Spinning the value of the degree

What leads to success after college--the people you know, what you know, or how you've come to know it? Do degrees from elite institutions have greater intrinsic value than degrees from less selective institutions--no matter the effort or sensibility that went into earning them? Is a college education a thing of substance or a self-marketing tool?

For those parents and students who have wondered if it's worth the financial sacrifice to acquire a degree from a selective college, two researchers have an answer: Probably not. A new working paper released by the National Bureau of Economic Research (www.nber.org) suggests that if you have the profile of someone who could be admitted to an elite college, your earnings 20 years out of school will be about the same no matter what college you choose to attend. To put it another way, it's how well students apply themselves to their studies that counts, not where they apply to study.

The paper, "Estimating the payoff to attending a more selective college: An application of selection on observables and unobservables," is written by Alan B. Krueger, a Princeton University economist, and Stacy Berg Dale, a researcher with the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation. They looked at 6,300 students who enrolled in college in 1976 and matched them up by academic characteristics into sets of students who could have gone to elite institutions but chose not to, with students who did enroll in the elite institutions. Studying labor earnings charts for 1995, the authors found that students at non-elite institutions earned about the same as the elite graduates. One exception was students from low-income families whose elite degrees tended to increase their earnings potential.

These findings contradict earlier studies documenting the increased value of the selective college degree. The findings support legions of teachers, parents and high school counselors, however, who drum home the message that being motivated and working hard in school are what pay off in the long run.

Freshmen are stressed, says report

The college freshmen who arrived on campus last fall are somewhat more stressed by all they have to do and the financial implications of attending college than were freshmen in years past. At the same time, today's freshmen may be less academically primed to get the most out of their four (or more) undergraduate years--a result of apparent grade inflation in the high schools and a general disengagement with study.

In the 34th year of the annual "The American Freshman: National Norms for Fall 1999,Ó produced by the Higher Education Research Institute at UCLA, the surveyors uncovered some interesting developments on the evolutionary path of college freshmen. For example, among the more than 260,000 students polled at 462 two- and four-year colleges:

• Thirty-four percent reported maintaining an A average in high school, compared with 13 percent of freshmen with that profile in 1969. At the same time, 12 percent reported earning a C average in high school last year, while the number was 33 percent 30 years ago. Meanwhile, increasing numbers of freshmen--18 percent this year--say they took remedial courses in high school.
  
• In their busy lives, today's freshmen aren't finding the same amount of time to study as their predecessors did. In 1987, 44 percent of freshmen said they spent six or more hours a week studying.

This year, the percentage is down to 32 percent. Forty percent study fewer than three hours per week, and 17 percent study less than an hour a week. In a record-setting response, 63 percent of students are so disengaged they say they frequently or occasionally come late to class.

• On the other hand, today's students sense significantly more stress in their college lives--especially the women. Twenty percent of men, but 39 percent of women, report frequently feeling overwhelmed by all they have to do. In 1985, only 16 percent of students reported that level of stress. Money worries play a larger role today, with 25 percent of freshmen reporting that it's likely they will get full-time jobs while in school. Women (44 percent) more than men (33 percent) say they will probably need to work.

• When it comes to self-discipline, women appear to have it more together than their male classmates. Women used their free time in their last year in high school to study, participate in student groups, help with housework and childcare, and volunteer. High school senior men, on the other hand, were more likely to exercise or play sports, watch TV, party or play video games (see accompanying chart).

The majority of students (67 percent) plan to pursue advanced degrees after receiving their BAs. And of all the possible career choices before them, the greatest percentage of students indicated that they might become teachers after completing their schooling.

The HERI has a summary of the report online, but most of the results are reprinted in the Jan. 28 issue of the Chronicle of Higher Education.