There’s an assumption in all of the debate over “equity” vs. “meritocracy” in admission to élite colleges which seems to be rarely questioned and, in the age of rampant insanity on those self-same campuses, ought to be, I think.
The real benefit of a Harvard education is that you don’t have to be intimidated or impressed by anyone with a Harvard education.
— Thomas Sowell
OK, but what are the real benefits, or phrased inversely, what is being denied when one is not admitted to Harvard or one of the other institutions which inflate the value of their credentials by restricting supply?
One way to measure this might be the median lifetime earnings of those who graduate from those universities compared to graduates of less selective state universities. (You want to use the median [half of the sample below, half above] as opposed to the mean [arithmetic average of earnings] because the latter will be perturbed by outliers in the sample.) Unfortunately, lifetime earnings are difficult to compute and obtain and are a many-decades-long lagging indicator, so instead let’s look at the median salary of graduates some number of years after graduation, which at least removes bias due to hiring preferences of high-paying employers.
Here are:
- “Top 50 Colleges with the Highest Post-Graduation Salaries” (median 6 years after graduation)
- “ Here’s how much people earn 10 years after attending the 25 best colleges in America”
In the first listing, the median Harvard graduate earns US$ 87,200 six years after graduation, which is higher than most of the non-specialised competition, but it’s not that high: graduates of Stevens Institute of Technology, which accepts 43.56% of applicants (compared to 5.58% for Harvard) earn US$ 82,800, and Rensselaer Polytechnic grads (acceptance rate 44%) earn US$ 81,700.
From the standpoint of earnings, it isn’t clear being denied admission to Harvard or one of the other Ivies is a life-crippling hardship, especially when one considers the cost of attending these institutions. More difficult to evaluate is whether graduates are better equipped to think, create, and adapt to a rapidly-changing world. Given abundant evidence of rampant intellectual corruption and curricular bankruptcy in these institutions, assuming there is value delivered beyond the prestige of the credential and the networking opportunities for students seems highly dubious.