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Thread: Is Elite College Worth It? Maybe Not

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    Default Is Elite College Worth It? Maybe Not

    Interesting read. I'd argue the one variable left out is the major the student chooses. If you want to go into the business world is studying Psychology at Harvard going to help you much more than a Business major at State U? Probably not. If your goal is I-Banking there are definite advantages to being in an Ivy.

    The reality is parents will continue to want their children to go to the best schools and we have not hit a tipping point where we see folks choosing otherwise.




    Is Elite College Worth It? Maybe Not

    Wealthy parents who spend heavily to get their kids into top schools aren’t giving them as big an advantage as commonly thought, research shows


    We’re told ad nauseam that college is the key to success. Is it any wonder that some parents broke the law to get their child into the best?

    Of course, the parents accused by the FBI of bribing coaches and test administrators are an extreme case, but even some law abiding parents can relate: Some donate millions to their alma mater or hire $1,000-per-hour consultants to land a coveted spot at a top school.

    And yet from an economic standpoint, this makes no sense. The evidence shows that a college degree delivers a large and sustained income premium over a high school diploma, but a selective college doesn’t make the premium bigger. There are exceptions, but most people who prosper after graduating from such a college would likely have prospered if they had attended a less prestigious institution as well. After all, the children whose parents were charged last week were born with wealth, connections, and devoted parents willing to do almost anything for them, a recipe for success no matter where they graduate from.

    Consequently, the outrage directed at parents who buy their children’s way legally or illegally into top colleges, while understandable, misses the point. Like an exclusive country club, admission to a top college is proof of status, not the source of it. A child bumped by another’s wealth has lost a trophy, not a future.

    The fact that smart, ambitious children who attend elite colleges also do well in life doesn’t mean the first caused the second. This was most clearly demonstrated in a pair of now famous papers by Stacy Dale of Mathematica Policy Research and Alan Krueger of Princeton University.

    Mr. Krueger, one of the country’s most admired and prolific labor market economists, died this past weekend, at the age of 58. His studies routinely overturned the conventional wisdom with innovative field experiments using obscure sources of data.

    The college study was one of them. He and Ms. Dale linked the college application choices drawn from a survey of graduates with their earnings results from the Social Security Administration over the next two to three decades. What they found was that two students with similar backgrounds, grades and test scores who applied to the same mix of selective and nonselective schools earned about the same later on, even if the first attended a selective school and the second didn’t. The choice of schools applied to was indicative of ambition which, they argue, is a more powerful driver of success than the school they attend. “The return to college selectivity [is] indistinguishable from zero,” they wrote in 2011.

    The fact that the school you attended makes little difference to your future income doesn’t mean quality doesn’t matter. Rather, quality defined as how effectively a school raises a particular student’s achievement isn’t the same as selectivity. Says Ms. Dale: “In colleges and universities, people are hired based on research, not on their teaching skills. The best teachers may not be at the best schools.”

    Doug Webber, an economist at Temple University, says the elite colleges Ms. Dale and Mr. Krueger examined were only slightly better, academically, than the nonelite colleges. Where quality differences are starker, so are the effects on income. He says one study found no premium for attending the University of Texas instead of other Texas state schools, which are ranked only slightly lower, while another found a big premium for attending the University of Florida, which he says ranks much better than other state schools.

    The same phenomenon appears overseas, where parents can be even more obsessed with elite colleges than Americans, even if they don’t spend as much getting their children into them.

    Magne Mostad, a Norwegian-born economist now at the University of Chicago, and two co-authors conducted a study in Norway similar to that of Mr. Krueger and Ms. Dale’s. When adjusted for age, gender and high-school grades, graduates of elite universities did earn slightly more than others, but what they studied mattered far more: Science graduates earned almost triple what humanities graduates did.

    So if selective schools have so little effect on a student’s future income, is it irrational for parents to pay so much and suffer so much anxiety, to get their child into one? In part, parents may simply value noneconomic factors, like bragging rights at parties or the chance for their child to marry within a particular social network.

    Admission to such schools is also like a lottery ticket: Your odds of reaching the top of business or politics are always low, but not quite as low if you share the same dorm as the future chief executive of a Fortune 500 company or U.S. president.

