UGA or Duke? Do elite schools reap greater returns?
Studies suggest graduates of elite schools like Duke earn more over their lifetimes.
Many Georgia parents of high school seniors are debating whether to push their child to attend UGA or Tech or go broke sending them to Duke or Emory.
Are those select colleges worth the thousands more that they charge in tuition?
That’s a question that you will hear discussed at almost every high school PTA meeting these days. With elite colleges costing $50,000 a year for tuition, room and board, many parents reason that their children should go the HOPE route and attend UGA , GSU or Valdosta for undergraduate and save their money for a top tier graduate school.
But will that $50,000 a year at a Princeton or Yale lead to higher salaries and more opportunities down the road?
A New York Times story explores that issue — one that we have discussed here at length in the past – in a news story this week.
Among the most cited research on the subject — a paper by economists from the RAND Corporation and Brigham Young and Cornell Universities — found that “strong evidence emerges of a significant economic return to attending an elite private institution, and some evidence suggests this premium has increased over time.”
Grouping colleges by the same tiers of selectivity used in a popular college guidebook, Barron’s, the researchers found that alumni of the most selective colleges earned, on average, 40 percent more a year than those who graduated from the least selective public universities, as calculated 10 years after they graduated from high school.
Those same researchers found in a separate paper that “attendance at an elite private college significantly increases the probability of attending graduate school, and more specifically graduate school at a major research university.”
One major caveat: these studies, which tracked more than 5,000 college graduates, some for more than a decade, are themselves now more than a decade old. Over that period, of course, the full sticker price for elite private colleges has far outstripped the pace of inflation, to say nothing of the cost of many of their public school peers (even accounting for the soaring prices of some public universities, especially in California, suffering under state budget crises).
Despite the lingering gap in pricing between public and private schools, Eric R. Eide, one of the authors of that paper on the earnings of blue-chip college graduates, said he had seen no evidence that would persuade him to revise, in 2010, the conclusion he reached in 1998.
“Education is a long-run investment,” said Professor Eide, chairman of the economics department at Brigham Young, “It may be more painful to finance right now. People may be more hesitant to go into debt because of the recession. In my opinion, they should be looking over the long run of their child’s life.”
He added, “I don’t think the costs of college are going up faster than the returns on graduating from an elite private college.”
Still, one flaw in such research has always been that it can be hard to disentangle the impact of the institution from the inherent abilities and personal qualities of the individual graduate. In other words, if someone had been accepted at an elite college, but chose to go to a more pedestrian one, would his earnings over the long term be the same?
In 1999, economists from Princeton and the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation looked at some of the same data Professor Eide and his colleagues had used, but crunched them in a different way: they compared students at more selective colleges to others of “seemingly comparable ability,” based on their SAT scores and class rank, who had attended less selective schools, either by choice or because a top college rejected them.
The earnings of graduates in the two groups were about the same — perhaps shifting the ledger in favor of the less expensive, less prestigious route. (The one exception was that children from “disadvantaged family backgrounds” appeared to earn more over time if they attended more selective colleges. The authors, Stacy Berg Dale and Alan B. Krueger, do not speculate why, but conclude, “These students appear to benefit most from attending a more elite college.”)
– By Maureen Downey, for the AJC Get Schooled blog.
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110 comments Add your comment
KW
December 20th, 2010
12:33 pm
Link: http://blogs.ajc.com/get-schooled-blog/2010/12/20/uga-or-duke-is-their-a-lifetime-payoff-from-an-elite-school/
Is “their” a lifetime payoff? I don’t know, but any article with that kind of spelling probably isn’t authoritative one way or the other.
HS Public Teacher
December 20th, 2010
12:36 pm
@abouttime – It was not an “off the cuff comment.” It was an honest assessment of GA Southern. It was not intended to personally offend you, even though it seems to have.
I am curious…. in the range from “most top notch” to “bottom of the barrel”, where would YOU place GA Southern. Would you place it along side with Yale, Harvard, MIT, etc.?
Would you place it along side with University of Alabama, University of Texas, USC?
Would you place it along side with GA State, Middle GA, etc.?
Would you place it along side with Troy State, Albany State, etc.?
You tell me!
