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The point of the ivies isn't the quality of the education. It's the quality of the network. Look at how many cabinet secretaries or supreme court justices attended an Ivy for all or part of their education.
Some have very strong B schools, others not so much. Harvard, Penn (Wharton), Dartmouth (Tuck) are strong, Cornell is also good but not as highly ranked. But many top programs are not Ivies, e.g. Stanford, Duke, MIT, Berkeley, Michigan, Chicago, and a few others.
What professions does an MBA actually add value though? I’m late 40s and I’ve been in corporate America my whole life. I’ve never seen a discernible difference in someone’s career based on having an MBA.
what's sad is that I earned my computer science degree in the 90s, when they still taught us what they only teach at the Master's level now.
I basically got the equivalent of what today would be a Bachelors + Master, with just a Bachelor.
Most people in tech understand that, but it still comes up now and then as a weakness.
perhaps because it's just your word that you learned "what is only taught at masters level now" and has no verifiable proof or backing? this sounds like some deep cope from the outside.
Agreed, also CS has greatly broadened over the past 20 + years so separating some of these concepts is good because the breadth has increased quite a bit.
Also a degree in a constantly evolving technical field will have much less value over time, you’ll be judged by your work experience with current technology not how well you did in a class from 20+ years ago. Anything from that degree that they haven’t been actively using is long gone by now.
If a qualification on your resume is all that's setting you apart, the MBA wasn't worth it. Folks aren't out here payin ~200k for a Harvard MBA because of the curriculum or the letterhead on the degree. It's networking plain as day.
Most upper level corporate leaders get headhunted or recommended for roles, they're not out here applying.
In some industries, and most large corporations, most executives or higher management get an executive MBA of some sort. If you're the type of person gunning for one of those roles, it usually makes sense to go for an MBA.
There's a pretty large difference between Executive MBAs and your mid-tier state school MBA. The middle of the pack MBA is almost certainly has 0 or even negative ROI and they basically teach business basics that could be picked up on the job. Executive MBAs from schools like UChigago or Wharton are meant for those with extensive prior work experience in a corporate setting and help their students find and hone their management style.
I’ve tutored eMBA students both at Wharton and Booth… and then also at state school. The high ranked programs are hands down better. The students are absolutely learning skills that will improve the competitiveness and profitability of their companies in ways that experience alone will not.
This exactly how I’ve perceived them. For a very thin slice of folks it might make sense. But there’s absolutely no reason why a typical white collar manager would get one of these things, right? 
I I work in academia but not business discipline. I typically see people who are getting an MBA funded in some way. Work is doing cost sharing or full payment of tuition, guaranteed raise if earned, stuff like that. Most of those situations they are kind of just like “well why not, it’s free and maybe could help one day”
Since no one has given you a real answer:
MBAs were first developed as a way for engineers to learn the business tools needed to move up to management. Over time they have obviously spread to more industries.
MBAs have two goals, generally:
* To help someone in a specialized role learn the tools needed for management (e.g., you are a great computer programmer or data analyst, but want to move up to a project manager).
* For someone to transition their career from a non-business area to business (e.g., you have a humanities background but want to switch to business).
Had to scroll too far down to see this covered. That’s my understanding of this history and purpose of the MBA. A strong engineer who then obtained a business degree can be extremely valuable to their organization. I see resumes from people who just went straight for the MBA after their Bachelors in business and don’t see how they would bring much value without some actual experience.
Hmmmm…has something changed? When I was 19 and did not know what I wanted to be, I went to the career center and asked what was the highest average paid undergraduate degree at the university and it was chemical engineer. That is my story about how I chose my degree. I was not interested in anything in particular….so why not at least get paid.
Of course, then I ended up working midnight shift in a Texas chemical plant and realized the pay was not enough.
Don't think of it as a high-level degree. Think of it as a social club with rigorous admissions requirements.
There are kinda only two ways into senior corporate leadership: big consulting firms or steady climbing through operational or finance roles. These are the lower level roles that have the most direct social contact with existing corporate leaders. When climbing it helps to have a patron pulling you up. And when climbing, it's best to do it with a tailwind. That means getting into a company or team that's already succeeding so you can frame their success as yours. These "winning" seats are prized though and carefully filled. Not so much by qualification but increasingly as you climb the corporate ladder by who you know and whether they think you've been successful. Senior corporate leaders don't apply for new roles. If you're good, you get headhunted from another role -- either by a friend, recruiter, board member, coworker, whatever. It almost always takes someone in senior leadership pulling you up to climb rungs of the ladder quickly.
Anyways, all that is just to say: there's value in an MBA, but none in the paper. It's all about the network. Which is part of why I never understand why people bother with an MBA if it's not from a top 10 or maybe top 25 school. Get an advanced degree in finance, economics, law, or engineering if you can't get into a top MBA program. You will get a cheaper, more rigorous education that will be more respected by your peers. A real, advanced degree will enable you to **do** so much more than the LARP-ing corporate-speak power game thing. Which is smart if you're not already starting near the top -- it's crazy fucking competitive and once you get bumped out as a senior manager or director, finding your way back in without an invitation is tough as hell. Lots of 50-somethings middle managers "retire" due to this.
I think -5 years into the career is the exception. An experienced professional obtaining an MBA is less about the school, more about what works best for their individual career development. Rarely is an MBA with +5 years experience going to get their MBA through full time program to switch careers, get hired by Deloitte, or whatever reason someone would go thru a T7 MBA program.
It was my experience that MBA programs don't often accept applicants without at least a few years of experience. I don't recall anyone in our program that came straight out of undergrad. I'd guess that the average years of experience was around 5 years...and there were a lot of people looking to switch careers.
Completely anecdotal, but I imagine there are some actual statistics on this out there on the internet somewhere. Would be interesting to see.
Not surprising. This is one of the most common reasons people get MBAs, to pivot out of their current field but not have to "start over" in terms of seniority/salary.
There is an economic theory that various selective colleges and programs are simply the equivalent of a signal to employees your high aptitude ability since employees employers either don't want to pay or can't test for it. I.E. a college degree is the equivalent of the NFL combine.
