How much Does High School Quality Matter In College? Lots.

I've no doubt that the quality of your high school matters in preparing you for college.   But how much does it typically matter?     I went searching for studies that looked at it and I found : the report Can You Leave High School Behind?  (link to PDF)   It looked at data from University of Texas Austin students.  

In Texas they've had a program where the top 10% of all high schools are admitted to UT automatically.    This means they get a good distribution of students from high schools of varying quality.   And it gives them a lot of data about >25 thousand students who came from varying quality high schools and then went to UT.    Looking at the grades in UT for those kids they can see what the correlation is between high school quality metrics and college performance.

In short:    If you go to a good or bad high school does it reflect in your college GPA?

The answer is YES.   Definitely.

Here's a excerpt from the study that illustrates :

"As an example, we estimate a predicted GPA for a simulated student with high school characteristics from two different campuses – one of the highest-ranked and one of the lowest-ranked high schools in the Houston area. Our simulated student is female, Hispanic, age 18, and has a mother with a high school diploma, family income between $20,000-40,000, and $1,000 in unmet financial need. Graduating from the high-performing high school, this student’s estimated freshman year GPA 3.21. Graduating 23 from the low performing high school, her estimated GPA is only 2.30 – a difference of over 1.6 standard deviations."

So they modeled that an specific student would end up with a 0.9 GPA difference if they'd' gone to a good high school versus a bad high school.  

Thats a pretty big swing.    I'd consider a 3.2 GPA in college a success and a mere 2.3 GPA to be a failure or at least a pretty mediocre performance.

Of course the study is just looking at averages.    A kid from the worst high school could go on to ace college and win a Nobel prize and a kid from the very bestest high school could flunk out of college and end up a homeless drug addict.    But on average... the quality of high school is reflected in the average grades of the students who go on to college.

--

Education Attainment levels by State

The other day I talked about the history of education attainment  in the US over the decades from 1940 to 2000.    Today I'll look at the 2009 education attainment data for individual states.   I got the images and data below from the Census report : Educational Attainment in the United States: 2009


First here's the map of the US showing how many people have completed high school by county:

(click image for full size)

Wyoming and Hawaii do a nice job of completing high school.  As you can see both states are solid red.    Rural areas of the South seem to have the lower completion rates in general.

Second here is the same map showing the % of population with Bachelors:

(click image for full size)

One thing these maps do is highlight the differences between rural and urban areas.   You can see red spots focused around locations of major cities.   Then there are white spots filling in the many of the rural areas.

Finally there are the state level % figures for high school an Bachelors:

	High School	Bachelors
Alabama	82.1	22
Alaska.	91.4	26.6
Arizona	84.2	25.6
Arkansas.	82.4	18.9
California.	80.6	29.9
Colorado.	89.3	35.9
Connecticut.	88.6	35.6
Delaware.	87.4	28.7
D.C.	87.1	48.5
Florida.	85.3	25.3
Georgia.	83.9	27.5
Hawaii.	90.4	29.6
Idaho.	88.4	23.9
Illinois.	86.4	30.6
Indiana.	86.6	22.5
Iowa.	90.5	25.1
Kansas.	89.7	29.5
Kentucky.	81.7	21
Louisiana.	82.2	21.4
Maine.	90.2	26.9
Maryland.	88.2	35.7
Massachusetts.	89	38.2
Michigan	87.9	24.6
Minnesota.	91.5	31.5
Mississippi.	80.4	19.6
Missouri.	86.8	25.2
Montana.	90.8	27.4
Nebraska.	89.8	27.4
Nevada	83.9	21.8
Hampshire.	91.3	32
New Jersey.	87.4	34.5
New Mexico.	82.8	25.3
New York.	84.7	32.4
North Carolina.	84.3	26.5
North Dakota.	90.1	25.8
Ohio.	87.6	24.1
Oklahoma	85.6	22.7
Oregon.	89.1	29.2
Pennsylvania.	87.9	26.4
Rhode Island.	84.7	30.5
South Carolina.	83.6	24.3
South Dakota.	89.9	25.1
Tennessee.	83.1	23
Texas.	79.9	25.5
Utah.	90.4	28.5
Vermont.	91	33.1
West Virginia.	86.6	34
Washington.	89.7	31
Virginia.	82.8	17.3
Wisconsin	89.8	25.7
Wyoming.	91.8	23.8

