What are the Lifetime Advantages of Attending Top Colleges

Parents Forum
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<p>Krueger’s study does not “settle” the debate whether attending an elite school results in higher lifetime income. A few posters in the thread have mentioned this as if it is accepted wisdom, but there are many reasons to discard Krueger’s report.</p>

<p>For one thing, Krueger is a populist, same guy who announced that raising the minimum wage has no effect on employment of low-wage workers. In both that study, and in the lifetime earnings study, Krueger’s results are at odds with almost all the rest of the published research.</p>

<p>I wrote a more detailed review of Krueger’s earnings study back in February; if you take the trouble to read Krueger’s actual report rather than the sound-bite trumpeted in the press, you find there are a number of reasons to question his purported conclusions. In a thread titled, curiously enough, " Do the Students make the school or does the school make the students?" my reply is at <a href=“http://talk.collegeconfidential.com/showthread.php?t=145732&page=3&pp=15[/url]”>http://talk.collegeconfidential.com/showthread.php?t=145732&page=3&pp=15&lt;/a&gt; </p>

<p>In case you don’t want to read that reply, here’s a brief summary: Krueger’s study claims to be about elite education, but in fact the variable he used was average SAT score of the students; the higher the avg, the more elite a school is presumed to be. And in a preliminary version of his report, available right on his own website, when he used a different measure (Barron’s selectivity ratings) he found that those ratings DID correlate significantly with earnings, a conclusion that managed to disappear from the final report.</p>

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<p>Princeton went coed in 1969. Williams in 1971. Amherst in 1971. Taken together, the schools had well more female grads, even from that period, than the remaining 7 sisters. (You can add 'em up yourself). Radcliffe students started receiving Harvard diplomas in 1963 (so I don’t mind if you include them in the equation.) Barnard students started receiving Columbia diplomas in 1900. </p>

<p>You can count 'em any way you like. Zero as a percentage of 2,000, 5,000, 10,000, or 20,000 still comes out goose eggs.</p>

<p>“Whether with a HYP degree or a Wisconsin degree, the brilliant kid will usually find a way to rise. In fact I’d dare to say if someone simply can’t excel in life with a Wisconsin degree, he wasn’t really that brilliant to begin with.”</p>

<p>I think we both overestimate and underestimate the value of a prestige education - for folks who don’t come from “prestige families”. (I have to let them speak for themselves.) Underestimate in that the impact, as Hanna experienced at H., and I did at Williams, of being around people who just thought that whatever they wanted to accomplish they actually could, unconstrained by monetary or other concerns, an attitude which I DO think comes from privilege (and is a GOOD thing which comes with privilege, and wouldn’t it be great if everyone had it), rubs off to some extent onto everyone there, and can be priceless in future value.</p>

<p>Overestimate, however, in that the Yale graduate on a Pell Grant still can’t figure out how to pay for Harvard Med (and is less likely to apply), might feel compelled to go out into the workforce immediately to help his/her family, and is least likely of all to want to go graduate (as opposed to professional school), as foregoing income-earning years for a relatively low income (given education) is just not a good tradeoff. And this remains true whether the intelligent student went to Princeton or Podunk.</p>

<p>Some of it might simply come down to the quality of advising. (which is why I like the LACs, and why, I think, Bryn Mawr produces its overabundance of Ph.D’s.)</p>

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<p>Someday I will dig up the article from Harvard magazine which analyzes the success of H’s alumni fundraising machine – which we can all agree, I think, is astonishing. It pointed out that their fundraisers figured out a long time ago that for a large proportion of their alums, the only distinctive thing they’d ever done was to be admitted to Harvard. So you have all these perfectly ordinary people leading perfectly ordinary lives… no silver spoons, no dinners with Bono to talk world hunger, nobody inviting them to meet Halle Berry-- just the daily grind. However, for four perfect years (at least in their own nostalgic soaked minds) they were SOMEBODY, which fuels the extraordinary generosity of H’s alums and validates their lives.</p>

<p>If there are parents of juniors reading this thread who have concluded that they must sell the house and move to a trailer to be able to send young Henry or Natasha to Harvard… you can relax. Lots of kids go to elite schools and never amount to much (and I don’t mean in a financial sense…) and lots of kids go to podunk U and read Great Books and have an astonishingly rich life filled with poetry and music and intellectual friends and ideas.</p>

<p>After reading through page 15 here I have concluded that the key lifetime advantage of attending a top college is to be able to post on threads like this and then claim, “I know what I’m talking about… after all, I went to (fill in the blank elite school).” For myself, I went to an Ivy as did spouse; we knew and know plenty of kids who were well-behaved grinds who did all their work and got nothing extra out of their experience, and we knew kids who lived 25 hour days and seemingly were attending chamber music concerts, teaching themselves Chinese for the fun of it, and majoring in engineering all at the same time.</p>

<p>Know your kid. Some of us have kids who are going to go to class and then play frisbee or watch “American Idol” regardless of the bountiful feast that’s put in front of them. Some of our kids will seek out phenomenal learning opportunities at the local community college-- that’s how motivated they are.</p>

