posted by Jefferson Provost at 12:07 PM /
The new school year is starting and soon MLHS kids will be scrambling to submit college applications, and agonizing over whether they'll be accepted to their top choice school or their "fallback." There is probably some time before the stress begins in earnest, so it seems like a good time to mention Paul Graham's latest essay, in which he argues that it doesn't matter where you go to college. Graham is a tech entrepreneur who went to Cornell for undergrad and Harvard for his PhD. He founded ViaWeb, which eventually became Yahoo Stores. Now he runs Y Combinator, a venture that funds technology startups. His company has evaluated hundreds of applications from thousands of potential startup founders. His conclusion: there's no relationship between what school someone went to and how smart or talented they are. My favorite quote:
What do you think? Is it worth the extra 2x to 3x tuition, plus the time the kids spend, organizing their high school lives around the perceived preferences of the admissions officers?
There's nothing like going to grad school at Harvard to cure you of any illusions you might have about the average Harvard undergrad. And yet Y Combinator showed us we were still overestimating people who'd been to elite colleges. We'd interview people from MIT or Harvard or Stanford and sometimes find ourselves thinking: they must be smarter than they seem. It took us a few iterations to learn to trust our senses.There is other evidence, including the Dale and Krueger study that showed that attending a more selective school does not lead to higher income over time:
Practically everyone thinks that someone who went to MIT or Harvard or Stanford must be smart. Even people who hate you for it believe it.
But when you think about what it means to have gone to an elite college, how could this be true? We're talking about a decision made by admissions officers—basically, HR people—based on a cursory examination of a huge pile of depressingly similar applications submitted by seventeen year olds. And what do they have to go on? An easily gamed standardized test; a short essay telling you what the kid thinks you want to hear; an interview with a random alum; a high school record that's largely an index of obedience. Who would rely on such a test?
They find that school selectivity, measured by the average SAT score of the students at a school, doesn't pay off in a higher income over time. "Students who attended more selective colleges do not earn more than other students who were accepted and rejected by comparable schools but attended less selective colleges," the researchers write. They also find that the average SAT score of the schools students applied to but did not attend is a much stronger predictor of students' subsequent income than the average SAT score of the school students actually attended. They call this finding the "Spielberg Model" because the famed movie producer applied to USC and UCLA film schools only to be rejected, and attended Cal State Long Beach. Evidently, students' motivation, ambition, and desire to learn have a much stronger effect on their subsequent success than the average academic ability of their classmates.As Graham points out, even non-prestigious schools will have some smart students and professors to hang around with and learn from. Practically all public research universities now have honors programs, whose students are at least as smart as -- and probably smarter than -- the average Harvard undergrad.
What do you think? Is it worth the extra 2x to 3x tuition, plus the time the kids spend, organizing their high school lives around the perceived preferences of the admissions officers?
Labels: college, high school
12 Comments:
IMHO, as a standalone indicator of future financial security or career development, no - your college attendance or lack thereof is not as much a factor as other things.
However, Paul's measure is based on the performance of the individuals obtaining seed funding for their startups through Y Combinator. Working in the field of software development, I'm not surprised by his results. But I don't know that the same would be found in more traditional professions. There is still a lot of psychological and emotional weight associated with a "prestige" school degree in the eyes of would-be employers out there, and frankly I'm glad to see that that's changing (at least in the tech industry).
I think ultimately success is best indicated by a person's innate character - their intelligence, ambition, perseverance, etc. I think those traits can be molded and shaped by school, but I also think that by the time someone hits college they've already done most of their development of those traits.
All things being equal, it can't hurt to have an elite college diploma. But if you're banking on that alone, you're mistaken.
Actually, there is a cost to an elite degree, literally. The tuition can be 3 time what the student would pay for in-state tuition at a state school. Student loans are a heavy burden that, IMO, totally changes the a way a twentysomething's life can go. A young person with little or no debt has the freedom to do all kinds of things that a debt-laden Harvard grad would be unable to do without defaulting on their loans. And if you ask me, for someone seeking to be happy, the lower their financial obligations, the better.
Regarding the weight of an elite degree in the eyes of employers, I think that Graham hit the nail on the head with his "nobody ever got fired for buying IBM" comment. Nobody ever got fired for hiring Harvard grads, and HR people have no disincentive for passing over qualified grads from other schools. Graham's footnote on the Lotus HR situation was really telling.
Graham's essay is profoundly depressing. Sure, if you assume an industrial model of higher education (the point being: measure inputs, primarily in terms of innate intelligence, or "raw material," then measure outputs, or finished goods -- earning power-- and compare them, to determine the value of the intervening process), then there is relatively little difference between Harvard and Podunk U -- aside from history and prestige and reputation.
If, however, you subscribe to any other model of education, then you can find a hundred reasons why an elite college education is superior to a Podunk U education. There is more to life than earning power and there is more to college freshmen than raw intelligence.
Whether an elite education is worth the price is a fair question. Whether high school seniors who don't come from elite programs have a fair shot at those schools is also a fair question. And whether all grads of elite colleges are equally and uniquely "smart" is a third fair question. But elite college graduates do get something for the money, even if it doesn't automatically translate into earning power.
Elite colleges often provide the 22 year old graduate the "in" he or she needs to interview with and secure that first job. It's the legacy thing. But after that a business is a business and it simply comes down whether or not that hire is a drain or a boon on the company's bottom line. More important, in my opinion, is the way a graduate presents himself via both the written and spoken word and the way he or she places and emphasis on their appearance.