The top 5  for high school completion are :

Wyoming.	91.8
Minnesota.	91.5
Alaska.	91.4
Hampshire.	91.3
Vermont.	91

The bottom 5 are :

Texas.	79.9
Mississippi.	80.4
California.	80.6
Kentucky.	81.7
Alabama	82.1

The top 5 for college degree attainment are (excluding D.C.):

Massachusetts.	38.2
Colorado.	35.9
Maryland.	35.7
Connecticut.	35.6
New Jersey.	34.5

The bottom 5 are :

Virginia.	17.3
Arkansas.	18.9
Mississippi.	19.6
Kentucky.	21
Louisiana.	21.4

--

Grade Inflation in High School: Up 0.4 since 1980

You may have heard about grade inflation.    Grade Inflation is the trend where grades in school trend higher over time.    Today I'll look at some data on that trend. 


Grades are Up 0.4 in 30 years.

This old article at the Dept. of Education from the 1980's looks at Sophomores :  High School and Beyond a national longitudinal study for the 1980's Two Years in High School : The Status of 1980 Sophomores in 1982  Table 14 on page 18 gives average G.P.A. figures.   For all students the average G.P.A. was 2.6 in 1980.    It was 2.5 for men and 2.7 for women.

Jump forward to 2009 and the overage average G.P.A. in high school was 3.0.    The U.S. Dept. of Educations AMERICA’S High School Graduates results of the 2009 naep high school transcript study
has G.P.A data and reports in figure 8 that average G.P.A is 3.0 for 2009.   They also have overall G.P.A. figures going back to 1990. 

Using these two studies as source data here is the G.P.A. trend over the past 30 years :

The trend is pretty clear.   Grades have been going up steadily over the past few decades.  In the past few years grade inflation has slowed down and there was not a big difference in average G.P.A from 2005 to 2009.   I am not sure why grades have gone up over time but I can give a couple reasons why they are not going up...

No, its Not that Kids are Just Smarter Nowadays
Its possible that higher grades in high school are simply a reflection of smarter kids.  If the curriculum didn't change and the average test scores went up due to smarter kids then this would rightly result in higher grade averages.  Unfortunately this isn't the case.   In Are High School Grades Inflated?  the ACT looked at grades from 1991 to 2003 and compared G.P.A. to ACT scores. The ACT scores act as a control for the individual students knowledge and aptitude.  If kids were just getting smarter then ACT scores would go up and someone who got a 25 on the ACT 20 years ago would get the same GPA then as now.    The ACT study found that G.P.A. went up for students when you hold ACT scores constant.   In other words a student that got a 14 on the ACT in 1991 would have averaged 2.40 G.P.A. but by 2003 the kids with 14 ACT scores were getting 2.65 G.P.A.  The kids remained the same smartness (as measured by the ACT) but grade averages went up across the board.    The article High School Grade Inflation from 1991 to 2003 also from the ACT goes into further depth on the topic.

No, School Is Not Easier
You might theorize that G.P.A's are up across the board because the course material in school has gotten easier.   This too is not the case.   Curriculum at high schools has gotten more difficult on average.   The ED report AMERICA’S High School Graduates results of the 2009 naep high school transcript study has data on curriculum as well.   Across the board students are taking more credits and higher level courses.    In Figure 6 we see that in 1990 students took 23.6 credits on average but by 2009 they were completing an average of 27.2 credits.   Students took tougher courses too.   For example Table 8 in the report shows that in 1990 only 57% of students took advanced math but by 2009 there were 84% completing such courses.    Likewise the percent of students taking advanced science went from 61% in 1990 to 86% in 2009.

--

Is Culinary School a Rip OFF?

 Do you ever dream of being a chef at a fancy restaurant?   Do you see TV commercials about culinary schools that say they can train you to be that kind of chef?   Do you put your dream and that commercial together and think maybe you should enroll in culinary school?   Think again.    


