How far will a degree from an elite college get you? A new working paper (ungated version here) from Kevin Lang and Erez Siniver tries to answer that question by?examining labor-market outcomes for Israeli students at Hebrew University (a leading university) and the College of Management Academic Studies (a “professional undergraduate college”). The authors found that a degree from an elite college will help you get a foot in the door, but skill quickly triumphs. “Our results support a model in which employers have good information about the quality of HU graduates and pay them according to their ability, but in which the market has relatively little information about COMAS graduates,” the authors conclude. “Hence, high-skill COMAS graduates are initially treated as if they were the average COMAS graduate, who is weaker than a HU graduate, consequently earning less than HU graduates. However, over time the market differentiates among them so that after several years of experience, COMAS and HU graduates with similar entry scores have similar earnings. Our results are therefore consistent with the view that employers use education information to screen workers but that the market acquires information fairly rapidly.” [%comments]
How Much Value Does an “Elite” College Provide?
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This is a hard question to measure, but I think salary is the wrong metric. Job satisfaction is probably the correct one, but is that much more difficult to determine.
I think it also depends quite a bit on what field you’re in. Those Wall Street jobs, maybe yes. (I’ve no direct experience.) Engineering & science, hardly at all.
Let’s see stats for Harvard v. U of Nowhere. I am sure the data are a lot more pointed.
How much of the foot in the door is through the networking that the elite college provides, such as your roommate’s dad or uncle being on the board of the Suchandsuch Corp. and that gets you an interview you wouldn’t otherwise get?
Freakonomics author Steven Levitt is a perfect example of elite college advantage in action. Would an economics professor at State U get a book deal and be able to launch a mass media movement like Freakonomics? The network and prestige associated with Harvard, MIT and U of Chicago (all Ivy level private schools) are what enabled Levitt to get to where he is.
I’m a scientist and have worked at a UC (top tier state school) and an Ivy. The quality of students and education are the same, really there is no difference. The job fairs and recruiting at the Ivy are light-years beyond what was going on at the UC. I’ve had a much easier time placing students in both industry and academic positions from the Ivy school, even to companies and schools I “abandoned” when I left California and their “privileged” relationships with UC. I’ve also had an easier time recruiting research staff to my lab here, despite a lower salary compared to cost of living. That is real value, and it’s a LOT of value.
Elite college status would matter if you don’t have much else going for you (at least in Engineering). Once you have some level of work experience, you cease being Mr. X from “Ivy league”. You are then known by your work experience.
However, I wouldn’t like other commentators discount the “getting in” capabilities of an Ivy league. Us public university graduates have to prove so much more when trying to find our first jobs.
As EK suggests, there may be a greater disparity between the “value” provided by an elite college in the UK or US than in Israel. The authors fail to mention two possibilities: (1) that perhaps Israelis are less obsessed than Americans or the British with attending or having their children attend elite colleges; (2) that Israelis are equally obsessed, but so much so that Hebrew University is not even in the same status universe as the US or UK elite (didn’t Netanyahu attend MIT?). Without addressing these questions, all the study does is reinforce the prejudice that those that attend elite universities attain what they do based largely on merit alone (you know, like George W. Bush).
Whether these results apply in other cultures and societies with different business values, different class structures (overt and covert), and different forms of social distinction (snobbery) is still an open question.
Are British employers, for example, as open-minded toward red-brick graduates as Israeli employers are to the graduates of COMAS?