Economic and Academic Consequences of Fraternity Membership

https://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=2763720

by ph0rque • 9 years ago

165 117 9 years ago

papers.ssrn.com

ghostlygpa4• 9 years ago

From personal experience, joining a fraternity definitely affected my grades negatively. I ended up graduating with around a 3.1 after a few rough semesters far below that. Having said that, the connections I made have been absolutely invaluable and I'd attribute all of the success I've had in my career to either my work experience as a student or the relationships I made in the frat.

kelnos• 9 years ago

Hell, I wasn't even in a frat, but my success since college had little to do with GPA (< 3.0), and mainly to do with work experience, open source work, and connections that lead to introductions and interviews.

I think GPA alone is just a very poor predictor of success. There are a ton of other, much more important factors.

ghostlygpa4• 9 years ago

Oh absolutely. Having older members come back after graduation to tell everyone how true this is didn't help, we all knew practically from the get go that we needed to focus on things like internships and leadership experience rather than class.

EDIT: "didn't help" might actually be "helped immensely", ha

BoorishBears• 9 years ago

Unless you're already about to fail, few, if any, employers will care about your GPA, and joining a large network of college graduates who share camaraderie can't hurt when it comes to finding well paying positions and moving up in organizations

beebmam• 9 years ago

GPA is virtually meaningless to me as an interviewer. There are so many more important things to me.

vostok4• 9 years ago

few, if any, employers will care about your GPA

"Elite" careers care a lot about GPA.

fny• 9 years ago

I can guarantee no one really cares about your GPA, especially after your first job. If it's your only proof of competency/intelligence that's been validated by a third-party, they'll care, but if you have other outside evidence and interview well, no one will ever even think to ask, even in elite settings.

I, for one, have never put my GPA on my resume.

champagnepapi• 9 years ago

Indeed. Certain institutions will not even consider a candidate who has not gone to a top tier University AND graduated with 3.5 or greater, unless of course they have some sort of connection with someone working at that institution. For first job out of college

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nugget• 9 years ago

Hyper-socialization can teach a lot of "soft skills" which come in useful in the business world. Whether it's a fraternity, a sorority, military boot camp, or similar experience, this influence may account for some of the data.

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waiseristy• 9 years ago

Boeing cares about GPA, so does Intel. Quite a few others do as well

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nether• 9 years ago

Granted, Boeing’s cutoff is 2.7.

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sgustard• 9 years ago

If you don't care about GPA, why do you need me to be a college graduate? I'm genuinely confused about the point of college. I can spend four years drinking and partying without going into debt if that's what I need to get a job.

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gbacon3• 9 years ago

A college degree is a legally and socially acceptable form of an intelligence test.

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sbge2• 9 years ago

Or Alpha males have greater tendency to join frats and to progress into leadership and push for greater pay...

Why claim causal link here?

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maxerickson• 9 years ago

Why claim "Alpha" exist?

Before getting too up in arms it's probably worthwhile to see what the actual paper claims.

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sbge2• 9 years ago

err, what?

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solotronics• 9 years ago

lol

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roywiggins• 9 years ago

From the paper:

In this paper, we identify the causal effect of fraternity membership on college grades and future income levels by exploiting time variation in the college’s social and residential environment. We use the presence of theme houses and non-Greek social houses and the presence of female students on campus, all of which may affect students’ choices bout whether to join a Greek organization, as instruments or reek membership.These changes allow us to identify shifts in he probability of fraternity membership that are plausibly exogenous and, thereby, to estimate the impact of fraternity membership on an individual’s academic and economic performance. We include controls for student human and social capital endowments to alleviate concerns that the policy changes that generate our instruments may have altered the composition of the student body. An additional advantage of using these instruments is that they are clearly choice variables from the perspective of the college administration.

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hueving• 9 years ago

They claim they identify causality but I don't see how that's possible based on what's written here. The presence (or lack thereof) of frats is going to change the applicant pool to begin with. And once they are present, there are going to be differences between who applies to be in a frat and who doesn't.

