Survey Joins Honors Work, High Incomes

An honors record at College seems to pay.

That is one of the conclusions of a survey report now being circulated among selected members of the Faculty and graduate students in economics by Seymour E. Harris '20, professor of Economics. The report summarizes the answers to a questionnaire filled out by 211 high magna or summa graduates in Harris' field of economics, and represents an attempt to find out what happens to "our best undergraduates."

The survey shows that: "Incomes of the high honors graduates of the last 30 years are high. The median with students, housewives, and soldiers eliminated, is $11,227, and the arithmetic mean (income total divided by the number of income recipients), $14,664."

Harris calls this figure "surprisingly high" considering that the graduates questioned are out of college (weighted mean) only 13 years, and that the proportion in the professions, where incomes are relatively low compared to business, is large.

Professions Lower

"The larger number in the professions pulls down the average income of our group," Harris continues. "Thus, for the 114 in the professions the mean income is $11,567 and the median, $9,663; for the 57 others (business executives and the like), the respective figures are $21,557 and $17,142, or about twice as high as in the professions."

Probing graduates' attitudes toward their college education, Harris found that most felt they received the largest returns from their course work. Among various items contributing to the graduates' education, course work was mentioned 120 times, and tutorial, in second place, was mentioned 95 times.

"In their replies," Harris states, "much emphasis was put on the advantages of the smaller and more personalized courses; on the new general education program; the quality of the faculty and the importance of personal contacts with the faculty."

He felt that responses "clearly reflected a deterioration of tutorial in the last ten years." He noted that tutorial was considered especially important in the first 20 years of his survey, while in the last ten years "the need of economy weakened tutorial.