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Who Needs Harvard?
theodp writes "Slate's Daniel Gross explores why big corporations are hiring fewer Ivy Leaguers. Is it because today's bosses aren't as snowed by polished young Ivy grads as they were in the past? Or are today's Ivy League graduates simply so wealthy that they no longer feel the need to find stable, high-paying jobs at big companies?"
It's because they all get hired by Google these days. :)
quidquid latine dictum sit altum videtur.
Could it be that other schools are becoming better as access to information increases?
try { Signature mysig = new CleverAttempt(); } catch(NonCleverSignatureException e) { postanyway(); }
Sounds like if I'm going to get a job soon ^^
Now maybe I'll be able to get one of those high paying jobs they all keep talking about.
Maybe it's because they've realized George Bush not only attended, but actually graduated from an Ivy League School.
James Tiberius Kirk: "Spock, the women on your planet are logical. No other planet in the galaxy can make that claim."
Maybe Harvard has been bought by Caldera and its mission statement is being subverted somehow?
If they are so smart then they should start their own companies.
Education has been found to be less desirable than motivation and work ethic.
Education has now become accepted as being acquired through experience and higher learning - not just the next step/next grade level of yesteryear.
Yell & scream & rant & rave... it's no use... you need a shaaaave ~ Bugs Bunny
This is not news for nerds.
The general mentality of what makes a good employee changes over time. We are at a stage right now where cheaper is better... so not only are entry level jobs being outsourced but mid and upper jobs are being filled with the cheapest levels of education.
They aren't going to pay John Ivy Leaguer 80k a year to do a job they could get a Lake Fall Springs College graduate to do for 35k.
Legacy graduates are destroying the integrity of the academic program and make a feudalism out of a supposed meritocracy.
Say what you will about GW Bush; the man is not an intellectual, but is an ivy league grad.
-- Political fascism requires a Fuhrer.
Or maybe they don't want to shell out what an Ivy league graduate expects to get paid
I've worked with both state-school grads and Ivy League grads. Ivy Leaguers, on average, surpass their state school colleagues in the area of self congratulation. Otherwise, there's no advantage in engineering and the hard sciences.
When everybody gets an A at Harvard, how could it be otherwise? State schools have to offer admission to just about everybody, but there ain't no grade inflation there. Nothing like the Ivy League, anyway. The weak are culled from the herd by the sophomore or junior year.
Or maybe it's the fact that there aren't any stable jobs at large companies anymore. Why spend the big bucks on the school when you'll have to change jobs every three years anyway. The article mentions it, but I can assure you that C-level executive positions usually last less than five years. The same is true for most other positions now, too.
GreyPoopon
--
Why is it I can write insightful comments but can't come up with a clever signature?
Shrubya AKA George W. Bush. He holds a Masters Degree in Business Administration and his MBA is from Harvard Business School. Enough said.
Being alumni of the ivy I can say I have had no real advantage in the direct job market because of my school but the network that I was able to develop while at school is second to none.
There is a idiom of ivy arrogance that the only difference between the education you get at Harvard vs other schools is that at other schools you learn about history at Harvard you are taught by the people that made history and sitting in a room with others that will make history.
Nobody gives a damn about them anymore, redundant expensive education. There's far too many lawyers around and nobody really wants to be a doctor.
"Ivy League" = Fucking rich, so who cares either way ?
A slashdotting - you get the stick first and then the carrot !
should he have posted a disclaimer? (Cornell, Harvard)
There is no such thing as a "stable" "job" anywhere in the United States today. You either work for someone else, in which case your job is only as stable as the next quarter's results (factoring out your personal performance), or you work for yourself with all the instability/risk that entails.
But the 1950s career ladder is gone.
sPh
I feel sorry for those who get into massive debt trying to land an undergrad degree at an expensive school, when they'd have been better off at a generic-cheaper state school. Undergraduate degrees are now what high school diplomas were 30 years ago ... everybody's got one.
Better off saving as much money as possible and later on applying it to a graduate degree or your own business. Besides most entry level technical positions require an aptitude/IQ test.
fsck em, i hate em all, i would gladly punch em in the nose and make a bloody mess out of em...
from a retired working class Va. coal miner...
Yeah, who needs Harvard?
I dont remember the exact words or the episode.
As a relatively recent Ivy league graduate (in engineering), I can assure you that many of us still need to work for a living.
In short, the Ivy League has opted out of the enlightenment, to become de facto seminaries for the state religion of political correctness.
Seastead this.
the real truth is:
people from big name schools are usually VERY difficult to work with! try it! i have...and they are, in general, NOT team players and egotistical. they generally just spent too much time trying to get ahead, and less time making friends and relaxing.
that you get the exact same education at most other non-ivy schools. And when someone graduates from an ivy, their most likely looking for a high paying job because they just spent a boat load for that school name. On the other hand, the non-ivy person is most likely looking for a well paying job, and if i were to hire one or the other, i would hire the cheaper one as long as hes just as efficient. It kinda reminds me of outsourcing, You know, why take the higher paying one when you can get cheaper for nearly the same quality.
I thought what I'd do was, I'd pretend I was one of those deaf-mutes. - Catcher in the Rye
Isn't it, Haaarrvard?
Nothing worse than hiring an ivy-league graduate who cannot do the job very well and then proceeds to display an arrogant attitude towards his or her non-ivy-league coworkers who can.
Dedicated Linux servers (root access) $45 p.M.
M$ coughed up that hairball to try to kill of Salon. Now M$ is trying to sell it. Earlier attempts to sell have failed because M$ had conditions in the sale retaining editorial influence over the content. Is that still the case?
As a student at Penn State, I can attest to the power of alumni support. The education here is pretty good, and that is my main advantage when looking for a job. However, one big advantage(probably 3rd behind education and experience) is the freaking HUGE network of alumni that "bleed blue and white" and prefer to hire Penn State grads. As more and more people go into higher education, the percentage of Ivy League grads is dropping, and to a certain extent, I think there is some resentment towards them.
Also, to me it seems people at the top schools have tough times finding jobs. I'm not sure why, maybe it is an over-reliance on technology(they don't network, they just resume bomb on monster) and a lot of them end up hiding out in grad school for a while, maybe never going to work at a big company.
Monstar L
Plastics.
The internet is going to kill these deep, fat, and wide bureaucracies that act as movie, music, and software distribution systems. It will do the same to educational and accreditation systems. People use the internet to prove themselves capable directly to employers without needing any official education.
Its because nowadays west coast univiersities are just as good as the Ivy League -- especially in the sciences.
I haven't looked up the numbers for myself, but without a doubt there are many, many more graduates of public universities in the job market now than there were 20-some years ago. As college becomes more and more of a necessity, new, smaller schools keep popping up and the larger state schools continue to grow. Meanwhile, most Ivy League schools have had little if any growth in student body size. Add that to the fact that "legacy status" is conferred onto just as many of those students as before, and you have a growing pool of qualified job applicants of which approximately the same number are Ivys now that were 24 years ago.
Too many Ivy League graduates went into politics and were/became corrupt. Who wants to emply someone and have to watch the silverware?
According to the US Census, about 13 mil employed white males from 35 to 64 have a bachelors degree or greater.
There are 8 Ivy League universities, but let's be gracious and include schools like Stanford, MIT and Chicago and up the number of "top" schools to 12. Let's assume an average enrollment of apx 1,500 students per year per school between the years 1960 through 1990 (the years those white males went to school), leading to a total of 12 x 1,500 x 30 = 540,000 graduates and let's assume that 2/3 are male (it's only 1/2 nowadays), leading to apx 360,000 ivy leaguers out there.