This Time magazine article Top Chef Dreams: Are Cooking Schools a Rip-Off?covers the topic of culinary schools pretty well.   One of the culinary schools is being sued by 800 of their current and former students who claim they were falsely mislead about their employment prospects after graduation.  Thats not a good sign.   You can read the full TIME article for their whole story.   But I'll share this one quote from Eric Greenspan a Food Network star and head chef and owner of the Foundry on Melrose, a high-end restaurant in Los Angeles saying: "These kids are paying law-school prices, and [culinary schools] are training them for minimum-wage jobs." ..."How do rock stars become famous? They work hard. They don't go to guitar schools," he says.

OK but... is it a RIP OFF?


I would say that the culinary schools are NOT a rip off in general.   I say that because from everything I see they do train you to be a chef.    As long as the school is not misleading you about what they train you or your employment prospects then I wouldn't call it a rip off.   You may consider it over priced or not worth the time and money.   Thats not exactly equivalent to a 'rip off'.   While culinary schools may not be a scam or rip off they don't seem worth the money and time.



You do not have to go to culinary school to be a great chef.   

The list of Best chefs of 2011 from Food & Wine lists the education for each chef.    Out of the 11 chefs listed 6 of them did go to culinary schools.   However the other 5 did not go to culinary school.   Two of those chefs Jason Franey and Kevin Willmann appeared to only have on the job training and no formal education is listed in their profiles.   Three more chefs went to some form of college but not culinary schools.   James Lewis got a business degree at U. Alabama.   Carlo Mirarchi went to NYU and it doesn't say what he studied there.   Finally Ricardo Zarate went to college in Peru for unknown studies.    If 5 of the 11 best new chefs in the nation can get to where they are without going to culinary school then thats clear evidence that culinary school is not required to succeed as a chef.

The TIME article mentioned above also cited Eric Greenspan as giving the advice that : "He says students would be better off getting their foot in the door with a chef they admire and working very hard to climb their way to the top"


Culinary Arts schools can be pricey

The Culinary Institute of America; Hyde Park, NY. runs around $25,000 a year roughly.   Le Cordon Bleu schools charge about $17,500 for a 9 month certificate or $37,000 for an Associates degree.   Full time tuition at the French Culinary Institute is over $33,000.

Why I think it ain't worth it

Ok so clearly you can be a rising star chef without going to culinary school.   Therefore culinary school is not necessary to succeed as a chef.   But that doesn't mean culinary school won't help.   What if the alternatives are spending 10 years plugging away as a line cook and gradually making your way up the ladder in the kitchen versus going to culinary school and jumping straight into a sous chef job?   That could make it well worth the money to pay for culinary school.   Basically I think that the reason culinary school isn't worth it is that if you're a good chef then this will be evident pretty quickly.   You have to be a very good chef to have a chance at one of the high end jobs.   There are only around 90,000 chefs or head cooks and their earnings are in the $30,000 to $50,000 for the vast majority of them.   There are about 3 million cooks and food prep workers and their median earnings are around $24,000.   Clearly the competition for the chef or head cook jobs is going to be keen.    Even if you do get a head chef job only the top 10% of them make over $70,000.   If you have the aptitude to rise to the rank of cook or head chef then you can probably do that with on the job experience.   Spending $30,000 to $50,000 on culinary school may be a very poor investment for the vast majority of cooks who are unlikely to land a high paying chef job.   If you have the talent to make it as a chef then you can get there without spending a lot of money on a culinary school.    For the vast majority of people they will not rise higher than a $50,000 chef job and many are unlikely to even get to the level of chef or head cook.   Therefore I'd say that culinary school is generally not worth it.  

There are likely to be some exceptions where individuals used a culinary school as a fast track to a chef job, but its just as likely that those individuals could have rose up the ranks to chef nearly as fast if they'd simply skipped school and spent more time working in restaurants.

