Do Elite Colleges Lead to Higher Salaries? Only for Some Professions
4th February 2016
What we found startled us. For STEM-related majors, average earnings don’t vary much among the college categories. For example, we find no statistically significant differences in average earnings for science majors between selective schools and either midtier or less-selective schools. Likewise, there’s no significant earnings difference between engineering graduates from selective and less-selective colleges, and only a marginally significant difference between selective and midtier colleges.
What’s going on? For potential employers, the skills students learn in these fields appear to trump prestige—possibly because curriculums are relatively standardized and there’s a commonly accepted body of knowledge students must absorb. So, a student may not need to attend the best possible school to ensure a good salary after graduation. (It’s important to note that we controlled for numerous other factors that might influence postgraduation earnings, such as family income, race/ethnicity, gender, marital status, SAT score, postgraduate degree and age at graduation and more.)
In other words, in fields where questions have right and wrong answers, and can be tested that way, pretty much any college can train you properly, and you can’t bullshit your way to a good grade.
Unstated is the obvious corollary: In fields where ‘right’ is a matter of opinion, it’s important how high the rank is of the Mandarin whose opinion you are successfully parroting.