<p>At all levels of education, up to and including graduate school, we need some quantitative measures of the value added by the institution. Most private HS that brag about the SAT scores of their students, have little to brag about. These students probably scored at the same percentile levels on similar tests when they were admitted to the HS. At the graduate school level, Harvard Business School has, IMO, a very low value added. They take in very smart students and produce smart students with an attitude problem, who have learned very little of use in their time at the program.</p>
<p>So you want quantitative, value-added measures. How would you quantitate your observations about “attitude” and learning “very little of use?” If all Harvard grads have attitude problems and have not learned things which you consider important, possibily the problem is you and not the graduates.</p>
<p>The COFHE schools (Ivies, prestige LACs, etc.) actually do have a survey, in which more than 50% of students at each school participate) that provide the student’s own assessments of academic quality and quality of campus life (among other things). Unfortunately, the data is considered proprietary, though several years ago, H. leaked some of theirs.</p>
<p>In my view an impossible task. In reading these threads it is clear that there are limitless ways in which people try to come to their own understanding of the value equation. Every case is different. </p>
<p>Personally, I feel the ability of a kid to benefit from college lies more within the kid than the college. Some go to top schools and flunk out for the most abject reasons - sloth, drugs, alcohol. Some go to lesser schools and emerge hungry and ambitious. It’s the kid, not the school, for the most part. </p>
<p>That’s why each famiily needs to weigh their own circumstances, goals, and aptitudes.</p>
<p>Loren Pope wrote something similar in Colleges That Change Lives, saying that judging colleges based on whom they admit is like picking a hospital based on their patients. It’s what they do while you’re there that counts.</p>
<p>edad,</p>
<p>“Quantitate” now that is an interesting word. The problem with HBS is the case study method, which IMO is a pretty bad way to teach business classes. I have found U of Chicago, Stanford, and other non-case study business schools consistently turn out more useful employees. And yes this difference can be measured. I will admit that the attitude observation is my own qualitative spin based on my own observations and I would certainly not argue that all HBS grads have an attitude problem.</p>
<p>I tend to agree that quanification is difficult at the college level. But I think, if the will was there, HS’s could test students on arrival and at graduation and give a very intersting picture of relavtive value added. It would be interesting to compare results for expensive private schools and public schools using statistically identical initial populations.</p>
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<p>So true, so true. I think the obsession with rankings, etc. is driven by the human wish to control outcomes, which includes a dangerous wish parents (and children) are prone to: to somehow guarantee success/happiness/??? in the future. The daunting truth is at this stage the outcome is way more up to them and who they are becoming than to anything that can be calculated or quantified.</p>
<p>Meanwhile, I wish there were avenues to more good qualitative data on the kinds of things that matter so much: quality of the community, morale of the faculty, efforts to achieve and integrate diversity/cultural competency, listings of jobs/graduate school programs for recent graduating classes sorted by majors (for a view of what kids from this school actually go and do…)</p>
<p>mmaah - I sense in many of these threads that parents, on the verge of spending huge sums for college, are desparate to somehow quantify the benefits during the decision process. After all, if you’re buying a car, for example, you look at objective criteria such as gas mileage, seating capacity, reliability record, etc. If buying a house, you look at beds and baths, tax levels, quality of schools, etc. THis is second nature to most of us. </p>
<p>But in the college process, one does not go very far into the process before wandering into a morass of subjective and qualitative analysis. It is very difficult to reduce these considerations to a coherent framework and be objective about it. The US News rankings are, perhaps, the best example of trying to jam lots of subjectivity into a cursory “ranking”. The problems with this are obvious, but parents and kids keep going back to these rankings. I believe that is largely because the rankings offer a respite from the subjective nature of the process - some sense of objetivity (real or imagined).</p>
<p>This is not criticism. It’s rational human behavior to attempt to understand, justify, and be comfortable with, a major financial decision But one can feel the stress that this qualititative ambiguity creates. I feel it myself, of course.</p>
<p>hvccgolf, I do agree that “benefits” lie more with the student than the college. Thus the question posed in the OP could be amended to, “how can a student maximize the value added during his college years”. And the correct answers would involve countless metrics depending on the values and expectations of each individual student.</p>