Coming at it from a completely different angle, I've been responsible for a lot of recruiting and hiring for my law firm. I am continuously pressured to actively recruit and retain students from the Ivy Leagues and other premier schools. Apparently, in the minds of some here or in the industry, there is a real benefit to having these Uber students on the firm "roster".
However, I can honestly tell you that pound for pound, the "brainiacs" from the power schools have a tougher time adjusting to the day-to-day grind and pace of the practice of law. They are less likely to fair well in front of clients, and tend to wash out faster than the other folks from less prestigious institutions. Sure, there have been some exceptions, but over the past 5 years in which I have recruited approximately 50 graduates, the ones with degrees from the 5 diamond institutions have faired no better, and in many cases worse, than the folks from Generic U.
In my humble opinion, in the end, your education and you professional career are what you make of them. As my dad always said, "If you put garbage in, you'll get garbage out."
If you go to Penn State, Pitt, Rutgers, etc and excel, I believe you'll ultimately have the same opportunities to succeed as someone from Harvard, Yale or Princeton.
I don't find the essay depressing -- I find it hopeful. I'm sure that much of the difference in my reaction and Mike's is directly related to the fact that I'm a product of state universities and he's a product of elite schools.
Still, I hardly subscribe to an industrial model of education. And I'm not sure that Graham does either. His closing paragraph sums up my entire attitude toward how kids (and people of all ages) should approach education: "What matters is what you make of yourself," and "their job isn't to get good grades ..., but to learn and do."
I disagree somewhat with Graham's assessment of the elite colleges' admissions process. I think that their process does strongly bias their student body toward high-achievers, many of whom will be smarter than the average college student. I really think much of the personal, intangible benefit comes from spending four years surrounded by smart peers. Do you think there's much difference between attending Harvard and attending the Honors College at Pitt or similar programs at other state universities? I think it's probably an equivalent education at a huge discount.
Also, I think if students are truly interested in learning deeply about a particular area or field, the best thing to do is to ignore the undergraduate rankings completely and find the schools with the top graduate programs that area. This is true in science, math, and engineering, at least. The top graduate programs are the places where the cutting-edge research is going on, and where the faculty and graduate students are currently working on the things that will be state-of-the-art ten years from now. Many such programs are at the elite schools; indeed, that's part of what makes them the elite. But many are at less selective state universities. Of course, many high school seniors don't actually know what they want to do, or they think they know, but they're wrong, and they end up changing majors. In this respect the elite universities probably provide some advantage over some state schools, in that they likely have very good grad programs in most areas.
I'm not sure what this says about 4-year undergraduate-only colleges, regardless of their selectivity. Their real advantage is in small class sizes and individualized attention. There is an enormous tier of such schools in which the differences are probably much more about the quality of fit between the individual student and the school than about the overall quality of the education they provide.
My bottom line is the same as Jefferson's: When choosing a college, "fit" is key, and most important. It's much more important than reputation or earning potential.
During my later years with major corporation, I was in charge of Human Relations and we decided to test our current hiring practices against the resumes and college/university transcripts of our top 100 officers and managers. Much to our chagrin, we found that over 50% would not have made the cut under our current hiring practices.
(I was one of those - my grades at a very good engineering scool were too low to make the cut!)
We did alot of soul searching after reviewing these results and decided to take a hard look at the characteristics of our managers that were common, shared by all. There were not that many, as it turned out, but they were important, in my opinion.
They were integrity, high value set, excellent human relations skills, outstanding communication skills, and empathy (the ability to walk in another's shoes).
If I was staffing my company, I'd look for those characteristics and I would care less what college or university the individual attended.
Food for thought - have at it.
I was thinking about this post more in local terms - - whether it provides any insight into our very own MTLSD. I think Ron has struck a chord: integrity, high value set, excellent human relations skills, outstanding communication skills, and empathy (the ability to walk in another's shoes).
Something to think about as we make Mega-Million Dollar decisions. (And the little ones too!)
To Ron's good list, I would add two things.
First is the ability to think critically and independently both about oneself and about one's family, neighbors, communities, country, and world, and to do so not only at age 18 or 21 or 25, but at age 40 and 50 and 70.
Second is a love of learning for its own sake, not just because it's an element of a job or career.
Together, people with these attributes are people who enjoy exercising their minds. When I was hiring lawyers for my law firms, I wanted lively minds as well as people willing to work hard.
To Mike's 10:05
Perhaps worth repeating something someone said long ago:
" Too often we enjoy the comfort of opinion without the discomfort of thought"...
John F. Kennedy
One note about the data set in Graham's little experiment. Y Combinator mostly funds software-based startup companies. As long-time IBM manager Fred Brooks pointed out in his book The Mythical Man-Month, the best programmers are 10 times as productive as the average. I'm not sure how many other fields there are where there are a few demigods who can each do the work of 10 mere mortals. Also, from my experience, those kinds of savant-like programming skills are probably not very highly correlated with the traits that college recruiters look for, e.g. willingness and desire to please teachers, interest in extra-curricular activities, sports, and community service, overall good grades, winning personality, etc.
I'm not saying those traits are anti-correlated with super-hacker skilz, either. At best, however, I think the odds of finding super-programmers in the population of elite university graduates is not much better than in the population of college students generally. If that's what Graham was talking about when he meant "smart" then his results seem pretty obvious to me.
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