I just finished The Fourth Turning Is Here. As someone in my eighties who has lived through the three previous eras described as Turnings by Howe I can say that they are a big deal. The fit is truly going to hit the shan in the next few years, and the result will probably be a levelling like the one following WWII. I operate a tree nursery in rural Texas south of Houston and the immiseration of the lower working class has gotten much much worse in just the last two years. People who could always find something are now broke, out of work, and hungry, and other parts of the country are probably a lot worse. Ideas like the Basic Income pushed by Andrew Yang are going to get a lot of attention as this immiseration spreads. As a descendent of flyover country gentry, town doctor, large farmer, I have lived to see the strip mining of capable people out of those areas. The level of federal debt is obviously unsustainable, the Woke manifestation has no solution for it or anything I can see. Academia and government have become a new Planter Class. The Planter Class lived off the stolen labor of their slaves. Academia is living on the stolen future labor of their students via student loans and government is living on the stolen labor of everyone by incredible borrowing.
I don't necessarily see Wokenss as a conspiracy but rather as a convenient change of subject for corporations and billionaires to jump on, but now that we've all become racist supremest homophobes income inequality hasn't been discussed much, nor has childhood stability started to be, yet it's amazing how morally superior those who attend the Ivies Plus are.
I wouldn't mind so much if Academia benefitted the professors, but the rise in tuition coupled with the fact that tenured jobs are harder to get while DEI administrators are making much more infuriates me. I also know a lot of high functioning autistic college kids who aren't receiving support services in colleges who could really use the help, despite the lip service touted to neurodiversity. To Rob's point about how elite universities are meant to carry on creating elites I think that is correct, but I wish they weren't subsidized in so many creative ways/grants/tax write offs by the public.
Yes, woke and all the radical left that the Democrat party has embraced and corporations have embraced is just a smoke screen for preventing the justified uprising of the lower income classes over the looting that the elites have done and are doing.
UBI is toxic. There is a good book, a novel, that somewhat explains the danger... Beggars in Spain. UBI is the beginning of the two-class system of elites in the upper class and everyone else. People must struggle, strive and persevere for their reward of self-sufficiency and independence that feeds natural human psychological needs. Take that away... just given them handouts to survive at a basic level, and their psychological needs will not be met and they will drift to other destructive directions in search of remedies to satiate those missing needs.
The US spends billions to create and retain domestic jobs... while other policies destroy domestic jobs. We need to stop the job destruction side and enhance the job creation and retention side. We are much better off from a perspective of health of the human condition by funneling the money into job creation and retention that paying off people that don't have work because we have encouraged the destruction or offshoring of domestic jobs.
“Elite colleges have effectively become the domain of two types of people: the children of the rich, and the freakishly remarkable. Our society shouldn’t be the Hunger Games. We should be looking at the unremarkable kids too, and figure out how to give them a shot.”
Kudos to this article whose subject is rarely discussed in polite or "meaningful" circles since those who would be spearheading the discussion are members of the unclothed emperor's cabal. Anyone else would be deemed unqualified or simply envious. Rob Henderson is among a vanishingly rare sliver of writers with a foot in both camps so to speak, whose experience and perspective is harder to dismiss. Those of us who graduated from state universities (Indiana University here) and at a time (1974) when simply earning a legitimate degree was a huge differentiator, it has been shocking to see the ever increasing hegemony and snarkiness and buffoonery from those with Ivy-plus pedigrees that they try to lord over the rest of us who they wish would simply bow down to their magistic superiority. They really can't understand our lack of reflexive worship. I strongly suspect that many in my cohort would love to see the rapid implosion of the charade which is the "Prestige of the Ivys." If that implosion were to happen in a manner akin to the how long it took the ill-fated Titan recreational submarine to snuff out the lives of its (mostly) smug occupants - who among the readers of this blog would shed a tear?
A friend’s sister went to U Penn and the only thing I learned about the school from her was that students there are extremely insecure about people thinking they’re just a state school.
Rob, great analysis as usual. Really liked how you brought out other parts of the paper.