This means that ivy leaguers make up apx. 2.8% of the eligible CxO candidate pool.
So, the conclusion is that having an ivy degree increases your odds of becoming a CxO by about 3.5x today instead of the 5x it did back in the day.
Of course, all this is meaningless drivel since they Ivy League is a *football* league, not some sort of academic standards association and, more importantly, as if increasingn a 0.002% chance to 0.007% means anything at all.
aww I guess no one here listens to Motorhead...
Compare this to the competition at other competitive schools whose degree programs are still tough (see above), and A's mean something. These schools - some mentioned in the article as ivy alternatives - are picking up the slack. I know for sure that the high-profile companies the article mentioned (McKensie, Goldman-Sachs, etc) do recruit heavily among top-tier non-ivies these days. They do here at Caltech anyway.
Also, as things move more and more toward technology and fewer employers care about the liberal arts, the smaller ivies don't have the resources to compete - science is very expensive. Even Princeton and Yale didn't crack top 10 in many of the sciences, last I checked, and the other ivies aren't close. In sciences/tech, Harvard is the only Ivy that can even COMPETE with many of the the schools I listed at the top.
-Looking for a job as a materials chemist or multivariat
The real reason is that middle management is usually the seeding ground for MBAs. Most companies have cut that back on mid-level management so MBAs are just not getting hired up like they used to (a glut on the market).
Now for a rant:
Besides, nobody likes working with know-it-all smart-ass trust fund babies. Pedigrees aren't the mark of true intelligence. It's also a matter of economics--It's easier to higher a state school grad from the top of his class for lower salary expectations than some snotty Harvard Biz school grad who expects a six-figure salary just because he graduated from an ivy league.
But I'm not bitter or anything.
I might know what I'm talkin' about, but then again, this is Slashdot...
This sig is false.
I can't tell you exactly where Karl Rove, Dick Cheney, George Sr., Don Rumsfeld, and Bill Frist appear in the heirarchy of command in Washington, but I can tell you they're all higher up than George Dubyah.
It is simply implausible that blacks are 3 times more likely to apply to Harvard than the members of the ethnic group that founded that institution.
Seastead this.
Is it wrong to judge a school by some of the people it graduates?
In my opinion, Americans spend way too much effort getting into the 'best' schools. In the end, your personal achievments speak much louder than where you graduate from. Mediocre Harvard graduates are still mediocre; exceptional XX-State graduates are still exceptional.
By all means go to the school that will best enhance your personal talents. But don't stand on your head to be admitted to 'the' school, especially if this effort is contrary to developing your individual talents. Admission to university is a beginning, not an end.
Paying 2-3x more for the same education for some connections is way overrated. especially when the percentage of good vs mediocre people is exactly the same.
You can always tell a Harvard man, but you can't tell him much.
The successful people they're counting are the college graduates of at least 10 to 20 years ago. College attendance began its explosion during this time and that leads to the percentage decrease because the number of Ivy admissions hasn't increased in kind. With so many more people attending other colleges and Ivys not keeping their proportion, it's no wonder that more good people that end up in high positions in corporate America having come from other colleges.
The majority of kids attending Ivys might come from rich families but I would argue this is much different than 50 years ago when the majority came from families that were both rich and had high status. Admission has become tough, even for legacies (well, unless there isn't a building named after your dad) so a lot of the kids being groomed to take over the family empire are more likely to not get into an Ivy and are more likely to not want to go even if they could. Ivys have become a lot dorkier in recent years.
Having attended both an Ivy and non-Ivys I can say that the difference is that the non-Ivys tend to be more practical, teaching things employers actually want to know. Ivys are about theory and thinking...which is what learning should be about, even if not as useful right out of college.
You cannot deny that preferental hiring for minorities is a little odd sometimes... *shrug*
I find it interesting that the article asserts that more children of the rich are getting into the ivy league nowadays. In fact, one could argue the exact opposite. In the past, the ivy league was only for the wealth. However, more and more, the ivies are striving for diversity and they are not taking as many "old money" private school kids.
You mean like Bill Gates?
Ivy League graduates aren't wealthy - not when tuition is $25,000/year. I'm going to be paying for my education for a long time to come.
Visit an Ivy League school sometime. Yes, we have more than our share of legacies, and rich kids, but a vast majority are just very smart people with financial aid (over 70% at Harvard). Believe it or not, we're not all rich kids coasting by on someone else's money or reputation.
You want to see spoiled rich kids, take a look at BU. Brandeis. Bennington. Fairfield. Holy Cross. Schools where the kids of rich people go when they're not smart enough to get into the Ivy's, and not lucky enough to be a legacy.
Gawd, this attitude really ticks me off. I got into Harvard, graduated with honors, and got a good job (in IT, no less). I'm far more typical than the spolied rich kids.
You graduate, you get your first job, after twenty years you might get to be a CEO. Graduating from the right school might get you slotted slightly higher on the ladder at the beginning but after that it's a horse race. What I get from the article is that the performance of Ivy League grads has slipped.
I have long believed that educational attainment does not predict job success. I don't have the original reference for this but a long time ago I read a really enlightening article. It described research done at HP trying to correlate employees' school marks with their corporate success. They found no correlation. What they did find was that the employees who hung around the water cooler tended to get the promotions. Staying at the desk with your nose stuck to the grindstone was not the ticket to success. Talking to people, gathering information and help from others and making contacts was the ticket.
Going to the 'right' school might actually cause a graduate to make self-defeating career assumptions that keep her from doing the things that she needs to do to get ahead. She will be out-competed by someone who is leaner and hungrier.
By any reasonable criteria for "seats that could/should be given" Harvard's bias against white gentiles is greater than the bias against blacks.
That you read something more into it is your own prejudice blinding you to the actual arithmetic stated.
Seastead this.
If you're going into a research oriented industry, or going for a doctorate so you can be hired by an ivy league institution... ... you better damn well have an ivy-league education.
It may not help for Fortune 500 CEO positions, but it does for getting tenure at upper-tier schools.
First of all, it's unamerican to not make fun of the President. That's what sets us apart from other nations.
Second, people who whinges about making fun of GW were probably saying nasty things about Clinton, Gore and Kerry, so
Best. Comment. Ever. Enjoy!
What's the significance of the term?
Anyone have any idea?
I was a co-founder and VP of Coriolis Group Books (a small publishing company) from 1990 to early 2002. I had occasion to interview dozens of hopeful college grads for editorial and marketing positions. I interviewed only a small handful of Ivy Leagers (from Harvard and Princeton if I recall) and they gave the impression of near-comical arrogance, and complete confidence that they deserved and should get the job. When asked hard questions about what I considered important issues to small presses (things like, How would you organize a book-length tutorial on a technical topic?) they invariable tried to change the subject rather than admit that they had no clue.
I haven't investigated why this should be so, but there was so little willingness among these kids to learn anything useful that I waved them on their way, and hired people from local state schools. There is such a thing as being a little hungry when you're starting out, and the Ivies don't cater to nor graduate anybody who might be "hungry" in the sense that makes them ambitious self-starters.
If I were to be hiring for a publishing company again, I would choose well-spoken grads from state universities, especially those who had shown some interest in publishing, perhaps by working in a bookstore as an undergrad, or typesetting a novel they had written for that annual November write-a-novel-in-a-month contest. What they might do to show their interest is much less important to me than the simple fact that they got off their lead asses and did something.