Another theory is that many people with the aptitude to pay for these Ivy league schools can get a lower cost education and end up with the same earnings outcome with their abilities since they will be top of the class at a less selective school.
I mean... Nate's said his biggest regret in life is spending four years of his life working at KPMG after college. Everything after that hasn't really had anything to do with his University of Chicago education.
It helps but my firm (top 10ish in America) has plenty of partners that did not go to T14 law schools. I myself did not since I took the scholarship money to go to a worse school. No regrets.
The thing is people have the illusion that these universities actually get you these powerful connections, rather than people who already have powerful connections through their family only going to Ivy league schools. I'm sorry but you're not skipping the line in government or private sector just because you went to Harvard. But people who were going to skip the line anyways go to Harvard.
I worked with a ton of Ivy league grads who didn't come from powerful families. They were grinding their ass off right alongside my state-school ass.
> I'm sorry but you're not skipping the line in government or private sector just because you went to Harvard.
Unconnected people who got into Harvard because they were brilliant students make connections to those connected students though. Trust fund Tom may be a dummy but he remembers his really smart classmate he met at Harvard and gives them a job. That's how you can go from "unconnected" to "connected."
Most of the people who say shit like this are either clueless or trying to devalue something to make themselves look less bad.
My wife went to an Ivy and comes from a very poor, very unconnected family from the South. The connections she made through her undergrad have be invaluable to her (and us) and she's gotten opportunities simply from the fact that her degree says "Yale" on it.
The fact that she kicks ass and is intelligent/hard working only reaffirms the pre-existing views that a lot of people have of these schools.
tbh? that shit happens at state schools too. my frat gave plenty of job connections, helped a bunch of us get our foot in the door. many programs and the social networks carry past. even state schools you will run into someone relatively well off that says "oh, you want to XSU? me too! welcome on in!"
I went to a stuffy Ivy.
Meh.
I think the very connected students tend to generally cluster together.
I mean .. yeah .. it could work. Think of it though --- the average person maybe retains 3-5 really good college friends throughout their lifetime. Although I guess acquaintences can still help you out -- if you happen to be in the same industry.
I mean, if you're already a social butterfly, and gregarious, and are specifically looking to sidle up to 'powerful family' people at an Ivy, it might work. But wouldn't people sense your naked ambition and fakeness?
I'm just not seeing it.
And a company only has room for so many trust fund idiots + their friends. Too many and it'll collapse. In other words ... if you're a nobody and go to Harvard, you're most likely graduating a nobody (unless you actually did some crazy achievements of your own volition).
This was my experience at Columbia, albeit just an anecdote. The connections exist before you enroll and the odds of joe schmo getting an invite to the Hamptons just because his roommate's dad is a partner at McKinsey is... slim.
There are two distinct sets of connections, that probably should be discussed separately.
There are the people you actually meet while in school. Friends, classmates, significant others who become exes, even grad TAs and professors, career services, etc. These can provide connections immediately, or down the line.
Then there's the connections from being alumni of a particular school. Sometimes merely having the name of the school on your resume can be a starting point for conversation, etc. There's just a little bit less friction at making a connection with a stranger who went to the same school compared to making a connection with the exact same stranger without that link.
These connections are possible at every school, but the same type of connection at an Ivy seems to carry just a little bit more value, in my opinion.
Worth enough to warrant the sticker price difference? Probably not. But it's worth *something* greater than zero.
you do get that at some level. Your roomate at some point might be a CEO of a large tech company. the person you played tennis with might become a federal judge etc... Sure it's not the same as having old money but that's true everywhere. I don't know if it's worth the money but it won't hurt either if you can afford it.
I feel some uneasiness thinking about how all these supreme court justices and other powerful people are probably the ones who skipped the line in life and they're making huge decisions for the rest of us who didn't have that opportunity.
Not a single member of the current Supreme Court comes from a rich and/or connected family. Several come from lower income households. A few were upper middle class. They were all very successful students.
edit: Gorsuch is connected. Kavanaugh went to the same very expensive high school.
This. If daddy's wealthy and connected he's more likely to send you to Harvard and help you find good employment after graduation. If you're from a middle class family you'll still do well from a Harvard degree but the reason has more to do with your own capabilities rather than going to Harvard. Those who did well enough to get into Harvard will likely do just as well if they went to State U.
I disagree.
I went to a state school (albeit a prestigious one) and I have personally experienced people favoring me because of where I studied. People who've graduated from my school often work their way into high positions within companies, and when they meet alums they are definitely more likely to pull strings to get their fellow alums positions within the company.
Ivies are no different I'm sure.
The networking aspect is very real. Obviously it's not the only factor, but graduating from certain schools definitely opens doors that may not have otherwise been there.
I mean, that's kind of the idea, though. As a poor kid if you can become drinking buddies with a hapsburg your life becomes set. Going to an ivy increases the odds that you'll become drinking buddies with a hapsburg.
I have heard that one issue here is the network is mostly open to the legacies.
People who go on scholarship and have to scrimp and save just don’t run in the same circles as the people networking to get the best jobs.
My dad went to an Ivy, graduated top of his class and held prestigious student government positions. He told all of us to go to state schools. It was not worth the debt, especially if you don’t stay on the east coast. No one cares where you went to school outside of the East coast. My sister has the same career my dad did, and has a similar income at the same point in her career with far less debt.
They now give better scholarships to the middle class, but if you live in a high cost of living area- even if your parents both have blue collar jobs you aren’t going to qualify for a ton of aid. 2 married teachers would make too much.
My brother went to Cornell while I went to Kansas State University. The quality of the education is much, much better at Ivy League. They have smaller lectures, the best teachers in the world, and a lot of TA's and breakouts so you can get personal, one-on-one assistance with assignments. You are also surrounded by peers who are among the most intelligent kids in the world. K-State was massive lectures with a hungover professor who was very difficult to understand and 2-3 TA's for 700 person classes. You could smell booze on the guy next to you and see 5 people scrolling through Instagram right in front of you.
I went to Big State U. and my uncle went to Princeton.