    And focusing only on the benefits to the wealthy may miss the full picture. Ms. Dale and Mr. Krueger found that African-American and Hispanic students, and those whose parents didn’t go to college, actually did enjoy an income boost from a selective college, perhaps, the researchers said, owing to networking opportunities they otherwise wouldn’t have had.


    https://www.wsj.com/articles/is-elit...d=hp_lead_pos9
    Last edited by cawacko; 03-20-2019 at 07:23 AM.

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    I don't see Cawacko's posts nowadays, so I'm answering blind, but I'd say that 'elite' colleges and universities - if they bring together bright people as well as rich morons - make for intellectual stimulus and human development which are probably worth all the concomitant crap, at least until we get rid of capitalism and everyone can develop into a 'genius'.

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    Quote Originally Posted by iolo View Post
    I don't see Cawacko's posts nowadays, so I'm answering blind, but I'd say that 'elite' colleges and universities - if they bring together bright people as well as rich morons - make for intellectual stimulus and human development which are probably worth all the concomitant crap, at least until we get rid of capitalism and everyone can develop into a 'genius'.
    I did not read the OP either, but I make it a point to see what you have to say when I get a chance.

    I do not have enough actual personal experience and evidence to have a strong opinion on the role of elite colleges. Maybe it is because elite universities are more common in the eastern U.S., or maybe it's because I have only had garden variety corporate and academic jobs. I really do not meet that many professionals who went to Harvard, Yale, Stanford, Princeton. Are they all on the express train to careers in the State Department, Wall Street, and foreign service? Way outside my league, man!

    I do have a very distinct impression that the top notch science talent really does end up at the elite universities. You almost cannot be a top tier scientific researcher without Ivy League, MIT, Cal Tech, or at least an elite, top tier public university under your belt (UC Berkley, Michigan etc.). I have run across exceedingly few elite scientists and researchers with PhDs from University of Montana, Kansas State University, University of Maine, et al.

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    According to Payscale, those who graduate with a degree in psychology make an average wage of $57K, which is also the national average wage too.

    Conservatives hate psychology because it answers the question; why are Conservatives so fucked up in the head?
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    Quote Originally Posted by cawacko View Post
    If you want to go into the business world is studying Psychology at Harvard going to help you much more than a Business major at State U? Probably not.
    According to Payscale, one of the top 4 employers of Psych grads is JP MORGAN CHASE.
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    Quote Originally Posted by LV426 View Post
    According to Payscale, those who graduate with a degree in psychology make an average wage of $57K, which is also the national average wage too.

    Conservatives hate psychology because it answers the question; why are Conservatives so fucked up in the head?

    Also, according to Payscale, one of the top 4 employers of Psych grads is...JP MORGAN CHASE, a fucking bank.

    Cawacko does shit like this all the time; he posts bullshit opinion as fact, then never answers for being a duplicitous piece of shit.
    I'm a piece of shit for posting this article? Wow. You are just an angry person aren't you.

    Once again you can't address the article. My analogy was any major not related to business. Pick English, history etc. But you knew that and just chose to be a dick because you can't help yourself.

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    Quote Originally Posted by cawacko View Post
    I'm a piece of shit for posting this article? Wow. You are just an angry person aren't you
    No, you're a piece of shit because you draw false conclusions from bullshit Op-Eds, and then you appeal to the authority of the OP-Ed instead of defending your position on the matter and/or answering for why you do what you do here.

    You're a phony.
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    Quote Originally Posted by cawacko View Post
    I'm a piece of shit for posting this article?
    you're a piece of shit whether you post articles or not

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    Quote Originally Posted by LV426 View Post
    No, you're a piece of shit because you draw false conclusions from bullshit Op-Eds, and then you appeal to the authority of the OP-Ed instead of defending your position on the matter and/or answering for why you do what you do here.

    You're a phony.
    LOL, chump. Don't come to a discussion board if it angers you so much to have discussions. Funny a guy who claims to have gone to the top business school in the country claims an article discussing the value of elite schools is bullshit.

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    Quote Originally Posted by reagansghost View Post
    you're a piece of shit whether you post articles or not
    Good morning Batman. Always great to hear from you.

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    Quote Originally Posted by cawacko View Post
    Once again you can't address the article
    Once again, you are appealing to the authority of the Op-Ed while not defending the bad conclusions you've reached through preconceived notions and ignorance.

