Unsurprisingly, elite college outcomes are mostly a function of the quality of the students they admit and the majors those students choose. This suggests that institutional level "value added" from education is modest and that institutional differences in salary and employment outcomes are mostly sorting effects. It also suggests that there may be significant value added attributable to choice of college major.
This study measures college quality by the amount by which the college adds to the salary of its students above what the median market value would be for the same majors and student quality. Commonly used national rankings of colleges such as U.S. News and World Report or Forbes are heavily biased by a college’s average salaries and the quality of the students it enrolls, and not by the actual value-added by the colleges. Once student quality and mix of majors are controlled, salary differences between elite and nonelite schools largely disappear.
John J. Green, Peter F. Orazem, and Nicole S. Swepston, "College quality as revealed by willingness-to-pay for college graduates" Education Economics (May 3, 2023) https://doi.org/10.1080/09645292.2023.2206985
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