Are fancy-schmancy schools like the one where I teach worth it? A new discussion at The New York Times says NO! According to the Times,
The key to success in college and beyond has more to do with what students do with their time during college than where they choose to attend. A long-term study of 6,335 college graduates published by the National Bureau of Economic Research found that graduating from a college where entering students have higher SAT scores—one marker of elite colleges—didn’t pay off in higher post-graduation income. Researchers found that students who applied to several elite schools but didn’t attend them — either because of rejection or by their own choice—are more likely to earn high incomes later than students who actually attended elite schools.
So if clawing and pushing your way into an elite school doesn’t pay off, why do we do it? What causes the hysteria that makes schools like Middlebury so sought after that we reject 80 percent of the more than 7,000 students who apply? Are the people who come here just not rational economic actors? Does that mythical homo economicus, who makes choices about the best bang for his or buck, just not bother with the likes of us and instead we are left with homo ineconomicus, a completely irrational economic actor? I think the answer is about capital, but not of the economic kind.
As French sociologist Pierre Bourdieu mapped out for us, class is never just about money. We gain prestige in our cultures not just or even necessarily primarily through economic capital. That’s why we feel disdain for the noveau riche since despite their high levels of economic capital, they often have low levels of educational, social, and cultural capital.
In other words, social power is expressed not just in how much we can buy, but what we buy, where we buy it, and who else is buying it. It is this sort of capital—the capital that makes it possible to effortlessly float through a museum, a trendy restaurant, or a party of the uber rich—that can give us the ability to maneuver through the world like a “fish in water” (i.e. Bourdieu’s term for how people for whom the social rules of the game are written feel). Those who make a lot of money, but have not gained the sort of educational, social, and cultural capital that is available at elite colleges often feel like a fish out of water, despite all their fancy-schmancy cars and homes.
Perhaps the best way to think about the difference between attending an elite school and going to a college that is less prestigious is to consider these two videos. The first, “Tea Partay,” is an ad for a Smirnoff alcoholic beverage that could be made with students from a school like Middlebury. The second, 50 Cent’s “I Get Money” is the boast of someone who has high levels of economic capital, but surely feels like a fish out of water at his mansion in Farmington, CT.
It is the microskirmishes over “taste,” especially in conditions of consumer capitalism, that determine our prestige, not the size of our bank accounts—or at least not the size of our bank accounts alone. And what elite colleges offer is a lot of prestige, not just in the name on the degree, but in the people you know, the clothes you wear, the places you go. This is what Bourdieu would call educational, social, and cultural capital.
In other words, the next time you see an article saying it doesn’t matter where you go to school because some of the richest people in the world either didn’t go to college or went to a not terribly prestigious school, ask yourself if social power is to be measured in bank accounts alone.
Maybe once we have a more complex understanding of power we can actually ask ourselves the far more important question: Is the transmission of high levels of various capital at elite institutions at its core anti-democratic? But if we naively assume that the college we attended doesn’t matter, we can never begin to understand why so many of us want to go to an elite college, despite the lack of direct correlation with future earnings.
30 Responses to Why Would Anyone Go to an Elite College?
pocvecem - December 1, 2010 at 2:50 pm
If you eliminate the Bourdieu and the general discussion of capitalism, there was almost nothing new to see here. Almost. This column is fascinating because the author teaches at one of these schools, acknowledges it, and does not embrace the hand that feeds her. Her professional affiliation doesn’t prove anything but a statement of authorial intention might be more enlightening than the column was.
trendisnotdestiny - December 1, 2010 at 3:42 pm
“does not embrace the hand that feeds her.”
Which adds to her credibility as well as personal risk….
Being an insider gives Dr. Essig a unique vantage point from which to criticize an elite education… this should be at the very least alarming since tuition may exceed 40K per year…
The new that you miss here is that if we are to become ‘homo economicus’ wouldn’t this mean that we find the very best schools with least amount of cost (i.e a public school in Idaho or a school looking (wannabee)gain admissions through price reduction.
The point being that elite school educations may not lead an opening of opportunity nor to eventual the golden parachutes social class nepotism…..
Actually, I think this short article was very enlightening…
wbgleason - December 1, 2010 at 4:14 pm
In Minnesota, homo economicus might attend an elite college – say Carleton, or Macalester – because he or she would have a much lower debt at graduation than at, say, the University of Minnesota.
Bill Gleason
pocvecem - December 1, 2010 at 5:29 pm
@ trendisnotdestiny: I have seen the argument before, which is why I said it was nothing new. If it was new to you, I’m glad it was written.
I also don’t disagree with what you wrote about increased credibility and personal risk, but authorial credibility is not the same as proof. In spite of that, I don’t have an argument to level against what Essig wrote. Gleason, on the other hand, may have a point. I wouldn’t know.
barbarapiper - December 2, 2010 at 6:20 am
Laurie! Lloyd Warner said it long before Bourdieu, in his Social Class in America, and he said it in more accessible style. I suspect that one of the values of elite education is that it teaches you prestige citation, another form of prestige consumption.
jffoster - December 2, 2010 at 9:12 am
Indeed, Barbara Piper. But they may not know much else besides Bordodo. And/or Foucault (Michel. They certainly don’t know Jean.)