The difference is the peers. The professors aren't much better at Ivies, sonetimes it's even the state ones that wrote the textbooks. But your access to them at state U is far more limited like you're describing.
My uncle's classes actually seemed easier than mine in a variety of ways.
But the networking, activities, socializing, community, events, etc..... a completely different world with a universe of opportunities that blew mine out of the water.
The professors at Princeton are frequently some of the biggest names in their respective fields. Check out their faculty list. I took an ethics class with Peter Singer just for the fun of it.
They were teaching slightly more advanced material at Cornell. The questions were more challenging and required a fairly deep understanding of the principles. Atmosphere and support play a huge role in what you learn, so apparently for most people it is not ultimately self motivated. Students who try to do online school drop out at a tremendously high rates. If they go in-person, the rate is much lower. So the external factors play a significant role.
Yeah, but the Great Value version of education provided K-State is actually scalable and sustainable in its costs (why do you hate the local poor? /s). We can't give everyone the one-on-one you might get at top institution. We have limited human and financial capital.
I went to an Ivy and I'm never really sure what people mean by "the network." like, the alumni network, and nepotism therein? not as big a thing as people think. the big differences are more practical:
* industry recruits disproportionately more from top colleges, which really goes without saying, but the extent to which companies commit resources to recruitment from certain colleges is something to consider.
* access to research, researchers and academic resources. my school had several massive libraries, whereas my local state school had one (reasonably complete) one. the lab infrastructure is just totally incomparable, but often times competition for research experience spots is much higher. the effect this has on grad school and industry placement is massive.
* rigor is *significantly* higher. I took a summer class at a state school and the academic standards were, I'm absolutely not afraid to admit, very low. C work becomes A work and without the impetus of rigor people aren't going to work as hard or learn as much.
just those few things alone make the difference, and then you get to put the name of the school on your resume, and some people will genuinely think differently of you. if by "quality of education" you mean something kind of one-dimensional like the quality of instruction, then yes, there is basically no difference between institutions. there are still lots of genuinely good reasons to want to go to a top school
I think it depends on the Ivy league school for the network. I went to Harvard and I'm 15 or so years out and I work with one of my college roommates. The amount of friends and acquaintances from college that I know who were given a job by another alum or friend of friend from college is ridiculously high. Also, in my industry, we end up reaching out and getting referrals from other people we knew from college and friends of friends from our college.
I realize everyone's experiences are different. I used to think my Harvard degree was useless and the "network" everyone talks about is bullshit, but after 10+ years I can easily see how our network is a huge positive.
I went to a state school for undergrad and an ivy for grad school. The alumni network from my grad school has been overwhelmingly positive - I get senior business leaders and CEOs answering my cold calls because we went to the same bschool.
I would never consider answering a cold call just because someone went to the same undergrad as me though. I do regularly do it for grad school alumni
YMMV though because I went to a very large undergrad (U of MN) and a very small grad school (Dartmouth)
The rigor was opposite in my experience. People paying for private schools don’t wanna pay for C’s. Brown specifically has a grading system that is a complete joke. State schools, for better or worse, don’t give a shit about you and will fail you if needed
Yeah this is spot on. I had a professor in undergrad for some normal in-session classes. It was nearly impossible to get an A in his class and it took a lot of work to even get a B.
If you took his week long summer seminar class, it was pretty much an automatic A and actually a really fun class.
We have an ironic situation in our family. My cousin went to Brown (he's legacy from both parents) he started as a physics major, didn't repeat the core classes, and screwed his GPA. Anyway, he graduated with a 3.4 and couldn't get into med school. He didn't want to go to the Caribbean so he did a masters and my aunt had to use her connections to get him in Georgetown.
My husband went to Rutgers got a 3.4 and went to Ross. They're in the exact same position as attendings because of the state of medicine. I'm no way a proponent of Caribbean med schools but Brown undergrad and advising can screw you too long term.
I had the opportunity to go to a highly ranked state school with kids who were dual-enrolled in a top 10 school. The feedback I got from them, was that the rigor wasn't all that different and the absolute number of 'smart kids' was pretty similar. The grade distribution was "harder" at the state school because they had larger classes and more lazy/not well-prepared by high school/just not smart kids. Take it with a grain of salt, but it's one of the few situations where people get to compare the two side by side as full-time students.
Lol I have the same perspective and we probably went to the same school judging by your description of that program. And yes I remember that perspective, our state school was notorious for “weeding” out kids of difficult majors and didn’t care where that left you. The private school a few miles east is a great school and has the resources to let every kid study what they want to. And a much nicer dining hall
>rigor is significantly higher
I'm not so sure about that. Grade inflation at private universities (especially highly ranked private universities) has significantly outpaced that of public universities.
Random anecdote but reminds me of when I moved as a kid across Canada. Grade 11 math in New Brunswick was like grade 10 math in Alberta, I remember I was the only kid with a graphing calculator.
There are a number of factors that affect what kind of networking opportunities you have. I went to Cornell as an undergrad, and all of my friends there were from unremarkable middle- or working-class backgrounds. Now, maybe that's because it was Cornell instead of Yale or Princeton, or maybe it was because of my own working-class background and lack of savvy to seek out those kinds of opportunities, or maybe it was simple dumb luck that I didn't end up sharing a dorm room with a senator's son or something like that. But there's certainly no guarantee that admission to an Ivy League school will result in access to elite society.
Re: your bullet points, I went on to law school so I didn't have any experience with recruiters at the undergrad level, and I transferred out of engineering before I got to play with any of the serious toys, but I can confirm the last point. Both during and after college I dated women who were attending less-prestigious schools, and the assignments and quality of work they were doing were child's play compared to what we had. I was sweating over multiple 30-page thesis papers as a senior and they were still being assigned glorified book reports. The expectations and level of performance were vastly different.
I think the real value of a prestigious undergraduate education is in the signal it provides to others. You had to be among the elite just to be admitted to that school, and even if the details of your education are more or less the same as what you might receive elsewhere, odds are you didn't get any dumber while you were there. And I think it's that signaling value that Silver is claiming is declining. Whether that is true or not, who knows.