Mark
December 20th, 2010
12:37 pm
Lee nailed it at 9:09 with this comment:
“I submit that once you land your first job, where you attended school becomes less and less important.”
It is all about planning, foresight, and determination. I am a fairly recent BS and MBA graduate of an institution some here would refer to as a “below-average” school: Georgia College & State University in Milledgeville. I make no mistake that UGA is a much better school than where I went. Because I was a late-bloomer, both in terms of drive and maturity, I ended up graduating from a school that some might call “below-average” ( I would disagree with this statement, however. This institution has educated some very brilliant minds, both in literature and in business). My desire to do well in my career has been the biggest difference. I know people who went to the same school I did that graduated with better GPAs than I did, who are either unemployed or hanging on at 45K a year. Just the same, I know graduates from UGA who are in the same boat. However, because of the planning and determination I mentioned earlier, I now am right where I want to be: an exciting medical sales career. At this point in my career, I can reasonably expect to make 80-100K a year. If I am not making twice that in ten years from now, then I have done something wrong.
Calvin Coolidge said it best:
“Nothing in the world can take the place of Persistence. Talent will not; nothing is more common than unsuccessful men with talent. Genius will not; unrewarded genius is almost a proverb. Education will not; the world is full of educated derelicts. Persistence and determination alone are omnipotent. The slogan ‘Press On’ has solved and always will solve the problems of the human race.”
RealityCheck
December 20th, 2010
12:37 pm
My understanding is that most students, whether attending a so-called “Elite” school or a state school, graduate to find that their jobs have been out-sourced. The overblown costs to attend an “Elite” school only to graduate and take a job as a fast food manager make those costs hard to justify.
As long as the US government provides tax shelters to businesses that move overseas this will be a problem and you can spend the rest of your life paying off those “Elite” school loans at 40k per year.
Lurker
December 20th, 2010
12:38 pm
Hee. Hee. Good one, KW.
HS Public Teacher
December 20th, 2010
12:42 pm
@Mark – I’m not so sure about that…. I’m 50 years old and applied to college for my PhD. They asked for my high school and college transcripts! Those details are still important even after your first job.
People always ask where did you go to college. That is one of the first 10 questions that people ask: what do you do for a living? Are you married? How many children do you have? etc. And, people always are too quick to judge – even based on where you went to college.
JM
December 20th, 2010
12:42 pm
“If you’re dreaming of that Wall Street or Madison Ave job, then yes, having that Ivy League pedigree probably is an advantage.”
Only for the former. There are very few Ivy Leaguers working in modern-day advertising, mainly because the pay is so low. Also, most agencies favor degrees in advertising/marketing, which elite schools rarely offer.
Smart to go in state
December 20th, 2010
12:43 pm
I read a report that the fortune 500 companies prefer to hire undergrads from within top tier state schools as opposed to the ivy league schools. In part, this is because such a high percentage of ivy leaguers go to grad school, and in part because of the “I am owed”attitude of the ivy league grad. Both my children graduated from Ga Tech, and both work for fortune 500 companies, so I do have some evidence for the preference for top tier state school grads.
Mark
December 20th, 2010
12:46 pm
HS Teacher, maybe in academia those things are true.
However, in the business world, a person’s reputation as being a producer is the biggest tool he can bring to the table. Granted, it is easier to have the opportunity to become a producer with a better academic background, but there are also those, like me, who find a way to establish themselves as producers despite where they got their piece of paper.
Not an Elite
December 20th, 2010
12:47 pm
Public high school….local college of state university system for two degrees in 5 years….public/state law school…total of about $30k in student loans……and in the 14 years since my final graduation I have made just a touch over $2million. Sure it isn’t “easy street” money, but in terms of return on investment I am very satisfied with my non-elite education.