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akovaski• 9 years ago

Agreed (not necessarily on the alpha male bit), I don't see how they can claim a causal link with just survey data. Correlation, sure, but even that's questionable with self-reported data.

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flachsechs• 9 years ago

i knew plenty of non-alpha types in frats. lots of fairly nerdy guys, in fact. it's more about coming from a wealthy family that recognizes the value in such things.

very few people played a college-level sport and were in frats, for example.

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notadoc3• 9 years ago

Not surprising. Fraternities engage in many nonacademic activities which could lead to a lower GPA, but they also come with a very large social network and series of connections which help members find jobs and further career options.

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watwut• 9 years ago

But, it is supposed to be meritocracy. \snark

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gigatexal• 9 years ago

yep likely a social networking effect.

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dpflan• 9 years ago

New metric: SPA = "Social Point Average" or NPA = "Network(ing) Point Average"?

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danjoc3• 9 years ago

All the frat guys I ever knew had well off parents. They were going to make more than everyone else due to that alone. Of course, being surrounded by privilege, parties, and sorority girls eager to score a rich boy hurt their grades. That doesn't really matter though. They graduated. Some even took an extra year or two to do that. It didn't matter. They did fine. Being a prince has advantages.

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ComradeTaco• 9 years ago

Some of the frats at my alma mater charge $5k a year. I would imagine being able to pay 20k or more might self select to some already well-off kids.

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lenzm• 9 years ago

Did that cover room and board?

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stephengillie• 9 years ago

The fraternity I was in charged about $175 a quarter. We didn't have a house yet, as a newer fraternity, so several of us rented a house together. Usually, 5 of us lived in the house, so we split rent 6 ways, and fraternity dues paid a 6th person's share of the rent. We ran college parties as fundraisers, charging $5 for unlimited beer and "jungle juice". (We started at $5, then shrewd bros would raise the price near $30 by midnight.)

I learned how to read a room, operate a night club, talk to (and avoid) police, be drunk without causing a scene, run meetings, talk to people to get stuff done, manage projects, and act normally in awkward situations.

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bkohlmann3• 9 years ago

Joining a fraternity was one of the most meaningful and impactful experiences of my life.

I come from humble means - my parents couldnt and didnt pay for any of the (expensive) school I ended up attending. I ended up joining one of only two "wet" fraternities on campus (meaning we were allowed to have booze in our house), and the one considered the most social. I was (am) an introvert and didn't drink in high school or college until I was 21. I loved nearly every moment. Not once did wealth, influence or ability to pay impact our recruitment decisions (and I was deeply involved in the process all three years). In fact, we did more due diligence on "legacies" than any other candidate.

My fraternity brothers were some of the most dynamic and interesting people I've had the honor of knowing. It was the first chance I ever had to delve into real politics...as a member of the executive board, we dealt with some challenging interpersonal issues that I wouldnt have been able to wrestle with until much later in my life.

While my brothers were very different than me, I grew more and learned more while living in my house than I did in the rest of college.

Stereotypes exist for a reason. But there are also virtuous, powerful reasons why fraternities endure.

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addicted• 9 years ago

By joining a fraternity despite being from humble means I'm almost certain you're someone who would have sought social connections even without. And you'd likely end up into an academic or an athletic or an interest based group where you'd build similar connections. The difference would be that the arbiters of who joined your club would base their decisions on your skills/interests/passions as opposed to your drinking skills during rush.

Would that be a better situation? I don't know but I personally doubt you would not have had the same meaningful growth if you lived in a hypothetical world where the social Greek system did not exist.

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danjoc3• 9 years ago

Not once did wealth, influence or ability to pay impact our recruitment decisions

Yet, I don't imagine you would want to trade places with any of the guys you blackballed from your friendly club. Having been a navy fighter pilot, are you really going to try to tell me, with a straight face, about how hard it was to pay for school or fit in?