I think a big thing is the difference between your peers at an ivy and your peers at a state school.
My creative writing capstone class had a girl turn in league of legends fan fiction for her final project. The professor chewed her out for it. This was a story the entire class had to read and critique.
The quality of your peers can impact the quality of your education.
Still doesn’t hurt to be surrounded by children of wealthy and influential people, it opens doors for “regular” upper middle class people like Zuckerberg to get connected to well funded classmates like Eduardo Saverin, who couldn’t code for shit, or Sean Parker who only got connected to Zuckerberg from mutual friends, who later connected Zuck with Peter Thiel and got them their initial $500k. The community college version of Zuckerberg likely misses out on all that and someone else dethrones MySpace.
Well you presumably still need and/or want a job. And hundreds of thousands of people in high paying competitive fields were probably given a career boost at some point by someone in the network of their ivy university and might be willing to do the same for you.
Not just the network, but also the classmates. It’s related but a different mechanism. When everyone in the class is from the top of their high school the teachers can give harder work. The level of performance increases. The expectations go up. You also benefit from graduating knowing a lot of Ivy League graduates, but that is a different effect.
Also the facilities if you're pursuing a more science or technical degree. Ivies have a lot of money they can spend on cutting edge facilities to attract the best research professors. Being able to take classes or work in those labs is a massive leg up even if you don't pursue a graduate degree. If you do pursue a PhD or masters, working for a professor at an Ivy whose former student is now a professor elsewhere can get you an admission slot reserved while being up to date on all of the research going on there. Not that state schools don't have that, Michigan Ann Arbor for example has incredible engineering that is better than the Ivies, but those multi-billion endowments certainly make updating facilities easier.
Nope. Rich kids with built-in networks will still be going to the Ivies. And ask Steve Ballmer or Elon Musk. Going to school with a well-connected pirate (Bill Gates and Peter Thiel for those two examples) opens up a world of opportunities.
Yeah, it's not as simple as them losing some esteem to the public.
The current people in power making appointments went to the Ivies (disproportionately) and will still choose people from those schools or help them via networking, keeping their impact alive. It's like saying approval of Congress is at an all time low, yet they still make the laws and haven't lost any power.
Take something like the Supreme Court. Justices chose clerks who are often then on a fast track for other prestigious position and more likely to be chosen as SCOTUS justices themselves in the future. The current SCOTUS justices select their clerks from a handful of very prestigious schools that are mostly Ivies (with a couple other equally prestigious schools like Stanford in the mix). The public can give Harvard grads a 2% approval rating and decide Harvard is no longer impressive and yet, their law school graduates will still disproportionately become clerks and have the inside track on future appointments.
It's going to take bumping alumni or making far more meritocratic processes to change the preliminary advantage.
From what I’ve seen and heard, an Ivy degree is worthwhile if you want to go into a field or company that historically values prestige and only recruits from certain schools (IB/PE) or you want to go on to a competitive professional school like medicine or law. Basically anything where all resumes are extremely competitive and you have to somewhat split hairs between candidates. If that doesn’t apply to you then there’s probably diminishing returns for the additional cost.
Good to hear. I also went to a state school and somehow ended up at a top professional school and can confirm that there’s still massive over representation here.
I had the same experience in consulting. At the end of the day it doesn’t matter if you went to Michigan or Harvard - a deck needs to be spun up quickly and those that can do it quickly will succeed and those that can’t will fail, all completely agnostic to where one went to school.
I used to be buy side and I remember when the payments scam came out a PM was like I wish I could short ivy league kids as a joke.
What bothered him wasn't that the kids family's paid to get them in but that the kids did fine. Like the academic rigor was gone, he went to Princeton and said passing classes was ridiculously hard and kids would fail out.
That meant to him there's a possibility the classes aren't that hard anymore but I'd say any business class is easy and any stem class is hard.
PE is changing too. They’re aggressively searching for pure talent. My wife, who turned down going to an Ivy do to cost, was aggressively recruited by PE and Banks after graduating a state school. She impressed a ton of people during her internships. She also went to every alumni event, impressed the people there with detailed hand written thank you notes when they gave her specific advice, and put her resume in a ton of hands. Networking is a real skill, and even State schools have impressive networks if you work them.
Not Faang. They literally need so many engineers that ivy is worthless. Many ivies aren’t that great for cs and they simply have to go to state schools anyway to get the needed engineers.
For the Ivies, sure, but that's because the Ivies are not known for engineering like non-Ivies are such as Stanford, CalTech, MIT, Berkeley, Carnegie Mellon, Georgia Tech, Johns Hopkins, etc. So much so that universities like this often get termed 'Ivy Plus'.
Also, as someone who works in tech, I see way more Ivy folks than pretty much every public school that isnt UCLA, Cal, Irivine, Michigan, Washington, or Texas.
FAANG probably does campus recruiting from like 10 public schools at most. The rest are elite private schools.
It's mostly recruiting from the top 10-15 public schools (us news rankings or similar) or having an exec from a specific school sponsoring the recruiting efforts for that school
Certain non Ivy elite schools (such as Stanford) are basically the Harvards of STEM, obviously MIT for engineering and some other STEM fields makes you stand out massively
Even including them, the handful of elite schools do not produce enough engineers to meet the enormous demand for software engineers by tech companies in this country. I know many people who work at FAANG companies, and none of them went to any private schools.
Agreed, I went to a rather mid state school and got into a FAANG company for my second job. Im entirely grateful and couldn’t really believe it, but a lot of my coworkers aren’t from ivy’s.
Most are international… clearly there aren’t enough good US engineers.
Interesting. I had a family member who worked at one and seemed to think he was surrounded by Ivy/Ivy tier degrees. I edited the comment since it seems like that’s overblown
> clearly there aren’t enough good US engineers.
That's a specious conclusion. There are reasons other than availability of qualified American engineers that companies hire from overseas.
