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Is Going To an Elite College Worth the Cost?
Pickens writes "Jacques Steinberg writes in the NY Times that the sluggish economy and rising costs of college have only intensified questions about whether expensive, prestigious colleges make any difference. Researchers say that alumni of the most selective colleges earn, on average, 40 percent more a year than those who graduated from the least selective public universities, as calculated 10 years after they graduated from and found that 'attendance at an elite private college significantly increases the probability of attending graduate school, and more specifically graduate school at a major research university.' But other researchers say the extent to which one takes advantage of the educational offerings of an institution may be more important, in the long run, than how prominently and proudly that institution's name is being displayed on the back windows of cars in the nation's wealthiest enclaves."
Its not about whether or not the degree you get there is any better if you email your CV to a company you found on a jobs site.
Its about if the preppy boy you shared a room with can get you a job at his dad's company.
If they're swayed by the big H on your resume, great! Maybe you'll be able to pay off your student loans slightly faster otherwise. Or you could just go to the much cheaper, less pretentious school and get the same degree without the financial insolvency. Your choice.
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At Duke I was pretty much told "Go buy the textbook [$200+] and come to class if you have questions [which probably won't be answered]." The profs were just that. Profs. Not teachers. They were more interested in their research than educating the lowly undergrads.
I switched to a state school. I actually have TEACHERS now! (at 1/10th the price!)
the distribution is not even. I've found complete idiots at some top schools, but I've also found smart people who are able to capitalize on the name of their institution to get interesting research problems to work on. That's almost definitely not exclusive to Ivy+, but is probably harder to find once you go down the ladder from places like Penn State and Illinois and GT, and 'flagship' institutions.
Are those that go to the big elites more connected anyway, thus enabling them to obtain the higher paying jobs out of college? I would assume a Rockefeller could go to community college and still land a rather well paying job. Who you know and all that jazz...
The article seems to assume that lots of folk attending elite schools are paying sticker for their education. From my understanding that's not the case.
With the move to substantially increase tuition at all universities in England, there will be growing comparison against the sticker price at the top US schools. That, of course, is an unfair comparison as top US schools while undoubtedly expensive also have exceptional financial aid packages.
While an in-state public university tuition will almost always be the most affordable, many will be able to attend top private schools for a similar amount. Very few will be paying the $45-50k talked about in the article.
From what I have seen it is the close personal contacts among wealthy families that make the difference and not the actual education. There are not so many people that can make a few phone calls and bring heavy investment money into a situation. After all, how many people can invest multi-millions in any project? They tend to know each other and their family members have the path prepared for them due to endowments to old ivy.
So they say that you earn more if you went to a highly selective school than a non-selective one. Ok, fine, but the problem is that it doesn't mean you earn more BECAUSE you went to that school. The thing is if the school is being highly selective, it is getting only the best and brightest students, not to mention motivated. Those people are likely to go on to better things because they are smart, motivated, and so on.
What you need to examine for something like this is how it compares between people that went to these schools and people that could have, but didn't. Those who had the grades and test scores, maybe even applied, but elected to go to a state school instead. My bet? Not much difference.
In the job market you'll find that your university education matters little past your first job. It isn't 100% irrelevant or anything, but employers start to care a whole lot more about experience and references than they do about education. Where you went to school and what your GPA was will take a back seat to what you've done at work.
Then, of course, in terms of it being "worth it," you have to consider the costs. Suppose you can go to a public school on scholarship, and the course load will allow you to work to cover other expenses. You can come out with a 4 year degree and zero debt. Now suppose you go to Harvard and have to pay $50,000 a year in tuition, and have no time to work so you accrue $15,000 in other living costs. You get out and owe $260,000, presuming interest was handled during your time in school (with costs that high, probably not). You now have to pay that, and its interest down. So you HAVE to make a lot more to break even. The money you spend on repaying your outstanding loans is money a person who did not accrue them could put in savings or invest.
I certainly wouldn't tell people not to go to a top school, but I'd say do so only if you can afford it. If they give you a scholarship, or if your family has plenty of money to support you, then sure, go for it. Really can't hurt, though make sure you do research because some schools are better for one thing than others. MIT is famously bad for undergrads, good for grads. However trying to pay for the whole thing just because you managed to get in? Hmmm, I doubt that's very smart. You'd have to be assured a good bit more money, and that it would consistently stay higher, than if you didn't to make it worth it in the long run.
Don't go take your under-graduate degree from a college that is famous for its graduate program, you will never see your professors, just their graduate student teaching assistants.
You should pick a school that is "known for" the program you are going to take at the level you are going to take it. That can be well worth it.
