In looking at things as an investment, like the article, I don't think it matures at graduation, but I'd suspect that the net worth of a person at 50 is significantly higher with a degree from Harvard in English than a person who did a gap year traveling. I suppose my point is, and this is confused by the article, good investment and delivers a job straight out of college aren't equivalent.

I can't really speak to net worth at 50, except to note that the lifetime earnings of my dad, with a Ph.D in nuclear chemistry from MIT, are significantly lower than the lifetime earnings of most of my coworkers, with bachelors from Berkeley or Ann Arbor.

But 4 years out of college, I can say that the salaries of my friends with no college degree and significant marketable skills are much, much higher than the salaries of my Amherst friends with English, history, or foreign language degrees. Like 4x higher. What you study seems to make a far bigger difference than where you go to school.

All of the schools that you listed there are in the top 1% of American universities. As for "a rite of passage into the economic elite", any of those will do. And there I don't mean "the Harvard elite" – I'm just talking about the upper middle class and above that most tech entrepreneurs, and presumably most of the people reading this site, come from.

Here's what I'm getting at: As per the article, parents who send their kids to an elite university to get a degree in creative writing aren't doing it because they're under the impression that they're getting vocational training, and nevertheless, it's probably a smart investment. Class cohesion is a pretty powerful force.

(Note: With all of this I'm not saying this is a good thing; just that social factors are as powerful as skills in determining at where someone falls in the economic ladder.)

Good point.

The problem is (particularly under the current US system) is that it is very hard to distinguish between likelihood to succeed & likelihood of going to a good college @ 18.

There are also feedback effects like mingling with those likely to succeed.