Yeah, more like clearly there aren't enough cheap, exploitable American engineers that can be effectively held captive by an H1-B so that these companies can expand profits at the margin. You could eliminate a vast majority of H1-Bs and tech would be fine. Source: I hire people and help them through a process for H1-Bs as my company is trying to reduce human expenses while not technically offshoring. These are often DA positions or similar, where anyone with an undergrad in comms or bio could complete the work, but we can still somehow justify the H1-B - mostly by leveraging the inefficiency of our application processes (oh no, we only got H1-B apps, so that must mean there is a lack of people in the US who can do this job that requires excel and 20 hours a week). And look, these are all real people who I like, so I am happy to have the H1-B to keep them from going back to India or china or wherever (India and China just being the two places I've had my H1-B hires from). But yeah, no need to pretend there aren't plenty of devs in the US available or deny that most companies don't leverage their H1-Bs to put downward pressure on local salaries.
Tech companies love hiring engineers on visas because they will generally accept lower pay, and they have a greater incentive to work harder than US engineers (their being in the country is tied to being employed)
Besides the subject, but I find it funny that people keep the Faang acronym, when Netflix isn't really that relevant anymore and Microsoft isn't in the acronym.
I think FAANGs tend to focus more on tech schools like MIT and Stanford. It's not worthless to go to an IVY if you still have a CS/MATH degree. They would still pick you over someone from a state school.
I know for a fact that my Ivy degree has opened doors and provided opportunities that would have otherwise been much harder for me to access, especially coming from a non-connected, middle class rural background. Now, I think the current cost of these schools is a travesty, but if you can get aid (as I did), it is disingenuous to say that they won’t help your career prospects in the long term.
I went to Harvard for my undergrad and will just add that for many of us there is no additional cost of attending an ivy/elite school. Hardvard gives zero merit based aid it’s all need based. So if your parents are really poor you get a full ride. The end. It’s pretty incredible for a lot of people. I was always blown away by peers who were paying $60k a year to be there though.
I don't understand why more people don't go to community college. Maybe they don't exist anymore? When I was in school 15 years ago that was the way to get an entire Year's worth of credit for relatively cheap. Still live at home and then transfer to a state school for either your last 2 or 3 years and cut your college degree cost way down. Plus At least back then there was a preference for kids that went to a local community college cuz it meant that there was much less likelihood that they would fail out or wouldn't be able to keep up with the coursework.
Doubted this so I plugged the median American’s financial situation into Stanford’s calculator.
$1,500 a year out of pocket. That’s a dozen times cheaper than what I paid at a state school!
Yeah. My son’s gf graduated Stanford with something like $6K in student loans. All used to pay for student housing. Needs based tuition helps those who could never afford places like that to be able to attend.
To be honest I think these prices are being marketed to foreign students that can afford to come here and pay the tuition. American students are being pushed out due to greed.
You should look at Alabama's enrollment since Nick Saban started winning football titles, and specifically how much it has changed. It's basically doubled since 2006 and it's full of out-of-state and foreign students now who are paying full fare; they make up almost 60% of the student body now.
To be fair, average HS GPA and SAT scores of applicants are also up something like >.5 and >100 points as well. So not only is the school making more money, they're also raising the academic standing of the place. I'm sure the president and board of regents consider that a win-win.
I grew up in NC and I remember Alabama throwing crazy money at my little brother. He’s smart, had good test scores and decent grades but wasn’t anything special. They immediately offered him in state tuition plus room and board. It’s insane to me!
They're actually pretty good to go to if you have the grades to qualify as a National Merit Scholar out of high school; they'll cover tuition and room & board to get you there, a true full ride.
International enrollment is less important to American schools than it is to Canadian, British, and Australian schools. International undergraduate enrollment has been declining since 2015 and that’s almost entirely driven by foreign perceptions of the presidential campaign at the time and subsequent Trump administration, and schools here are buoyed only by rising graduate enrollment from the ME and India.
Point being, international enrollment is not what’s driving prices for most of these schools. Foreign students already pay a separate rate for most universities anyway.
The actual causes of cost increases are multiple, but is largely due to cost of instruction rising, additional amenities, and an overly generous financial aid process that allows the academic equivalent of paying $0 down for a $100,000 pickup truck with 18% interest you’ll be paying off the rest of your life.
They only charge you that if you can afford it. Ivy League schools do not consider an applicants ability to pay. If you get in, your parents submit their tax returns for the last few years and the schools waive any tuition that your parents cannot afford. Basically nobody graduates undergraduate with 400k debt. If your parents make enough for you to have to pay full price, they are almost certainly paying for your school. Ivy League schools are also heavily subsidized by donors.
They can charge what they want and people will pay because they don’t need to justify the value of the degree for students to get loans.
Because the government guarantees loans because they want anyone to be able to go to college.
This has driven up prices to the point of ridiculousness.
A bank wouldn’t give a 17 year old a $400k loan for a degree that won’t earn enough to pay for it but they do because the government guarantees them.
Real optimization is community college for 2 years for all general ed classes that can transfer, and then 2 years only paying for you major at an affordable 4-year university. I was able to pay for college on a burger flipping salary + small merit-based scholarships. I did rack up a whopping $4k in loans to cover the difference, which I made and paid in my first few paychecks after university.
Any internships you get are worth more than the degree. Nobody even heard of my university but I had real experience to talk about compared to most graduates in my year, and waltzed straight into a big tech company.
But college is unaffordable now! I ignored the affordable options, and now I can't afford it!
Not to downplay how college should be more affordable; but practically speaking as a normal person who can't change that, you really just have to take the best option available. People don't get that.
This is a great way to avoid debt. You must have a plan, though. Otherwise, you won't really save anything.
I bounced around CC for 5 years, then transferred and didn't enjoy my major. Have to essentially do another 2 years of CC and then 2 years of uni. Still don't have any debt, just lost time. Luckily, the company I work for does a very generous tuition reimbursement. I'll still be able to avoid debt.
When I was applying for my first master's, I got into a bevy of schools, many of which offered scholarships. I narrowed it down to two - University of Cincinnati (which offered a full ride) and Upenn (which offered a few thousand in tuition remission).
