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Who Needs Harvard?

Posted by ryuzaki0 on from the no-one-in-new-haven dept.

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?"

14 of 577 comments (clear)

  1. Other Schools... by Lord+Pillage · · Score: 5, Interesting

    Could it be that other schools are becoming better as access to information increases?

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  2. Education no longer matters by adzoox · · Score: 2, Interesting

    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.

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    1. Re:Education no longer matters by ducomputergeek · · Score: 4, Interesting
      Well, if you don't have at least a Bacholers Degree, we aren't even going to look at your resume. It takes a work ethic and motivation to get a degree. A BA/BS means that "hey this person had at least enough drive to get the degree, we can probably train them to do whatever we need".

      So to say that education is less desirable than motivation and work ethic is a fallacy since it takes motivation and work ethic to get an education.

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      "The problem with socialism is eventually you run out of other people's money" - Thatcher.
    2. Re:Education no longer matters by harvardian · · Score: 2, Interesting

      You can be both a legacy AND work hard. As you can tell from my lame nick, I went to an Ivy League school, and this was the case for me. But I also went to public school, so I didn't have the socioeconomic boost that often comes with being a legacy.

      As a side note, I was one of 22 hires to Microsoft my year (/~100 CS majors). MIT had something like 29. So I'm not sure what the article is talking about.

      (For those interested, I quit after a year because I hated it. I'm applying to grad school now. And I use Firefox.)

    3. Re:Education no longer matters by Pathetic+Coward · · Score: 2, Interesting

      >It's nearly impossible to flunk out of an Ivy League school

      This may be true of Harvard (90% honors graduation rate), but certainly isn't true of my alma mater, Cornell. 15% honors graduation rate, a large percentage of flunk-outs and "academic leaves" freshman and sophomore years (I personally know many who never returned) and, unlike many of the other "competive schools", there's no forgiveness for freshman grades. If you don't get on dean's list freshman year you might as well transfer, because you aren't going to get honors and will be competing against those grade-inflated Harvard kids for grad and professional school admissions.

      Oh, and the engineering school there has a pretty good reputation, too. And the CS department, even though I think it's too theoretically oriented.

  3. Ivy vs non-ivy... by lordbyron · · Score: 5, Interesting

    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.

  4. Re:Diversity's Losers by jspoon · · Score: 3, Interesting
    White gentiles, comprising 73% of the general population get only 18% of the seats at Harvard. They are under-represented by a _factor_ of 4 times. If blacks were similarly under-represented at Harvard, they would have only 3% of the seats. In fact, they have 8%.

    Those stats didn't sound quite right to me, and they seem to contradict the numbers in Harvard's own information book:

    http://vpf-web.harvard.edu/budget/factbook/current _facts/enroll_ethnicity_7.html

    It shows (American) whites as comprising 44 percent of the student body. And since a third of the international students are from Europe, that probably tips the total over half. No info on how many are 'gentiles' though.

    That's less than the 70 some percent whites make up of the population, but lets see who is even more under-represented: Wow, even though blacks make up about 12% of the population, they're just 6.3 percent at Harvard! And Hispanics, who I believe recently passed blacks as Largest minority in the US, have just 5.5%!

    Of course we all know who the real culprits are: those crafty Asians and Pacific Islander's. Of course their status as the lone over-represented race is due to white guilt, not a culture that values academic achievement. (/end sarcasm)

    To disclose my slight personal connection to the issue: My uncle was the first Irish Catholic to get tenure at the history department at Harvard.

  5. Islamic fascists.... by Foamy · · Score: 2, Interesting
    Those Islamic fascists are surely taking advantage of us having an absolute moron running the globe's only superpower.

    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.

  6. ... OR by uarch · · Score: 2, Interesting

    ... 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.

  7. The decline of generalism by sbenj · · Score: 2, Interesting
    A missing factor in all of this may be that 30 or 50 years ago, a college degree in and of itself was considered to be a valuable ticket, and an indicator in and of itself of a persons ability. People graduated with generalist liberal arts degrees and moved smoothly into the business world, and in a situation like that it's reasonable to use the "quality" of the degree ( or at least the percieved quality ) as an indication.

    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.

    1. Re:The decline of generalism by hagbard5235 · · Score: 4, Interesting

      Actually, it isn't a decline in generalism, it's a decline in liberal arts degrees. If you really want a generalist, hire a physics major. Most liberal arts majors get almost no meaingful training in mathematics, or science. Mathematics and science background, and more importantly the kind of critical thinking they engender, is crucial today. Liberal arts majors don't have that.

      I interview lots of job candidates. While specialization that will make them applicable to the problem their being hired for is a plus, it's not the deciding factor, because I will need to use them on something completely different in 6 months to a year. Adaptability is key. Quick learning is key. The ability to flesh out a hard technical problem and come up with an innovative solution to it is key. I've never seen anyone with a liberal arts degree who could do those things. I see physics, mathematics, biochem, and engineering people do them routinely.

      The one kind of liberal arts major I've seen a general use for is history majors. They can pull together large quantities of scattered data and write a coherent explanation of what it all means. That's a niche, but it's a highly useful niche.

    2. Re:The decline of generalism by sbenj · · Score: 2, Interesting
      As a programmer I'm tempted to agree with a bias for the hard sciences, as I suspect are most people in the field. However, I'm not too sure that it's a good bias that ought to be indulged.

      While a liberal arts degree (as opposed to, say, an engineering degree) doesn't show evidence for analytical thinking, it compares favorably in my mind to junk degrees like (sorry, just my opinion) marketing or communications in that it at least shows evidence of intellectual curiosity and a living mind. There's something terribly sad, to me, of someone 19 years old with no intellectual interests. I have a vivid memory of a girl at my college orientation looking through the entire university bulletin and whining about not being able to find any courses on any subjects of interest.

      There's another issue regarding the degree type, and that's that there's a downside to a degree in a "hard" subject. I'm specifically thinking of CS majors I've worked with. As far as I can tell, having a CS degree and being a good programmer are unrelated, or at most distantly related. I've worked with plenty of unimaginative drones with CS degrees, who perhaps could've benfitted from writing some poetry.

      For the record, I've acutally got a music degree, though I did hard sciences for a few years. I've also had a number of recruiters tell me that lots of people thought musicians made good programmers (though perhaps they were just being nice).

  8. Re:Ivy League is no plus for tech grads by timeOday · · Score: 3, Interesting

    I'm sure you're well aware of this debate, but since it's relavant - more than half of all grades at Harvard are As or A-minuses. Is that all be attributable to the libaral arts as you suggest?

  9. Re:Legacy Graduates by Beetle+B. · · Score: 2, Interesting

    Not at all.

    At least last I heard (while ago), the number of Harvard students who benefit from this is less than 10. They simply did not admit such students.

    Anyone have any official numbers?

    --
    Beetle B.