Comment on Efficient prestige hypothesis

Wed, 18 Nov 2009 14:35:55 GMT

Oddly, I was just reading How to Lie with Statistics the other day, and, well ...

One often-cited study from 1998, however, concludes that attending a more selective or elite institution does not translate to an economic advantage for students later on, as measured by their reported income.

... these data might be very poor, for several reasons.

1. Self-reporting is unlikely to be accurate - people both overstate and understate income for various reasons.

2. The surveys can only go out to people that can be tracked down - and those who cannot will be disproportionately the poorly-off.

3. If the response rate is not close to 100%, there may be a strong difference between those who reply and those who do not.

These are just the three effects I can remember that apply to a study of just this kind.

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