    Literally the first sentences of your post were inaccurate, and had you done the research and/or put in the bare minimum effort, you would have come to a much different conclusion than the one you came to that preceded the Op-ED.

    That is a bad habit of yours. You do that frequently.


    My analogy was any major not related to business.
    You literally singled out Psychology and now you're trying to shift the goalposts.

    Had you done the bare minimum research you would have come to a different conclusion than the one you came to. But your problem is that you have an inherent bias that has been informed by 40 years of Conservative propaganda and bullshit, that has so warped your twisted mind that you cannot differentiate between opinion and fact. Nor have you put in the effort to defend the bullshit you spew forth here on a daily basis, appealing to the authority of the OP-ED instead of defending the conclusions you drew from it.

    You're a lightweight.


    Pick English, history etc. But you knew that and just chose to be a dick because you can't help yourself.
    Did you check those majors in Payscale?

    English Language Majors make an average of $56K a year, and guess which one of the top 4 employers of English majors is? You ready for this? BANK OF AMERICA.

    History Majors make an average of $62K a year, and guess who two of the top 4 employers of History majors are? You ready for this? BANK OF AMERICA and JP MORGAN CHASE.

    You have preconcieved notions that are completely wrong, and they're completely wrong because you substitute your bias for fact. You do that because you are lazy as fuck.
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    Quote Originally Posted by LV426 View Post
    Once again, you are appealing to the authority of the Op-Ed while not defending the bad conclusions you've reached through preconceived notions and ignorance.

    Literally the first sentences of your post were inaccurate, and had you done the research and/or put in the bare minimum effort, you would have come to a much different conclusion than the one you came to that preceded the Op-ED.

    That is a bad habit of yours. You do that frequently.




    You literally singled out Psychology and now you're trying to shift the goalposts.

    Had you done the bare minimum research you would have come to a different conclusion than the one you came to. But your problem is that you have an inherent bias that has been informed by 40 years of Conservative propaganda and bullshit, that has so warped your twisted mind that you cannot differentiate between opinion and fact. Nor have you put in the effort to defend the bullshit you spew forth here on a daily basis, appealing to the authority of the OP-ED instead of defending the conclusions you drew from it.

    You're a lightweight.




    Did you check those majors in Payscale?

    English Language Majors make an average of $56K a year, and guess which one of the top 4 employers of English majors is? You ready for this? BANK OF AMERICA.

    History Majors make an average of $62K a year, and guess who two of the top 4 employers of History majors are? You ready for this? BANK OF AMERICA and JP MORGAN CHASE.

    You have preconcieved notions that are completely wrong, and they're completely wrong because you substitute your bias for fact. You do that because you are lazy as fuck.
    Let me guess, that was your major and that's why you are crying right now.

    You choose to ignore the premise of the article and what I posted to cry about your major because you think it's equal to a business major for someone who wants to go into business. But again, you choose not to discuss the article you just want to scream and shout. Poor LV.

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    Quote Originally Posted by cawacko View Post
    Don't come to a discussion board if it angers you so much to have discussions.
    Don't whine when someone attacks you for being a piece of shit, lying scumbag who draws false conclusions because you're too fucking lazy to do the work of being informed.


    Funny a guy who claims to have gone to the top business school in the country claims an article discussing the value of elite schools is bullshit.
    What's sad is that your mind is so weak and your ability to think critically is so non-existent that you draw false conclusions from opinion articles and rather than defend your false conclusions, you appeal to the authority of whoever wrote the Op-ED and shrug your way through debates and conversations.

    You're a phony and a fraud, and I see right fucking through you.
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    Quote Originally Posted by cawacko View Post
    Let me guess, that was your major and that's why you are crying right now.
    You drew a false conclusion from an Opinion piece and now you want to make this about me because I called you out on your BS.

    What a fucking crybaby.

    Grow up.
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    The last line, "network opportunities" is a biggie

    I live in the NE where private schools are dominate, and in this area it does mean something to graduate from one of those smaller private schools. Having also lived in Florida for awhile, I know it means more to graduate from UF than any other institution down there, and in both cases it is because of networking. Suppose geographical location also has something to do with it, it would be more difficult to expect success getting an enviable position in NYC graduating from UF than say a Colgate or Bucknell

    Personally, I do know based upon myself and my children, the small private college offers a better education than the large State institutions

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