Mark
December 20th, 2010
12:50 pm
In terms of the point of this article, I would definitely encourage my kids in the future to attend GA Tech/UGA for undergrad and then a Duke or Vanderbilt for a professional degree. Makes no sense to attend a top-tier private school unless you are already wealthy.
nofreecheese
December 20th, 2010
12:53 pm
As I was finishing college at a state school in NY in the early 90’s, quite a few of my classmates were going on to law school. Many of them were unable to gain acceptance into Buffalo Law, although they were accepted to more prestigious institutions such as NYU Law. Buffalo was their #1 choice b/c it cost less than $10,000/yr, while these other institutions cost over 4X as much. Now, nearly 20 years later, many of those who did gain acceptance and ultimately graduated from Buffalo regret their decision; many of the prestigious law firms would only hire from the “elite” schools. For the most part, far fewer of them made it to the “big leagues”. Even my Buffalo Law graduate friend who has probably made more than ALL of his alumni who are now lawyers, regrets his decision; he HATES being a personal injury attorney even though it has made him rich. He would have rather been a partner at a major firm.
Bottom line: It’s a tough choice if you’re paying for it yourself.
Mark
December 20th, 2010
12:53 pm
HS Teacher, those things may be true in academia.
However, in the business world, I would submit that the single biggest tool a person can bring to the table is a reputation of being a producer. Granted, it may be easier to get the opportunity to prove yourself as a producer with a top-tier educational background. Then, there are those like me, that find a way to establish ourselves as producers despite where we got our piece of paper.
Listen to your kid
December 20th, 2010
12:54 pm
I’m concerned that no one here, including you Maureen, has said they will listen to their kid and let them have input about where they should go to college. When my wife was a senior in high school, she wanted to go to a school called “the University of the South”, a private school more popularly known as Sewanee. Her dad made her go to the state university in her state because it was cheaper. She’s always been a little bitter about that. Faced with the same type of choice I was able to go to a private school I loved and we paid it off long ago. Now our daughter could go to UGA, probably on a HOPE, but she is in love with Davidson College, a smaller school about on par with Sewanee or Emory. We will go over everything with our child, but if after making an informed decision about happiness and finances she still wants to go to Davidson, we’ll make it happen. Lots of parents and kids have used a combination of loans, savings, scholarships and other aid to make it work. Don’t forget the kid can get a job to help it happen too, as I did. And I don’t care about what school has the best “networking”. I care about where my kid can get a good education, be happy and thrive. I apologize if I sound old-fashioned but cost and getting ahead in somebody’s rat race don’t matter to me as much as simply finding the right fit and being happy.
Mark Buchheim
December 20th, 2010
12:55 pm
Aside from the probable difference in quality of education, a huge intangible associated with being an alumnus of an elite school is the “old boy” network. I’ve seen it go beyond the generation of the person that attended the school (in this case, Harvard Business); his son accompanied him on one of the School’s exotic Summer alum trips, where he met the ex-CEO of a Fortune 500 company. This led to an unusually lucrative and choice job offer, in spite of the fact that the son’s MBA was from a more pedestrian institution. As was my own.
Testing, testing
December 20th, 2010
12:58 pm
If you are going to be your own boss, and your business won’t be a national player (at least at first), then pick the school that gives you the best preparation for your business (engineering, business, art, home ec, whatever), get done as fast as you can, and get to work.
If you are going to be working for someone else, and that entity is not an elite place (like State government, a chain retailer, a regional bank), go to the best in-State institution you can afford. These people are looking for someone like themselves, who can connect to their clients, who also are likely to be local.
If you are going to work for a firm with national or international stature (and want to move up), a firm that requires networking skills, or a place where the employers either see themselves as elite or themselves aspire to be elite, then go to an elite school. Most of the regional elite schools really aren’t – the tops are the Ivies, certain small liberal arts schools, the University of California system plus Stanford, Virginia, UNC, and Michigan, and a smattering of nonivy privates. Most are not in the South, which unfairly, is perceived as an intellectual backwater.
If you have no idea what you want to do, then get a job as a barista or a retail sales associate, work for a year, then travel as much as you can with what you earn. Repeat until you figure out what you want to “be.”
Horace
December 20th, 2010
12:59 pm
“I read a report that the fortune 500 companies prefer to hire undergrads from within top tier state schools as opposed to the ivy league schools.”
Unless you’re talking about bulge-bracket i-banks or a few selective tech companies, working for a Fortune 500 company is nothing to brag about. (Why start working at P&G for $50K/year when you could make three or four times that at a hedge fund or PE firm?)
It also makes sense that a hiring manager would rather bring on a legitimate underling than someone who poses an immediate threat to his job.