And the definition of famous needs to be curtailed. As some professionals in the field you intend to pursue whether what schools they "know are good". The answers to this are almost always rather surprising and often include some very good near-by or state schools.
Schools "earn their branding" for a reason, but you have to _really_ _check_ the brand details and you also have to make sure that it isn't expired. Only the professionals in the field will know if the school that is famous for X to the general populace is really sitll famous for X amongst the topical peerage.
Innocent people shouldn't be forced to pay for inferior software development.
--"Code Complete" Microsoft Press
Though there is a flipside to that: High end schools are often well connected themselves, as are their faculty, so going there can get you connections. Thing is that tends to be more true on a per-program basis. So in the event you have a field you really want to be in, particularly if it is something involving graduate work, then you need to look at what professors are good in that and choose the school accordingly. May turn out a "lesser" school in fact has a better, more connected, program in the area of your interest.
But yes, it is another problem with the study. If the people have the connections anyhow, and a job is "waiting for them" so to speak, then the school they go to is not all that relevant.
Actually, I both agree and want to push this further.
Although he was phrasing it rather snarky, the AC elsewhere who said it was about the preppy contacts and schmoozing was part right - if you're a people-person and know how to be in the popular crowds, the Who-You-Know factor can be an instant ticket.
However, I treated a degree as "something to defend" and didn't want a glaring Scarlet Letter following me around. I agree that the undergrad experience in some of the Name Schools is awful and a borderline-scam. I switched to a state school and started on a mostly ordinary business career.
But Education is the next big Bubble. I was in Uni in a precisely dated "last of the old" time slots - 1993-1997. A typical undergrad course = 2 textbooks, "40 podcasts" and your choice of "2 answers per podcast + 1 office hour". Thanks to the RIAA's screaming, we now know that 40 podcasts = ... $0! And now the Two-Questions can be answered on the net. So the real price of the class is a $50/hour "consulting hour" plus the rent for the dorm + meal ticket.
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Many of the most elite schools have a "legacy admissions" policy (that's how the C-student George W. Bush managed to get into Yale). It gives the children of alumni priority admission, because they want their richer alumni to keep contributing money, and denying little Biff or Muffy their admission would be bad business. It's affirmative action for the rich.
We have elite subjects (educations). For example Med. school is really hard to get into, whether you try at UvA (University of Amsterdam) or something like the middle-of-nowhere UG (Groningen University). On the other hand, there are relatively few requirements for getting into Social Sciences. I don't get the USA system. What's the worth of an education the market isn't waiting for, even if you attended the most prestigious university? Harvard art students still don't become CEOs. I myself am studying Law at the University of Amsterdam and there is no elitism whatsoever with regard to the university. There is, however, a lot regarding universities in general compared to colleges and between studies. (e.g. "Law is better than art history!") Makes more sense. Please tell me your stories, I'm really interested.
Who am I going to hire in a recession? A guy from Kansas State U or someone from M.I.T.? I would pick M.I.T. if both candidates were equally qualified. Experience counts more of course but the deal breaker would be the school.
The debt ... well the guy from Kansas Sate working at Target will make more than you. 50% of yoru income will just go to payback loan and you will need a 2nd job to survive and eat due to the outrageous cost. But in 5 years when you are a manager you can then start to make up the difference. In 30 years when you are getting ready for retirement you will see the difference in your bank account. It just wont show for awhile due to the high outragous costs.
Now if you do not find an I.T. job then you are wasting money. Some of you just wont work in I.T. Indians do these jobs now mostly and it is very competitive. Cross your fingers and take risks appropriately. Also do not bring in more than 100k in debt. Keep that as the limit.
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It depends on the cost. I was lucky enough to get a place at Cambridge University in the days when there were no tuition fees for university in the UK so going there cost no more than any other university (you just had to pay or accommodation, food and books....and the odd beer or two! ;-). I got a fantastic education which has been exceptionally useful in getting a career in academia. So I'd say it was definitely worth it.
Of course nowadays students at Cambridge will be looking at £9,000/year tuition fees with lower fees of £3-6,000/year elsewhere thanks to the UK government's appalling mismanagement of education. With fees like that I would have had to think long and hard before going. Partly because of the cost but also partly because selecting student's based on parental income rather than academic ability will mean lowering the education standards and a worsening of the student experience as the fraction of those of us who went through the state school system is reduced.
I went to Stanford for Computer Science + Management Science and can emphatically say yes.
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Is going to a University at all worth the cost?
