schools - I wonder if it reflects at some level what students tend to major in and what kinds of careers they tend to pursue.
I notice that the median earnings number (10 years after entering college) for MIT is higher than any Ivy, and conversely the numbers for even the top LACs (Williams, Amherst, Pomona, etc) are below any Ivy. Obviously more students at MIT major in STEM fields, which tend to have higher earnings at least in the early career years, and I would assume the numbers of STEM majors are much lower at LACs with the Ivies somewhere in between. Or maybe not just STEM, but pre-professional fields more broadly so also including economics etc.
That’s one possibility anyway.
Sure. The top earners are actually graduates from speciality schools" such as pharmacy or nursing, but that’s not we are talking about here. We are comparing the similarly structured Ivy+ schools and Yale (sorry for lacking a better term) lags behind MANY of them.
I haven’t looked at the numbers in great detail, but do notice that the Ivy with the lowest median earnings 10 years out (Brown) is arguably the most liberal arts focused, and the highest number aside from Harvard is for Penn, arguably the most pre-professional Ivy (e.g., the only one with an undergraduate business program aside from Cornell). At Stanford, which also has a high number, the most common major is computer science.
We actually see all Ivies except brown plus Stanford, Georgetown, Duke, a few LACs and all the better known “tech” type colleges such as MIT, CMU and GeogiaTech etc. doing better than Yale. On the other hand, Havard and Princeton got ahead of many of the above mentioned. So yes, majors definitely play a big role but that’s not the whole story.
Based upon my observation of Yale graduates, I don’t think you can put much stock in the college score card run by the feds. For example, my son graduated Yale last May and is currently working as a data analyst at a big tech company in New York – you probably have the Ap on your computer and phone. His starting salary $90k per year, plus $25K in stock options, plus free health care, gym, breakfast, lunch, matching 402K, and 4 weeks vacation. Now granted his salary and benefits places him among Yale’s top earning graduates, but all of his friends are making at least $70k. So, from my perspective Yale is NOT lagging behind.
@gibby: That is what is puzzling. Then what could’ve gone so wrong in the scorecard that it produced a result that is so not line with the reality? Nowadays, you bet info about earning prospect for college graduates will draw attention from government backed up by IRS data in particular. As imperfect as it is noted by many, this result, IMO, can be considered bad publicity for Yale given its status.
FWIW: I also know UMich graduates who are making $65K to $85k, so I really think college score card is way off and not just for Yale.
“Graduates who are making…” Is not the same as the average earnings of graduates, of course.
Maybe Yale graduates focus less on salary and more on…something else.
If there’s nothing wrong with the data and it holds true in the long run, then there are only two possible explanations - lack of money making ability or lack of money making motivation. So @justonedad named one of them.
If the numbers are correct, it’s hard to reconcile with the fact that based on the last numbers I saw, Yale has the second largest university endowment, second only to Harvard (and per student it’s higher than Harvard’s).
It seems like somebody has been making money and giving some of it to Yale . . .
@canoe2015 The bulk of Yale and Harvard’s endowment burgeoning over the last 20 years is jaw-dropping fantastic returns based upon fantastic work by the respective investment offices. The new Grad school tower is being named after David Swensen ('84 Phd), the lead investment officer since the 80s. (the main donor insisted and Yale agreed, it be named after Swensen – who humbly would not have wanted that honor). He’s overseen Yale’s growth from $3B to about $23B since then. He also happened to be the instructor for my first capital markets class – good teacher, too!
Certainly there have been some remarkable and historic donors to these great universities-- but the bulk of the growth has come from wise investment.