Mark
December 20th, 2010
12:59 pm
HS Teacher-those things may be true in academia.
I would submit to you that in the business world, a person’s reputation of being a producer is the single biggest tool he can bring to the table. Granted, it may be easier to get the opportunity to prove ones’ self as a producer with a superior academic background, but there are also those like me, that find a way to prove themselves as producers, despite receiving their piece of paper from a less than desirable institution.
Good comments at 12:54.
Lee
December 20th, 2010
1:07 pm
Wait for it, wait for it….
“A few years ago. I interviewed higher education journalist Peter Schmidt about his book, “Color and Money: How Rich White Kids Are Winning the War over College Affirmative Action.””
What a load of politically correct crap.
Let’s face facts, if you have an IQ of 85 and your spouse has an IQ of 85, then your prospects to earn big money is limited. Meaning, you’re not going to be a doctor, lawyer, engineer, or a multitude of other higher paying jobs. Furthermore, as a general rule, your kids are going to have a low IQ which limits their opportunities as well.
The politically correct want to ignore the role of IQ in achievement. Over the years, they have spent millions of dollars and devised devious ways to hide the IQ stratification such as affirmative action, quotas, etc, etc, but have yet to find a way to make a person smarter.
Go figure.
Skipper
December 20th, 2010
1:08 pm
It all depends on what you want to do. Broadcast journalism? Go to UGA because they have a fantastic program, facilities, opportunities to get real-world experience in that field. When you interview for a job in that area, nobody will EVER ask where you went to school or what was your GPA. They WILL, however, ask: Have you ever ACTUALLY done this before?
If you want to be a doctor or lawyer, go to Duke. The reasons for this are two-fold: 1.) Duke prepares you better for medical/law school because of the rigors of the curriculum. 2.) Doctors and lawyers make enough to pay off their loans later on. Broadcast journalists (outside the major network and talk-radio personalities) do not.
JayHo
December 20th, 2010
1:15 pm
If you want to make $100K+ (including Bonus, etc..) then 98% of the time you HAVE to be a graduate of an IL school or Top Tiep (NYU, NE, etc). graduating for ANY OTHER school will put your starting salary around $55K-$60K with FAR less loan to pay off (especially if you received HOPE)
I graduated from GA State with a average GPA with a business degree and landed a job with top 10 Consulting firm in Washington DC. People in my hiring class were from colleges such as UGA, VA Tech, Michigan State, Georgetown. Some of my co-workers are from elite colleges such as MIT
It it all about landing your first job, after than its all connections and networking
good luck to all
InHonestTerms
December 20th, 2010
1:19 pm
@Lee.
What in the h3ll are you talking about?? You come on this board of intellectual discussion with your warped agenda because you obviously are one of those who have a problem dealing with the facts. This wild argument about “IQs” and how it’s passed on to someone’s child is typical supremacist type garbage.
This individual (who was obviously and authorithy on the subject due to their research) presented arguments and provided hard FACTS to back it up. You on the other hand, only bring heated rhetoric – ad hominem to be exact. I would stack my IQ against yours anyday, and I was raised in the so-called “ghetto”. Get a grip, and stop blaming minorities for your own unhappiness, becasue that’s really what it’s all about (for you).
williebkind
December 20th, 2010
1:19 pm
College is not about learning but simply acquiring a degree. Nor does it promote ambition but retards it. Performance measures are for the minimum wage earners. Now how do you acquire a degree? Government handouts for minorities, big loans for working families, and the elite colleges are really not elite in teaching standards but a higher scale of wealthy. In the above remark by “Lee” it is really evident he/she has had a sheltered life. It is the paper stupid. That is all everyone has been told and now accepts.
Hannah
December 20th, 2010
1:31 pm
HSPublicTeacher, as a 2010 graduate of Georgia State, I have to say that I disagree that Georgia State is an “average” school. I would say it is a good school. If we go by your rankings, Georgia has no good schools and goes from great schools like UGA to average schools like Georgia State, and that is not the case.
James
December 20th, 2010
1:38 pm
It all depends on what the student wants to do with his/her life as a career if they want to be a engineer then Georgia Tech is a great school for them but if they want to do business then Georgia State is a great school for them.