I was a computer geek from elementary school and knew where my career was heading. After an addiction to Ultima Online that resulted in too many absences I was given a choice of retaking a whole 6-month semester of high-school and being separated from my peers or dropping out of school. After a few months lounging around and playing the game some more I went to work in a large computer chain doing desktop and printer repairs, then worked as a junior server & desktop admin at an account firm trying to become a Dot-com, then started as a Wintel Server Admin (Systems Analyst) in a major Wall Street investment bank, and after 9/11 I worked for most of Wall Street firms as a contractor doing essentially the same thing making well over 6-figures.
When the last economic slump hit even New York I took a position last year to move to Houston Texas to work for a major health care/hospital organization and I've been working as a Senior Windows Server Admin. I'm much happier now in this new city and the quality of life here is much better than what I had in NYC, even though I took a 20% pay cut but still remained in the 6-figure range with a higher or equal pay rate than some who have gone to universities.
That's my story and I sometimes wonder how it would have turned out if I did go to a university? Would I have been working at a more difficult and prestigious job than a server admin making more money? Would I be happier? Or would I have turned out like some of my friends who went to college and came back no smarter or more educated but with a large financial debt making half as much money as I am?
In 1999, economists from Princeton and the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation looked at some of the same data Eide and his colleagues had used, but crunched them in a different way: They compared students at more selective colleges to others of "seemingly comparable ability," based on their SAT scores and class rank, who had attended less selective schools, either by choice or because a top college rejected them.
The earnings of graduates in the two groups were about the same — perhaps shifting the ledger in favor of the less expensive, less prestigious route. (The one exception was that children from "disadvantaged family backgrounds" appeared to earn more over time if they attended more selective colleges. The authors, Stacy Berg Dale and Alan B. Krueger, do not speculate why, but conclude, "These students appear to benefit most from attending a more elite college.")
=~ s,(.*),<sarcasm>$1</sarcasm>,g if any_point_you_wish();
After I graduated from MIT and went out into the "real world", everyone was like, we'll hire you because you can do anything. And if there was any truth in that, it came mostly as self-fulfilling prophecy; I owe much of my success to the simple faith my first bosses gave me. Tell anyone that they'll be great in some way they haven't yet realized and get them to really believe it and see what happens. The effect of a high-value degree is a double-edged sword, though, as it can set internal expectations that are extremely difficult to shed. I have to say, looking back, the effect of the education itself was quite inconsequential.
Yes, you build up a network of contacts in the world of the most successful people. But that is important. But interacting with successful people does more than just give you "contacts"; there is inherently automatically a "mentoring" effect.
"But other researchers say the extent to which one takes advantage of the educational offerings of an institution may be more important, in the long run"
This is theoretically true at an individual level. If I think to my own days in a third-world mediocre public school and university, I would say I ultimately managed to get a good education 'in spite of' my school/university, not because of it --- but even so, I often performed very poorly (regretfully), and if I had to name THE single-biggest thing that negatively influenced my performance, I would have to say it was being surrounded by almost 100% uniformly poor-performing peers; they were stupid, they were lazy, they didn't care, learning was the least important thing imaginable, and stupidity and laziness was basically celebrated. When 99.9% of a child's peers are like that, as happened with me, it is almost impossible not to be negatively influenced and 'dragged down' to some degree.
Now, many years later, I have a baby on the way, and have to start thinking about where to send her someday. And I definitely feel that if I can afford it, I want her in one of the top-notch universities. Why? Not because I'm expecting miracles from the professors or infrastructure, but because I know she is most likely to be surrounded by a comparatively higher percentage of peers who are amongst those in society with the highest focus and motivation on hard work and success.
It is oddly seldom mentioned, but beyond parenting and teachers, I think the quality of peers that your child sits with must have a huge influence on their outcomes.
The other reason is that I indeed want my children to mingle with society's successful people, not just to build contacts, but because there is an inherent mentoring effect. Even spending a day with someone highly successful at something can make a young persons entire career. The most successful people in finance and investing, tend to have had top-notch mentors, and you can mostly only find those people in the upper echelons.
Like it or not, many of the most successful IT entrepreneurs etc. do come from backgrounds that allowed them to attend top-notch universities, and there are reasons for that.
Can children be successful in cheaper schools, sure, of course, but suddenly when parenthood looms I just think I want the statistically best chance for my kids, so they can have opportunities I never had.
As other people have noted, people attending top schools may be more successful financially and professionally, but they also tend to be smart, hardworking, and come from affluent backgrounds. Those qualities are probably more important predictors of success than the education itself. The article mentions a Princeton economist who found that kids who were admitted to elite schools, but who turned them down to to attend other institutions, did about as well as those actually attending.
