Ivy League Edge?

The Wall St. Journal reports on a survey conducted by Payscale.com showing that the college one attends “can make a big difference in starting pay, and that difference is largely sustained into midcareer.”

Personally, I would like to see this study conducted so that it removes the impact of SAT and high school GPA. Are the Ivy League schools simply cherry picking those mostly likely to earn the big bucks, or are they really adding value and enabling people of similar talent to earn more? I suspect it’s the former. Nonetheless, the perception is that it’s the latter.

Payscale slices and dices its data in multiple ways; you can go to the site to see the variations for yourselves. Here are a few highlights from the WSJ article:

“…graduates of Dartmouth College, an Ivy League college, earn the highest median salary — $134,000.”
“Liberal-arts-school graduates see their median total compensation grow by 95% after about 10 years, to $89,379 from $45,747.”
“Engineering-school grads, who earn the highest starting salaries, yet
see their paychecks expand just 76% by their career midpoints to
$103,842 from $59,058.”
“History-majors-turned-business-consultants earn a median total
compensation of $104,000, similar to their counterparts who pursued a
business major like economics — whose grads earn about $98,000 overall the PayScale study shows.”

Zcat8

Another oft ignored factor is the student’s affluence prior to entering college. If I were a millionaire, I would send my child to an Ivy League school; upon graduation, I would ensure that they had a six figure salary as a result of my social network. If someone entered college as a millionaire, then wouldn’t they be a millionaire after they graduate, regardless of which school they attended? Is it the Ivy League institution that created their wealth? How many billionaires send their kids to a state college? Without taking into consideration the earning potential and family’s affluence (and influence) prior to entering college, the complete study is meaningless. The article appeared in The Wall Street Journal and a job search engine was next to the article. I did a search for these supposed high paying jobs and turned up zero results. Jobs only pay well if there is a high demand for that particular position; if there is such a high demand then why are there no jobs available? More importantly, was the study funded by the recruiting departments of various Ivy League schools? Before someone can call me a cynic, they should be able to show me where I can find one of these jobs. Take into consideration that the study only accounted for students with a four year degree.

The study would only be of value if the student’s earning potential before entering college was taken into consideration because it greatly affects the results of the survey.