It frustrates me that these ROI calculations are done as comparisons between two separate populations, each with different characteristics like raw intelligence or work ethic. Return on investment should be looking at treatment effects only.<p>For example, it may be that science minded people have higher salaries in general, and those people also tend to apply to technical schools. In that case, the real ROI is from being technically minded, not from attending a school that focuses on that.<p>A better test would be looking at kids that got into both Harvey Mudd and MIT and separating them into populations based on where each kid decided to matriculate. That way you're factoring out the admissions bias.<p>Malcolm Gladwell wrote an article in the New Yorker about the difference between state schools and Ivy League schools that actually looked at treatment effects. And he found that there were none for the majority of the population.<p>I haven't seen one of these done for college vs. no college, but that would be much more valuable than misleading shit like this.<p>edit: summary of the Gladwell article here
<a href="http://notesandrestsmakemusic.wordpress.com/2011/09/14/the-value-of-an-ivy-league-education/" rel="nofollow">http://notesandrestsmakemusic.wordpress.com/2011/09/14/the-v...</a>
The numbers "feel" off to me. Here's some rough numbers from an earlier discussion. <a href="http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=3753975" rel="nofollow">http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=3753975</a><p>In my own case graduating with a degree resulted in an immediate 45k per year pay bump, and I don't think that was particularly exceptional. Their 30 year ROI sounds hopelessly low by an order of magnitude (at least for Eng and bus)
Of course HMC tops the list. It's free for everyone. Reminds me of that one (Forbes?) college ranking list that had West Point as the best school to go to, primarily because they factored in cost as a major ranking determinant.<p>And yes, everything's stacked in the favor of elite schools. They make you more money, and they cost less. I had a full ride to Harvard and so did everyone else whose parents made less than $80k. At state school I would have been fucked over twice.