I hope somebody at Harvard gets a copy of this, since I have no other way to reach them: To me, a Harvard diploma is poison. Period.
--73--
--Jeff Duntemann
Colorado Springs, Coloradao
I can speak from the perspective of UVa out here in Virginia -- which was ranked as the #1 public school last year, and is tied for #2 this year with University of Michigan. #1 this year is UC Berkley, who trades spots with UVa every few years. (All these facts are courtesy of the worst ranking agent ever, US News and World Reports)
Anyway, basically what I'm trying to say is that public schools are making huge headway into almost every important field. Berkley has the amazing engineering program that the best schools compete neck and neck with. Michigan has extremly competitive law, business, and medical schools. Virginia has #4 law program, the #12 business program, the #24 medical school, a top 5 commerce school (that puts out some of the best investment bankers in the world) -- etc, etc.
Between the three top public institutions, every facet of higher education is relatively well covered from medicine to liberal arts to commerce to engineering. Today, wasting 50 grand a year on a Harvard education may still be worth it if you're not lucky enough to be living in Virginia, California or Michigan, but honestly -- the concept of building a network of connections and alumni support is well expressed in our public instituions today.
Perhaps the biggest difference between a public school and a private schools is a fact that wikipedia expresses -- the endowments are huge for schools like Harvard and Yale. UVA had an endowment of 1.4 billion dollars, harvard had 22.6 billion, and yale was at 11 billion. Harvard is the second largest nonprofit after the Bill and Melinda Gates foundation.
Those are the facts that set apart a university like Harvard from a UVA or a Berkley. I think in the coming years these kinds of huge differences between top public schools and top private schools will increase. While the economy was bad in the earlier part of this century (hehe), schools like Berkley and Virginia took hits in funding. In virginia for example, the tuition was raised somewhere around 30%, and funding dropped pretty substantially. Certain public institions in the state that weren't doing as well dropped substantitally in rank according to US News and World Reports, and without public support, pulic (!!) institions can't do well.
For now at least, UVa looks to be going more and more the private route, especially with the new legislation on the table specifically asking for more leeway in the strings the government has attached to the institution. Hopefully as a more expensive, but still cheaper top instition that's quasi private/public will make for a better University overall. As per now, I can honestly say that going to a instition other than a top public one if you live in the states of Virginia, Michigan, or California (if accepted of course) would be a mistake. Perhaps getting lots of money to go to an expensive Ivy is not a bad plan, but the majority of them don't even offer merit based scholarships.
Anyway, there were quite a few cents more than my 0.02 there, but take from this what you will. =)
Apparently you believe it is inappropriate for people to restrict educational institutions which they founded to people of their culture.
Do you also believe it is appropriate to punish subsequent generations, based on their ethnicity, for the "crime" that their ancestors committed by trying to exercise freedom of association within their private colleges?
Seastead this.
When you are competing with other Ivy leagueres for a high-paying job in a mature industry I think your statement is true.
An Ivy-league education is a powerful symbol of wealth and status that will open doors to more wealth and power for you than my State College education will ever do.
I'm not crying about it, I have to aquire my wealth and power a different (non-traditional) way. Michael
http://www.maxineudall.com/2010/02/should-economists-be-sued-for-malpractice.html
As someone who has spoke to many in the position of hiring, here is what they always say they are looking for:
- Well Rounded... not just knowledge of the job, but working with people!,
- proven ability to learn something new.
- Experience
- overall industry knowledge
- Has previously handled job of equal stress/commitment
- has reason to be a long term employee (show job commitment)
explanation
1. All jobs require working with people. From dealing with the boss, to clients, to fellow employees on a group project. Most inefficiency is from bad communication between employees.
2. Need to show that you can evolve with the job. Industries are moving faster now. You need to show that you can adapt and keep the company on the leading edge. Not trailing behind.
3. Experience is self explanatory.
4. Lots of people get a good job... then decide they don't like the lifestyle, or stress, and quit. It's expensive to hire an employee (between searching, interviewing, and training... it costs thousands, if not more often tens of thousands of dollars)... losing a new employee is a major loss for a company. Getting a good one that stays on: that's a major gain.
5. Long term is key. Besides for higher morale, less absence, they tend to be more productive (because they know how to do their job well from experience), capable, and have good relations with fellow co-workers. These are the gem's in the company... they know exactly how things work. They require little effort on behalf of management, and can do a whole lot.
First, it's possible (I think it's always been possible, actually) to get a top-notch education from just about anywhere. The Ivy League schools have a reputation for excellence, but that's just smoke and mirrors. They have no monopoly on academic excellence, and the business world knows this. They also know that Harvard grads are more likely to carry huge debt loads and will ask for more money than someone who graduated from a "lesser" school (but who is every bit as qualified).
Seems like simple economics to me.
Seems to me employers these days value experience much more highly that any bits of paper from big name educational establishments you might bring along to your interview.
The large companies simply aren't interesting to most Ivy Leaguers (that I know) for any number of reasons: they're perceived as stodgy, smaller companies are more exciting, better pay/benefits/work at smaller shops, more responsibility at smaller shops, etc. The traditional draws of Fortune 100 employment - guaranteed advancement, loyalty to career employees, etc - are perceived not to exist. That leaves very little incentive to work for those companies.
The corporations USED TO offer "stable, high-paying jobs", but now offer neither.
Pretty much everyone knows that there is no corporate loyalty to their employees anymore, and that you cannot expect to have a position next year EVEN if you do a great job (strategy changes, mergers, sales of divisions, etc.).
Corporate pay is no longer what it used to be either. Except for getting to the absolue top, you may live comfortably, but you will not get wealty on 4 decades of corporate pay. And they are getting better at extracting more work for less (real) pay -- its called increased productivity.
In contrast, there are now many examples of excellent success in entrepreneurship, and the better control over your lifestyle. So, if you were smart and had a top education and a choice, would you go be a wage slave for some corp? Maybe for a few years just to get a bit more background and maybe connections, but not for long. Pretty soon, you won't put up with the corp BS, and you'll choose a better lifestyle running your own show. Ergo, there are fewer Ivy-types available to rise into those positions
I refer to people who don't enjoy learning, who prefer not to think, who generally don't retain what little they do learn, and who often don't pick up the infrastructural skill of critical, organized thinking.
These people are suffered to finish because the schools and departments themselves have incentives to process as many people as possible.
IMHO, that has devalued higher degrees and academic grades so far that they aren't helpful predictors of future performance. We're seeing that reflected in the Fortune 100 statistics.
W. Bush.
If someone says he and his monkey have nothing to hide, they almost certainly do.
And from the actual paper: "Between 1980 and 2001, the percentage of Fortune 100 top executives with Ivy League undergraduate degrees fell by four points (to nearly 30%) while the proportion from public schools increased by 16 points (to 50%)." The paper then goes on to say that this effect may be because there are more people graduating from state schools than ivy league schools (Harvard continues to graduate approximately 1600 kids ech year).
As someone who graduated Harvard recently, I can tell you my hypothesis as to what the difference is. When most of my peers graduated they either went on to become consultants (a nice pay-check + world travel), graduate school (both professional and academic), or investment bankers (really nice pay-check). A few became newspaper reporters, governmental employees, or started working at a large publicly traded corporation, but these things were not the norm.
Also, though there are some rich (and very rich) kids at Harvard, there are also poor and middle class kids from public schools. Harvard's financial aid is good that you can afford to go if you are admitted. They even give you money to buy winter clothes if you can't afford them. But it's so much fun to stereotype, isn't it?