I would make one point for your consideration about this section,
"Suppose we expel all of them. Suppose we replace them with the 25,000 academically-equipped poor and middle-class students in the analysis I referenced above. These 25,000 talented youngsters receive elite pedigrees. They obtain high-paying jobs. They gain more pathways to power and influence. How nice for them. What about the rest of the young people in the languishing communities, impoverished families, and dysfunctional neighborhoods they were plucked from?"
I think the big effect of this is you would actually change the elite over time. Basically you'd be filling the elite universities with more Rob Hendersons who come from backgrounds that would not buy into the luxury beliefs. For example, newspapers used to have hard scrabble reporters from lower and middle class backgrounds but now they're all Ivies. This approach would return us to that time. It could actually save us...it would certainly help.
That sounds nice in theory, but it dramatically overestimates the average low/middle class Ivy League attendee in their ability to not simply adopt whatever positions that the right person of authority tells them are correct. Rob Henderson is unique not just because he was poor, but because he miraculously survived a selection process that is literally designed to exclude the kind of people who don’t conform to a very particular pattern of behavior.
Sure, but they are much more likely to have common sense and the fact that they are not alone will allow them to be more comfortable speaking up. It would be a very different world than the drones we have now coming in with luxury beliefs instilled in them from prep schools and their elite families.
There is another (more likely?) possible result from that experiment: elite employers stop looking to the elite colleges to fill their ranks, because those schools no longer are populated with people like them-- they stop using colleges as a signal and start using other things like the high school the applicant went to.
Excellent reflections, as usual. Three random thoughts:
1. Why isn't Caltech included in Ivy Plus? By any reasonable standard, it should join the list.
2. I wracked my brains for examples of non-sports or entertainment "successes" without a college degree. There are probably more, but the name that popped for me was former Wisconsin Governor Scott Walker. His lack of a degree was the subject of elite snicker during the 2016 Republican primaries. But who could doubt we would have a better America today if no Trump, and Scott had provided an alternative channel for resentment against ruling elites?
3. "Latinx," Rob? ¡Ay de mi! You may of course use any self descriptor you choose, but "Latinx" is the ultimate cultural misappropriation. Spanish is a highly gendered language; you would not eat a tacx or hug your abuelx. If you want gender-neutral, "Latine" is real Spanish and some have begun to prefer it for that usage. As you likely know, "Latinx" is hugely unpopular in the Spanish-speaking world outside the American luxury beliefs class--the overwhelming majority of which is Anglophone. Just sayin'.
BTW, Amazon expressly ignores what college applicants attended, or even whether they graduated from college in evaluating employees and potential professional employees. They can do this because (as a huge employer) they can develop their own methods for evaluating talent that are more sophisticated that just relying on the crude proxy of where one went to school-- and relying on the selection mechanism of college admissions.
"Galloway is speaking specifically about economic opportunities. Nothing wrong with that. I’d focus at least as much, though, on a shot at improving children’s early lives. Well-meaning people like Prof G have been trained to speak in the language of economics and education. We could also concentrate on promoting stable families, attentive parents, and good social and emotional health for kids."
Looking at this pragmatically, I don't know how with any public policy we can make material progress "improving children's early lives" except by improving economic opportunity for low-income and middle class families.
Rob, let's do the next level of work here. You have done very well making the point that stable families are the correct remedy for improving the lives of children and hence improving the over all human condition as more children grow up to be well-functioning and self-sufficient adults. What exactly should government and society do to help make it so?
I think keeping drugs off the street and providing more services to help the addicted get straight is one, but frankly I cannot think of anything more powerful than, for example, economic development assistance to bring in good-paying industrial, manufacturing and trade jobs to labor surplus areas. Tax incentives for business to locate in these places, and tax assistance to working families.
Unfortunately it is powerful. Polls conclude that a majority like it. My perspective is that many people see it as an assist to help them break though the rigged game of elite control of the economy. What they don't understand is the destructive force of replacing reward based on color and gender-blind merit with any other system of criteria.
