Is Harvard Worth It？

No longer worth it?
Which graduate is more attractive in today's job market? Sorry, Ivy Leaguers. This is where state schools win out. A survey released this week bolstered the argument that the luster of private elite colleges might be fading. Under pressure to cut costs and simplify hiring efforts, U.S. companies are increasingly recruiting from large state schools over private elite institutions, according to The Wall Street Journal's survey of recruiting executives in nearly 30 industries including finance, consulting, marketing and technology. Graduates from elite schools may argue that they're more likely to earn higher incomes upon graduation, but historical research proves that's not the case. In a study featured at the National Bureau of Economic Research by economists Alan B. Krueger and Stacy Berg Dale, selectivity of schools generally had little effect on incomes once other factors, such as SAT scores, were taken into account. In other words, students with the same test score would earn roughly the same income, regardless of the school they attended.
Return?
What kind of return is there likely to be on that investment? And how does it compare with the return on a less expensive but also less prestigious education? The academic evidence is murky.
Doubt—Does an elite college really pay?
Harvard or Yale can cost a fortune, but the theory goes that the cost of a prestigious diploma will pay off in future earnings. Many who've studied the numbers disagree. 【Link】 A Student’s Dilemma Yesterday I got my acceptance package from Harvard law school. I'm Canadian and I also got accepted to the University of Toronto, which is a really good school and about a quarter as expensive. If I accept at Harvard, I will have to finance law school almost entirely through loans, and will be really in debt by the time I graduate. Plus, I don't think I'm interested in working in a high-paying, Wall Street-type job. I'm more interested in typically low-paying public interest or academic work. But people I talk to keep saying that I have to go to Harvard because of all the "opportunities" it'll provide me--that I can do "anything" after graduating from there. So, my question is this: Is it worth it to pick Harvard over another really good school, even if it means racking up enormous debt? Is a Harvard degree really that much more impressive to employers than another degree?
It？ Is Harvard Worth It？
Background
Is Harvard Worth It? Conventional wisdom says yes. But with the price of a degree from America's most famous university and other elite private colleges now surpassing $125,000, many families--and a number of economists--aren't so sure. For years, economists have wrestled with the question of whether the hefty cost of an Ivy League or equivalent private college is worth the differential in economic terms. Will attending the elite University of Pennsylvania result in higher future earnings than attending Penn State? And will the higher earnings exceed the higher cost? These questions have no easy answers.
Students’ Qualities Speak Louder ’
Krueger and Dale concluded that smart, talented kids who attended less selective schools did just as well in their careers as their counterparts at elite colleges. There was no difference in average earnings. The same traits that made the students desirable candidates for admission to Yale--ambition, intelligence, wit--carried over to the workplace, where they were duly (and comparably) rewarded, even though they had turned down an elite education. Krueger says this is because the positive characteristics attributed to selective colleges were actually characteristics of the students, not of the schools.
A prestigious undergraduate degree does pay off
Dan A. Black, an economist at Syracuse University who has studied such questions, says you will make more by attending an elite college, "but it comes out awfully close to what you’d get in the stock market" if you invested the difference in price between a top college and a lesser state school. But Hoxby, who specializes in the economics of education, has come up with some different answers. She figures student aptitude accounts for somewhere between two-thirds and three-quarters of the earnings difference; yet even allowing for this, she finds that it pays to go to the most selective college you caБайду номын сангаас. "People who invest in education at a more selective college generally earn back their investment several times over during their careers,”