College Mom
December 20th, 2010
1:40 pm
Listen to your Kid, I’m with you.
My dd faced the college decision last year and passed up GT using Georgia Hope to go to Virginia Tech. She had 43 credits transfer in between AP and her Calc 2&3 through GT Distance during her senior year in HS. She just finished up her first semester with all As and is so settled in. I’m not sure the same could be said had she chosen GT. We explained the difference in cost and let her make the decision.
We heard all the naysayers on “you passed up Hope”, but there were no guarantees in this economic climate and the VT environment was a better fit. Turns out the total (without Hope) for GT wasn’t all that much less than she is paying. The unknown was whether she would have had Hope for all 4 years and where tuition was heading since university class of 2014 has no tuition lock unlike earlier students in Georgia.
Add in GT’s attitude of “you get Hope and are a National Merit Finalist, we don’t have to offer any more money to sway you”. That didn’t go very far to sell my dd, she really didn’t feel wanted.
WM
December 20th, 2010
1:44 pm
HSPublicTeacher-
I’ve read your comments about the school I graduated from, Georgia Southern, and I’d like to ask you a question. Where did you recieve your degree from? How about your masters ? And I saw you mentioned you were applying for doctoral programs. Care to share with the rest of us which programs you’ve applied to? And why the disgust for Georgia Southern?
nofreecheese
December 20th, 2010
1:46 pm
@ Lee & Inhonestterms:
Lee, although your opinion is confrontational, it is valid; too many people try to argue that a person’s social, educational, and income levels are arbitrary–that the affluence or poverty they’re born into are primary causes. Clearly this has some truth; a brilliant child born in Haiti or Mali in unlikely to reach their potential; however, intelligence, or lack thereof, is like many other traits that can be inherited and affect one’s standing in America. Another aspect is culture; meaning that two people born in the same country of parents of similar means may grow up w/ different values that affect their success–such as children of newly arrived Asian immigrants vs. the child of inner-city parent(s). Unfortunately, it’s politically incorrect to impugn a particular culture’s shortcomings even if you’re trying to improve their children’s chances in life.
Why are so many members of our political class and academia so afraid to attribute shortcomings to inherent and cultural shortcomings?
HS Public Teacher
December 20th, 2010
1:51 pm
The bottom line here is….
If it wasn’t worth it in some way, then those top schools would not be able to charge that amount, now would they? Someone must find value in them, otherwise they could not exist.
Also, it is sad/funny how people trying to justify “their” school because it is “great” in “this one area” need to just stop. We are talking about the overall school here. I hear that Albany State College is “great” in their “dental hygenist” program – that does not make them a top tier college!
Finally, I know that corporate recruiters do use methods to compare different colleges. One from Coca-Cola told me that when comparing the grad from UGA to the grad from GA Tech for a given job openning, they add one full point to the gpa of the GA Tech grad because they know that Tech is a more academically rigorous place. That is plain and simple and even abouttime should understand that!
Hannah
December 20th, 2010
1:55 pm
Also, HSPublicTeacher, you have to take account how long it’s been. You may have grown up in Statesboro…20 years ago? I don’t know how old you are…But the school that you knew then may not be the school it is now. I will also say that I do think Southern could hold a candle to, say, the University of Alabama (whoever argued that it could not compare to an SEC school.)
I know that Georgia State is becoming more and more challenging, especially in the past couple of years. Just because it was a commuter college in the 80s doesn’t mean the quality of education there has remained stagnant. The school is growing very rapidly.
OldPhysicsTeacher, as a teacher, you know what you’re talking about, but even us liberal arts majors (I majored in English) can make more money than our peers depending where we go to school. I don’t expect to ever make as much as a doctor, even if I did go to Harvard (which I did not.) However, I would have liked to go to my first-choice school (UGA…Thanks, HOPE) and feel that would have provided better opportunity. However, if I had gone to Georgia Tech and majored in something like history, things wouldn’t go the way they would have for a GT mechanical engineering major or even an English major at UGA.
And I’m off my soapbox. For now.
HS Public Teacher
December 20th, 2010
1:55 pm
@WM -
I will be happy to do that if you answer the questions that I posed to abouttime and they refused to answer….