I have a brother that supports DEI and UBI even though he is a white male. He is an socioeconomic malcontent. He is the least successful of his brothers, a middle child, and he is sure it is because the man, the system, everyone else, has treated him unfairly and he is a victim. So to stick it to the man, he likes these political ideas that force "the man" to give rewards based on other criteria. There are a lot of people out there like my brother... and more every day as we continue to export working class opportunity to other countries while importing other country's poverty.
Yeah, those 2 Atlantic magazine headlines are fascinating: the first one has an edgy honesty and the second one is quintessentially, douche BAG. We live in a world of ambient political conditioning, and no institution is more guilty of this than Atlantic magazine, the salon of the elite.
I’m certain that AA has hurt the Black communities, just as brain drain out-migration hurts poor countries, tho helps the humans migrating. The smart and responsible leave the already underperforming group, which reduces the performance. Poor communities need their best members to stay in the community, and be a leading local example. Many older Blacks recall more thriving small Black businesses in ghettos, when discrimination stopped those locals from integrating AND leaving the real, geo located group. How to reduce Black crime and Black promiscuity? We need more govt experiments since we don’t know how, but being honest about the problem would help.
Society would be better off if tax exempt colleges had no more than 1% of their students from the top 1% (99%) of households, and follow that thru deciles down 90, 80,70,60,50,40,30, and maybe 20. Harvard should not be a huge tax free investment fund, with a college. But it is.
"This also occurs today with mixed-race people with a white parent. They feel less secure in their nonwhite status, so they double down on activism or broadcasting certain opinions to ensure people accurately consider their position to be on the “correct” side of the group boundary."
I don't think this is completely correct. Biracial kids by definition have one white parent and one non-white parent. The non-white parent is likely the child of immigrants. The kid probably probably grows up in a very diverse upwardly mobile neighborhood or a very white neighborhood (they are probably not growing up in a Bangladeshi or Chinese enclave for example). As a result, their non-white parent is the one who feels the anxiety about "losing" their culture and over-emphasizes it in their child.
For example, compare these two:
- fully Indian kid who grows up in San Jose, CA surrounded by lots of Indian kids and families
- half white half Indian kid who grows up in Berkeley, CA surrounded by lots of half white kids and white kids
The parents of the first kid are both Indian and likely both immigrants. They share in their culture with each other and don't need to "explain" anything. They also likely go to parties and gatherings with other similar families where cultural and religious customs are passed around and, frankly, the kids all just kind of figure it out.
The Indian parent of the second child in comparison does not have the "unsaid" cultural understanding with their white partner. In addition, they are not surrounded by Indian culture, contributing to their sense of cultural isolation. As a result they need to explicitly "teach" culture to both their partner and their kid. The kid therefore grows up identifying with that part of their racial heritage perhaps even more strongly than the first kid.
"Throughout the 18th century, Anglo American world, traditional authority was brought into question. The social hierarchy seemed less natural, less ordained by God, and more-man made, more arbitrary. By early 1770, the practice of ranking entering students at Harvard and Yale by their social status had some to seem archaic and unfair and was abolished." -Gordon Wood- The Radicalization of the American Revolution p.145. That is the same Wood from Good Will Hunting. "That's gonna last until next year; you're gonna be in here regurgitating Gordon Wood, talkin' about, you know, the pre-revolutionary utopia and the capital-forming effects of military mobilization."
As far the question of who to admit. think the key question here is “what is the purpose of the university”??
I think with state university (such as the one I attended) it is relatively easy. The purpose is to make improve the lives of the citizens of that state. This like means a balance of selecting the most academically talented with those of particular backgrounds and interests . If all of your students came from a single zip code or wanted to major in English for instance, that would clearly defeat the purpose. This is the ideal, although political considerations and industry influence often seep in.
For the private college it gets a lot more complex and perhaps I’ll defined. Traditionally, the (real) purpose was the bring the children of (economic) elites in close proximity. If we were to go through with Rob’s thought experiment of having an all middle/lower class Ivy, it would in many ways cease to be an Ivy. Furthermore, wealthy families them take their tuition dollars and, more importantly, their donation somewhere else.