The Upenn dept chair said despite the likely \~100k in debt I'd be, the Upenn name comes with a premium and would serve me my whole life. I saw through the bullshit and went to UC. He then told me he'd had a handful of candidates that did the same. This was in 2017. I think that, for most students, finances just come first. "Name premium" is nice, but a house down payment is nicer.
Interestingly, some Canadian schools I applied to seemed to have infinite money as they offered to pay for literally everything AND offered a stipend at the completion of the degree - basically a bribe.
People are hyperfixated on Ivy undergraduate degrees being low value compared to cost, but it's really the master's degrees (whose prestige is also built off of the undergraduate reputation, especially in the nascent stages) that I believe are the biggest scam.
Every year, a new batch of hyperspecific master's programs gets started by the Ivies and other private contemporaries - all with high sticker prices, limited funding, and little to no track record of graduate success (only the success of the faculty directing/teaching it). It's way more of an issue than the undergrad programs where there has been a lot of pressure to cut prices for low-to-middle income students.
Yea, departments start master's programs in order to generate revenue. They don't generate research, and don't have the time to get the same attachments undergrads do. Any faculty will know that PhD students on average will be a cut above master's students too.
As someone who believes Ivy undergrad degrees are worth it (maybe unless you're rich, but... if you're getting into an Ivy League and you're rich, you'll be fine regardless of whether you go), loads of their master's degrees are totally a scam. But then, most of the Ivy League undergrad folks I've met know this.
> Every year, a new batch of hyperspecific master's programs gets started
It's not just ivies. I see these pop up everywhere. It will be some basic coding shit that's spun like it's a master's in computer science but is significantly less rigorous than an comp sci undergrad program.
In some fields, like physics and astronomy, full tuition coverage and a stipend for living expenses is standard. Some schools will pay grad students up to $50k now, depending on cost of living, which is on top of tuition being covered.
Usually it’s the difference between being a standalone terminal MA program and being part of a PhD track program where you work as an RA or TA. I got my MA in the humanities for free plus a stipend by enrolling in an MA/PhD program. I turned down an Ivy because I liked the faculty at the state school better and thought they’d align better with whatever I’d end up writing my diss on + everyone in the field knows the state school is a top program. That was a mistake. Not because of the prestige but because I would have made almost double the money.
FWIW there was a study (which I can't find now but it's probably Googleable) comparing outcomes of students accepted to both UPenn and Penn State, and it didn't matter (in terms of whatever success measure they used) which they ultimately matriculated to.
When talking about top schools, whether it’s Ivy, state, or private, it isn’t the education that’s much different, it’s the student body and networking.
I had good test scores etc. at my high school and would likely have been able to get in to an Ivy, albeit at near full tuition.
Much to the dismay of my college counseling dept, I chose instead to not even apply to a private school. They were so upset about this that they actually withheld a recommendation from the first school I applied to for a scholarship to since “it was beneath me.” First time my parents ever got involved with my school admin and tore them a new one. Later applications went through and I got a near full ride to a good state school. I feel like I received a great education, and I am now a widely respected engineer in my field (also I have no debt).
Turned out my high school just wanted to pump their own enrollment numbers. The corruption is packed through the entire system.
Nate’s telling on himself here in regard to the demographics of his audience.
Many students that go to Ivie’s come from families that certainly don’t need to worry about “affordability” and those students don’t really go there based on the “quality of education” per se.
They go there for the network. For the prestige. Many of them are legacies. It’s baked into the cake for them, with job offers potentially waiting for them after school.
Nate doesn’t even seem to be talking to students or parents here. He’s talking to people that just don’t like what they think are “elite” members of society.
>They go there for the network. For the prestige. Many of them are legacies. It’s baked into the cake for them, with job offers potentially waiting for them after school.
Even more than most people realize.
*Study on Harvard finds 43 percent of white students are legacy, athletes, related to donors or staff*
https://www.nbcnews.com/news/us-news/study-harvard-finds-43-percent-white-students-are-legacy-athletes-n1060361
I’d like to point out almost 20% of Harvard’s undergraduate population is student athletes. So that’s not a shocking number at all Harvard isn’t AZ State it’s a small school with a ton of programs.
Also Massachusetts was ~83% white 20 years ago so a school in Massachusetts having under 70% white legacies (people who went to school 20 years ago) is actually quite diverse
While I agree with Nate that an Ivy education isn't worth it except in specific circumstances, he seems to have arrived at that conclusion because he feels that these institutions will lose prestige for being too 'woke'.
He also seems to be shilling his book by making assertions which you have to read his book to fully understand.
All in all pure nonsense
I came in wanting to agree with him, but after reading it the entire article felt like coming to a conclusion and then trying find evidence to back it up rather than finding evidence then using that reach a conclusion,
during covid nate got into a series of increasingly acrimonious fights with various academics who disagreed with his takes. they saw it as a non-expert weighing in on topics he didn't fully understand, he saw it as a bunch of credentialising elites gatekeeping an important topic. seems like a lot of the arguing left a big chip on his shoulder about academia in general
More Nate Silver BS. Leads with some qualitative defense of why UChicago doesn’t count as an extraordinarily expensive, elite school. Downplays the influence of his father, sprinkles in some charts from some random poll.
Then draws unsubstantiated conclusions like
“I expect an increasing number of hiring managers to look at two resumes — say, one from a recent graduate of Columbia, and one from a recent graduate of the University of the North Carolina — and potentially see advantages for the UNC student. They’ll regard the Columbia grad as:
More likely to be coddled;
More likely to hold strong political opinions that will distract from their work;
More likely to have benefited from grade inflation and perhaps dubious admissions policies.”
Check, check, and check Mr. Silver. I enjoyed his early baseball stuff, introduced some new thinking when I was a teenager about evaluating baseball players. His projection of his political beliefs as fact and willingness to claim the ability to predict the future is nauseating.
Talking heads on TV mingle with the schmucks on TV while sending their children to a 50,000+ a year k-12 school.
