<p>Another thread on this page got me to thinking…</p>
<p>What if there were an open market in trading diplomas. Say my sheepskin says Stanford, and I prefer that is say MIT. (of course this is a dream world, but that’s where thought games live).</p>
<p>I proposed on the other thread that Yale at $175k tuition is not an even trade for Duke tuition-free in a small program of scholarship students. </p>
<p>What if diplomas could be traded. E.g.: “I’ll give you $x + my Columbia for your Princeton”. Or “I’ll trade you my Northwestern for your Emory + $100k.”</p>
<p>Well, not practical, but it certainly would be fun to see which price points would be established by such open trading.</p>
<p>I imagine that the price differential one would pay falls to near zero as the person gets older and has more work experience under his/her belt. Ultimately it’s a footnote on a resume and a piece of paper. What a theoretical purchaser lacks is the experience and memories of actually attending.</p>
<p>Another interesting spin on the problem is “What would you pay, each month, for the next 15 years for a degree from X?” That is what the people opting for big loans are doing. I’ll bet posing it that way would really ding NYU.</p>
<p>I don’t theink very many people would pay anything at all. The value is not in the diploma but in having gone to the school in question. Having a Yale degree with your name on it is worthless if you still actually went to Duke and vice versa.</p>
<p>I would bet the number of people who have graduated from Duke and would trade their degree for another, even at low cost, is very low. Even people who graduated from big state schools like Alabama or Wisconsin probably wouldn’t trade their degree- most people are extremely proud of their alma mater, no matter where it is.</p>
<p>In a world where you could just buy the degree, the degree would no longer be a legitimate qualification.</p>
<p>So nothing, really. Maybe a couple bucks for novelty value.</p>
<p>
Also, this.</p>
<p>Anyway, I doubt that the quality of education between Duke and Yale varies greatly. As for money, the average net return on investment for a Yale degree is $1,435,000, while it’s $1,388,000 for Duke. Not a big difference.</p>
<p>I think if you printed Duke diplomas on rolls of soft absorbent paper perforated into little squares, you could sell them to a lot of people for about a buck per roll.</p>
<p>I have no issue with Duke, in fact I admire many things about it, but the school does seem to generate a lot of animosity.</p>
<p>I would pay extra for a Yale education. I don’t see the diploma as that big a deal, even though I understand that a huge portion of the cost is the name alone. That being said, I am a hs senior going to UVa in the fall, so I guess i don’t have the proper perspective on it right now.</p>
<p>You are all complete fools. Don’t you idiots have better things to do? None of you, RML, DunninLA, BillyMC, and for future sake, rjkofnovi and even Alexandre don’t even go to Yale or Duke. Yes, I said Duke, the university apparently all you people seem to hate. In reality these two universities are top 10 in America. Everyone knows that. And you people go to schools with a ~25% admit rate that are ranked in the 20s and 30s and you’re talking crap about a school that ranks 10-20 levels higher…great job. </p>
<p>Who the hell are you to decide how much a school is worth? What is the point of this thread?</p>
Hate? I seem to recall saying that the education will be roughly the same at Yale or Duke and that if I had a degree from Duke I wouldn’t trade it. Also, I backed up the fact that the two barely vary at all in the job market.</p>
<p>So GoldAngealArea, why did you condemn me without reading my post?</p>