The value of "brand name" college education

An earlier post discusses the latest approach to ranking colleges. An investment in a degree from highly-ranked colleges seems to many a good idea because of the lifetime of benefits that may be reaped. But this popular notion doesn't fit with research that has been done on how much a degree from a well-known school actually impacts a person's chances of lifetime success. How much does a college "brand name" degree really matter?

Research suggests that attending a prestigious school doesn't make a person more likely to be successful professionally (as measured by income). Princeton University economist Alan Krueger and Stacy Berg Dale of the Andrew Mellon Foundation unraveled some myths about the importance of brand-name degrees in a 1999 study when they found that students who were accepted to elite universities but chose instead to attend less-selective schools did as well in adult life as their peers who'd attended top-tier institutions. In other words, it is the quality of the students selected for admission to elite schools, not what happens within the ivied walls, that made the difference.

Read this interesting and lengthy article on the value -- and burden -- of a degree from a "prestigious" college.