It would be interesting to compare look compare the private school dominated Northeast with the much more public school oriented West Coast in terms of elite education and future position.
I think you have cause/effect reversed for (2). Someone coming from a top 1% family will have more opportunities to find higher earnings opportunities. But, controlling for wealth - the fact that a top 1% family wealth college student will have more opportunities whether going to Harvard or a local community collected - the college does not add additional explanatory power.
Interestingly, related research shows the strength of these findings varies by domain. In STEM, school affiliation makes little difference on average. But liberal art majors from Harvard will make more than the same from the University of State College. Such opportunities may reflect family connections more than school; however, there is IMO an interaction effect. If a rich family sends their child to Big State School, it will be harder for Goldman Sachs, McKinsey, etc. to make an offer even if the parents play golf together.
Assuming the number of people in the top 1% has a significant effect on the average (if it doesn't that is the answer) this could only be true is the remaining 99% has incomes *below* the average of their non-elite college counterparts to make up for the effect of those in the 1%. For example, if some went on to make lots of money as doctors and lawyers, but a chunk those that didn't ended up working for the Peace Corps.
Exactly! A perfect example of “earned income” and “wealth.” Ultimately, it indicates individuals accepted into these institutions never needed to attend college for economic advancement purposes, considering their inherited wealth already placed them in the 1%
I’m confused by that also. I guess maybe it is that if you already are part of the 1%, you have enough family connections etc. so you’ll get a high paying job no matter what. Likewise, if you get a journalism degree from an Ivy, you’re not going to make as much as a hedge fund manager with a degree from State U., but you’re more likely to get a fancy job at NYT or WaPo vs. a kid with a journalism degree from State U who ends up writing ad copy for a widget manufacturer.
I just finished The Fourth Turning Is Here. As someone in my eighties who has lived through the three previous eras described as Turnings by Howe I can say that they are a big deal. The fit is truly going to hit the shan in the next few years, and the result will probably be a levelling like the one following WWII. I operate a tree nursery in rural Texas south of Houston and the immiseration of the lower working class has gotten much much worse in just the last two years. People who could always find something are now broke, out of work, and hungry, and other parts of the country are probably a lot worse. Ideas like the Basic Income pushed by Andrew Yang are going to get a lot of attention as this immiseration spreads. As a descendent of flyover country gentry, town doctor, large farmer, I have lived to see the strip mining of capable people out of those areas. The level of federal debt is obviously unsustainable, the Woke manifestation has no solution for it or anything I can see. Academia and government have become a new Planter Class. The Planter Class lived off the stolen labor of their slaves. Academia is living on the stolen future labor of their students via student loans and government is living on the stolen labor of everyone by incredible borrowing.
I don't necessarily see Wokenss as a conspiracy but rather as a convenient change of subject for corporations and billionaires to jump on, but now that we've all become racist supremest homophobes income inequality hasn't been discussed much, nor has childhood stability started to be, yet it's amazing how morally superior those who attend the Ivies Plus are.
I wouldn't mind so much if Academia benefitted the professors, but the rise in tuition coupled with the fact that tenured jobs are harder to get while DEI administrators are making much more infuriates me. I also know a lot of high functioning autistic college kids who aren't receiving support services in colleges who could really use the help, despite the lip service touted to neurodiversity. To Rob's point about how elite universities are meant to carry on creating elites I think that is correct, but I wish they weren't subsidized in so many creative ways/grants/tax write offs by the public.
Yes, woke and all the radical left that the Democrat party has embraced and corporations have embraced is just a smoke screen for preventing the justified uprising of the lower income classes over the looting that the elites have done and are doing.
UBI is toxic. There is a good book, a novel, that somewhat explains the danger... Beggars in Spain. UBI is the beginning of the two-class system of elites in the upper class and everyone else. People must struggle, strive and persevere for their reward of self-sufficiency and independence that feeds natural human psychological needs. Take that away... just given them handouts to survive at a basic level, and their psychological needs will not be met and they will drift to other destructive directions in search of remedies to satiate those missing needs.
