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These salaries on the image on the right seem extremely high. Half of Colgate Social Science majors are in the top 5% of income earners? Half of Tufts humanitie
by no_wave 11y ago
These salaries on the image on the right seem extremely high. Half of Colgate Social Science majors are in the top 5% of income earners? Half of Tufts humanities majors? These are great colleges, but it doesn't pass the smell test.
And, looking at the actual data collected, the image on the right doesn't hold up. The study must have collected data from hundreds of colleges, yet there were only 7,300 observations. Sounds like a lot, but assuming that there were 200 universities (probably a low estimate) and 8 categories of majors, you're only looking at 4 to 5 observations per college per category. And these observations were probably unevenly distributed. So it's inevitable that a few colleges will have extreme "median" reported incomes, as the table on the right shows the highest incomes observed in each field.
So while the percentile distinctions cited in the article between selective and less-selective schools are likely accurate, the numbers on the image of the right-hand side - the really striking part of the article - have almost no statistical validity.
The WSJ is leading people to a shocking conclusion even though the real finding - that there's a 12%-18% difference in earnings between selective and less-selective colleges - is much less extreme. (It's also likely making a lot of people feel poor... one of the strange selling points of the WSJ that in this case simultaneously gets eyeballs on PayScale.com)
- hackuser 11y ago> Half of Colgate Social Science majors are in the top 5% of income earners? Half of Tufts humanities majors? Only ~30% of the population gets a college degree, and a college degree has a large impact on income. Add that these are good schools and that most students in good schools come from wealth, with all the other benefits that entails, and I don't find those numbers surprising.
- rchaud 11y ago>Half of Colgate Social Science majors are in the top 5% of income earners? I went to a New England liberal arts college, like Colgate, and the most popular major at my school was Economics, which is categorized as Social Science. Most of the Econ graduates went for jobs in management consulting or investment banking, as those companies would come to recruit on campus, and tend to already have a solid number of alums working there to begin with. In fact, Dick Fuld, the ex-CEO of the infamous Lehman Brothers investment bank, was a trustee on the board of my school, and hired many alums, as did Goldman, Morgan Stanley, Credit Suisse, etc. For banking jobs straight out of undergrad, you don't have to have a deep understanding of quantitative finance. It's more about having a soiid GPA, a demonstrated interest in the topic and interest in learning, and the capacity to work very, very long hours.
- no_wave 11y agoPayScale is basing its median income data for Colgate grads with 10+ years of experience off of 16 observations. There are likely only one or two observations going into the Colgate Social Science salary in the article. http://www.payscale.com/research/US/School=Colgate_University/Salary#by_Years_Experience http://www.payscale.com/research/US/School=Colgate_Universit... In addition, only 25% of Colgate grads go into business-related fields after graduation and the number of those going into high-profile management consulting or investment banking is likely under 100 people a year. The number of people making huge piles of money in general is very small and isn't as correlated with education as people tend to think. Hacker News has a wildly skewed view of this and dishonest "statistics" like these generally go unexamined.