Selective v. Less Selective Schools

Todays copy of the Boston Globe carries an article by Alan B. Krueger, Professor of Economics at Princeton, and Stacy Berg Dale at Mathematica Policy Research Inc. in Princeton, N.J. The article is entitled "Prestige Schools Offer No Real Advantage," and it can be found at:
http://www.boston.com/globe/editorials/
The title of the article clearly indicates the general thrust of their research although there are some interesting exceptions. Those interested in a fuller description of the research can find it on Prof. Kruegers website within the Dept. of Economics at Princeton. It is downloadable as a pdf file, is about 50 pages in length and has a somewhat different title: "Estimating the Payoff to Attending a More Selective College: An Application of Selection on Observables and Unobservables."
None of it is specifically related to distance learning but there is more than a little discussion here on the topic of 1st Tier, 2nd Tier, "which school is better..." etc, so I thought it might be of general interest.
Jack

 

Without reading the article I can say that in some cases that is true & in others it does make a difference (eg starting salaries for lawyers are different depending on where you graduated). I suspect that someone with a B.A. from Harvard in Philosophy may be competing for similar jobs with someone with a B.A. in Philosophy from Generic State University. The B.A. from Harvard may get a leg up in the competition but pull in no more money.

From what I remember part of the argument in the book "The Bell Curve" was the issue of the level (in terms of IQ) that the top schools (specifically Ivy League) attracted and therfore caused the level of education to be higher (more challenging etc). In terms of this then there was purported to be a different level of educational experience.

That is certainly not to dismiss state universites. A look at the US News Top Tier shows schools like the University of Texas (consistently in the top 25 or 50 National Universties) & in the last two years Texas A&M as well. UT Austin colleges (professional) also rank in the top twenty. My gut level feeling is that it is the speciality colleges (such a law) where the school you graduate from may make a difference as to where you go. After all, I am sure it was with great pride that the Enron executive that Diane Feinstein was grilling was able to say he graduated with a Harvard MBA & no he had no clue about what was going on.

North