The US spends billions to create and retain domestic jobs... while other policies destroy domestic jobs. We need to stop the job destruction side and enhance the job creation and retention side. We are much better off from a perspective of health of the human condition by funneling the money into job creation and retention that paying off people that don't have work because we have encouraged the destruction or offshoring of domestic jobs.
“Elite colleges have effectively become the domain of two types of people: the children of the rich, and the freakishly remarkable. Our society shouldn’t be the Hunger Games. We should be looking at the unremarkable kids too, and figure out how to give them a shot.”
Kudos to this article whose subject is rarely discussed in polite or "meaningful" circles since those who would be spearheading the discussion are members of the unclothed emperor's cabal. Anyone else would be deemed unqualified or simply envious. Rob Henderson is among a vanishingly rare sliver of writers with a foot in both camps so to speak, whose experience and perspective is harder to dismiss. Those of us who graduated from state universities (Indiana University here) and at a time (1974) when simply earning a legitimate degree was a huge differentiator, it has been shocking to see the ever increasing hegemony and snarkiness and buffoonery from those with Ivy-plus pedigrees that they try to lord over the rest of us who they wish would simply bow down to their magistic superiority. They really can't understand our lack of reflexive worship. I strongly suspect that many in my cohort would love to see the rapid implosion of the charade which is the "Prestige of the Ivys." If that implosion were to happen in a manner akin to the how long it took the ill-fated Titan recreational submarine to snuff out the lives of its (mostly) smug occupants - who among the readers of this blog would shed a tear?
At Penn back in my day, one of the stores on campus sold a t-shirt that read “Not Penn State”.
A friend’s sister went to U Penn and the only thing I learned about the school from her was that students there are extremely insecure about people thinking they’re just a state school.
Rob, great analysis as usual. Really liked how you brought out other parts of the paper.
I would make one point for your consideration about this section,
"Suppose we expel all of them. Suppose we replace them with the 25,000 academically-equipped poor and middle-class students in the analysis I referenced above. These 25,000 talented youngsters receive elite pedigrees. They obtain high-paying jobs. They gain more pathways to power and influence. How nice for them. What about the rest of the young people in the languishing communities, impoverished families, and dysfunctional neighborhoods they were plucked from?"
I think the big effect of this is you would actually change the elite over time. Basically you'd be filling the elite universities with more Rob Hendersons who come from backgrounds that would not buy into the luxury beliefs. For example, newspapers used to have hard scrabble reporters from lower and middle class backgrounds but now they're all Ivies. This approach would return us to that time. It could actually save us...it would certainly help.
That sounds nice in theory, but it dramatically overestimates the average low/middle class Ivy League attendee in their ability to not simply adopt whatever positions that the right person of authority tells them are correct. Rob Henderson is unique not just because he was poor, but because he miraculously survived a selection process that is literally designed to exclude the kind of people who don’t conform to a very particular pattern of behavior.
Sure, but they are much more likely to have common sense and the fact that they are not alone will allow them to be more comfortable speaking up. It would be a very different world than the drones we have now coming in with luxury beliefs instilled in them from prep schools and their elite families.
There is another (more likely?) possible result from that experiment: elite employers stop looking to the elite colleges to fill their ranks, because those schools no longer are populated with people like them-- they stop using colleges as a signal and start using other things like the high school the applicant went to.
Excellent reflections, as usual. Three random thoughts:
1. Why isn't Caltech included in Ivy Plus? By any reasonable standard, it should join the list.
2. I wracked my brains for examples of non-sports or entertainment "successes" without a college degree. There are probably more, but the name that popped for me was former Wisconsin Governor Scott Walker. His lack of a degree was the subject of elite snicker during the 2016 Republican primaries. But who could doubt we would have a better America today if no Trump, and Scott had provided an alternative channel for resentment against ruling elites?
3. "Latinx," Rob? ¡Ay de mi! You may of course use any self descriptor you choose, but "Latinx" is the ultimate cultural misappropriation. Spanish is a highly gendered language; you would not eat a tacx or hug your abuelx. If you want gender-neutral, "Latine" is real Spanish and some have begun to prefer it for that usage. As you likely know, "Latinx" is hugely unpopular in the Spanish-speaking world outside the American luxury beliefs class--the overwhelming majority of which is Anglophone. Just sayin'.
