Joanne Jacobs counsels, "
Don't overpay for a prestige degree."
The pay-off for a prestigious college degree is smaller than you think, write Frederick M. Hess and Joseph B. Fuller on The Hill. Hess directs education policy studies at the American Enterprise Institute, where Fuller, a Harvard Business School professor, is a visiting scholar.
The argument, dear reader, ought be familiar.
[I]t’s not clear whether elite colleges’ high graduation rates are “due to terrific teaching and support, or simply to student bodies composed of hand-picked high achievers,” write Hess and Fuller.
They advise students and parents not to overpay for “bragging rights” or future networking possibilities. That’s especially true now that “the promised intimate mentoring has been reduced to the occasional Skype session.”
I tend to agree that it is the interaction of high achievers that is the source of the premium, although it's possible that the institutions elsewhere on the academic food chain are
complicit in the U. S. News problem. "[A]s long as the regional comprehensives, the mid-majors, the land-grants refuse to act as if they are in the same business as the Ivies, the
Ivy premium inflated though it likely is, will continue."
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