Posted on 04/11/2014 8:46:47 PM PDT by SeekAndFind
This month, high school seniors across America are receiving college decision letters of acceptance and rejection. Many of these students, and their parents, will think that where they go to college will significantly affect their employment future.
They think wrong. Today, whether you go to college retains some importance in your employment options. But where you go to college is of almost no importance. Whether your degree, for example, is from UCLA or from less prestigious Sonoma State matters far less than your academic performance and the skills you can show employers.
Research on the impact of college selection has focused on comparing the earnings of graduates of different colleges. In 1999, economists Alan Krueger and Stacy Berg Dale published a widely-read study that compared the earnings of graduates of elite colleges with those of “moderately selective” schools. The latter group was composed of persons who had been admitted to an elite college but chose to attend another school.
The economists found that the earnings of the two groups 20 years after graduation differed little or not at all. In a larger follow up study, released in 2011 and covering 19,000 college graduates, the economists reached a similar conclusion: Whether you went to University of Penn or Penn State, Williams College or Miami University of Ohio, job outcomes were unaffected in terms of earnings.
(Excerpt) Read more at time.com ...
There’s some truth to what you say. Those elite schools offer a huge advantage, despite the deficiencies in what they actually teach. Still, those people can be beaten. The world is still what we make it. For now. Sort of. Less so every day in the West. Ugh.
Maybe for most people. Daughter has her degree from Harvey Mudd College. You can bet that carries a lot more significance with employers than University of Phoenix or some community college or even any state college. Sorry, people, depending on the area you choose to study, sometimes pedigree does matter.
The pensions won’t be though. Actually anybody starting government today is CRAZY. 5.5 percent towards retirement goes off the top immediately….then Thrift Savings, then federal, state, Social Security, medicare (why everyone has to pay that is beyond me), health, dental, vision insurance, life insurance, etc. you may have 20 bucks left.
As a right-eyed, bushy-tailed 17-year-old Freshman at CSUC at Sonoma (as it was called at that time - it became CSU a few years later), I was surrounded by aged hippies - relicts from the 60s, actually - and liberal professors. But it isn't where you are so much as what you get out of it.
Regards,
And success or failure is measurable and based upon objective reality. IOW, you can't ace the class by regurgitating collectivist drivel spouted by the prof. Liberals need not apply.
I knew a Personnel Administrator (term used before ‘Human Resources’) who did not pay that much attention to what schools a prospective employee graduated from, when he was hiring and firing for an aeronautics company.
If the prospective employee had all the right credentials, degrees, etc, it mattered not if he/she came from Peedunk U. in the middle of America, instead of perhaps graduating from UCLA.
His boss was totally impressed with Universities, yet rarely knew where most of the (bright) employees graduated. . .
Those from P.U. helped us get to the moon, by golly, and later, got the missiles built and tested, that were used on a fighter jet - - -
Well, not according to the 20-yr ROI of various college in the US:
http://www.economist.com/node/21600212
Not all ‘big names’ give you the best ROI. Mostly because they cost a lot, so their annual return must be bigger as well.
I know a lawyer who went to Harvard. Conversations with him are predictable. At some point or another he always starts talking about having attended Harvard.
He can walk through a room and people part out of his way like the Red Sea, because they know he wants to talk to them about his matriculation from ...
It might not matter as far as your earnings go, but there is a world of difference. It makes a difference to you, to your mind, to your soul. You don’t want to end up in a junior high school with the name of a “college” pasted onto it. Don’t let everything be measured by dollars and cents. Go for the best college you can get into.
Besides, I think Time is wrong.
And I am getting to hate articles filled with statistics.
Unless you are going to college for either the hard sciences or business, the only reason to go to college is for these words only.
” College degree required.”
If you do not have that your chance of getting a decent job today is next to nil.
Don’t go to college unless you want to go into business or do ‘hard science’ for a living, or want a job that requires a college degree?
If you don’t have a college degree your chances of getting a decent job are nil?
Gee, I dunno. Bill Gates and a lot of other college dropouts might disagree. Mark Steyn never attended college.
A good liberal arts education allows a man to think for himself, to see both sides, to be free.
Try reading ‘ The Trivium.’ Written by a nun and based on Aristotle’s thinking on grammar, logic and rhetoric, it’s all anyone really needs to be a good citizen, as well as a contented, happy person.
And it might help you frame coherent advice.
“Gee, I dunno. Bill Gates and a lot of other college dropouts might disagree. Mark Steyn never attended college.”
IIRC, Bill Gates dropped out of Harvard because he had an invention that was going to revolutionize computing.
A liberal arts education has been watered down so much that Starbucks is being choosy on who they take. Then again, if you have the desire to take womyn’s studies with a minor in Esperanto there are plenty of jobs waiting for that special someone.
I’ve worked with engineers who were graduates of Cal Tech and CSU Long Beach. On average, the CSU-LB alums were better. Maybe they had more to prove....
The fees doctors charge are highly regulated by the govt.
Try a free market discipline instead or look at the entrepreneurs instead of the saleried people.
For political reasons, salaries for the same job are all about the same.
Not so for earnings of business owners.
I think we could actually use more liberal arts types. Unfortunately the only places teaching liberal arts seems to be Hillsdale College and a few others.
That pretty much is the case for government jobs now. Degree is a degree is a degree, no matter from where.
It does explain the caliber of most government employees.
...one Dr graduated from SUNY Stony Brook School of Medicine...the other Columbia University School of Medicine...approximately same earned income....
Do you happen to know which undergrad schools they attended?
Most engineers seem to have had this natural tendency to like to take things apart to see what makes them work, or creatively build or fix things using a combination of materials no one ever thought of using.
Several years ago the Wall Street Journal had an article relating among other things - how challenging engineering is as a discipline (one must have the mindset, mathematical competency, etc) as manufacturing has moved overseas so moved many entry-level engineering jobs, and many young people who had the aptitude to become an engineer, avoided it because they did not want to endure the difficult course of study. Today’s resurgence of manufacturing in middle America should bring more entry level jobs.
As far as liberal arts - they need to be important to science, math, engineering majors. Just like some challenging science and math should be an important part of a liberal arts education. The issue is what is termed Liberal Arts today seems less education and more leftist indoctrination.
“Only Harvard, Yale and Princeton are at the top echelon. Not having a degree from one of those three schools places one at a massive handicap for elite career tracks.”
For proof, look at the U.S. Supreme Court.
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