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<p>“If I take your argument all the way it implies to me that really believe that between the student bodies of the mid-rank colleges and the student bodies there is no different at all in terms of meta-level thought capabilities? In that case, you must believe that the top universities are bastions of the privileged accessed by social standing and financial resources with intelligence no criteria? Is that the implication?”</p>

<p>Alumother, somewhere in these 200 plus posts I have said that I don’t believe that.</p>

<p>What I believe is these elite schools do have a preponderance of intelligent students AND they are also clubs.</p>

<p>What you lose at Wisconsin compared to the IVYs is the club. I don’t believe for 1 minute that your intelligence will suffer if you go to Wisconsin.</p>

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<p>I just reread the last few posts. I now realized that DJ is accusing Ivy League grads of being destined for blue states and Mini is accusing them of being blue bloods with no intellectual curiousity or energy (except Harvard, they get a bye in this). Can ya make up your minds one way or the other? Or perhaps they are all Democrats living on either coast who also happen to wear pearls and have no interest in matters of the intellect?</p>

<p>Hmm. I will have to look for that segment of consumers. Seems like I could sell them a lot of stuff.</p>

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<p>Dstark. I don’t think if you go to Wisconsin your intelligence will suffer. There just might be fewer people like you to talk to.</p>

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<p>Democrats have always had much more interest in matters of the intellect…LOL! There was a terrific David Brooks article on this very topic a few weeks back, which was worth the read.</p>

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<p>“Mini is accusing them of being blue bloods with no intellectual curiousity or energy”</p>

<p>Nothing of the sort - as I noted, explicitly (so I don’t know why you are misreading me on purpose) 1) there is now much more an aristocracy of money than of blood, which is reflected in these schools; and 2) Data indicate that students believe that the quality of education/quality of life at no fewer than 26 schools (including Princeton, Yale, and likely Bryn Mawr) is higher than at H. H. just offers (in degree, not in kind) something else.</p>

<p>And, yes, if your kids are not interested in the experiences (social/economic and otherwise) of their classmates, I AM accusing them (actually their own parents are accusing them and I am convicting them), of a lack of lack of intellectual curiosity.</p>

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<p>SBmom, you wrote, “Luckily, though, it isn’t quite as bad as the Taneesha example when we get back to colleges. Whether with a HYP degree or a Wisconsin degree, the brilliant kid will usually find a way to rise. In fact I’d dare to say if someone simply can’t excel in life with a Wisconsin degree, he wasn’t really that brilliant to begin with”.</p>

<p>That’s what we are arguing about, isn’t it? We send our kids to all these colleges and we hope they have a fulfilling life. We hope our kids made the right decision, but we don’t know. So while they go through the process, we discuss and argue, and hope. What more can we do? It’s out of our hands.</p>

<p>Then as our kids grow up and right when we get to see if the college decision really mattered, we die.</p>

<p>It’s better to argue about the former than concern ourselves with the latter.
:)</p>

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<p>You are right mini. I used the term blue blood to parallel blue state when I really meant rich. Mea culpa. Mea maxima culpa.</p>

<p>As for my kids, well, I really don’t like it when people mention my kids on this board. But I believe you mean well. My D will spend her summer leading the local summer program for middle-school kids from our nearby largely Hispanic low-income neighborhoods designed to give the kids what they need to take the college track once they get to high school. At this point she wants to join the Peace Corps when she graduates from college.</p>

<p>However, she does own a strand of pearls that my mother gave her. My mother, BTW, a graduate of Smith, a lifelong Democrat, and an early participant in the passing of Fair Housing laws in California in the 60’s. </p>

<p>The cry not to generalize about those who don’t go to an Ivy on grounds of intellect has some validity. So does the cry not to generalize about those who did go to Ivies on grounds of social consciousness or lack thereof.</p>

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<p>Hanna:</p>

<p>

It wasn’t that you said it. I thought maybe it was your implication that because Harvard had so many smart kids gathered together in one place, it created an environment where people were freer to do things than the students were at your other school. I guess I just misread you.</p>

<p>

I see.</p>

<p>

But don’t you see that a lot of money is still backing this, whether these people are paid or not? If Podunk U were to invite them, these people would not even come because they just don’t have the facilities, the budget or anything close to those of Harvard’s to support it. In fact, the students at Podunk U likely wouldn’t even try to invite these people because they know they do not have the raw material$ to support them. Harvard students certainly know they have everything required to entice these folks – and so I think they are certainly more prone to invite them. The Harvard name is probably Harvard’s biggest asset, and it is built on a lot of money that Podunk U. does not have. Students at Harvard know this. And they likely exploit it.</p>

<p>I think it is probably true that Harvard gathers together a denser population of aggressive students. But I suspect if you put those same students in Podunk U, and give them the same resources (as was your case in your old school), you are gonna pretty much get the same results as you are now getting at Podunk U. It takes resources (money, facilities, etc.) to help people see the possibilities. A group of aggressive students is good too, but without the influence of the resources I am talking about, I do not think they would be anything NEAR what they are.</p>

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<p>Blossom, I like your post #223.</p>

