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Has anyone bothered to check the methodology of this survey? Beyond excluding all with an advanced degree (including MBA), the survey also excludes the self-employed. Mid-career salary is apparently anything over ten years. And the data is based on the self-report of those who happen to use the PayScale service.

I suppose it’s better to rank well on such a thing than not, but any alum who tries to share this with grads of the other “heavy hitters” identified in the news item may well end up embarrassed. Colgate alums have far too many substantive accomplishments to report for the university to publicize this.

Jodi, I disagree with your first 3 sentences and agree with everything else.

The causes of financial crisis are rather complex and manifold. Simplifying and overgeneralizing the causes mostly to the "greed of highest paid" members of the society actually demonstrates a deficiency in your critical reasoning skills.

Further, financial benefits of any programs should actually factor in any person's choice, as, unless they get a full scholarship, they will be paying for their choice for years to come. A person shouldn't be choosing to study economics over literature if literature is what they love. However, a person should give some thought as to how they will be supporting themselves once they graduate. Not to mention providing for their families or elderly parents and paying off their educational debts.

Colgate is an enterprise offering a service/good to its buyers. It has to maintain its attractiveness, especially in times of crisis. Like it or not, many Colgate students attend it because Colgate is a great springing board for careers in law, finance, medicine and other occupations that tend to produce some of the highest paid members of the society. Those students would be attracted by this ranking.

And greed isn't exclusive to the well-paid people. For example, the housing bubble is certainly considered to be one of the causes of the financial crisis. Were the borrowers forced to take out loans for more than they could ever hope to repay, and then use their homes as cash machines pulling out money from equity lines of credit? Did someone order them to do it? Without the borrowers, the banks wouldn't be lending so recklessly, would they?

I find this article to be in poor taste in light of the past year's economic meltdown, due in large part to the greed of some of the highest paid members of society.

The last thing any prospective college student should be thinking about when choosing a school is the financial benefit of one program versus another. Go to Colgate, make the most of your experience, and learn how to think critically. Then go out into the real world and use your new critical thinking skills to make sense of life beyond Colgate's #1 most beautiful college campus (a ranking that truly does deserve mentioning).

You have years after college to develop the skills and experience that will help you rise in your chosen field. For now, enjoy the beautiful campus and appreciate the good fortune you have that you can spend four years just thinking and learning. No salary is every going to buy you that.

As an alumni from Colgate's Pleistocene era (i.e. no computer, Facebook, My Space, cell phone, or women, only 5 academic buildings and an unfinished basketball court) I still remember the one-line comment on Colgate from Life Magazine; " ... For the businessman's son who can't quite make the Ivy League."

This appears to be the 21st century edition of that quote.

I just hope that Colgate is promoting this salary potential information mercilessly, in admissions flyers, etc. Considering that a lot of kids have getting rich pretty high up on their priority list, it could be a significant factor to lure students in the coming years. Maybe even enough to significantly affect the rankings, if acceptance percentage drops.

Once we start talking about rankings (especially USNews), we put Colgate on a slippery slope...to have them or not to have them will always be debated. It seems Colgate is destined to be in the mid-to-high teens as it typically has been. Kinda hard to play leap frog on that list.

That said, perhaps the article about salary potential will help bolster applications for next year's class, which were down this spring after Colgate's most successful year ever. That's not to say the incoming class isn't Colgate's brightest yet, but college-bound students and their parents must be concerned about the costs of any private education these days and are looking for alternatives. From what I have read, Colgate leads many lists for the least amount of debt after four years, too, so what's not to like?!

Considering we own these top rankings on Princeton review as well:

#16 Most Popular Study Abroad Program
#9 Best College Library
#17 Happiest Students
#9 Lots of Beer
#1 Most Beautiful Campus
#13 Most Accessible Professors
#14 Best Classroom Experience

...and have a brand new science center, why are we 18 on US News and World Report, for just liberal arts colleges?