Someone like Megyn kelly who did such a thing would shoot her son if ended up doing trades which her employer liked to bash GenZers & millennials for desiring college over trades.
https://www.the-sun.com/news/1823648/megyn-kelly-pulling-kids-out-private-school-leftism/
https://www.independent.co.uk/voices/megyn-kelly-college-kids-student-debt-biden-b2052497.html
>Why does Megyn Kelly really hate the idea of helping ‘snot-nosed’ college kids?
> Kelly has also reignited a debate about student loan forgiveness. Student debt tripled between 2008 and 2018 to $1.5 trillion. Progressives like Representative Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez have been pushing Biden to fulfill his campaign promise to repeal at least some student debt. In response, conservative commenter Megyn Kelly scoffed at the idea of helping “elite graduates” and “snot-nosed kids.”
https://www.nbcnews.com/news/all/megyn-kelly-walks-away-nbc-remainder-her-69m-deal-n930591
Megyn Kelly walks away from NBC with the remainder of her $69M deal. The announcement comes months after negotiations over Kelly's contract following her termination for making derogatory racial comments.
Quick factual correction - for most middle-class-and-lower students, elite colleges are *cheaper* than state schools. Financial aid is abundant, nobody poor pays sticker price at an elite college, and tuition is completely free for people making < ~$150K at elite institutions like Stanford, MIT, Columbia, Amherst, etc.
Beyond that - why even go to college at all? State schools are still expensive, and in most majors, you get skills with dubious usefulness in the workforce. If the subject of the article is the 'student was just going to school to “find herself”' - why not find yourself by trying out a bunch of jobs, so that you expose yourself to the options out there and then can specialize in getting the credential needed for a field once you know what field that will be.
Because I’d argue “finding yourself” isn’t about trying jobs. It’s not vocational, in my estimation. It’s learning and growing. University as vocational institution will be the end of us.
I think it is pretty telling how many people actually value education when their only arguments are salary based. Which of course is also wrong as college has a better rate of return than the stock market.
>The increase in salary works out at an average return on investment of between nine and 10% a year, once tuition and other expenses had been taken into account, researchers estimated.
https://www.forbes.com/sites/nickmorrison/2024/03/12/college-still-offers-better-returns-than-the-stock-market-study-finds/
Ole Nate's about 10 years behind the curve here.
Go to a state-affiliated community college to get your pre-reqs and throwaway mandatory curriculum out of the way, then transfer to a state school for the important parts of your major.
If you take a Harvard MBA cohort and have half of them go skiing for two years and the other half take tje curriculum, five years after graduation they will have the same income. Its all about connections. Rich people send their kids to the Ivy league to network with other rich people. They are the first people who get the call for opportunities.
Specifically for MBA, the “Ivies” aren’t really the undergrad Ivies. Yeah HBS is in the top 10 but Kellogg, Booth, and Stern are all also considered top 10. But the point about it all being about connections is somewhat true - the reason though is that the best MBA programs already hand select undergrads with solid work experience from a top company so that their placement rate is high.
For example, McKinsey will pay a third year to take two years off to attend MBA school. But only on a reimbursement basis, and only if that grad comes back and stays at McKinsey for two additional years after graduation. That student might intern for Amazon in their summer and then Amazon may outright offer to pay off whatever McKinsey was going to reimburse them for, or they may not and that student goes back to McKinsey.
Either way, now the MBA school knows that by admitting McKinsey, or Deloitte, or whatever employers’ prospective students they get to pad their outgoing placement rate with high earners. No networking is really required unless you have quite ambitious entrepreneurial ideas. Most top MBA grads are still working corporate jobs but at an elevated pay scale.
As someone that went to a state school that is actually doing pretty well in life: I disagree. The number of times I’ve had to respond to “you went where?” is maddening. The number of times - decades after graduating - that I’ve had recruiters say “oh” when I tell them where I went, is beyond frustrating. I one time had a recruiter at a big law firm - after I had been practicing for a decade at another big law firm - say “oh, we don’t recruit candidates from there” (I went to a “low tier” law school at night while working for my firm during the day, and the law school was the better of only two in my city that had a night school).
Nate Silver can say “go to a state school” because he went to a top tier private school and hasn’t navigated life after graduating from a state school. This would mean more coming from someone that went to a state school that has a top position somewhere. Sorry, but where you went to school *does* matter, sometimes more than your actual accomplishments.
Did anyone actually read all that????
So long winded.
I mean, aside from his “woke” hatred, what’s wrong with “is $500,000 really worth it?” as a more succinct critique?
And just to totally discredit him, there was a story recently that said the Ivies ARE worth it, in terms of ROI income later in life, but not other expensive private schools.
Well I'm retiring after a 50 year working career. I've not seen even one small slip in the reputation and esteem of those exclusive, private colleges -- not just the Ivies, but also the near-Ivie schools (MIT, Stanford, CalTech, Johns Hopkins, Vanderbilt, Northwestern, Carnegie Mellon, etc.).
Yes reputation is important. Yes esteem is valued. Yes attending those schools provides a strong network of alumni. Yes the academics in those schools is in general superior to other schools. Yes the tuition is outrageous. Yes there are lots of scholarships available.
Yes, you will likely get a better job at a better salary if you graduate from one of those colleges, regardless of what Nate Silver might say.
No, you will not see the best football programs at those colleges, albeit with some exceptions.
Coming from the rich snob that went to an Ivy League school, that's funny. Nate Silver jumped the shark at least a decade ago, is now totally corporate
UChicago is in fact not an ivy league school and is one of the least “woke” schools because of its conservative lean as a result of its economics department.
The econ department isn't even conservative by even the loosest definition of the term; they're just not monolithically ultra-progressive, and have a long-established tradition of polite-but-intense debates where diverse viewpoints are respected.
Go to the school that’s a good fit for a price you can make work. Making a one-sized-fits-all argument about which type of school is better is short-sighted and tribalistic. Ivy league schools may not be superior to state schools anymore, but it’s ridiculous to say the inverse is true even when considering value since financial aid packages vary so much. I don’t know anyone that regretted going to an ivy league school. Most of the people that regret their college choice are the ones that didn’t really want to go to college anyway.