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davidw2• 9 years ago

They were going to make more than everyone else due to that alone.

Good research controls for stuff like that.

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baron816• 9 years ago

Dear Silicon Valley,

Please start something (company or otherwise) that will make it easy for adults (young and old) to become part of a large, real world social network. One which will help them form good career connections, as well as platonic and romantic relationships. Fraternities create their own unique culture (traditions, handshakes, songs, idioms, etc) to tie people together, so keep that in mind. Please leave hazing out of it too.

Kindly,

Baron

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pascalxus• 9 years ago

Try LinkedIn and Tinder?

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gkoberger• 9 years ago

Doesn't that already exist? It's not a technology problem. There's everything from Meetup.com to Facebook groups/events to private Slack channels to Tinder for dates to Reddit to so many other things.

Silicon Valley already does have its version of frats: companies. Alumni networks are the equivalent of a frat; working at Google or Facebook or another big company all have their own culture and opens up a lot of doors when you're job hunting.

At the end of the day, though, it's not a problem tech can solve. It's a people problem.

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danblick• 9 years ago

Silicon Valley already does have its version of frats: companies.

Ew, no. Work-life balance?

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ThrustVectoring2• 9 years ago

Making it easy defeats the entire point of something like a fraternity: excluding the less valuable and less committed people from the social space so that the high-value and committed people that remain can efficiently use their time.

Now, of course, the fraternities can't say that that's why they're exclusive, but yeah, they're exclusive for a reason.

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OvidNaso• 9 years ago

Why can't they say that? Because that sounds exactly like what their parent organization (the university), does every year. This thread seems to be really down on the exclusivity part, but I feel I'm taking crazy pills, because this is happening at universities!! All of pledges just went through a very judgemental, exclusive selection of elites...and they one that round. A further selection process is now abhorrent?

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aqsalose• 9 years ago

Problem is that the useful societal networks as described by e.g. the other comment below [0] are naturally scarce resources.

A fraternity (and the associated wider friends-of-friends social network) that consists of dozens or even hundreds of people doing favors to each other over the non-frat people, that's still manageable and self-sustainable. However, the world has billions of people. A network of million already is useless, and would leave the market open for another exclusive social club.

[0] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=15316723

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defen• 9 years ago

Who wants to join a group that will let anybody in? It's a very basic aspect of human psychology that shared sacrifice (real or perceived) leads to stronger social bonds.

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MagnumOpus• 9 years ago

Who wants to join a group that will let anybody in? The majority of the human species that participates in organised religious groups that let anybody in who can recite a credo or a shahada... (Of course there is still sacrifice - they all have arbitrary rules and constraints to lead to shared hardship and to create the essential us-vs-them.)

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SeeDave2• 9 years ago

Hey Baron,

I think Vive Church [1] offers exactly what you're looking for!

[1] https://vivechurch.org/

-David

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dragonwriter2• 9 years ago

Please start something (company or otherwise) that will make it easy for adults (young and old) to become part of a large, real world social network.

Churches are real-world social networks that are generally easy to join (the degree to which they provide large or strong networls vary considerably, of course.)

There are lots of other examples.

I'm not sure what the opportunity for Silicon Valley is here.

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davidw2• 9 years ago

"Silicon Valley disrupts religion" sounds like a gold mine for parodies.

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tdb7893• 9 years ago

I miss church but not religion, sometimes it's nice to just eat some donuts and chat with random people. Sadly I can't do a startup where people just eat donuts and chill

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xienze• 9 years ago

In all seriousness, that's called "church."

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crush-n-spread• 9 years ago

It should be hard. That's why networks are valuable.

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danieltillett• 9 years ago

I actually have a rather good idea on how to do this. I was looking to solve the problem of religion, not frats, but in many ways frats and religions are very similar problems.

