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I’m not saying that there’s nothing to this rising inequality thing, but I’m really getting tired of references to that Harvard family income average. We’re all people who like math, right? Don’t you all agree with me that the family income statistic cries out for the use of the median rather than the mean. This is a distribution with a tail in only one direction: upward. And it can be skewed in a big way by a few outliers. I mean, if one CEO earning $3M per year sent a kid there, that would balance out the average at $150,000 even if 19 other students came from families with zero income. Or one $3M household balancing 28 households at $50K would give a mean over $150,000. Would you say that a school with one rich kid and twenty some medium-to-poor kids is inaccessable. My guess is that Harvard gets its share of CEO offspring.

I would expect someone writing such a hand-wringing magazine article to present facts in the most alarming light. So, if the median was known, and it was greater than $150,000, then we’d hear that number instead. I think the median number is much more interesting, and I wouldn’t be surprised if the median at, say, the University of Michigan was within 15% of Harvard's.

-- DanK - 19 Aug 2005

I don't think the distinction between Harvard & University of Michigan matters in reality. This article is from THE ECONOMIST, which is an elite British publication, so (my guess is) they're going to be focused on Harvard because it's Harvard.

But you're going to see the same stats with University of Michigan (and in fact, I've just looked them up--)

I'm trying to see if I can find a median, but so far no luck.

The median wouldn't necessarily help in that as far as I can tell people in the middle are out of luck. I haven't fact-checked this, but the Harvard undergrad population seems to be wealthy kids & affirmative action kids....(with the added irony being that affirmative action kids very often are affluent black students. Affirmative action, at Harvard, isn't class-based.)

-- CatherineJohnson - 19 Aug 2005

"The income of people with just a high-school diploma was flat in 1975-99, whereas that of people with a bachelor's degree rose substantially, and that of people with advanced degrees rocketed."

Is the difficulty of gaining a HS diploma or a bachelor's degree flat over that period? Most of the evidence I've seen hasn't indicated that. While every generation laments the shortcomings of "kids these days", I've been persuaded that higher education is less rigorous today than 40 years ago, as is much HS education. (There are still rigorous schools, but they are not the norm. Many charter schools seem to be trying to fill this niche.)

If a given credential is easier to get or represents a lower absolute education, then it is only reasonable that the value of a higher degree would go up. That is, a requirement for a higher degree today might well not imply that a higher absolute education is required today than in the past.

"They attend schools with fewer resources than those of their richer contemporaries...."

Every study of correlation between "resources" (which I will take to mean cash per student) and school quality (as determined by the measurable skills of that schools graduates) in the public primary and secondary system that I have seen has shown a weak negative trend with increasing "resources". This should not be taken to mean that there can be no positive correlation nor that there is no minimum level of per-student income below which school quality falls off. I think it rather strongly implies that throwing money at serious systemic problems doesn't solve them, though.

"Affirmative action, at Harvard, isn't class-based."

In other words, the "disadvantaged" aren't. Now what was the putative point of "affirmative action" again? Sorry, that's not irony, that's bigotry.

-- DougSundseth - 19 Aug 2005

I'm a little too tired to focus at the moment, but I would say the difficulty isn't flat....although I should think this through before writing a comment. (Offhand I was going to say that difficulty has dropped.)

I would just ignore the resources business; this is THE ECONOMIST, as I say. They themselves have written countless articles saying that American schools are overfunded, etc. They went nuts over the NYC court ruling.

John Taylor Gatto's first chapter asks why bad schools cost so much more than good ones!

it rather strongly implies that throwing money at serious systemic problems doesn't solve them, though.

I have now reached the strong form of this statement, which is that throwing money at systemic problems makes them worse.

I can probably support that.

'Too much money' has become mantra number 3 around here.

-- CatherineJohnson - 20 Aug 2005

Oh! I should probably the post from EDUCATION NEXT showing the negative correlation with resources....

-- CatherineJohnson - 20 Aug 2005

Here's the quote--I love the Firm, Objective language expressing this radical thought:

When other factors are taken into account, higher spending and smaller class sizes seem to correspond to inferior mathematics and science results, though the overall effect is relatively small.

money, class size, & math achievement

You may have seen this post a couple of weeks ago:
Hoxy on school competition

-- CatherineJohnson - 20 Aug 2005