The Middlebury Campus

Issue date: 11/15/07 Section: Features

Media Credit: Grace Duggan Steven Woodbury '75 addresses a packed Warner hemicycle in his discussion of the advantages of attending an elite college. Himself a Middlebury College graduate, Woodbury discussed the pros and cons of elite institutions. [Click to enlarge]

Middlebury students pay a hefty price - $46,910 a year, to be exact - for the privilege of their elite education. But does this initial investment actually appreciate in the long run?

Steven Woodbury '75 addressed this concern last Thursday, Nov. 8, before an eager crowd of students and faculty that spilled into the aisles of the Warner Hemicycle. A Professor of Economics who earned his Ph.D. at the University of Wisconsin, Woodbury utilized graphs, statistics and empirical evidence to answer the title question of his lecture: "Does it Pay to Attend an Elite College or University?"

The speech was structured around three main sections. In the first, Woodbury used specific data to analyze trends in earnings among college graduates. One particularly telling graph plotted earnings against age, and revealed that the age-earnings profiles of American men in 2001 were much steeper and higher for those who were educated at more prestigious institutions. This is by no means a recent trend: in 1969, there existed a fifteen to twenty percent difference in wages between alumni from schools ranking in the lower quintiles and those from schools in the top quintile.

Another major factor in wage earnings, Woodbury argued, is the degree of education that an individual's parents have received. Those who attend elite schools are often born to more educated parents than those who do not. Conclusively, the status and/or wealth of a person's parents can wield powerful influence over his or her ability to climb the rungs of elite institutions.??

Woodbury explored possible explanations for these statistics in the second part of his lecture. He illustrated two main theories ­- the Human Capital Theory and Spence's Signaling or Screening Hypothesis. The former suggests that education and training are investments that directly improve a worker's productivity. While the latter explains how education and training increase a person's productive capacity, which in turn increases his or her earnings.

Continued...

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