In the UK we say that our leaders are all from public schools. It's just that we have different meanings for the phrase...
I'll see your Constitution and raise you a Queen.
They just indoctrinate with radical left-wing agitprop. Ivory school grads cannot be assumed to have had a college education.
I lived in Michigan during high school. Acceptance to U of M wasn't an issue. Instead of going there, I went to an Ivy . It was most definitely not a mistake. The loans kind of suck, but the benefits have been absolutely tremendous. The name recognition alone has opened a number of doors that would otherwise be firmly locked/slammed in my face. Love it or hate it, the Old Boys Network is alive and well in the business world.
I don't mean to disparage U of M or other public schools - U of M is, in fact, an excellent school. But don't discount the Ivy Aura.
(no, that's not pompous. It's real. Life's not fair...)
Support your Alumni Assiociation. Go EMU Eagles!
You mean "alumnus". "Alumni" is plural, but "alumnus" is singular.
You're missing some commas there.
There is a idiom of ivy arrogance that the only difference between the education you get at Harvard vs other schools is that at other schools you learn about history at Harvard you are taught by the people that made history and sitting in a room with others that will make history.
Gosh, where to start: "a idiom", missing commas, missing "while" before "at Harvard", no capitalization of "Ivy".
They would have thrown me out of CMU for writing like that. Is that another key difference between Harvard and non-Harvard education?
You see, that pesky little organization that actually thinks about issues like global terrorism and the impacts of US policy on such activities, the CIA, has this to say about dumbasses little escapade into Iraq. Iraq has replaced Afghanistan as the training ground for the next generation of "professionalized" terrorists...
Not exactly what dumbass had in mind, but I guess when your brain works with binary logic (black:white) you can't see that the world is morass of nasty fucking gray that takes more than 1 step of logic to contemplate.
I hope that the Idiot in Chief at least can figure out that since he's a 2nd-termer, he should pull our troops the fuck outta that shit hole once the civil war begins in earnest...and that should begin in about 15 or so days after the killing event also know as the January 30th "election".
Your points about public universities are right on.
This is technically correct, but you're missing something very important - the Ivys are starting to waive tuition for students that can't afford it. No loans to pay back, just a deal: you do the work, we'll pay for it. That's one of the benefits of a multibillion dollar endowment.
... or has Harvard just lowered the quality of its graduates by inflating everyone's grades?
The stories about it may be completely bogus but if they are giving out that many A's then something is definately wrong.
Second, your assertion that Harvard's definition of "white" excludes European "whites" is implausible on the face of it and is unsupported by the document you cited.
In short, if this is an example of the quality of analysis we can expect from someone who identifies as a discriminated against minority with grievances against Harvard's historic private policies favoring students from the same culture that founded that university, then it is all too obvious why corporations are hiring fewer Harvard graduates.
Seastead this.
Lemmy's the fucking man. But oh, that mole!
As the article mentions, grads of places like Harvard tend to avoid big corporations, as more money and a nicer lifestyle is available at banks, consultancies, etc. When I graduated the main occupations were: banking, consulting, law school (followed by a law firm and/or politics) and medicine. The office of career services shunted you into these paths and everything else was "other." Working for a big corp was seen as making stuff in some obscure town, not as "big-time" as getting paid outrageous amounts for your advice and living in NYC, Boston, Washington, Bay Area, etc.
I guess the common sense has begun to prevail: a degree from Ivy league college does not guarantee a successful hire.
If you are smart and work hard for good (or evil), your chance of success is greater. If you're not so smart but work harder to compensate for it, then you'd be welcome by the society just as well. If you're not so smart and don't want to work hard at all, then you'd better have lucrative parents or relatives who can support you to move into the field of politics.
By the way, I wouldn't say no one needs Harvard. I've known many Harvard graduates and current students, and they all work extremely hard for their scholarships.
That was sooooo funnnny. Can I get modded funny as well?
i just started working AT harvard...hmmmmmm
mat
I worked for a Big 5 consulting firm for a few years and people would sometimes wonder out-loud why there weren't any Ivy leaguers in the office. Here, the wise people would respond that management consulting and investment banking were seen (by the Ivies) as greener pastures. Why butt heads with an accounting major from State U. when you can, instead, be Chelsea's teammate at McKinsey?
The author posits that the reason Ivy League graduates are disappearing from the corporate world is because they have the luxury to do so. How can anyone equate that with stupidity? It sounds to me like they're getting to make the choices everyone else wants to make. Who in the hell wants to work for one of the corporations listed in the article? GM? American Express? No thanks.
I got cheeeese, hoez, and a bunch of fucking dope. / I got peeeeeas, coke, and some killaz at da doo'.
This is a reflection of my original statement:
Seastead this.
I did sit in on some grad classes on a few occassions and date one Harvard student for a while. While I can't specifically vouch for the full qualification (or lack thereof), Harvard students really didn't seem any more intelligent than any average person. In fact, mostly, they seemed there for the prestige and not the education. The difference is simply that Ivy Leaguer's tend to be more ambitious. It's often the ambition that pulls them ahead in life.
This is all part of the continuing devaluation of American workers. People older then say 30, aren't really feeling it. But every college graduate I know who is working in the county records office, "self employed" making 10g/year, selling motorcycles, doing plumbing, woring at walmart, and delivering pizzas *WITH A COLLEGE DEGREE* knows what these people are finding out -- that "business" has sold us out.
Religion is a gateway psychosis. -- Dave Foley
Is it because today's bosses aren't as snowed by polished young Ivy grads as they were in the past? Or are today's Ivy League graduates simply so wealthy that they no longer feel the need to find stable, high-paying jobs at big companies?
Are you f**king kidding me?! Okay, I have no love for rich America, but this is getting friggin' ridiculous. These kind of comments do *not* belong in article summaries, period. Hell, if it was a comment, it'd be modded "-1 Troll" in no time. Christ, how the *hell* did this get past the editors? Oh, right because they don't actually do their job... *sigh*
I have found that some of the best people I have hired are from schools that I have never heard of (mostly foreign). That is not to say I have not hired good grads from CMU, MIT etc, but they aren't good because of where they went to school. Hence I now black out with a marker where someone went to school on a resume. It makes zero difference to me. If you interview well, you will get a job, regardless of your attendance at Duluth Hairdressing School or Caltech.
Simple explanation: Total number of US corporations and employees grows, total number of Ivy league grads stays the same -> number of Ivy leaguers hired by individual corporations shrinks. Simple 3rd grade math. The real question is: how many US employees can do simple 3rd grade math?
But, you know in our society people want to think paying more means better. People are confused where Mercedes gets a lower quality ranking than Kia, or when state grads are getting jobs Harvard grads aren't. Sorry kids, you don't always get what you pay for.
Your McGill 3.89 is a Queen's/UofT 3.2, so I will average you down a bit, but good luck!
Oops... I guess he's saying that natural selection, rather than conspiracy, is the origin of said "mind control". By he doesn't need to posit a "conspiracy" to explain the existence of mind control mechanisms in nature.
Neither do I.
This doesn't mean conspiracies never occur as part of nature. Of course they do. Lots of bad behaviors occur in nature. However, they don't form the organizing principle of nature, nor have I anywhere posited that they do so. Perhaps you should try examining your tendency to hallucinate conspiracy theorists rather than trying to cast me as a conspiracy theorist.
Seastead this.
Bright people have a tendency to want to change things and are not afraid of the future.