A similar article from BusinessWeek ranks Colgate 5th among ALL colleges and universities, not just liberal arts colleges. The article does state that some schools were not analyzed due to small sample sizes. Hope the link works ;-)

http://images.businessweek.com/ss/08/08/0807_college_grads/1.htm

As a parent of a rising sophomore, this study bodes well with me. I would like to believe, and have observed through various means as I become more engrained within the Colgate community, that the graduates become real thinkers and are sought out by perspective employers for their knowledge and most of all, potential. As someone footing the bill, what else can I ask for other than a healthy return on my investment - an investment that any parent, capable of sending their child to a private institution, would gladly do. In the end, our grads need to be happy in their field of choice, their opportunities for growth, and materially, how they are compensated.

Although not a Colgate grad, I am a parent of two. I must say that the education our children received did in fact put them in position to succeed in any career path they choose to undertake. Our children have already covered a lot of territory in a few short years -- from Wall Street, to not-for-profit, to book publishing, to selling muffins in a foreign land, to working the land by snow grooming and hay bailing! As a full pay parent, I can say Colgate gives great return on investment. The rest of life, once Colgate prepared, is about individual choices. I can think of but one modest suggestion: A return to survey courses in the Core focused on American literature and history. College level study of Longfellow and Frost, the Founding Fathers and Teddy Roosevelt, are far more powerful development tools than the current program. Notwithstanding, the educational environment is superb and I'm thankful for it!

Interestingly, my husband and I are both Colgate alums from the late '70's. We both are good at and love what we do and the work environment in which we each flourish --I teach nursery school part time at a Catholic school, and my husband (who has an MBA in finance) works in a not-for-profit organization. We are emotionally fulfilled by our work/callings, but we are desperately trying to figure out how to put our second son through college -- funny thing, he's going to attend Colgate this fall. Currently we are liquidating our IRA's toward this end.

The Colgate I remember was of building communities, working hard, exploring broad academic horizons, and for me, as I lived in Bunche House, about thinking globally and acting locally -- something that was embodied at Colgate in the '70's -- part of the NY State history of Utopianism, I guess.

Doug, my original entry was lost due to an error so I will just say this:

First, your details on the data gathering is interesting, thanks for sharing.
Second, I think this study, while shedding Colgate in good light, also shows a culture of greed (that translates into the pressure I spoke of earlier) that permeates top universities in this country that lead young graduates to focus their talents in a few sectors. Furthermore, many come to believe that their potential (and expensive education) are wasted if they work in education, government, non-profit, or service.

Not everyone thinks this, obviously, but I was keenly aware of an expectation to be in business unless I had firmly decided plans to be in another kind of career (which I didn't).

Ande, I'll have to disagree. I understand that it sounds like you may be frustrated in your first job, as are several other friends of mine. I don't think that sentiment can be directly and objectively derived from this report. The article from the New York Times (through Yahoo Finance) does mention a few important facts that create a curious setup for the dataset. The ranking is based on a poll from PayScale.com and comes from voluntary reports of salaries from its members. This is NOT a random sampling of society. Also, it omits alums that have graduate degrees -- the NYT article actually points out that this rules out most teachers (who would actually have made the average salary more modest). Essentially, it is very hard to make inferences about career paths based on the dataset. That said, allow me to make an inference about career paths. I think the high salary numbers in this article could be based on the large percentage of grads that pursue finance, which carries a fairly high salary and does not necessarily require a graduate degree. Whether they like their jobs or not really is not represented in this report.

What does this study tells us? It says that Colgate alums succeed, but it also says that there is pressure at the school to seek out higher paying jobs, regardless of fit or desire. Putting an emphasis on things like pay for recent grads is why I, and many others, felt tremendous pressure to look at higher paying jobs that ultimately were and are a terrible fit for me. This pressure to work in high paying fields is keeping Colgate alums from spreading their talents, intelligence, energy, and creativity to traditionally lower paying fields, such as in the non-profit sector, teaching, or service. Colgate needs to learn to emphasize having recent grads pursue the right careers, not just the impressive 6-figure salary career that might very well leave them feeling quite unfulfilled.