That being said, don't discount the importance of the name. A prof once told me "the name will help you get in the door for the interview, but once you're inside, it's all about you". He meant to emphasize that it's ultimately about the person, not the institution. True, but if you can't solve the immediate problem of getting that interview, your qualifications don't really matter, and in a lot of fields its difficult to even get an interview. Simply being able to get into a good school implies that you have a lot of the qualities- motivation, work ethic, intelligence- that people want. They're more likely to read your application carefully and call you. Maybe that's not fair, but that's the way it is. The name opens doors.
Personally, I think good schools really are worth it; the top institutions really are different. But keep in mind that the "best" school according to U.S. News and World Report is not necessarily the "best" school for you. Different schools have different cultures and you might find yourself fitting in perfectly at one, and miserable at the other. Maybe you prefer a school where people are passing out drunk and vomiting in the halls, or maybe you want a school where people hang out in the halls arguing about programming languages. Maybe you want a school with an amazing English program, maybe you want one with an amazing philosophy program. Maybe you want to go to a huge school in New York City, maybe you want to go to a small college in a college town. It's more important to go to the school that's best for you, than the one that's ranked #1 this year.
But the most important thing to keep in mind is this: you can get a good education anywhere, if you work hard, and a lousy education anywhere, if you don't.
The Harvard Longitudinal Study of Adult Development studied groups of men since the 1940s. The only correlation the study could find with anything was personal relationships.
http://adultdev.bwh.harvard.edu/research-SAD.html
Men with good relationships in childhood and young adulthood did better in almost every facet of their lives than did those with poor relationships: income, social status, marital status, health, etc. etc.
There are also lots of studies that show that, once employees meet the minimum qualifications and are hired, their performance has nothing to do with where they graduated, their marks, their IQ or any additional degrees they have. The big thing is their interpersonal relationships.
Of course, this is Slashdot, populated with geeks and nerds, so I don't expect that most of those reading this will believe it; sigh.
What if you go to some famous school, but all the good jobs are reserved for the "insiders" who have been going there for generations? Outside of this crowd, other employers may feel intimidated by your background and not want to hire you. Not all employers want a super-smart employee. Or if they do hire you, they may set you up for failure, because the boss wants to laugh about firing someone who went to a prestigious school.
I went to a prestigious school, where everything people said had many layers of meaning, and everything was an advanced mind game. It took me a long time to trust simpler people who really mean what they say; people couldn't understand why I was so "paranoid". Well, I was in an environment where you had to be.
As Walter Benn Michaels puts it in "The Trouble with Diversity," universities are where the rich send their children, in order to "launder their privilege into qualifications." What a great phrase!
The USA claims to be a free and open society, where anyone can, through natural talent and hard work, rise to a higher class, and become wealthy and influential. But of course that's a lie. Social classes exist here just as they do in all countries, and the rich upper classes will always remain dominant, the poor you will always have with you, and the middle class will always be insecure and will strive to move into the upper class. It's not different here, it's just that we've been sold on the myth of equal opportunity.
Because of this lie, the rich have to hide their inherited advantages, and must show evidence that they actually have talents and are hard-working. Middle-class workers have to be kept asleep, lest they realize that the people who own the corporation do so through wealth, and not through merit. Hence the corporate owners send their kids to Yale, Harvard, Princeton and Stanford, to mask that inherited privilege with the trappings of actual skill and effort.
I've walked through the campus at Princeton, and the undergraduates there all appeared to float through space, as if life had never presented them with any obstacles, as if anything was possible, as if the future held great delights. They weren't snobbish. They were very nice people, but they truly knew that they were masters of their universe.
So how does this relate to the NY times article in question? Why do private-university graduates have higher salaries than state-university graduates? Simply because they are rich and connected *BEFORE* they enter the hallowed halls. That wealth and advantage are there after they graduate, and helps them land great jobs. They would probably land those jobs if they didn't attend those schools, but then the resentful middle-class workers would smell a rat.
In other words, the school you attend makes no difference. What matters is what class you were born into.
There are many factors at work here. The various studies all have flaws as there are many interrelated variables and they are difficult to separate out. There is a complex choice here, and it is never as simple as these studies or stories make it out to be. Some things that are typically omitted:
1) If your undergraduate degree is the last degree you are going to get, the importance of that institution is elevated somewhat.
2) If you plan to get an advanced degree, one main goal of undergraduate education is to increase the likeliehood that you will get into a top graduate program and do well there.
2b) Top graduate programs in science and engineering are much more likely to take strong students from research universities, particularly those undergraduates who already took some graduate-level courses or had specific productive experience with undergraduate research.