Average people don't want things to change, just want to keep the status quo.
Humanity suffers. Case closed.
The article doesn't say that companies are hiring fewer Ivy Leaguers. It says that fewer "C-level" (CEO, CFO, CIO, etc) execs went to an Ivy League school as an undergrad. Also, it is not like NONE of them are Ivy grads. The percentage dropped from 14% to 10%. This is still a LARGE number when you compare the enrollment size of the Ivy's with the size of the population at large. Based on this number, Ivy schools have a disproportionate representation in the board room, relative to their size.
:-)
Based upon the erroneous conclusions of the submitter and the author of the original article, I would say that both probably attended a public college.
------
www.moneybythenumbers.com
Probably because they figure they can get someone do to the same job, only charge them a few grand less because they're just "regular" students instead of "ivy-league" students.
Basically the same principle behind out-sourcing; just replace "regular" with "third-world" and "ivy-league" with "American".
It's because they actually don't need the money so they don't have the drive a poorer employee would have to do good in a position.
Three words:
Six.
Minute.
Abs.
Multiple years of "higher education" and a wall full of degrees don't mean squat if you don't have common sense, something that is most definately missing from most grads these days.
My peace of mind does not depend on
+5 funny? We've heard variations of this joke for over 4 fucking years now. Youre idea of brilliant comedy must be repeating "George Bush is stupid" over and over again...
Companies are hiring less Ivy League Graduates for fiscal reasons. Think about this, an Ivy League graduate has a much higher wage expectancy than someone who graduates from a non-Ivy League school. Companies today are in the process of getting rid of employees that eiter don't do enough, or that they feel are overpaid for their job.. So if they have a chouce between the Ivy League guy that wants $50,000 a year, and the State University guy that wants $30,000 a year, most companies will choose the State University guy.
Make America grate again!
That's 15 of 43 presidents (35%). Then again, 7 didn't even go to college...
Note to self: Stop putting jokes in my insightful comments so I can get something other than +1 Funny!
The difference now, I think, is that those positions that used to be filled by liberal arts majors are now filled by people with degrees in things like Communications, Marketing, or MBA's.
Leaving aside the worth of such things, I'd think that this would equalize the Ivy Leauge factor somewhat.
While the Ivies do play football (of a sort), the Ivy League is much more than a football league. The eight Ivy League schools, with MIT, do cooperate on issues like admissions, financial aid, etc. In years past the cooperation was extensive--enough so that the Federal Trade Commission sued alleging restraint of trade (since the Ivies would coordinate financial aid offers to prevent "bidding wars" for students).
The article points out that:
A widely quoted study from the Century Foundation found that 74 percent of the students at 146 selective colleges surveyed came from the top socioeconomic quartile, while only 10 percent come from the bottom half! Harvard President Larry Summers devoted his 2004 commencement speech to this phenomenon
70% may have some financial aid. Doesn't mean there not rich...
Standards had to be lowered for affirmitive action purposes, especially in the ivy leages.
Ivy leages can longer only select the best and brightest.
Let me guess. You did not get into the college of your choice, so now you're going to mock the grammar and spelling (of an online post, I might add) of a Harvard student to compensate. Am I right? Because envy is pretty pathetic.
In fact, since you were modded up, I can only guess that some of the moderators feel the same way.
Plainly, Harvard and others, did not spend enough time teaching ethics. Aristotle is forgotten...
Oh well, what the hell...
Ivy League schools tend to be known for their liberal arts, schools of business, and law... yes, there are exceptions, but if you're a talented engineering student, Stanford, MIT, or Carnegie Mellon might tend to be more of a top-tier goal than Columbia's School of Engineering and Applied Science.
500GB of disk, 5TB of transfer, $5.95/mo
Not all the best schools are ACM accredited. Some don't bother with it, because they don't want to have to offer basic or outdated courses, and their reputations let them get away with it.
I got a Computer Science Engineering degree from U. Penn in the mid '90s, and it was not accredited in CS. Neither was MIT. For I know, both schools still aren't.
I'm not claiming this is good, I'm just reporting it.
I knew people who went to Ivy schools, I myself went to a state school. The Ivy'ers were pretty bland people, no personality. They burned the oil at both ends, and while they could tell you how Dante relates to the banana, they couldn't identify a keg. They have no sociability. Well, most don't. The problem with Ivy'ers is they spent most of their life looking for anwsers in books. They never closed the book and looked around, in the real world. Most of the people I have met at state schools were pretty smart. I met one guy who was much, much smarter than anyone at haaaaaavard, but he would never admit it. The next time you Ivy'ers see a state school, if you want to see true expressions of brilliance, watch how 18 year olds find ways to buy beer even though the sign says "over 21 only", or how the frat guys find one more new way to open a bottle of beer, not just using doors or teeth. BTW, if Real Genius was to happen, it would never happen at a private school. It would be a public school. And oh, we have one more thing the private schools don't. Chicks with tits. So take that haaaaavard. Go back to banging your nasty sister with buck teeth.
Rosco: "If brains were gunpowder, Enos couldn't blow his nose."
There seem to be some shining examples of people who've worked their way up from the bottom... I would assume that it's because they've shown themselves to be motivated and have a fundamental understanding of what the majority of the company actually *does*, and doesn't just look at their products as "goods sold" and people as "labor costs".
Look at the recent McDonald's CEO and the current nominee for Commerce Secretary (or was he confirmed already?) from Kellogg's.
500GB of disk, 5TB of transfer, $5.95/mo
The number of state colleges is way up in the last 50 years. The nuber of ivy leage colleges is the same.
I think the key is to seperate "education" from a "license to get a real job". There are two camps here, really two sides. Pursuing philosophy because you LOVE it, and it enraptures you and consumes you and becomes your life's passion... or computer science, or theoretical physics, or economics, or any other subject like that. Versus working hard to get a BS so that someone will hire you. Versus "you forget most of what you study anyway, it just proves to your employer that you are willing to work hard".
When you focus objectively on the subject, when you do what is called "deep learning", when you really get into what you are studying, and actually get your brain working, thinking new ideas, coming up with new questions, trying to find new answers, you begin to experience the true value of education, which is, if you asked me, about learning the material, understanding the significance of astronomy or physics or ethics or philosophy or literature or art or film, or politics, economics, etc...
I am from the camp that respects education because education is good in and of itself, intrinsically. I find education to be an end in and of itself, a way to improve yourself, question your place in society, learn more about the world you live in. I am not from the camp that feels that education is a "license" to get a job.
What we are probably seeing here is a reflection of these values - perhaps ivy leaguers are more likely to be passionate about education; perhaps they attach a significance to education that goes beyond the ability to get a job or proving that one is a hard worker.
If you think about it, at least at the undergraduate level, the stuff you learn and study has been studied and taught for hundreds, even thousands of years... there must be some compelling reason for this; and I can speak from personal experience that if you open your mind and really focus on "deep learning", really get into what you are studying, that it becomes quite obvious why we are still studying these subjects thousands of years later.
Education can be a very, very powerful tool; but you have to recognize that it has value in and of itself, and that it's not just a way to get a better job. Looking at it from this point of view, perhaps the figures make a little more sense. The types of environments that you will find in these big businesses probably make those positions less attractive to people who have a genuine, deep respect for education. Larger businesses will probably place more emphasis on a degree as a qualification or requirement, potential hires may be required to possess a BS as matter of policy.
