Some Colleges Have More Students From the Top 1 Percent Than the Bottom 60 (nytimes.com)

Students at elite colleges are even richer than experts realized, according to a new study based on millions of anonymous tax filings and tuition records. At 38 colleges in America, including five in the Ivy League -- Dartmouth, Princeton, Yale, Penn and Brown -- more students came from the top 1 percent of the income scale than from the entire bottom 60 percent. From a report on the NYTimes (alternate non-paywall link): Roughly one in four of the richest students attend an elite college -- universities that typically cluster toward the top of annual rankings (you can find more on our definition of "elite" at the bottom). In contrast, less than one-half of 1 percent of children from the bottom fifth of American families attend an elite college; less than half attend any college at all. Colleges often promote their role in helping poorer students rise in life, and their commitments to affordability. But some elite colleges have focused more on being affordable to low-income families than on expanding access. "Free tuition only helps if you can get in," said Danny Yagan, an assistant professor of economics at the University of California, Berkeley, and one of the authors of the study.

Comments

Wrong kind of diversity

[plague911]

These school pride themselves on "diversity" or at least the "right kind" of diversity. They spend all their effort focusing on ethnic and gender diversity with almost no effort for economic or cultural diversity. This is what happens when the recruiters are generally nice, but low functioning collage graduates who could not find careers in their original field. They have their definition of diversity and do not expend any critical thinking skills trying to find where their ideas fall short of the stated goal of creating environment with diversity of thought. You end up with schools where people all look different but think the same.

The more relevant study.

[geekmux]

The far more relevant study would be to determine the earning potential after humans piss away four years and Ferrari money on an investment that isn't paying out these days.

Of course, the Education Mafia selling college degrees wouldn't ever allow that kind of study to happen...

Re:Not a surprise

[PPH]

White-shoe management consulting firms exclusively hire from the elite universities, .... going from being a broke college student to making $250K a year is a big change.

What is this 'broke college student' you speak of? The elites are a bunch of drunken frat boys with daddy's American Express Centurion credit card.

It comes down to value for the hiring organization once you get out of school. Consultancies and investment banks value the networking connections that elite college graduates bring with them. Because these businesses add very little actual value to their product, other than the stamp of approval of their name on otherwise obvious advice. Businesses that are more value added tend not to hire from elite colleges as much. Because the cost of these graduates doesn't make up for the small (if any) increase in their productivity.

Re:New flash - Bugattis owned by rich not poor

[hey!]

Except some poor and middle class kids get into Harvard -- in fact they get their expenses paid. That's not the case for Bugattis.

And it's for a good (or at least shrewd) reason: Letting the intellectual elite into your exclusive school lends the prestige of their academic accomplishments to the financial elite who attend.

Look at our president-elect, who likes to point to his attendance at Penn as proof that he has a very good brain. Well, I'm not one of those people who think he's actually stupid but he got into Penn because he was rich and had family connections in the admissions office. He's not in the same league as the kids who get into Penn on a scholarship.