“I am curious…. in the range from “most top notch” to “bottom of the barrel”, where would YOU place GA Southern. Would you place it along side with Yale, Harvard, MIT, etc.? Would you place it along side with University of Alabama, University of Texas, USC? Would you place it along side with GA State, Middle GA, etc.? Would you place it along side with Troy State, Albany State, etc.? You tell me!”
Also, I do not have disgust for Georgia Southern or any institution. I feel that they each fill a void or a special niche in the community. However, it is just ridiculous to think that GA Southern is at all the same on any level compared to the mentioned schools. I believe that we need to be honest about this with ourselves and with today’s high school students.
HS Public Teacher
December 20th, 2010
2:01 pm
@Hannah,
Because GA State is “growing” does not mean that it is “academically rigorous.” Wake Forest student population is only around 2000, but it is considered a very rigorous private school.
The academics at GA State are a joke. Undergraduate students think it is like 13th, 14th, and so on grade of high school. They ask professors for extra credit and other ridiculous things that should have been left in middle school. The professors are beaten down to giving the most basic multiple choice tests for core subjects such as science and history.
I would never waste money on GA State if I wanted my child to get a real college education. Now, if my goal was to simply get them a degree, then that is another matter….
Hannah
December 20th, 2010
2:08 pm
My boyfriend goes to Georgia Tech and one of the students asked the teacher if they could have copy of the final with the answers to study from and he was dead serious. I never heard students ask for extra credit in my classes. Did you go there or do you know a lot of faculty members that teach there? My point about how much the school is growing is that people actually want to go there now. I absolutely did not even consider going there my freshman year and ended up transferring. Now, it’s the first choice of a lot of students. Because there are so many people applying, the school is also rejecting a lot more people. Because of that, the school is weeding out the lower GPAs and SAT scores.
Hannah
December 20th, 2010
2:12 pm
I would also never compare Georgia State to Wake Forest or even UGA! lol
Georgia Resident
December 20th, 2010
2:16 pm
Something that’s been touched on here but not clearly stated (I don’t think) is that perception does factor in. The perception held by many people is that Georgia Southern is the school you go to if you can’t get into Georgia or Georgia Tech. I heard that when I was looking at colleges 10 years ago … and I still frequently here it today. Sure, they may be come a long way academically in 10 years. I think that’s terrific. But if I had a high schooler, I would strongly discourage him or her from looking at that school because of it’s long-held perception as a below average institution. Not to mention the fact that it’s other reputation is that it makes UGA’s partying look tame.
Maureen Downey
December 20th, 2010
2:25 pm
To all, You can find brilliant. engaged students at any college, including community colleges. I think the advantage of the prestige schools is that there are more of them clustered in one place. As I have said about my own experience — state college for undergrad, Ivy League for grad school — I met plenty of smart people in college, but everyone in my grad school was bright and driven. There are plenty of smart kids at GSU, some of whom chose the campus over UGA. I also know smart kids at Georgia Southern. I have no doubt you can get a great education at any school if you choose.
Maureen
Financially strapped
December 20th, 2010
2:35 pm
As a parent with twins about to enter college, (and another one already in college) I am most interested in these comments. I do know that I do not want my children to be strapped with the debt associated with some of these “elite” colleges, no matter how “happy” they may be at the time– especially if they are interested in a career that does not provide the income earning potential to pay back said loans. So I am a “bad” parent for asking my children not to consider those universities and look instead at more practical considerations, like being able to get out of college without a huge debt burden. And that means a state school. We saved for their college, but apparently not enough,and tuition has risen faster than the cost of living. We are not qualified for any minority scholarship, or special needs. We are just an average family who wants all our kids to get a college degree.
DeKalbite
December 20th, 2010
2:39 pm
It depends on the child’s major. If their heart is set on Investment Banking, law, or getting an MBA, then the connections are quite valuable because in the upper echelons of these careers, connections are often more important than knowledge (e.g. Wall Street collapse). However, many students want to be teachers, journalists, English majors, history majors, etc. There is no monetary point in going the elite school route for lower paying professions. Now if your parents make so much that writing that a $50,000 check is no problem, then by all means go there to major in education, and no doubt it will be a fun experience. I think we are speaking about the middle class to upper middle class families here because really sharp students from low income families can get a tremendous amount of student aid. I certainly don’t begrudge them the opportunity to get that student aid. To come from a lower income home and thrive in high school to the point you can have the qualifications to get into an elite school is a very difficult proposition and they deserve the student aid they get.