Perhaps the path to getting the most out of education doesn't lead to C* positions at large organizations; and if getting the most out of life has anything to do with getting the most out of education, and if getting the most out of education has anything to do with respecting education as being important in and of itself, not simply a means to get a job, then you may very well see the positions in large corporations being filled with individuals who are open to accepting the viewpoint of education as a requirement, as a prerequisite to employment, with less emphasis on the intellectual and creative side of education, which usually requires money and time to pursue.
I personally went to 2 years of college (Comp.Sci.) at a decent school, and dropped out. You're talking a while ago (1984), but I realized back then after correcting the teachers numerous times that I really wasn't *learning*, I was just "playing in the system" to get a piece of paper...
To me, work ethic and experience is far more valuable than education. I can't count the number of MCSE's and Netware admins over the years that I interviewed who studied, passed the tests, and didn't have a clue. Real-world experience is far more important to me than certifications & education.
Now, cert's and education may get your resume noticed, in fact I've seen a lot of companies that post "anyone w/o a cert need not apply", which to me is silly since I think you eliminate some of the best that way.
I bust my butt at work, I'm constantly asked for in meetings for my 'experience and knowledge', and get a lot of respect from people. In return, I got a 6% raise this year, well above the average, and a stellar review for being the 'go-to guy' that can just jump in and fix anything.
To me, education may get you in the door, but if you can't follow it up with the dedication and knowledge that your employer needs, you're just a highly educated piece of deadwood. And perhaps companies are starting to realize that. Actions speak louder than words... and the words on that diploma or that resume are worthless if you don't "add value" to your employers business.
The point is made by virtue of the fact that corporations need reason to profit and the absence of reasonable brain activity among those reacting to my post is relevant to my stated theory that the state religion of political correctness is the source of the business devaluation of a Harvard education.
Again, thank you for illustrating my point.
Perhaps you will make a good spell checker for guys like me if our computers get take out by an EMP during a nuclear holocaust arising from religious conflicts between the West's state religion and Islam.
Seastead this.
Hi!
I have read the article in Slate, but have only read the precis of the original article in NBER. Based on the Slate article, and the NBER precis, I have some concerns about the quality of the research underlying this.
First, haven't the "C" jobs changed?
In 1981 very, very few corporations, if any, had a position with the title of Chief Information Officer or Chief Technical Officer. Or anything resembling the post. By 2001 practically every major corporation did--if only to satiate the demands of securities analysts who wanted to know if the company would weather the "Y2K Crisis." The CIO/CTO position, by its very nature, is a technical one. Even though experienced IT workers can tell all kinds of stories about some of the bozos we've seen (cf. the Dilbert Principle--engineers with no talent are moved to the place where they can do the least damage: management), the CIO/CTO almost always comes from a technical background.
Why would this have an impact on Ivy League graduates? Despite the fact that ENIAC was developed at Penn, and BASIC was developed at Dartmouth the Ivies are primarily liberal arts colleges. (Indeed, BASIC was developed at Dartmouth expressly to expose English majors to computer programming.) Technology workers with liberal arts degrees are a rarity, Ivy League degree or not. As the number of "C" jobs in Fortune 100 companies grows to include a tech-focused job category, it is natural that the percentage of graduates of liberal arts schools in those "C" jobs will decline.
Second, hasn't the nature of senior management changed?
Once upon a time a budding business executive would take a "well-rounded" college education (meaning a liberal arts degree) and join the management training program of a major corporation. Other budding big-biz big-wigs would study business before joining the management training program. They trained to be managers....
And those mid-level managers got laid off, by the thousands, in the 1980s and 1990s. In the "flattening" of American corporate management driven largely by the stock market's unyielding insistence on ever-increasing efficiency and ever-growing profits, lots of managers got downsized right out the door. The emphasis shifted to "operators"--generally meaning people with experience in sales, engineering, or manufacturing. Look at the ranks of corporate chiefs today--sales is still a good track for senior management, but engineering and manufacturing are far more common today than they were in the early 1980s. (I graduated from Penn in 1980--a number of my classmates went into management training programs at major corporations. To the best of my knowledge, none are still employed by the company they initially joined.)
The companies in the Fortune 100 reflect a similar kind of shift: engineering-driven companies have grown, while traditional corporate conglomerates (Litton, ITT, etc.) have faded from view. There are exceptions (Procter & Gamble, Coca-Cola) but a number of technology companies have burst onto the stage in the past twenty years (Microsoft, Apple, HP, Dell, etc.) and none of them are hiring liberal arts majors to be trainees--in the Ivy League or elsewhere.
Does that make an Ivy League degree worthless?
Absolutely not. The statistic that is not given in the Slate article is the stat that is most significant: what is the percentage of GDP generated by those companies in the Fortune 100? That percentage has dwindled fairly substantially over the past 20 years--the size of companies in the Fortune 500 and Fortune 1000 have increased substantially. And many Ivy graduates don't go to work for corporate America--they go to law school (where they are wildly over-represented in the top spots), med school (where they are wildly over-represented in the top spots), or other graduate schools. Ivy League graduates are grossly over-represented in American politics: remember that John Kerry, John Dean, and George W. Bush were all contemporaries at Yale.
...maybe it's because I am not ivyleauge material, but I will never understand these people.
"There's a classic videotape made at a Harvard University graduation a few years ago that illustrates exactly what I mean. In the opening scene, young graduates and faculty members still in their caps and gowns answer this question: Why is it warmer in the summer and colder in the winter? Twenty-two out of 25 of them got the answer wrong. Just as disturbing was how confidently and articulately the Harvard University grads, offered their incorrect explanations. They didn't recognize the contradiction between their typical explanation It's warmer in summer because the Earth is closer to the sun and their knowledge that when it's summer in Boston, it's winter in Sydney."
source: http://www.luminet.net/~wenonah/new/rocketsc.htm
I am a student at Drexel University. The school is located edge to edge with UPenn's. People often go there to party because they are rich and (IMHO) spoiled and everything is free at parties there. But Drexel kids always come back to our campus after drinking at the UPenn parties because the people here are way more fun to be with. There is just a tremendous gap in social and common sensical skills at many schools that make their graduates useless as employees.
http://brandonbloom.name
Indeed that is true in some cases
My friend's an engineer at Bell Sympatico and he's heard stories similar to that where Sympatico hired a young student who asked for a smaller wage than another who has certs, more experience and who demanded a much bigger wage.
Think about it. If you're an IT manager who could hire a kid out of a state school for 20k less a year than an Ivy grad and still get the job done, why not? Plus who would want to work with a stuffed shirt ego. You never want your staff to be more (expensivly) educated than yourself, or pretty soon you're not the boss anymore.
-makoffee
Oh please, moderating a grammar correction and a classless insult to +5 funny? I was under the impression, that slashdotters didn't like that sort of crap. Obviously, I was mistaken.
Not Berkley!
Or call it Berserkeley. But get that E in there!
Infuriate left and right
Aside from anything else in the article, this assertion:
...is wildly inaccurate. While it is true that the things he mentions (SAT tutors, etc) allow rich kids a leg up, the problem is no where near the level it was was 30, 50, or 70 years ago, when most of Harvard (et al) was composed of most of the Senior Class at Andover (et al); these days, those schools are happy if they get 10% accepted... Are the Ivies completly merocratic? No.... but to assert that they are less so now than in the past is ludicrous. Although tuition is higher in real dollars, financial aid spending has increased by an even greater magnitude.
