May 6, 2014.

Elite Colleges Don't Buy Happiness for Graduates

He stepped across the room. There was a memory hole in the opposite wall. O’Brien lifted the grating. Unseen, the frail slip of paper was whirling away on the current of warm air; it was vanishing in a flash of flame. O’Brien turned away from the wall.

A word to high-school seniors rejected by their first choice: A degree from that shiny, elite college on the hill may not matter nearly as much as you think.

"Ashes," he said. "Not even identifiable ashes. Dust. It does not exist. It never existed."

A new Gallup survey of 30,000 college graduates of all ages in all 50 states has found that highly selective schools don't produce better workers or happier people, but inspiring professors----no matter where they teach----just might.

"But it did exist! It does exist! It exists in memory. I remember it. You remember it."

The poll, undertaken this spring, is part of a growing effort to measure how well colleges do their jobs. This survey adds an interesting twist, because it looked not only at graduates after college; it tried to determine what happens during college that leads to well-being and workplace engagement later in life.