Honors college survey

I was invited to address a class this morning in the Clark Honors College at U Oregon. The Honors College is like a small, select, liberal arts college within the university that requires special admission. It's one of the oldest honors colleges in the country and has (I'm told) a very good reputation. Most of its students could probably have been accepted at elite private colleges, but are getting a less expensive education here.

At the end of the class I took a survey. I was particularly interested in the level of interest in science and science careers, and the level of awareness about the kinds of elite career paths that are common for Ivy League students. As I mentioned in an earlier post, about 50% of Harvard graduates now head into finance. It was my hypothesis (confirmed by the survey results) that even top students at public universities are generally unaware of these relatively new career options, as opposed to traditional high status jobs in fields like law, science and medicine.

Studies of a previous generation of students showed, after controlling for SAT score, little difference in lifetime earnings between graduates of elite and non-elite universities. I doubt that will be true for this generation -- some essential social capital is missing from the public school experience, in particular, knowledge of the very existence of the most lucrative career options. (Of related interest: David Wessel of the WSJ comments on the finance bubble and the NYTimes on how the legal and medical professions have lost allure.)

Survey

25 participants, roughly equal numbers of seniors and juniors and a smaller number of sophomores. About 1/3 of the students were science majors. Some of the numbers below are estimates, as I had to quickly count the number of raised hands.

Number of frequent MySpace users: 3/25
Number of frequent FaceBook users: 25/25

Would you be unhappy if your annual salary never exceeds $100k per annum (in today's dollars)? only 3/25 said yes -- amazing!

Do you feel you have a good understanding of / do you think it is important to understand :

DNA and evolution 16 / 16
special relativity 3 / 7
internet technology 3 / 6
the operation of a nuclear bomb 3 / 6

Have you ever written a computer program of > 100 lines not required for a class? 0 / 25 (!!!)

Can you give a job description for the following:

management consultant 1 / 25
investment banker 5 / 25
derivatives trader 0 / 25
venture capitalist 7 / 25

Can you tell me what fraction of a normally distributed population is >4 standard deviations above the mean? 0 / 25 (a few knew it was a small fraction, but no one gave an estimate within an order of magnitude)