"Something has changed about the character of the student bodies at many Ivy League schools in recent decades. With the rising ability of the wealthy to smooth the path to admission by paying private-school tuition and hiring college advisers and SAT-prep tutors--and with college tuition far outpacing financial aid growth--rich kids are more likely to get in, and to attend, Ivy League schools than in the past."
Modded +5 funny, but I really think that such advancements in polymers, like along the lines of plastic solar cells, could really become a big thing.
There is no such thing as a "stable" "job" anywhere in the United States today. [...] But the 1950s career ladder is gone.
It is, however, ignoble of modern day corporations to assume that the career ladder and career-for-life workplace won't return. Currently the trend is [as you noted] three to five years per job. Ultimately, I think, businesses are going to realize that cyclical employment costs them a lot more money than retaining employees for several decade. Oh sure, pensions aren't cheap, but neither is training new employees, unemployment insurance, and dealing with your five year employee taking your trade secrets to your direct competitor.
The career ladder didn't just arise out of nowhere - the great businessmen of yore knew that it was as good for the business as it was for the employee. Unfortunately, "modern" business practice seems to have forgetten that. The old adage about those who forget history are doomed to repeat it seems appropriate here...
I really wanted to go to the Women's College in Sydney, but since they didn't offer Electrical Engineering, I had to settle for CMU.
:)
Slate's Daniel Gross explores why big corporations are hiring fewer Ivy Leaguers. Is it because today's bosses aren't as snowed by polished young Ivy grads as they were in the past? Or are today's Ivy League graduates simply so wealthy that they no longer feel the need to find stable, high-paying jobs at big companies?
One point where the article is dead on is that finance, particularly hedge funds and investment banking, is seen as a much sexier line of work than management. Especially as a straight-out-of-college deal, it's much more socially acceptable to say that you're going to work for Merrill Lynch than Walmart. The entry-level pay is higher, for one thing, but of course it just "sounds" better to certain ears. Recruiting for these prestige jobs also heavily favors those with connections, and not surprisingly, students like to exploit their connections. Many comments here pertain to engineering or CS, but these schools are not typically known for those departments, and in any case, those jobs are not sexy either. (These aren't my judgments, just my observations of other people's perceptions). I would be interested in the statistics on entry to graduate-level programs and the effects of those numbers on this phenomenon.
- Earn one.
- Buy one.
In other words, a C student at Harvard whose family comes from money may very possibly be a complete idiot in comparison to an A student from the local Uni. . .Sounds like a Mr. Jeff Duntemann had to go to a mediocre school.
Who needs Harvard? A lot of talented people looking for a really good education that they can use as a springboord for a better life. Get real people, life is not measured soley by whether or not you find a CEO job for chrissakes. It's about doig something that you enjoy and making the lives of people around you better in the process.
Slashdot should know better than to publish an article like this. Life is more than getting a fancy title in corporate america. Criminy.
Basically, Wolfram wanted to develop a program for symbolic computation to help with his work on physics. He later did leave Caltech (and had serious problems trying to take his symbolic program with him as the University claimed ownership probably because he used University resources to develop it) and went to the Institute for Advanced Study. He did research there using computers and felt that the culture there didn't like computer modeling so he left and went to UIUC, I think, which was about the same time that he got the MacArthur Genius grant, I think, and that grant gave him enough money to found his own company.
"sweet dreams are made of this..."
The statistical sample of "arguments" is not "proof" that my theory is correct, but that these arguments would be made from a quasi-religious/emotive standpoint is logically predicted by my theory, and obviously so.
This means they support my theory, not simply because they fail the test of logic but because they pass the test of religious zealotry.
Counting cases for statistical support is generally called "rationality" due to the fact that one is taking "ratios" between case counts so that one can take into account contextual information such as counter-cases. This combination of logic, statistics and rationality is accorded the name "reason" -- something that is required to make profits for corporations.
Seastead this.
Perhaps if were to properly screen your applicants for appropriate experience, you wouldn't waste your time interviewing the ones that don't have any!
I was a Harvard undergrad and have been a graduate student instructor at (arguably) the top public university in the country. The most glaring difference I saw was writing ability.
At Harvard I was used to the fact that everyone I knew was a good writer - even we science students were pretty good. Sure, the grades were a bit inflated, but the work was generally decent work.
The public university students I have seen more recently (many humanities students included) have by-and-large been awful writers. As the previous poster stated, they "can't write two coherent sentences back-to-back".
This surprised the hell out of me. I was a public school student growing up and got a full need-based scholarship to college, so I had always assumed that the best state schools had students and faculty that were just as good as the best private schools. I've (unfortunately) now more or less concluded that the faculty quality may be similar, but the student quality (on average) is not.
This sig is false.
This sig is false.
You know I tried really hard at school but it wasn't for me. But I made some really good friends and we would all like a job when your finished. Your son George W.
Might as well become a manager, since all grads/workers get crapolo pay rates compared to big tiem managers that really doing do hard brain work but only coordinate the workers. Sounds bugger easy to me, at least easier than coding, more of a part creative thought process than pure math/logic process.
How does one become a manager? work at the bottom , wait till everyone leaves or dies and theres a lucky open position?
Such is life.
Might as well start your own business.
Liberty freedom are no1, not dicks in suits.
Letting a couple poorer people in doesn't forgive all the spots they give to legacies. Personally, I don't see why federal funds should go to schools that admit based on legacy.
However, you are very incorrect that there are no 'stable' jobs available (and I'm not talking about the pun of my sister poster).
Government jobs are such. They may pay less than others but part of the trade off is near absolute job security.
No I'm not. I'm merely accurately representing the source despite your misrepresentation of the statements
You cry reverse discrimination when white gentiless are not given adequate seats with respect to population, ignoring that blacks too are discriminated against.
Let me present the original sentence carefully for you so you can see the arithmetic implications that show your interpretation inconsistent with the original words of the author:
Now as your pop quiz question: What percent of the general population is black as implied by the above quote (where "representative" at Harvard means the same percent as the general population)?
Now, don't strain your brain too much. Take your time. I'm trying to help you here -- not make your head do the Scanners thing and go GABLOOIE.
Seastead this.
Its all about who you know. Engineering is a low job, like window cleaning, as Dilbert says, Engineers don't get offices or promotions unless they have the fortune of starting their own successful company. You can graduate from the top university or the bottom with a good degree and you can still quite easily end up in the same situation, but if you know the right people you're going to get on a board and be playing golf and earning that pay check while the lackeys do their science stuff. It just so happens that the powerful people you'll meet are more likely to be in a respectable university. Here in the UK it used to be that in order to get into a good uni you needed to be from a good school, which if you were poor but intelligent the government would pay for, then they stopped paying and so now you just need to be rich and the university will take on a quota of 'token' state-school kids (as long as they don't have a cockney accent)..
This comment does not represent the views or opinions of the user.
Not everyone is a DILL if they dont do a degree, sometimes spending those 4 years in a degree can mean the difference between missing the boat on the latest technology booms. Imagine if you went to UNI in 1994 to graduate in 1998. You would have missed the big internet boom, but if you left in '95 started a small company , got into the business and been one of the few people to do a particular thing, then you would have made more experience and technical knowledge while the UNI sticks with stuff 3-5 years OLD because it takes time for lecturers to learn their stuff, then teach it. For fast moving technology, its not suited to slow paced UNIversities, they are more suited to scientific models and slow moving knowledge.
Just because someone doesn't do a degree doesnt mean that cannot be trained, if your a dumb-ass-prick at 19, then you are unlikely to become a smart-ass genius just because you go to Harvard.