Bill Gates...
BTW, Amazon expressly ignores what college applicants attended, or even whether they graduated from college in evaluating employees and potential professional employees. They can do this because (as a huge employer) they can develop their own methods for evaluating talent that are more sophisticated that just relying on the crude proxy of where one went to school-- and relying on the selection mechanism of college admissions.
Latinx? Really?
"We could also concentrate on promoting stable families, attentive parents, and good social and emotional health for kids. "
Would love to know how to promote this...
"Galloway is speaking specifically about economic opportunities. Nothing wrong with that. I’d focus at least as much, though, on a shot at improving children’s early lives. Well-meaning people like Prof G have been trained to speak in the language of economics and education. We could also concentrate on promoting stable families, attentive parents, and good social and emotional health for kids."
Looking at this pragmatically, I don't know how with any public policy we can make material progress "improving children's early lives" except by improving economic opportunity for low-income and middle class families.
Rob, let's do the next level of work here. You have done very well making the point that stable families are the correct remedy for improving the lives of children and hence improving the over all human condition as more children grow up to be well-functioning and self-sufficient adults. What exactly should government and society do to help make it so?
I think keeping drugs off the street and providing more services to help the addicted get straight is one, but frankly I cannot think of anything more powerful than, for example, economic development assistance to bring in good-paying industrial, manufacturing and trade jobs to labor surplus areas. Tax incentives for business to locate in these places, and tax assistance to working families.
What else?
This is exactly on the mark. I want to shake people out of their stupor with the word equity. It's a dishonest word that sounds nice. That's all.
Unfortunately it is powerful. Polls conclude that a majority like it. My perspective is that many people see it as an assist to help them break though the rigged game of elite control of the economy. What they don't understand is the destructive force of replacing reward based on color and gender-blind merit with any other system of criteria.
I have a brother that supports DEI and UBI even though he is a white male. He is an socioeconomic malcontent. He is the least successful of his brothers, a middle child, and he is sure it is because the man, the system, everyone else, has treated him unfairly and he is a victim. So to stick it to the man, he likes these political ideas that force "the man" to give rewards based on other criteria. There are a lot of people out there like my brother... and more every day as we continue to export working class opportunity to other countries while importing other country's poverty.
Yeah, those 2 Atlantic magazine headlines are fascinating: the first one has an edgy honesty and the second one is quintessentially, douche BAG. We live in a world of ambient political conditioning, and no institution is more guilty of this than Atlantic magazine, the salon of the elite.
I’m certain that AA has hurt the Black communities, just as brain drain out-migration hurts poor countries, tho helps the humans migrating. The smart and responsible leave the already underperforming group, which reduces the performance. Poor communities need their best members to stay in the community, and be a leading local example. Many older Blacks recall more thriving small Black businesses in ghettos, when discrimination stopped those locals from integrating AND leaving the real, geo located group. How to reduce Black crime and Black promiscuity? We need more govt experiments since we don’t know how, but being honest about the problem would help.
Society would be better off if tax exempt colleges had no more than 1% of their students from the top 1% (99%) of households, and follow that thru deciles down 90, 80,70,60,50,40,30, and maybe 20. Harvard should not be a huge tax free investment fund, with a college. But it is.
"This also occurs today with mixed-race people with a white parent. They feel less secure in their nonwhite status, so they double down on activism or broadcasting certain opinions to ensure people accurately consider their position to be on the “correct” side of the group boundary."
I don't think this is completely correct. Biracial kids by definition have one white parent and one non-white parent. The non-white parent is likely the child of immigrants. The kid probably probably grows up in a very diverse upwardly mobile neighborhood or a very white neighborhood (they are probably not growing up in a Bangladeshi or Chinese enclave for example). As a result, their non-white parent is the one who feels the anxiety about "losing" their culture and over-emphasizes it in their child.