<p>curious, any economist would disagree with you. HBS routinely takes kids from Teach for America or the Peace Corps or who work as congressional staff assistants–earning from 20-35K per year, and after two years, turn them into Associates at Blackstone or Texas Pacific Group, or traders at Goldman Sachs, earning $300K plus bonus, plus equity in their deals. This has got to be the most astonishing value added deal in history- a payback of your entire investment, plus the opportunity cost of being out of the workforce, in less than one year???</p>
<p>If that’s value, I want in. Whether the school teaches anything is irrelevant, since hordes of capitalists, who presumably know the value of a buck better than anyone else in the world, are lining up to employ its grads, at huge multiples of what these kids were earning just two short years ago.</p>
<p>I don’t doubt that a HBS degree is a valuable credential. My point in raising it as an example is that a HBS degree is a valuable credential mostly becasue of the process of getting selected for it and much less so for the content of the education provided.</p>
<p>blossom, there is a raging debate on the issue of whether the kids bring their excellence and drive to the college, or vice versa. There is a Nobel laureate at U of Chicago (if I recall correctly) who strongly feels that the “value” of a top school is overstated because people errantly attribute these student’s success to the college they attended, despite the fact that if you bring a bunch of very bright and motivated kids with average SATs of 1400 together, a large proportion of them are going to go on to be highly succcessful, however you measure that. </p>
<p>The argument for “value” goes like this: “The average Harvard (for example) makes a million dollars more over his/her lifetime than a state school grade. Therefore, the value-added is clearly measurable. Hence, spending an extra $150K for college is an easily justifiable expenditure based on the data.”</p>
<p>The counter-argument is; Of COURSE they make a million more over their lifetime. They are exceedingly bright and motivated, and were when the matriculated at college. The college may or may not contribute to this to a material degree. (I believe it does, bot not in the hghly quantifiable way some people suggest.)</p>
<p>One take on the “value” issue is to step back out of the USNews rankings and look at a school in a global sense. One element that informed our research - my DH is a consultant, travels internationally, works with top management types all over the world, so he gets a certain perspective on university education. And of course parents everywhere talk to others about their college search. Most business types in Europe, Asia have not really heard of GW, WUSTL, the LAC-s - all those schools held so near and dear on this site and elsewhere. Knowledge of North American schools extends to the Ivies (and probably not even Penn or Cornell), big schools like UMich and Berkeley, Univ of Toronto and McGill. These schools are held in high esteem. And interestingly, my husband has run into top managers all over the world who are UofT grads. We were intrigued by rankings of best universities in the world, more than by USNews rankings. We are travelers and much of our livelihood is based on globalization, which affects our perspective. But being a grad of GW, Davidson, Vandy, whatever - it didn’t seem worth it, in today’s globalizing world.</p>
<p>spikemoom- very interesting perspective. I spent a semester in London in 1983, and was astounded by what I did not know about the rest of the world. It instilled in me some humility about extrapolating America’s views onto the rest of the world which I still feel. </p>
<p>And it brings up another possible change in perception that might be all that apparent - and that is the notion that the nature of work, and pay, and mobility, and “success” is entirely different than what existed 30 or 40 years ago. </p>
<p>Many of the “silos”, or lifestyle and socionomic tracks, used to be largely tied to (a) are you a high school grad (b) are you a college grad, and (c) what type of family background are you from. Of course, many of those things still apply heavily, but we now live in a world where a sneaker-clad dude (or dudette) with long hair, unshaven, can make millions of dollars in SIlicon Valley, or on-line, or in any myriad ways that are “unconventional” by former standards, and which didn’t even exist 25 years ago in many cases. The globalization issue which spikemom so nicely describes dovetails with that point. And the notion of spending 34 years at a FOrtune 500 firm, like my dad, seems amazingly old fashioned. </p>
<p>There are many ways to be “successful” in this life. I’m dismayed by the number of posts on CC which speak to “which college will get me the best job when I graduate?” I think kids should think in terms of being open to as many different avenues of study as possible, including foreign study, etc. </p>
<p>In summary, the “old” ways of looking at college may have been usurped by the “new economy” and the incredible mobility of today’s knowledge workers. Sounds like Univ of Toronto is an exellent internationally-oriented school. I can’t say I’ve even seen it mentioned in the threads in CC.</p>
<p>As to the question “what college will get me the best job” - your competition may be in Bangalore, Dubai, Amsterdam, Sophia Antipolis - and attending Oxford, Tsing Hua or Sciences Po.
There are threads for UofT and McGill on CC, but they are not typical choices for US students.</p>