By definition, a very small fraction of graduates attended a prestigious college. Wouldn't it make more sense to look at the odds of an individual reaching a certain level of (for lack of a better phrase) "corporate achievement", depending on where they went to school?
via Forbes, the median MIT graduate has a starting salary of $72,000. The median starting salary for all college graduates is around $43,000. Since only 50 people in the world can be CEOs of the top 50 companies at once, maybe it makes more sense to look at numbers like this?
I'm not saying that salary should determine your choice of school, just that this article is using a very strange metric to argue its point.
I think a lot of points in the article made sense.
Salary might not be as good a measure of college value as how each individual student feels about the school they attended and their performance in the real world many years later. Related, there was one example of a student who felt that attending community college gave him a chance to feel more confident than he might have otherwise. (He does not say this directly, but being around students who were like him and with similar abilities made him more confident, as well.)
Also, the majors offered at MIT are different than those at typical schools, which could alone account for your average salary statistic.
Next, I would not be surprised if students from top universities are more likely to work in big cities than those who are from schools in the middle of the country, accounting for cost of living differences and local job opportunities.
Finally, if salary is a factor, then the cost of college should be, as well.
I think success at MIT would be that a student found the coursework challenging, opportunities plentiful, and made lots of smart friends, and not a potential salary or prestige. And I think those same factors are also important for most students who succeed from other schools; in other words, doing things that make them happy.
>I think success at MIT would be that a student found the coursework challenging, opportunities plentiful, and made lots of smart friends, and not a potential salary or prestige. And I think those same factors are also important for most students who succeed from other schools; in other words, doing things that make them happy.
Looking at the CEOs of the top 50 companies doesn't tell you that at all. It is almost like an article about how your kids highschool doesn't matter because all of our astronauts, rockstars, and professional atheletes have come from all over the place.
That has rather little do do with MIT being better than State of Denial University and rather more with MIT graduating a lot of engineers and State of Denial University graduating a lot of English, Philosophy, and Women's Studies majors.
Engineers get paid more than generic office employees with no specific marketable skills. Film at 11.
via Forbes, the median MIT graduate has a starting salary of $72,000. The median starting salary for all college graduates is around $43,000. Since only 50 people in the world can be CEOs of the top 50 companies at once, maybe it makes more sense to look at numbers like this?
I'm not saying that salary should determine your choice of school, just that this article is using a very strange metric to argue its point.