I just discovered an Economist article from last year showing that, once again, which college you go to is a lot less important than what you do at college. Using NCES data, PayScale estimated return on investment for students from selective and non-selective colleges. Then, they separated STEM majors from arts/humanities. Each dot represents a college major and its estimated rate of return:

Some obvious points:
- In the world of STEM, it really doesn’t matter where you go to school.
- High prestige arts majors do worse, probably because they go into low paying careers, like being a professional painter (e.g., a Yale drama grad will actually try Broadway, while others may not get that far).
- A fair number of arts/humanities majors have *negative* rates of return.
- None of the STEM majors have a negative rate of return.
- The big message – college matters less than major.
There is also a…
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