It’s all Return on Investment for me. I always look at Time Value of Money. Saving $200,000 on college tuition and wisely investing it for your child will bring a huge return over time – say 20 to 30 years down the road. For example, $200,000 now invested at 6% compounded annually return over 24 years will equal $800,000 (tax implications being what comprises your portfolio). Did these studies look at the Time Value of Money – i.e. Did they also calculate what that money would grow to over time. If my earnings are $500,000 more over 24 years of work but I had to invest $200,000 more to get there, then I should have saved the $200,000 and invested it. I would be ahead $300,000 at the end of 24 years if I had used a public university. And remember money saved is a “sure thing”.
I sent my daughter to UGA on the HOPE as many of her peers went to Duke, Princeton, etc. – many of the parents taking out loans or having their kids take out loans. We are currently helping her invest the money we saved for private college. She loved UGA – all kids love being away from home and with thousands of other kids their own age.
I was in the business world for many years in sales simply because the money is quick and plentiful if you can make and exceed your quotas. Nobody cared where I went to school. They just wanted me to bring in as much revenue as possible. When I changed companies, all anyone wanted to know is what was my track record. How much did I exceed my quota in my last job. How much could I bring in in the job I was interviewing for. I think the first job you get out of college it’s important where you went to school, and in some arenas (e.g. Wall Street, big law firms,etc.) there is a carryover effect. But for most employers, after your first job, they look at your experience and your past performance. This is a good thing.
Testing, testing
December 20th, 2010
2:45 pm
A friend of my husband’s set aside a certain amount of money for each of his three children, sufficient to pay for a four-year education at a relatively elite school (on the order of Johns Hopkins, Columbia University, or Carnegie Mellon). He told each one that was all the money he would give them for higher education and they could spend it any way they wanted. One spent it on a fancy undergrad degree, and made good with that because the field was something like art history, which demands an excellent elite network to find a job. The second spent part of the money on a state university undergrad degree, then went to a state law school and stayed in the area to practice. His network was his law school friends, which enabled him to be well known throughout the state. The third went to a state university for undergrad, then spent the leftover money on an elite graduate program, taking out a loan for the remainder. That kid also prospered because the graduate field required the name brand school to open doors.
There are lots of ways to “make it.”
Hannah
December 20th, 2010
2:46 pm
I was planning on going to grad school next month (at Kennesaw) to get my MAT to teach high school but my dad really stressed that being $40,000 in debt from loans is not a good idea when the job market is like this.
Lynx
December 20th, 2010
2:57 pm
@Maureen… I have to disagree with you – it is not always possible to find “a great education at any school if you choose” in higher education any more than it is possible to do so in any high school, middle school, or elementary school. Underfunded programs and incompetent or unengaged faculty can make it impossible to make the most of your innate abilities and previous training. As one responder pointed out repeatedly, a school can brag about having “the best…” (dental hygiene program, biochemistry department, teaching accreditation, etc.) but you take a big risk going to a school that has only one or a few good programs because the overall poor reputation will dog you and if you change out of that major, you can suffer academically.
To the people who suggested that students ask for tests in advance, want fill in the blank tests, and generally don’t want to be challenged, that goes for some of those high SAT earners at UGA as well. I taught there 15 years as a tenured faculty member and it got worse over time as more GA high schools created the teach to the test mentality that just destroyed a lot of critical thinking and reasoning brain cells in GA students.
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December 20th, 2010
3:10 pm
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Magny
December 20th, 2010
3:59 pm
@Maureen: My point about financial aid being a game changer is that if you could go to an elite school for $5000/year as opposed to $50K, then it’s almost certainly worth it for that student. Yes, I’m not surprised at all that the family income is so high at a state school like Tennessee. The well to do almost always send their kids to college but they don’t want to pay the exorbitant tuition that they would have to pay since they would get little financial aid. Completely understandable.