While I don’t want to go into details, the basic idea is to use technology to track and bank reciprocation as well as the problem of in-group identification. I thought it was clever, but it just got added to my ever expanding good idea list :)

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austenallred• 9 years ago

It's called Y Combinator ;)

I'm only somewhat kidding.

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psyc• 9 years ago

This has been near the top of my "app ideas" notebook for 10 years, and I've never found any serious attempt out there. I view this as a game theory problem, whose solution would be facilitated by a social network that modeled whatever the problem is. If it ever succeeded, it would probably be in continual hazard of turning into that Black Mirror episode about reputation scores.

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beager2• 9 years ago

http://facebook.com

http://linkedin.com

Now that I'm done being flippant, there are other things like IVY which purport to be exclusive networks that give you access to events and networks that will help your career and social stature, but at their core any and all of these things will be businesses that will extract as much money as they can from all parts of their client base. Contrast that to a fraternity, which seems much less like a business, at least in the sense that the proprietors are separated from the consumers of the product.

All I'm saying is that SV's motivations in creating something like this may necessarily not provide folks with the same authentic experience that a fraternity would.

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JamesBarney2• 9 years ago

I always thought a group based around the giving pledge would be great.

You filter yourself to high value people because they're more likely to be able to afford 10%. You have a sacrifice these people are making, and a reason to help others. If you help some random guy land a job where he's making good money it further your goal of increasing donations to charity.

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tomcam• 9 years ago

Houses of worship often serve these purposes.

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archagon• 9 years ago

I think projects like Latitude[1] and Kalu Yala[2], while easy to poke fun of as examples of Silicon Valley out-of-touchness, also reveal the deep longing many of us have for genuine, spontaneous community interaction. I lived in a student co-op in college and it was the most significant social event of my life; how I wish there were more avenues in the “real” world to live, laugh, and love in a community of equals under the same roof!

(One major issue from the SV side, I think, is that the business models don’t align with the goals. A startup aiming to tackle this problem would probably need to be organized as a cooperative. See “Jungletown” for an example of what happens when community thinking butts up against top-down, profit-driven leadership.)

[1] https://motherboard.vice.com/en_us/article/xygykj/my-year-in... [2]: https://www.viceland.com/en_us/show/jungletown

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mitchellst• 9 years ago

So many replies to this comment, and none have yet acknowledged the high probability that Baron's request is sarcastic.

When frat guys with names like "Baron" claim they have superior social awareness, this is what they mean.

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chrissnell• 9 years ago

The best “fraternity” I ever joined was ROTC. My GPA went up half a point, I got in shape, learned a lot about leadership, and made some life-long friends.

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uptownfunk2• 9 years ago

Wish I had joined a frat in Uni..

What no one told me in Uni is that:

+ You're either tech or not tech, and not tech is not sexy in the valley

+ You need experience, no one cares about all the extra coursework you do, experience is king

+ Don't wear a suit to an interview in the valley, ever.

+ Your connections are invaluable, form lasting relationships, it's one of those weird things where not studying pays off, a lower GPA is actually good in this instance, and the bonding time with the bros is more valuable down the line.

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peteretep• 9 years ago

I'm a recruiter who doesn't work with any companies in the Valley, and I'm curious about this:

    > Don't wear a suit to an interview
    > in the valley, ever.

Really? Almost everywhere else in the world, not wearing a suit to an interview is a weak negative signal, as it shows you're unlikely to be able to put up with even small amounts of the inherent corporate bullshit that occurs in companies. Even if you'll never wear a suit once employed.
I'm not disagreeing, I just want to know more.

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danielam• 9 years ago

I think this is generally the case for tech companies in the United States and for startups around the world. Personally, I can't name a single tech company where interviewees are expected to wear suits to interviews. If there are any such bona fide tech companies (versus companies with tech teams), I imagine they're older corporations.

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uptownfunk2• 9 years ago

It's a cultural fit, most SV companies don't do suits, it's just not part of the culture. So if you go and interview with a company, and no one's wearing suits, it makes it look like you're not going to fit in if you are wearing one. It's almost seen as over compensating for lack of technical skills or knowledge by wearing a suit, at least that was my impression.