I find it often ironic that CEOs and business owners that got them selves rich of others but using their smarts but with NO DEGREE, require that all new hires to be DEGREE people. Once someone has finished their degree and done 5-8years of real work, then they are no longer any more BETTER than someone who has equally worked in similar jobs for 5-8years also. "Look man, I got a degree in 1989 in computing" thats about as usefull as a C-64 for a webserver. Your work experience in 1990-2005 is what sets you apart.
Maybe thats why a lot of super rich business people have no degrees because they could not get good enough job chances without one, so they started their own company and worked from there.
Each person is unique so examine them carefully even if no degree is present, I bet there are many grads which have graduated but not well or probably fluked it or just are sick of the decipline to be outstanding.
95% jobs are nothing more than just factory position process workers being told what to do.
Often job requirements are way above what the job really is, or often they get you to do the work of 2 people that you replaced.
Liberty freedom are no1, not dicks in suits.
I smell a massive inflation coming along where every 15 yo working at McDies will earn $50/hr easy, because runaway inflation will hit.
All those Harvard Grad economists working at wall street are nothing more than legalized THIEFS, all your savings will DISAPEAR once inflation hits, its the only way USA can reduce its debt, because rampant DEFLATION would see the pains of 1931 coming back.
Liberty freedom are no1, not dicks in suits.
- you know/learn what you need to know
- have enough money
- good contacts
then you just start your own firm and beat all loser competitors out of the business. If you can't do that then it wouldn't have mattered if you had a good education or not - you are still not good enough. If I were hiring I wouldn't hire anyone how wouldn't be able to make next Microsoft/Nokia.. etc. happen.Other advices:
You live isn't worth the shit if cannot make > 1M$/year, anything below it doesn't matter. So go for it or kill yourself.
Way to get there: Always put money before personal happiness.
Don't co-operate. Others are only competitors, you either get it all or you don't get nothing. Sharing with other ones gives you so little money that it doesn't matter (round all sums below 1M$ down to zero).
It's not like I believe guys who say profiling is evil and then profile are not hypocrites. Or are you proud of being a hypocrite?
Seastead this.
=) You're right. Cheers!
You automatically lose the flamewar for saying "quasi." Do not pass go, do not collect $200.
As the koreans say, ggnorekthx.
This sig is false.
I think it's probably more the end the Ivy-leaguers are after, and time at the university is only the a means to that end. It's possible that the means might be worthy of more sonsideration than people have given them in the past.
I think the idea Ivy-leaguers are somehow "special" is complete BS. Some might be, but I think most probably aren't. It's mostly a social/status game.
Okay, then that's essentially every school in the country, not just the Ivy League. State schools included - you think only private schools engage in this practice? It's good fundraising practice for them. See these numbers for some more examples.
Almost no school "gives" spots to legacies, they just give them extra consideration. The idea that somehow only Harvard does this is a trollish lie perpetuated by morons like our dear Slashdot editors who have been posting nasty anti-intellectual, anti-Ivy League trash all day.
I am a Harvard grad; an old classmate works in the office of the Prime Minister of Canada and told me this fascinating story. During Bush's recent visit to Canada he attended a meeting with the PM concerning US-Canada border issues. Also in attendance were a few Canadian cabinet ministers, Colin Powell, Condi Rice. About eight cabinet level attendees in total. The Canadian side thought Bush would make a few superficial remarks and then let Powell and Rice do the real work. In fact, they were surprised that Bush did all the talking, worked through a set of files in front of him and commanded the issues and topics with clarity and efficiency- like a keen, HBS grad. Surprised? Just because someone was a frat party animal and is inarticulate doesn't mean he is ineffective or stupid. On the other hand, I don't see HBS boasting about W very much. So don't expect a new HBS case study featuring W and a matrix analysis on regime change.
This is a fluff piece from Slate. I work at major biotechnology company in California. I have hired over 30 people in the last 6 years. I have found that most of the people from these schools are extremely arrogant and difficult to manage. Most believe they should be running our company and if they aren't running within a year of coming on-board they are clearly shocked that we don't realize their brilliance. They then do their best to make everyone on the team miserable like them. The real problem is that most universities don't really prepare people for the real world. In fact, I would argue that US universities are probably some of the most "unreal" places around now. Nevertheless shocking how arrogant some of the graduates from these schools are.
The sentence you quote was not about the author of the article; it was about the person who submitted the story to Slashdot.
And is Geocities supposed to have some sort of political reputation?
Don't blame Durga. I voted for Centauri.
Geocities is a carrier of content.
Seastead this.
Harvard is a country club. Stanford is for research. I've studied at both, and this is clear to me: creativity and genuine intelligence is not required for admission to these schools.
Harvard was a genuine joke. I'm sure law is good, but I never took any law classes.
Stanford is great for research, but that is for two reasons: the teachers in research fields are very experienced || because they have worked research since the graduated and never actually worked in a real job. Think about it.
How about Berklee? It's got the right number of E's.
The ______ Agenda
if the person is qualified and not a bullshit artist then they are a great asset, what else matters?
"The Post's Web site already has an alliance with MSNBC.com, which is partly owned by Microsoft, and former Microsoft executive Melinda Gates, the wife of the company's founder, was named to the Post Co. board in September."
First, how much did Melinda's influence on the Post's board affect the deal, and second, what ties does Slate still have to MS, beyond Melinda? Earlier attempts to sell off Slate had many strings attached in the contract leaving MS more or less still in editorial control.
I worked next to a Harvard MBA guy (our then President and CEO). Some small research showed his 3 previous companies tanked out of business. Rumors where that after provoking the death of all businesses he took under his decisional control, he could only get our "dot com" using his contacts (other Harvard graduates in the family).
Our dot com also thanked in 18 months; I could go on and on about bad decisions, like paying 20+ contractors (at $750K/mo for 8 months) while 25 employees had nothing to do, and all that for a project bringing in $20K/mo on completion. All revenues predicted by numerous "low level managers" before, during and after the project's life.
I am sure many Ivy League schools have great students, but so does many other schools. I would personally avoid Ivy Leagues just because of the general "super ego" attitude. Techy-Nerds are sometime hard to work with, but nearly all Ivy's I met are.
Undergraduates from Ivy league schools are no more qualified than people from any other school. All types of schools have their good and bad students. Private schools just have fewer regular duds and more cream-fed sloshes. Also, it is not uncommon for state schools to rival and beat private schools, especially in engineering or CS.
-- Microsoft is the most expensive commodity operating system and office suite vendor in the marketplace.
All the ivy greaduates I know are doing quite well. Glad to see overall business is so good that others do well too.
No- it's because they finally realized that anybody who goes to an American University, especially one with a fancy name, costs 10x as much as an IIT graduate who can do the same job and got their degree for $4000.
SJW: a person who perceives an injustice, and while correcting it, commits a greater injustice.
WTF is the point of giving people who can kick a football a college scholarship? I talk out of naivety here, since I can't think of any good reason (beyond financial ones, perhaps) that sports and HE are tied together in the States.
I mean, here in London, a few of the colleges have teams - I think Imperial (the biggest sci/tech college) have a team that is relatively pro, but that's only because most people see it as a bit of fun rather than what it seems to be in the US.
How does it further the "community of scholars seeking truth" function of a university to have dimwitted douchebags running around a football field on a semi-professional basis? You can justify college sports only on the same basis that you can justify college UT squads and scholarships for EverQuest nerds.
catch (HumourFailureException e) { e.user.send("You, sir, are a humourless idiot."); }