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This is not bad. It is simply one of many possible ways to rank colleges.

BookmarkSaver 11y ago
But it is a serious flaw in the methodology. It says nothing about the quality of education or the boost in earnings that a college will provide, if you are specifically going to a school to do so. At the very least they need to somehow account for individuals that go to the top schools but aren't looking to go into lucrative careers. CalTech is a common example being cited here. It is basically impossible to deny realistically that going to CalTech is a great way to make a lot of money. But it is in the bottom percentages of these rankings, likely because so many CalTech alumns go into academia. The metric is supposedly showing which colleges can potentially increase your earnings the most, but it just isn't doing that. It's a great idea, it just hasn't been implemented fully.
- selimthegrim 11y ago
  I think the money thing is paralleling something else entirely - given the supposed caliber of student that comes into Caltech, is Caltech really making them better scientists than if they had gone elsewhere (or at least better scientists than they were turning out in the 1970s). That to me is a open question.
  - BookmarkSaver 11y ago
    Yes, but Caltech students have some of the highest rates of going into academia. Which pays well on a general scale, but compared to where engineers and developers go onto it drags the stats down. They do admit that the metric only gauges financial success and is imperfect when it comes to accounting for alternative priorities. But do you seriously believe that CalTech provides one of the worst "financial bumps" even accounting for the quality of their admissions? I find it incredibly hard to believe.
    - selimthegrim 11y ago
      It's not at all clear that every Caltech student is going to be an engineer or developer. Recall Jim Simons getting booted out from Princeton because he sucked at programming?
et2o 11y ago
If I ranked colleges based upon something silly such as the length of the college's name, that would also be "one of many ways to rank colleges" but it would also be "bad" in any traditional sense of the word as applied to our problem of ranking colleges based upon educational quality.

But it is a serious flaw in the methodology. It says nothing about the quality of education or the boost in earnings that a college will provide, if you are specifically going to a school to do so. At the very least they need to somehow account for individuals that go to the top schools but aren't looking to go into lucrative careers. CalTech is a common example being cited here. It is basically impossible to deny realistically that going to CalTech is a great way to make a lot of money. But it is in the bottom percentages of these rankings, likely because so many CalTech alumns go into academia. The metric is supposedly showing which colleges can potentially increase your earnings the most, but it just isn't doing that. It's a great idea, it just hasn't been implemented fully.

selimthegrim 11y ago
I think the money thing is paralleling something else entirely - given the supposed caliber of student that comes into Caltech, is Caltech really making them better scientists than if they had gone elsewhere (or at least better scientists than they were turning out in the 1970s). That to me is a open question.
- BookmarkSaver 11y ago
  Yes, but Caltech students have some of the highest rates of going into academia. Which pays well on a general scale, but compared to where engineers and developers go onto it drags the stats down. They do admit that the metric only gauges financial success and is imperfect when it comes to accounting for alternative priorities. But do you seriously believe that CalTech provides one of the worst "financial bumps" even accounting for the quality of their admissions? I find it incredibly hard to believe.
  - selimthegrim 11y ago
    It's not at all clear that every Caltech student is going to be an engineer or developer. Recall Jim Simons getting booted out from Princeton because he sucked at programming?

et2o 11y ago

If I ranked colleges based upon something silly such as the length of the college's name, that would also be "one of many ways to rank colleges" but it would also be "bad" in any traditional sense of the word as applied to our problem of ranking colleges based upon educational quality.