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forgotpw20172• 9 years ago

Not surprised. I was in a fraternity, and no we didn't haze at all. Between all the events (of which less than a third are parties) and dedication it takes to keep the thing from barreling into the ground you learn a lot of real life skills.

First, there's selection bias. We would only take guys that were really sociable, somewhat hard working, competitive, and with decent grades. Most fraternities were the same. "Frat bros" being meathead rich retards is a myth. We would pick the smartest, most promising, and sociable guys in the school. Money wasn't a factor. Neither was skin color, my house was probably 40% minorities. But we had a fraternity GPA a solid .6 above school mens average and a dropout rate of less than half. Fraternities ARE elitist and I was proud of that. So are all the tech companies.... We only took the best. Yeah we drank more than most students and had crazy parties but we were also smart, hardworking, and had a lot of friends.

Second, the power structure closely resembles the business world, complete with budgets of over a half million even in a modest sized house. Bigger houses have budgets of millions a year. These budgets were handled by the "exec board" which was just democratically elected student members.

A fraternity is basically a non-profit company run by students. Harder to do than it sounds, especially with all the hate towards Greek coming from the school itself. At many schools the Greek system is actively shunned by the administration.

Then there's the connections. Being in a fraternity/sorority means you automatically know over 50 people pretty well, sometimes hundreds. I was vice president for several years and I knew hundreds. Maybe 20 really well. I knew people on the school board. I met the president of the University enough times that he knew me by name. The president of the student senate was a great friend that lived across the hall.

I got my first job from an old friend from the house and another was kind enough to help me move across the country to a tech hotspot. We're all still friends to this day and we joke about how wedding are largely a fraternity reunion. Everything in my life today exists largely because I joined a fraternity 8 years ago.

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cowpig3• 9 years ago

First, there's confirmation bias. Our social group's identity was build around feeling superior, so we chose to value the things we were good at, and forgot about the ways in which we did harm to everyone around us. Also, probably a lot of bad things happened to us that got washed away in a boozy haze.

Most fraternities were the same. "Frat bros" being meathead rich retards is not how we see ourselves. We see ourselves as the smartest, most promising, and sociable guys in the school, which has no impact on our being seen as "meathead rich" whatsoever. Money wasn't as much of a factor as I realized, as most of the bias was outside my control. My house was probably 40% minorities, which is a statistic I'd like to use to show how little I understand about racial inequality. But we had a fraternity GPA a solid .6 above school mens average and a dropout rate of less than half.

It's really easy to get comfortable with being a fundamentally bad person. Just invert the emotional response: fraternities ARE elitist and I was proud of that instead of ashamed. See how easy that was? Also you can point to how other people do it too. Tech companies are elitist, for example. We were shining examples of virtue defined precisely in the way that most benefited us.

Second, power structures in the business world closely resembles that of our frat world. Despite this being a serious problem in society, it benefits me directly so I choose to see it as en example of why frats are good instead of why the business world has problems. Want to see how ridiculous the inequality is in the university world? I'll brag about some stats. Bigger houses have budgets of millions a year. These budgets were handled by the "exec board" which was just democratically elected student members.

I like to think of a fraternity as a non-profit company run by students of our personal selection. It doesn't technically turn a profit, but we do! That's what nonprofits are all about, right? Harder to do than it sounds, especially with all the hate towards Greek coming from the school itself. At many schools the Greek system is actively shunned by the administration for some reason I can't possibly fathom.

Then there's the connections. Being in a fraternity/sorority means you automatically know over 50 people pretty well, sometimes hundreds. Let me check my facebook. Actually it was thousands. I was very important. I knew important people. I really like important words like "president" and "executive".

