Does It Matter Where You Go to College?

[xchrom]

http://www.theatlantic.com/business/archive/2012/05/does-it-matter-where-you-go-to-college/257227/



Meet Ben. He's a high school senior from a middle class family in Massachusettes who is choosing where to attend college next year. He's down to two schools: prestigious Boston College, or the University of Massachusetts at Amherst, his state's top public campus. Even with the generous financial aid package from BC, he would still graduate with a big mound of loans. UMass, meanwhile, would be more than $15,000 a year cheaper.

Which should Ben pick? Prestige or price?

With the cost of higher education climbing every year, and student debt surpassing $1 trillion, more and more young people will have to decide whether to make that trade-off. It begs the question: Does it really pay to go to an elite university, financially speaking? Researchers have been investigating this issue since at least the 1980s. And their findings tend to show that when it comes to future earnings, where you go to college counts.

Study 1: DO THE RANKINGS MATTER AT ALL?
Yes. The more elite the school, the better its alums' paychecks.

Figuring out the payoff of an elite education is a tricky task for economists because of the sheer number of variables that can come into play. Some students are smarter than others. Some are richer, or more motivated. A few students may pick a lower-ranked university to take advantage of a particular program -- say, a science whiz who chooses to attend the Colorado School of Mines in the hopes at landing a lucrative engineering gig in the oil industry. For academics, controlling for all these factors is a bit like trying to rid mosquitos from a swamp -- pretty close to impossible.

[NYC_SKP]

1. A cursory read reveals, to me, two-no, THREE faults in this approach and reasoning.

First, that anyone cares where you went to school; that a prestigious school is somehow automatically better.

Second, that low cost can be correlated to low quality.

ETA the third and most egregious fault: that post-university income is the end-all most important thing. puh-lease!!!

What they miss, apparently, is the most important question: are students being transformed into more critical thinkers, better contributors to their field (irrespective of price or reputation of the institution)?

And, how happy are these people with their college experience (beyond their fucking paycheck)?

[CrispyQ]

3. Regarding your second point, "...low cost can be correlated to low quality."

Years after I got my Bachelor's I went back to school to freshen my math skills & to learn programming. I started with a couple of classes at the local community college. I don't know if I was just lucky, but the three professors I had were fantastic! My OOP professor was one of the best I've ever had.

[unblock]

2. and when economists look at this question, they tend to look only at future income potential.

but the college experience is much more than that.

lifetime friendships and perhaps romances are formed at college, and one's entire outlook on life, certainly from an intellectual standpoint, is heavily influenced by those four years.

that has a value far beyond mere income potential.

that doesn't necessarily mean the more expensive school is better, or that the private school is better than the public school.

as with many jobs, the "best fit" matters most. if you're the type of person who would get lost in the shuffle at a big state university, then a smaller private school might be a better fit. alternatively, if you know exactly what you want to study, your choice of schools might lean heavily on the particular departments of interest (e.g., johns hopkins is a famously great school for pre-med).

income potential matters, of course, but if you focus only on that, you're already missing much of the point of college.

[global1]

4. The More Elite The School, The Better Its Alums' Paychecks? Really Or......

are the alums' paychecks better because these alums have daddy's and mommy's that are wealthy and they wind up in cushy family jobs after they graduate?

In other words, how much of the 'better paychecks' is due to being born with a silver spoon in one's mouth?

Did these grads really make it on their own or did they have a golden path to follow after they graduated?

[Warren Stupidity]

7. Apropos of nothing much...

Harvard is leading the way in the ivy league in eliminating cost as a factor. Their threshold for family income that pays nothing is now at something like 250,000.

And while there are legacy admissions, the top schools do far less of that than you'd expect.

At the very top of the elite schools there has been a concerted and largely successful effort to restructure the system as a meritocracy.

[Igel]

8. Given the numbers ...

Mostly on their own.

It's not the schools. It's not the parents. It's not the faculty.

It's the students.

They show up prepared and disciplined, they learn a lot. They get their foot in the door--and a good-name school helps with that--and they advance.

Prestigious schools attract a lot of well-qualified applicants. The pool of students that results tend to be very well prepared, on the whole, and disciplined. They work hard. They learn a lot. And they get a chance to show off their learning and discipline.

Schools with less prestige attract a lot of well-qualified applicants, but the pool tends, on average, to be much less prepared and much less disciplined. They work less hard, on average. Some work hard and learn a lot. Many don't.

Schools with much less prestige attact fewer well-qualified applicants and it's hard for them to get their foot in the door. They start at a lower level of educational achievement than those in more prestigious schools. They don't work as hard. They wind up at a lower level when they graduate--if they graduate.

Far more students attend low-prestige schools. These swamp the results when you look at the value of a college degree.

The parents' big role is in making sure the kids are prepared and disciplined. It shows up in educational achievement over the summer; it shows up in support and encouragement and monitoring during the school year. It shows up in the kids' attitudes in the classroom. One can make excuses for the parents and find valid (and not-so-valid) reasons for their kids turning out good or bad in school. In the end, the only thing the excuses do it give the kids a second or perhaps a 3rd chance. What they do with their second or third chance depends on them.

You can surely find counterexamples. But 2 or 3 instances out of a thousand shows only that it happens, not that it's common.

[global1]

11. Heard A Story Yesterday Where The Top Grad From A Top Non-IV League School Was At.....

a private Goldman Sachs hiring event. After a series of interviews and hobnobbing - he was called into an office and told that they really liked him and would like to hire him but that the job was being offered to a Harvard grad not as qualified - simply because he was a Harvard grad that had good family pedigree.

[cloudbase]

5. It depends on the discipline.

There's much to be said for engineers that graduate from the Caltechs, MITs and Rensselaers over those that come out of schools where there is a lesser focus on the subject. The curriculum is of considerably greater rigor, and because of their graduates' professional reputations, they can enlist quality undergraduates.

[Warren Stupidity]

6. It makes a difference for your first Job.

Anyone who thinks that everything else being equal, a fresh out from Harvard doesn't have better prospects than a fresh out from umass is in denial.

That first job is frequently critical to your entire career trajectory.

Of course everything else is never really equal, the stats, as the article points out are complicated, and that makes calculating an objective value for the bump one gets on an individual basis nearly impossible.

[treestar]

9. Only when you're a high school senior

Getting into Harvard might assure your future, but other than that, IMO most people don't really care where you went - the degree is what matters.

[Manifestor_of_Light]

10. It depends on who you know, basically.

I graduated from an excellent private liberal arts college.
U.S. News and World Report called it "the best liberal arts college west of the Mississippi" if you pay attention to those things.

I also graduated from an excellent private free-standing law school.

Neither of those degrees enabled me to land a job. So I think it must be connections. I wasn't rich enough and didn't have a rich daddy with a profitable business. And none of the guys I went to law school with, who were partners in law firms raking in a million dollars in profits per year, on top of their salary, could give me a job as a paralegal. They just couldn't do it.

[FarCenter]

12. It depends on his objectives in life

If he is going for an occupation where looks, personality, networking and connections are important, then BC provided that he has the family connections, looks, personality and extra budget to party with the right crowd.

Otherwise, UMass, especially if he is going for a STEM major. Actually, UMass Lowell is higher rated in some majors. But Amherst has the more bucolic campus.

In either case, associate with other intelligent, hard-working, good students.