For example, compare these two:
- fully Indian kid who grows up in San Jose, CA surrounded by lots of Indian kids and families
- half white half Indian kid who grows up in Berkeley, CA surrounded by lots of half white kids and white kids
The parents of the first kid are both Indian and likely both immigrants. They share in their culture with each other and don't need to "explain" anything. They also likely go to parties and gatherings with other similar families where cultural and religious customs are passed around and, frankly, the kids all just kind of figure it out.
The Indian parent of the second child in comparison does not have the "unsaid" cultural understanding with their white partner. In addition, they are not surrounded by Indian culture, contributing to their sense of cultural isolation. As a result they need to explicitly "teach" culture to both their partner and their kid. The kid therefore grows up identifying with that part of their racial heritage perhaps even more strongly than the first kid.
"Throughout the 18th century, Anglo American world, traditional authority was brought into question. The social hierarchy seemed less natural, less ordained by God, and more-man made, more arbitrary. By early 1770, the practice of ranking entering students at Harvard and Yale by their social status had some to seem archaic and unfair and was abolished." -Gordon Wood- The Radicalization of the American Revolution p.145. That is the same Wood from Good Will Hunting. "That's gonna last until next year; you're gonna be in here regurgitating Gordon Wood, talkin' about, you know, the pre-revolutionary utopia and the capital-forming effects of military mobilization."
As far the question of who to admit. think the key question here is “what is the purpose of the university”??
I think with state university (such as the one I attended) it is relatively easy. The purpose is to make improve the lives of the citizens of that state. This like means a balance of selecting the most academically talented with those of particular backgrounds and interests . If all of your students came from a single zip code or wanted to major in English for instance, that would clearly defeat the purpose. This is the ideal, although political considerations and industry influence often seep in.
For the private college it gets a lot more complex and perhaps I’ll defined. Traditionally, the (real) purpose was the bring the children of (economic) elites in close proximity. If we were to go through with Rob’s thought experiment of having an all middle/lower class Ivy, it would in many ways cease to be an Ivy. Furthermore, wealthy families them take their tuition dollars and, more importantly, their donation somewhere else.
It would be interesting to compare look compare the private school dominated Northeast with the much more public school oriented West Coast in terms of elite education and future position.
Word. Power to the (dispossessed) people!
I hope this isn’t a stupid question, but... can somebody explain to me in simple terms how it is simultaneously true that
1) Going to an ivy league school vs not has almost no effect on average future earnings, and
2) Going to an ivy league school makes you 60% more likely to have earnings in the top 1%?
Having a lot of trouble wrapping my mind around this one.
I think you have cause/effect reversed for (2). Someone coming from a top 1% family will have more opportunities to find higher earnings opportunities. But, controlling for wealth - the fact that a top 1% family wealth college student will have more opportunities whether going to Harvard or a local community collected - the college does not add additional explanatory power.
Interestingly, related research shows the strength of these findings varies by domain. In STEM, school affiliation makes little difference on average. But liberal art majors from Harvard will make more than the same from the University of State College. Such opportunities may reflect family connections more than school; however, there is IMO an interaction effect. If a rich family sends their child to Big State School, it will be harder for Goldman Sachs, McKinsey, etc. to make an offer even if the parents play golf together.
Assuming the number of people in the top 1% has a significant effect on the average (if it doesn't that is the answer) this could only be true is the remaining 99% has incomes *below* the average of their non-elite college counterparts to make up for the effect of those in the 1%. For example, if some went on to make lots of money as doctors and lawyers, but a chunk those that didn't ended up working for the Peace Corps.
Exactly! A perfect example of “earned income” and “wealth.” Ultimately, it indicates individuals accepted into these institutions never needed to attend college for economic advancement purposes, considering their inherited wealth already placed them in the 1%
I’m confused by that also. I guess maybe it is that if you already are part of the 1%, you have enough family connections etc. so you’ll get a high paying job no matter what. Likewise, if you get a journalism degree from an Ivy, you’re not going to make as much as a hedge fund manager with a degree from State U., but you’re more likely to get a fancy job at NYT or WaPo vs. a kid with a journalism degree from State U who ends up writing ad copy for a widget manufacturer.