Alternatives

Well first of all you need some practical experience.   Start cooking in your own home.   This seems like an obvious thing, but I want to cover it so its not taken for granted.   I'm sure you can learn many cooking skills on your own from books and online resources totally for free.   Of course this may not be enough to get you into a job as a chef but you have to start somewhere and any work you do at home will help hone your skills.

On the job training seems to me like one of the best ways to learn to cook.   Some of the best new chefs on the Food & Wine list seemed to start this way so it can get you into a high end chef job.    Would you rather pay to go to school or get paid to work in a real kitchen?  

Still it may be a good idea to perfect some of your skills with a formal education and a degree might help you get your foot in the door at a higher end restaurant.  If you want formal education then check the local community colleges to see which ones may offer a culinary program.   Not all community colleges will have culinary programs.    The CC in our city doesn't have a full culinary school.  However another CC in our state has a certificate program and an associates degree in culinary arts.   Tuition at that school is just under $3,000 per year.

Finally I think that doing an Apprentiship via the American Culinary Federationmight be a  good way to go. This would give you formal training, on the job experience plus a mentor. 

Disclaimer : I know nothing first hand about being a chef and I have no personal experience with culinary schools.

-

What Majors Graduates Get Bachelors Degrees In

I thought it would be interesting to look at the kids are majoring in in college nowadays.   Turns out the data was easy to find.  Census data shows the number of Bachelors Degrees earned by Field.   You can find it in table 291 in the education data on the statistical abstract [ excel file] or [PDF].   

Here is a side by side comparison of the % of degrees per major / field from 1980 and 2007 :

	1980	2007
Business	20.00%	21.50%
Education	12.70%	6.90%
Engineering and engineering technologies	7.50%	5.40%
Social sciences and history	11.20%	10.80%
Biological and biomedical sciences	5.00%	4.90%
Psychology	4.50%	5.90%
Visual and performing arts	4.40%	5.60%
Communication, journalism, and related programs \2	3.10%	5.10%
Computer and information sciences	1.20%	2.80%
Liberal arts and sciences, general studies, and humanities	2.50%	2.90%
OTHER	28.00%	28.20%

There is a large pile of degrees in the "other" category.  I didn't feel like listing all the dozens of separate degree options out there, so I picked out major categories and the most popular choices to highlight.

Heres a few things that I see from the trend between 1980 and 2007:

Engineering down but Computer up :   Engineering degrees dropped 28% as a portion of total.  However at the same time Computer degrees rose 131%.   In 1980 we had 7.5% of degrees in engineering and 1.2% in computers for combined 8.7% and in 2007 the combined amount was 8.2%.  Overall between Engineering and Computer combined the portion is marginally down.

Education down significantly:    The % of degrees offered in education dropped 45% from 1980 to 2007.   I'm not sure but this may be partially explained by some people going to Masters degree programs for education.   But the masters degrees in education are going down as a % of the whole as well.

Psychology, performing arts, communications & journalism degrees growing:   The % of people getting psychology degrees rose from 4.5% to 5.9% up 30%.   Visual and performing arts went from 4.4% to 5.6% which is growth of 27%.  Communications and journalism went from 3.1% to 5.1% so it grew at 67%.   Combined in 2007 these degrees accounted for 16.6%   (1 in 6) of all the bachelor degrees earned.   Its too bad that the jobs and demand for these fields aren't growing as fast as peoples interest.   There are FAR too many people getting degrees in these fields compared to the number of jobs available or the demand for people trained in these areas.

Here is another look where I've piled the degrees into some broader categories:

	1980	2007
business, engineer, scientist	33.70%	34.60%
arts and social	25.70%	30.30%
education	12.70%	6.90%
OTHER	28.00%	28.20%

Arts and social includes the combination of : Social sciences and history, Psychology, Visual and performing arts, Communication, journalism, and related programs, Liberal arts and sciences, general studies, and humanities   The 'business, engineer, scientist' group includes Business, Engineering and engineering technologies, Biological and biomedical sciences and Computer and information sciences

Over all it seems that interest in business, engineering and sciences is marginally up if you look at the % of degrees given.    The % of degrees earned in education is down.

The portion of people pursuing psychology, arts, communication/ journalism is up significantly.   With all due respect to individuals in those over crowded fields I think this is a bad thing if more and more students are joining already over crowded career fields.