Eventually I had to join the real world and it turned out that being part of an exclusive club full of people who were taught for years to value tribalism and self-importance pays off: I got my first job from an old friend from the house and another was kind enough to help me move across the country to a tech hotspot. We're all still friends to this day and we joke about how wedding are largely a fraternity reunion. Everything in my life today exists largely because I joined a fraternity 8 years ago.

FTFY

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forgotpw20172• 9 years ago

I stopped reading half way through because your shitpost twists everything said into a life of privilege and deceit. My dad was a mechanic. His dad worked in a steel mill. His dad worked in a steel mill. His dad escaped the horrors of WW1 in a country we'll never know.

Go ahead and twist everything I say until it either refutes me or supports whatever agenda you want.

You can talk general shit about fraternities but the minority part really bugs me. Our house was more Asian and African American than it was white. Are you saying my house bought minorities for points? Ballsy. We took them because they were good. My best friend was 100% black and going for his PhD.

Instead of lamely forming your argument by copy editing a few words of mine how about coming up with something of your own?

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Steko• 9 years ago

Kevin Drum notes it's a weak result but if true, wonders if the authors draw the right conclusions:

suppose it’s true. Here’s what the authors say:

Our results indicate that college administrators face an important trade-off when they consider policies designed to limit fraternity life on campus: while such policies may significantly raise academic performance, these gains may come at a significant cost in terms of expected future income for their graduates.

I’d argue exactly the opposite: ... Allow me to reframe the authors’ conclusion:

Our results provide empirical evidence that fraternities are just another way for social elites to keep themselves at the top regardless of actual performance. Those rejected by fraternities, even though they have higher GPAs, earn 36 percent less than those accepted by fraternities. This is further evidence, if any were needed, that college administrators face few trade-offs when they consider policies designed to limit fraternity life on campus.

http://www.motherjones.com/kevin-drum/2017/09/new-report-fra...

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gshulegaard• 9 years ago

Just an anecdote, but joining a fraternity drastically improved my social skills...and I personally believe these skills are fundamental when it comes to being successful in the work force. Not because being in a fraternity made me a member of a elite alumni group that excludes others, but because it allows me to be a more effective team member.

I have not doubt that I would be far less successful if I was as socially self-isolating as I was in high school. Not just successful as far as career trajectory, but just a less effective contributor. Most jobs require team efforts...which require social skills to navigate politely and effectively.

It is from this perspective I find the original conclusion more reserved and purely based on observed correlations, while the second infers much (regarding causation).

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cowpig3• 9 years ago

I'm pretty sure most people develop social skills in university regardless of whether they join a fraternity. Having a group of adult friends, freedom, roommates, etc, all prepare you for the real world.

Fraternities also prepare you for the ugly parts of the real world, though. The real world is full of elite clubs without meritocratic entrance criteria, and learning how to join one and function within one is certainly an advantage.

I would argue that removing this advantage from as many people as possible would make the system of society as a whole run better, though.

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gt_• 9 years ago

Maybe you are not a "more effective team member" but only a "more team member."

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smsm42• 9 years ago

Or, maybe, there's a difference between getting a good grade in the class, inside strictly controlled academic environment shaped by the college administration, and the real world where one has to deal with chaotic conditions of real life and social environments rarely covered by academic curriculum. And fraternity life improves social skills, and gives people tools that can make them successful outside of the strict conformance to the rules prescribed by the academy. And limiting access to those tools would only make future graduates less fit to meet the challenges of the open market.

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coolaliasbro• 9 years ago

You had me at "social elites".

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tyrust• 9 years ago

Those rejected by fraternities, even though they have higher GPAs, earn 36 percent less than those accepted by fraternities.

This is not a correct statement based on the abstract of the paper.

The group of people that did not join fraternities does not consist entirely of "those rejected by fraternities", but those who are rejected and those who didn't bother applying in the first place.

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Dove• 9 years ago

You want to watch out for when trains of thought become unscientific.

This part is science: "After carefully controlling for all variables, we can conclude that the choice to join a fraternity has these quantifiable downstream impacts, on average."