Expounding a bit:
1) For careers in finance or management, many strong firms only consider students from very strong universities. If that is your career path, that could be an important criterion. Similarly, if your only degree will be undergraduate in some other field where generally the expectation is just an undergraduate degree, that choice of institution of course matters more. In terms of studies that look at average salary, this effect can dominate others as these are often high-paying fields with great variance in salary.
2) In general, I recommend that good students go to the "best" place that they get into. That is, the most academically rigorous usually works well. Overdoing it can be a problem, if they go to a place where the expectations are simply to high and they struggle and fail. But most commonly, the advantage of going to a strong place is that the other students are also strong, and the professors can then teach at a reasonable level for their audience. That is, often the other students are the limiting factor to the depth of a course's coverage and so you want to be at the best place you can be and still succeed. That is a good route to the preparation needed for doctoral-level courses.
2b) I've had to serve on various doctoral admissions committees, and students from big research universities are much more known quantities. Professors at these institutions have more experience with students continuing on to graduate school (and seeing their own students and other graduate students in their departments) and the students have a pretty good idea of what they are getting into. There have been too many students from small liberal arts colleges, whose letters of recommendation said "this is the best student I've seen in years" who took all the available courses there and excelled grade-wise, but who struggled and turned out to be poorly prepared or just overwhelmed by doctoral level work, or simply didn't really realize what they were getting into. So occassionally there are students from such backgrounds who do OK, but it isn't common and I can't recommend it as a good route to a strong graduate program. It may be the case that their smaller college instructors there are more involved in their teaching, classes are smaller, facilities are better, and they may in fact actually learn more at their institution and be happier there, but that doesn't really carry much weight for eventual graduate study.
FWIW, I went to an elite US research university for my undergraduate, and went to a top US research university for my PhD. I have taught or held research appointments post-Ph.D. in a wide range of institutions, from one of the weaker Ivy League institutions to top tier public research universities to mid-tier public research universities and I have a strong record of research funding as a professor judged primarily on research. People from many backgrounds ask for my advice about university choices in science and engineering as there is a culture of excessive obsession about "the right institution" for their choice.
It's psychosomatic. You need a lobotomy. I'll get a saw.
I did Applied Math (minor in Statistics) at Stanford and can say with absolute certainty that there's probably a 50-50 chance it could go either way.
Confucius say, "Find worm in apple - bad. Find half a worm - worse."
And the "best" schools aren't necessarily the most expensive schools. That is another important distinction to make.
Quite true. In fact, Ivy League schools can be nearly free if you're not rich and are willing to negotiate with the financial aid office.
"I zero-index my hamsters" - Willtor (147206)
I went to a reunion at a very elite college and they had the results of a survey sent out to the alumn.
One answer to the question, "Do you think 's name helped you?" was:
"Yes, it opened many doors... and legs"
You provide a link to the study, but not to any results supporting your claim. The only results I found with a bit of searching were in an Atlantic Monthly article -- and those indicated that personal relationships were most important, but only among the Harvard men studied, not the "Glueck men", for whom the most important predictor was industriousness in childhood. Further, there were other factors as well, for both groups.
Where are my mod points.... Right now even elite colleges are finding it hard to get all the full-tuition students they need. My daughter enrolled at a top school this year which gave us a no-strings-attached discount that dwarfed the cobbled-together combination of (grade-contingent) scholarships, loans, and grants that her other options offered. Now she's getting a household-name education, plus perks like great professors and a single room. Of course she's doing all the work and taking full advantage of everything on offer there. Now's the time to go a little contrarian in your educational choices.
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Americans ideals tend to favor the individual over the group. This is likely due to the fact that the US was founded (or at least developed) by rugged individualists who favored ideas like self-reliance, free will, self-determination, upward mobility within as single generation, and at least the perception of a meritocracy. Wrong, right or in between a highly structured system where a kid must move down a specific track for his educational career largely runs counter to those ideas and is seen as removing opportunity from those who make mistakes early in life or who do not have the opportunities due to socio-economic or other constraints. Hence things like tracks which allow you to get educated versus tracks where you get vocational training is looked down upon as anathema to the American ideals of equality and opportunity here. As a result it's unlikely you'll see something like you're proposing over here anytime soon though it is often discussed in educational circles.
To answer your question about the SAT it's just a standardized test to see what a kid has learned. It's a way of comparing kids from vastly different backgrounds and educational experiences on a standard scale. It doesn't take into account things like experiences or whether the kid performed community service or played a leadership role in school just his or her knowledge. We send in what amounts to a resume (i.e. CV) along with our test scores and high school transcripts to cover that other stuff when we apply to college.