AlreadySheared
December 20th, 2010
4:01 pm
GT vs. Emory or Duke is a false choice = excluding premed and some other majors, Tech is fine.
According to a survey the Wall Street Journal conducted in September, corporate recruiters
rank Georgia Tech as one of the top 25 schools in the nation.
“…a new Wall Street Journal survey, which reveals recruiters are shifting their attention away from elite private schools to focus instead on state universities.”
http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052748704554104575435563989873060.html
catlady
December 20th, 2010
7:00 pm
If you ALREADY HAVE the social and cultural capital, you will come out of the premier institutions even better off. If you don’t have that capital, you will come out heavily endebted with some contacts, IF you could afford the social expectations of the peers who came in with full pockets.
there right now
December 20th, 2010
7:10 pm
Agreeing with Magny here. We encouraged our child to work VERY hard in high school (take the most demanding courses you can), and it paid off in offers from very good (don’t know about elite) private colleges, as well as (smaller) scholarship offers from two Ivies.
Right now, we are paying annually about what we would pay for a community college, because the scholarships are paying for the rest. The scholarship also pays for a semester abroad (all expenses), so we can afford to use savings to pay for one more semester abroad.
I believe the contacts from this college, the alumni network, and the seriousness about academics will make my child’s life a little better. BTW, this school was my child’s choice.
John
December 20th, 2010
7:55 pm
As a lawyer I might be a bit biased because school reputation matters quite a bit in my profession, but I think you have to consider where you want to work and how “elite” your college really is- I’m not from Atlanta but, in my opinion, Duke is though to be considerably more prestigious and “elite” than Emory throughout the country. Duke as an educational institution is much different than it was, say, 20 years ago. The acceptance rate is much lower and quantitative data places Duke in the company of middle-ivies (Penn, Dartmouth, Columbia) and other elites such as Northwestern, etc- its consistently ranked in the top 10 by the popular but sketchy USNews rankings. Emory, while a great school seems more along the lines of Washington & Lee, William and Mary, Tufts, etc. The perception in the north/probably the rest of the country is that Duke tends to be more of a peer school to ivies, while Emory is used as a safety for students of this caliber. With that said, I think the experience one would receive at Duke, an ivy, Stanford, Northwestern, etc. is one well worth the price, but the networking, opportunities, and environment at Emory, Wake Forest, etc. may not be worth 50k a year- just my opinion.
TopPublicSchool
December 20th, 2010
8:21 pm
TOP does not always mean TOP—
Better check it out from TOP to BOTTOM first…
All that glitters is not GOLD
http://www.TopPublicSchoolCorruptionAtlanta.com
Really amazed
December 20th, 2010
8:35 pm
@there right now, so take the mos demanding courses you can in high school?? I hope this works. My son sure is but he also isn’t making straight A’s any more. Hope this helps and doesn’t hurt him instead. He is being challenged for the first time ever in high school. Is this a good thing or bad? I would love your opinion.
GSUBLH
December 20th, 2010
11:08 pm
enjoyed the comments here so far…couple of quick opinions
1) the nature of college is changing, whereas, with the influx of “for profit” schools and the extinction or near total loss of some employment sectors, a KSU,GSU, or Georgia College degree might not be worth much as they were ten years ago.
2) GT and UGA are awesome schools,no doubt about it. Tech has “street cred” that goes nationally and UGA is one of the best state institutions in the country.
3) oh, and HS Teacher,I was one too btw, I graduated from GSU in 93′, and I can say without a doubt an Eagle degree candle shines just as bright or even more so than a Alabama,LSU, Miss. State.,etc…(hate to mention SEC schools,but its true).
4) Do elite schools garner greater returns ? looking at everything,yes, they do. but it depends on majors the student wants and excels in, also, could they handle Sewanee? or would they thrive better at Georgia St. or Georgia. Not to get into classism(can I use that word)….when I drive thru Athens most,not all, but most students are driving autos that retail 40k and up…its pretty hard to get into UGA and Tech,but its a whole new game when it comes to staying there,thriving there,and taking part in all the cultural activities that is UGA. That takes lots and lots of money. Thats an elite school. Didn’t even mention Oglethrorpe, Emory, Berry, or Covenant. The state of Georgia has enough colleges to satisfy every type of student.