This part is just-so stories: "That happens because . . . "

I know it's aggravating, but to insist on a high degree of caution in demonstrating a truth and then to insist on none when it comes to interpreting it lends reckless thinking an undeserved veneer of respectability.

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agjacobson• 9 years ago

1. Frats select for lower overall academic ability. Few physics, biochem, ee majors. This bleeds over into their easier major. 2. Frats select for larger physical stature and attractiveness. This deselects for academic performance and strongly selects for business success. 3. Most importantly, there is little artistic, creative, or purely intellectual emphasis here. If a young person is dedicated to "going for the money" at an early age, the results are not surprising.

These advantages, while enduring, are likely to reduce with time, in my opinion.

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bobthechef• 9 years ago

Frats select for larger physical stature and attractiveness. This deselects for academic performance and strongly selects for business success

Physical stature and attractiveness are negatively correlated with academic performance? Sounds like you're repeating a stereotype. Can you cite evidence of that? (I have come across studies, e.g., Kanazawa 2011, that show significant positive correlation between intelligence and attractiveness. Also, frats are not composed of purely attractive people. That's just Hollywood movie nonsense. I've met plenty of unattractive and rather dull frat members.)

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gozur88• 9 years ago

So... spending time networking and developing your most important job skill, that of interpersonal communication, pays dividends later in life at the expense of a small hit in your GPA?

Color me not at all surprised.

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snorkel• 9 years ago

Indeed, the power of networking. I was not in a frat but I can attest that my GPA didn't help me get a job, my college roommates did! ...and they probably lowered my GPA too!

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notadoc3• 9 years ago

Networking is the true value of going to "good" schools too.

You're going to read the same books and have the same general coursework at an ivy league as you will a state school. The difference is the people, including who is teaching you, who is learning along with you, and who they know.

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dragonwriter2• 9 years ago

It's kind of junk, because it doesn't include and control for variables like pre-collegiate socioeconomic status which is well-known to contribute to both likelihood of joining a fraternity and income potential.

As a result, while it shows a correlation, it provides very little basis to reject that the correlation is due to a common cause rather than frat membership causing the income result.

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meri_dian• 9 years ago

A fraternity is like a business. Learning to work within that kind of structure can help prepare you for the real world in a way that .25 of of a GPA cannot. But it's likely more correlation than causation. I'm not convinced by the methodology the authors claim distill causal effects. The Minerva and Theme variables are assumed to present plausible alternatives to Greek life but that may not be the case.

A few bad fraternities/fraternity brothers give the institution as a whole a bad reputation, but aside from those bad ones I don't understand the fraternity hate. What's wrong with wanting to be part of socially beneficial organization that will help you make friends and party over the course of (some of) the most carefree years of your life?

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doctorsher• 9 years ago

From the paper: "Since our results are drawn from data on a single college, they may have limited external validity." In particular, they specified that this college is a small liberal arts school. I too was in a fraternity at a small liberal arts school. I think people should be wary when trying to paint the national fraternity system with the same brush stroke, as the greek climate at small liberal schools can be quite different that the climate at large universities. I'm not sure how this would affect their results, but the environment is very different in my mind.

They also say: "57% of alumni in our sample report belonging to a fraternity, which is somewhat higher than the 46% of all male alumni that were fraternity members. Greek alumni may be over-represented in the survey due to greater attachment to the college." While they mention this detail in passing, I find it quite interesting. Not sure what the implications are; it would probably require further study.

I'm also not quite sure I buy that people self reporting the amount they drink is controlled by adding their age and age squared as factors. I think it's natural to remember the "good times", which often coincide with drinking, but not remember the weeks you spent slogging through coursework. This, sometimes combined with a perverse incentive structure that says drinking is cool and you should do it more, may artificially inflate the self reported number of nights in a week spent drinking.