[edit 4/13/11 : I realized the table formatting was not showing all the columns so I fixed them ]

Comparing States Public School Test Scores

Are the schools in your state any good?   Some people seem to think that any and all public schools anywhere in America are horrible.   There are many schools that are not doing a good job educating student but there are also many schools that are doing a very good job.   The quality of education varies greatly across the nation from state to state and city to city.    One starting point for comparison is to look st the average test scores for schools in each state.   Some states score well above average and some are below average.  

The Dept. of Education's National Report card has data on test scores students at the state level.   Below are the average test scores for math and reading plus their sum.


2009 test scores for 4th graders:

	math	read	sum
National Public	239	220	459
Massachusetts	252	234	486
New Hampshire	251	229	480
Vermont	248	229	477
New Jersey	247	229	476
Connecticut	245	229	474
Minnesota	249	223	473
North Dakota	245	226	471
Maryland	244	226	470
Virginia	243	227	470
Kansas	245	224	469
Montana	244	225	469
Colorado	243	226	469
DoDEA	240	228	469
Maine	244	224	468
Ohio	244	225	468
Florida	242	226	468
Pennsylvania	244	224	467
Indiana	243	223	465
New York	241	224	465
Delaware	239	226	465
Wyoming	242	223	465
Missouri	241	224	465
Kentucky	239	226	464
South Dakota	242	222	464
Iowa	243	221	464
Wisconsin	244	220	464
Washington	242	221	464
North Carolina	244	219	463
Idaho	241	221	462
Rhode Island	239	223	461
Nebraska	239	223	461
Utah	240	219	460
National Public	239	220	459
Texas	240	219	459
Illinois	238	219	457
Oregon	238	218	456
Michigan	236	218	455
Oklahoma	237	217	454
Georgia	236	218	454
Arkansas	238	216	454
South Carolina	236	216	452
Tennessee	232	217	449
Alaska	237	211	448
West Virginia	233	215	448
Hawaii	236	211	446
Nevada	235	211	446
Alabama	228	216	444
California	232	210	441
Arizona	230	210	440
Mississippi	227	211	438
New Mexico	230	208	438
Louisiana	229	207	437
District of Columbia	219	202	421

2009 scores for 8th graders:

	math	read	sum
National Public	282	262	544
Massachusetts	299	274	572
New Jersey	293	273	565
Vermont	293	272	565
Minnesota	294	270	564
New Hampshire	292	271	563
North Dakota	293	269	562
Montana	292	270	562
South Dakota	291	270	561
Connecticut	289	272	560
DoDEA	287	272	560
Pennsylvania	288	271	559
Washington	289	267	556
Maryland	288	267	556
Kansas	289	267	555
Wyoming	286	268	554
Ohio	286	269	554
Maine	286	268	554
Wisconsin	288	266	554
Colorado	287	266	553
Missouri	286	267	553
Indiana	287	266	553
Idaho	287	265	552
Virginia	286	266	552
Nebraska	284	267	551
Oregon	285	265	550
Utah	284	266	550
Iowa	284	265	549
Delaware	284	265	549
Texas	287	260	547
Illinois	282	265	547
New York	283	264	547
Kentucky	279	267	546
North Carolina	284	260	544
Florida	279	264	544
National Public	282	262	544
Alaska	283	259	542
Michigan	278	262	540
Rhode Island	278	260	538
Georgia	278	260	538
South Carolina	280	257	538
Tennessee	275	261	536
Oklahoma	276	259	535
Arizona	277	258	535
Arkansas	276	258	534
Hawaii	274	255	528
Nevada	274	254	528
Louisiana	272	253	526
West Virginia	270	255	525
New Mexico	270	254	524
Alabama	269	255	523
California	270	253	523
Mississippi	265	251	516
District of Columbia	254	242	496

Keep in mind that these are just average test scores and that every state will have variations.   Each state has a large variation in school quality from city to city and between school districts.   The very best school in a state with low average scores may be a very good school even compared to most schools in a state with very high averages, and vice versa.