But at Middlebury when you graduate, they issue you not only a diploma but a cane. And “there is nothing like Gamaliel Painter’s cane.”
wbgleason - December 2, 2010 at 10:02 am
@pocvecem
At first glance, the $50,000 plus price tags on a Carleton or Macalester are intimidating. But both give close to $30,000 in need and non-need based aid with the bulk of it going towards need. The average student graduates with less than $20,000 in debt.
We’re talking about $10,000 less than the $27,467 in student debt that’s saddling the average Minnesota graduate, Class of 2009.
A peek at the Project on Student Debt’s data on debt load by school is eye-opening. Average debt at the University of Minnesota? $26,516. Winona State? $27,190. Carleton College? $18,601 Macalester? $17,275
And it isn’t just because only rich kids go to the private schools.
Percent of students graduating with debt: U of M (63%), Carleton (54%), Macalester (76%).
An important site for students, parents, taxpayers: The Project on Student Debt
Link: http://bit.ly/hYgv5B
tomian - December 2, 2010 at 9:23 pm
@trendisnotdestiny–re your second to last paragraph:
Huh?
pocvecem - December 3, 2010 at 12:25 am
Thanks for the link, Bill. Every high school guidance counselor in the country ought to have access to that.
luther_blissett - December 3, 2010 at 8:52 am
Dear Foster and Piper,
Thorstein Veblen said it before Lloyd Warner. See, anyone can play the moronic game of citation oneupmanship. Please stop being idiots.
Kay thx bai.
goxewu - December 3, 2010 at 1:13 pm
Medieval European peasants probably noticed that the class difference between them and the castled aristocracy was more than the aristocracy’s simply having more gold coins in their pouches. Some commonplaces don’t really require citations, except for academic showing off.
barbarapiper - December 3, 2010 at 2:36 pm
@luther_blissett
“Thorstein Veblen said it before Lloyd Warner. See, anyone can play the moronic game of citation oneupmanship. Please stop being idiots.”
Goodness, I thought that was my point to Laurie.
goxewu - December 3, 2010 at 9:28 pm
Nope. barbarapiper’s comment about Warner was clearly meant to convey the opinion that Warner was a better citation (“Warner said it long before Bourdieu, in his Social Class in America, and he said it in more accessible style”) than Professor Essig’s “prestige citation” of Bordieu. luther_blissett’s point–to repeat the obvious–was that the entire academics’ game of battling citations is “moronic.” And goodness, he’s right.
pocvecem - December 4, 2010 at 2:35 am
New topic, same old goxewu. (I know I said I was sick of this, but I can’t resist.)
Goxewu is back to his game of out-of-context quotations. Barbarapiper’s comment was ultimately about a different form of “prestige consumption” at Middlebury, which is the original context of “prestige citation” in the column. I don’t think Barbarapiper was calling Warner the “better” citation as goxewu would have you believe. Her comment on citations reads more similarly to Alan Sokal’s views on the topic. (See: Sokal hoax)
barbarapiper - December 4, 2010 at 7:23 am
Comments on blogs are dashed off even more quickly than the blog entries themselves, and subsequent comments are often efforts to clarify, expand, etc. so please forgive this little follow-up as part of that postmortem. At least a part of my vague intuition in mentioning an alternative to Laurie’s Bourdieu was a sense of exasperation at why she would mention anyone at all just to make a rather simple point about status and [conspicuous] consumption (I heard the point first from my mother as a child – Laurie is welcome to cite her in the future).
Honestly, it reminded me of an online article I had just read in which the author starts off writing “when I was a freshman at Yale…” but continues with nothing that has any relationship to Yale at all. It was simple grandstanding. I had a sense that Laurie was engaging in exactly that kind of conspicuous consumption with the utterly irrelevant mention of Bourdieu.
I acknowledge that it might be idiotic, but was I wasn’t playing a citation game so much as pointing to the irony of Laurie’s own conspicuous consumption – with all credit to Veblen.
wbgleason - December 4, 2010 at 8:02 am
Can’t resist-
Veblen, who was an elite college grad: Carleton.
Bill Gleason
goxewu - December 4, 2010 at 3:08 pm
Nope again. In the first place, all quotations are “out of context.” Otherwise, the quotation would have to include quotee’s entire article, book, or collected works. In the second place, barbarapiper didn’t chide Professor Essig for academic citing per se; she chided her for citing a source who is less “accessible” than Warner and who postdated Warner in making the point about class. She chided Professor Essig for indulging in “prestige citation,” not citation per se.
barbarapiper’s second comment would have more cred if she hadn’t written her first.
barbarapiper - December 4, 2010 at 3:51 pm
“barbarapiper’s second comment would have more cred if she hadn’t written her first.”
Yikes! I was not aware that I had only one opportunity to make a point, and that it had to be precise, without any possibility of clarification, elaboration or explication. Nor was I aware that goxewu was the final arbiter of meaning. I’ll try to do better next time.
pocvecem - December 4, 2010 at 5:21 pm
Summarizing is a beautiful thing, goxewu. It gets rid of those pesky quotation problems.
goxewu - December 4, 2010 at 6:33 pm
Pocvecem’s is a nice summary itself. (Must’ve seen that one coming.)
As for “Yikes!”: Of course one has more than one opportunity to make a point, and barbarapiper’s third try–the charm–does it. Pocvecem’s (ahem!) summary of the matter is what I was disputing.