I also see a lot of people in this comment thread saying the increased salary is intuitive due to the connections made in a fraternity. I am suspicious of this. This is anecdata, but I was one of two computer science majors in my fraternity (of ~75 members). I have received no obvious professional gain from being in my fraternity. A number of my other friends who went to med school, dental school, and law school had to get in on their own merits -- fraternity connections do not apply to those domains (alumni ones, perhaps, but not fraternity). Others who got jobs seemed to rely more on connections between our college and various companies, not through our fraternity.

It's unfortunate that this paper does not control for college major -- they do when considering the grade regressions, but not the future salary. I would imagine the distribution of majors for people who are in a fraternity are different than the distribution of majors for those who are not. Perhaps those majors chosen by people in a fraternity, like law or business, tend to be more lucrative. Additionally, I can imagine people in some of the more socially conscious majors might be repulsed at the idea of joining a fraternity, and also do not tend to be the highest paying. I am being a bit broad and hand-wavey, but this comment is not a research paper -- just trying to capture my intuition.

Lastly, relying on my personal experience, I think a fraternity might improve qualities necessary for working at a company. Again, anecdata warning, but I became more sociable and confident after joining my fraternity; I also became less edgy, awkward, and bashful. I think these qualities are some of the intangibles that can help people get ahead at a company. Perhaps most importantly, you are forced to live and work with some people who you dislike, which is essential for being in the workforce.

All in all, I think it's an interesting paper, and I appreciate their work. It still leaves something to be desired though.

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blahyawnblah• 9 years ago

I would have failed out of college if it wasn't for people in my fraternity pushing me to get my grade straightened out. Joining one was one of the best decisions I ever made. I was shy and really wasn't very good at socializing before I joined.

For people saying all the fraternity members being from well to do families, I disagree. It was about the same price as staying in the dorms. We had a professional cook, on site laundry, live in advisor (house mom), and a large yard. I think I paid $600/month for all food, board and utilities.

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kraig• 9 years ago

It's less about what you did in school and more about your network outside of school.

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adpoe• 9 years ago

One positive thing about being in a fraternity -- it provides experience in dealing with and resolving conflict in a large organization.

For better or worse, navigating the internal politics of a clique such as a college fraternity is often similar to what many people later experience in the wilds of the corporate world.

You also get a lot of practice meeting & building rapport with a wide variety of peers (both male and female), if your fraternity socializes frequently.

These 'soft' social skills are just as much of a factor in determining salary as technical ones. And for all their warts and downsides, fraternities do provide you with good practice. Of course, you need to be wealthy enough to pay the dues, etc...

However -- more time socializing means less time for studying. So GPA goes down, but interpersonal skills go up. These new interpersonal skills pay off dividends later, though.

Just an extremely non-rigorous hypothesis.

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beager2• 9 years ago

Rather than attack the study and criticize the limited data (one northeastern US university) and the conclusions it draws, I'll say I'm intrigued by the results and would hope for a larger study that brings in a larger data set and controls for school type and geography.

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ZeroGravitas• 9 years ago

I find it interesting how strongly HN as a collective believes corporate America isn't a meritocracy in some threads, while in others it assumes hiring decisions are all about merit.

The difference mostly seems to revolve around whether sexism is brought up.

Here we are discussing men joining men-only organisations for networking purposes and the general consensus is basically "duh, that's how I got my job. Everyone knows that's how it works!"

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grzm• 9 years ago

I find it interesting how strongly HN as a collective believes corporate America isn't a meritocracy in some threads, while in others it assumes hiring decisions are all about merit.

It's because HN isn't a collective in the sense that we all share the same opinions (as much as one might reference the hive mind). There's a wide range of opinions, values, and experiences and you'll notice some piping up in one area and others in, uh, others. Add the wrinkle that we're all (well, likely mostly) human with all of the idiosyncrasies of human psychology that implies. We're perfectly capable of hypocri^H^H^H^H^H logical inconsistency. There's a lot of evidence that our rationality is there primarily to rationalize (in the truest sense) our intuitions and explain them to others.

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