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<p>“My D will spend her summer leading the local summer program for middle-school kids from our nearby largely Hispanic low-income neighborhoods designed to give the kids what they need to take the college track once they get to high school. At this point she wants to join the Peace Corps when she graduates from college.”</p>

<p>I think it WONDERFUL that she is doing that and wants to do that. I would love to see my kids do the same (and as you know, they are already well on the way.). (And I think it was noble of John Kerry to go to Viet Nam unlike another Yale grad and another Yale dropout I know.;)) BUT (or maybe, to be fair, I should say AND) look at the privilege that represents.</p>

<p>It was very, very long time ago, back in the dark ages, but I remember a group discussion I was in with a very, very poor Black student at Williams (the U.S. high school typing champion by the way), who dropped out after his first term (he couldn’t hack it socially). We went around the circle saying what we thought we might like to do after we graduated. A well-to-do, and extremely bright, and caring, outgoing New Englander (a real blue-blood, not just of the nouveau riche) said he’d like to go into the Peace Corps. (He didn’t, by the way, but he has been notable for his good works.) Several other folks nodded their heads. But Calvin (from inner city Chicago) shook his head, “Boys, you didn’t get it. Where I’m from, and in my family, I AM THE PEACE CORPS.” </p>

<p>Folks laughed. Calvin laughed. I laughed. But most of us DIDN’T get it.</p>

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<p>OK. Damned if we do and damned if we don’t. I have been aware of my privilege all my life and have tried never to forget what I owe. Believe me, I know we have the luxury of public service in part because I come from privilege. But as that privilege is a given and I cannot wish now that my kids might be granted the purity of heart apparently only true poverty might bring I make do with the the generosity of spirit they may show in wishing to contribute.</p>

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<p>You do more than make do - you are blessed with it!!! Poverty does NOT breed purity of heart, any more than wealth does. And privilege, used well, can be a positive force for its expression. Sometimes I feel like the most privileged person on the planet (and maybe the feeling means that I am?) You can be blessed if you have it, and blessed if you don’t. </p>

<p>But I think you already know that! ;)</p>

<p>And, back to DStark, this feeling of privilege I have, as you know, some of it I feel is a product of the privilege I experienced at my elite college, for which I am forever grateful. I could have gotten the “education” elsewhere (maybe even as good, maybe even better), but my college helped me become aware (though it took me another 10 years to unravel it) that privilege and wealth didn’t necessarily have to go hand-in-hand, but being around folks who were wealthy and carried it well, as well as being around intelligent people (though they weren’t more intelligent than at my high school), was an extremely important (and positive) force in my real education.</p>

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<p>How do you get zero? I guess Duke doesn’t count as a highly-selective, elite co-ed university equivalent to the Seven Sisters in your world? And neither does Stanford, or Georgetown? Or, for that matter, Yale?</p>

<p>All count currently sitting female members of Congress among their undergraduate alumnae.</p>

<p><a href=“http://bioguide.congress.gov/congresswomen/chrono.asp[/url]”>http://bioguide.congress.gov/congresswomen/chrono.asp&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;

<p>I wonder if others are beginning to take your facts with the same grain of salt that I add.</p>

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<p>I apologize if there is a Yale sitter (Sheila Jackson Lee?). Other than that, I stand by what I wrote.</p>

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<p>John Muir, Frank Lloyd Wright, Charles Lindbergh, John Bardeen, Saul Bellow, bell hooks, Frederic March, Don Ameche, Steve Miller, Joyce Carol Oates, Erroll Morris, Gena Rowlands, Eudora Welty, Boz Scaggs, Daniel J. Travanti, Butch Vig, Eric Heiden, Bud Selig, Steve Bornstein, Phil Hellmuth, Chris Chelios, Wayne Lukas, John Morgridge, AC Nielsen, Lee Raymond, Charlie Trotter, Dick Cheney, Lynn Cheney, Lawrence Eagleburger, Stephen Ambrose, Lowell Bergman, David Maraniss, Edwin Newman, Jeff Greenfield, Haynes Johnson, William Siemering (founded NPR, created All Things Considered), Greta Van Susteren, Paul Link, Abraham Maslow, Karl Menninger, Scott Dikkers (The Onion) and Jack Kilby are among the students who once climbed Bascom Hill.</p>

<p>They did OK.</p>

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<p>Why would you think I’d disagree?</p>

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<p>The discussions about the Peace Corps, working with poor students, etc. is interesting. Because I have done this myself, and often worked along side graduates of the “elite” schools, I found it remarkable that many of these people do think of themselves as “pure at heart,” while at the same time they are capable of displaying great arrogance in everyday interactions with the “regular” people around them.</p>

<p>For example, part of my family moved to Africa to help the government of a very poor nation there. On the other hand, they also own a house in a European country. They have domestic staff at both places. They interact with the intelligentsia of both countries. I am sure they truly believe they are enlightened, as well as privileged. Yet I’m also sure they have no idea that the vast majority of people, the ones in the middle, are invisible to them. Really invisible. And that they often display great arrogance toward these people. A graduate of an American university of the second tier? They wouldn’t bother spending a minute and a half with that person. They’re clueless in many respects. It’s kind of interesting.</p>