Another musing… is the selectiveness of a school on the way in particularly relevant?
I mean, I went to a large state university, and while we weren’t the most selective up front, there wasn’t much in the way of grade inflation (our profs were all too eager to dish out Cs and Ds to people), and a surprising number of people failed out, or transferred out once they realized this wasn’t for them, or that they couldn’t cut it. Meanwhile I hear tales of private colleges basically pulling out all the stops to keep students in, and to ensure their success- grade inflation, tutoring, etc…
Wouldn’t we be better off looking at the careers of graduates say… 5 or 10 years out to determine which schools are *really *elite? Looking at the entrance stuff strikes me as ranking a sports team based on who they drafted/who they signed rather than by the record at the end of the season.
Just because a college “pulls out the stops” to support a kid doesn’t mean that kid isn’t educated. Like, I often send kids to “elite” small schools where they have the STEM skills in spades but their writing is relatively weak compared to native speakers from prep schools. They get a ton of intervention in learning to write–not just a writing center, but proffs willing to sit with them through multiple drafts and tons and tons of feedback. And they learn to be better writers. At a big state flagship that takes pride in handing out Cs and Ds, they might well be the ones who “realized they couldn’t cut it”. But with the support and resources, they catch up.
ETA: and 5 and even 10 years isn’t super-reliable because so many of the potential high earners will still be in med school or getting an MBA or starting out in law. It’s 20 years before you know how many make partner/get a super-high paying specialty/reach C-level.
Comparing outcomes is really hard. It’s partially like predicting who is making reliable cars: I can now see who was building the most reliable cars 20 years ago, but that doesn’t tell me who is making the best cars today. It’s also partially because there are so many confounding variables. 20% of Duke students come from households with incomes over $650K. Where you went has a pretty different demographic. So right there, comparing outcomes is wonky: those kids get out of college with very different projections.
I don’t think your analysis would tell you much unless you control for SES.
There is a pricey, ivy-walled university in my city that has a reputation for enrolling huge numbers of slacker and/or dumb rich kids. But slackerdom and dumbness aside, I imagine that most graduates wind up doing fairly well for themselves. If my surmise is accurate, what is the most likely explanation? The school is rigorous enough to transform lazy dullards into high-achievers? Or rich people are bound to have opportunities fall into their lap regardless how lazy and stupid they are?
If the poor and middle class students who attend this school go on to have success, then I agree that this would indicate it is a good school. But I would want to compare their collective success against their same-SES cohort who graduated from cheaper schools. It is hard to call someone a financial success if they had to take out a six-figure loan to wind up with a salary that maxes out at $45K.
It’s also a question of how you define success. I know a lady who was a poor kid who went to an Ivy League school on a full ride. She now makes $50k-ish a year as a community organizer, helping kids like her do what she did. She’s smart and dedicated as they come, but not focused on maximizing her earning. Is she “less successful” than if she’d pursued a more lucrative career?
I think looking at the alumni base over all and seeing how much they earn is probably a good way to define colleges as elite. Most of the colleges that have been mentioned so far show up on the top 25 mid career salaries list.
I will note that just a couple of years ago my choice of specialty elite school (Mines) was much higher on this list and I’m a bit surprised to see it falling down to #22. Which can all be attributed to the oil field tanking the last 5 years which is what specializing gets you.
I don’t know… I think that gets us back to a similar question to the OP- what makes a school elite? Is it the quality of the professors, the networking opportunities, some combination, or is it the support the school gives? Is it the alumni network?
I don’t know that looking at the alumni salaries is the way to go, and specifically why I said “look at the careers”, not just salary. Because you could probably gin up a half-assed liberal arts school and populate it with the scions of rich families and have a very good showing on the post-school salary rankings, solely because of the family connections and social circles of the students, without having anything to do with the educational opportunities. Or you could have a school with a decent, but not stellar reputation that actually does a whole lot (like Manda Jo points out) in terms of relative magnitude. I actually suspect some of the traditionally black schools fall in this category- how many families were forever changed because a father managed to attend Howard or Morehouse, for example?
I would argue that the point of quality professors, net working opportunities and the alumni network is that it give the students knowledge and the ability to use it and in the real world these are all things that employers pay more for. Some careers pay better so schools that specialize in those will see higher careers earnings but Harvard only has 19% STEM graduates so it is not necessary to specialize. I know there are people who feel that the goal of college is to get an education not to use it to make more and just having your mind opened is all that matters. I don’t agree with that I went to college so that I could make more money that I would without a college degree and view the point of college to make money. Now you do need to be happy in your career or at least content in order to do it for 30 or 40 years until retirement so not everyone can or should follow the money to big law or engineering but it matters how much better than average a particular college will make you. For selecting a college I think its also useful to look at ROI but that’s a different conversation that which schools are elite.
While I’m sure you could populate a school with nothing but rich kids it hasn’t been done yet or at least if it has been done they aren’t actually making more money in reality then kids who go to Harvard. Maybe you could make an argument that Babson or Williams is an all rich kid school but it seems unlikely.
As far as relative magnitude I would guess that community colleges do more, in general, then a Howard or Morehouse. In either case I don’t think that the magnitue of change is really a useful metric in determining elite otherwise any basic econoshitbox car would be the most elite car since it is a million times better than walking while a porche isn’t really that much better than it.