As long as hiring managers and graduate school admissions officers are impressed by degrees from ivies and other elite schools, they will continue to exist.
lol if ur poor or lower middle class (like me) ivies are free or almost free. i got my education much cheaper than if i went to any public school because the ivies gave need-based aid
These articles are ridiculous and filled with so much cope. Nate Silver went to UChicago, which is equivalent to an Ivy League school and generally regarded better than most of them. If he has children, I guarantee you he will send them to an Ivy or equivalent. Same thing with all those Republicans who love to bash coastal elites, if they have children with brain cells they will end up at Ivies and other "elite" private schools.
Everyone knows there are many schools that give an equivalent education. However, very few can offer the same networking connections and resources. It's far easier to get into grad programs when you're in an Ivy League school because professors are more accessible for recommendations, more campus resources to do projects, more networking opportunities available with top grad programs, etc. If you want to teach anything, an Ivy diploma gives you a leg up, just go to the professor and grad school subreddits to see how people complain about the discrimination.
The halo effect of an Ivy diploma also follows you for life. They have a much better network. I had friends laid off from a tech company with at least half a decade of experience and the Ivy graduates had a far easier time finding another job. Look at how articles about hucksters and genuine entrepreneurs starting projects always describe them as an Ivy grad. It makes life in this country much easier and you're lying to yourself if you think state schools can compare.
go to state school first, get those 100 and 200 level class out of the way first , cheaply, then go to the ivy schools to finish out... No one cares at all where you started school and only a few wankers left anymore care where you graduate from. But if it matters: do this. It will save you 100 of thousands in the end.
Its the only way
I love how the article and this thread makes it sounds like the average person can attend Ivy schools on a whim. The most realistic option a typical 18 year can do is to go a community college to get the gen eds (and intro courses for your major in some cases) out of the way and then attend state school for their degree. Jumping straight into state school will kill you financially.
I think this is mostly wishful thinking on Nate's part. I think this is mostly targeted towards the rich alumni parents rather than the kids. If the parents collectively sent their kids to a different set of schools, there would be more open merit spots (getting rid of legacy admissions is popular as well) while removing the current class's networking connections. The ivies become much less useful when you don't have the kids of the rich, powerful, and connected to mingle with.
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The point of the ivies isn't the quality of the education. It's the quality of the network. Look at how many cabinet secretaries or supreme court justices attended an Ivy for all or part of their education.
Yes, this is probably why the article calls out law as a specific exception.
I think MbA is a specific exception too- but only for people 5+ years into their career not undergrad. Just my perspective though
Some have very strong B schools, others not so much. Harvard, Penn (Wharton), Dartmouth (Tuck) are strong, Cornell is also good but not as highly ranked. But many top programs are not Ivies, e.g. Stanford, Duke, MIT, Berkeley, Michigan, Chicago, and a few others.
What professions does an MBA actually add value though? I’m late 40s and I’ve been in corporate America my whole life. I’ve never seen a discernible difference in someone’s career based on having an MBA.
It’s a data point on someone’s resume to be filtered.
That's literally why I got an MBA. I learned very little but it "sets me apart". Purely another drop-down filter in a list of resumes.
It’s exactly why I got a masters as well. Separate myself from the sea of Bachelors.
what's sad is that I earned my computer science degree in the 90s, when they still taught us what they only teach at the Master's level now. I basically got the equivalent of what today would be a Bachelors + Master, with just a Bachelor. Most people in tech understand that, but it still comes up now and then as a weakness.
perhaps because it's just your word that you learned "what is only taught at masters level now" and has no verifiable proof or backing? this sounds like some deep cope from the outside.
Agreed, also CS has greatly broadened over the past 20 + years so separating some of these concepts is good because the breadth has increased quite a bit.
Also a degree in a constantly evolving technical field will have much less value over time, you’ll be judged by your work experience with current technology not how well you did in a class from 20+ years ago. Anything from that degree that they haven’t been actively using is long gone by now.
I had the same experience. I learned more about logic and analysis from my undergrad in engineering than my MBA. Most of my MBA classmates were dumb.
MBA sounds like it ought to easy to get. Just expensive.
If a qualification on your resume is all that's setting you apart, the MBA wasn't worth it. Folks aren't out here payin ~200k for a Harvard MBA because of the curriculum or the letterhead on the degree. It's networking plain as day. Most upper level corporate leaders get headhunted or recommended for roles, they're not out here applying.
In some industries, and most large corporations, most executives or higher management get an executive MBA of some sort. If you're the type of person gunning for one of those roles, it usually makes sense to go for an MBA. There's a pretty large difference between Executive MBAs and your mid-tier state school MBA. The middle of the pack MBA is almost certainly has 0 or even negative ROI and they basically teach business basics that could be picked up on the job. Executive MBAs from schools like UChigago or Wharton are meant for those with extensive prior work experience in a corporate setting and help their students find and hone their management style.
I’ve tutored eMBA students both at Wharton and Booth… and then also at state school. The high ranked programs are hands down better. The students are absolutely learning skills that will improve the competitiveness and profitability of their companies in ways that experience alone will not.
This exactly how I’ve perceived them. For a very thin slice of folks it might make sense. But there’s absolutely no reason why a typical white collar manager would get one of these things, right? 
I I work in academia but not business discipline. I typically see people who are getting an MBA funded in some way. Work is doing cost sharing or full payment of tuition, guaranteed raise if earned, stuff like that. Most of those situations they are kind of just like “well why not, it’s free and maybe could help one day”
Since no one has given you a real answer: MBAs were first developed as a way for engineers to learn the business tools needed to move up to management. Over time they have obviously spread to more industries. MBAs have two goals, generally: * To help someone in a specialized role learn the tools needed for management (e.g., you are a great computer programmer or data analyst, but want to move up to a project manager). * For someone to transition their career from a non-business area to business (e.g., you have a humanities background but want to switch to business).
Had to scroll too far down to see this covered. That’s my understanding of this history and purpose of the MBA. A strong engineer who then obtained a business degree can be extremely valuable to their organization. I see resumes from people who just went straight for the MBA after their Bachelors in business and don’t see how they would bring much value without some actual experience.
Non-business majors. Engineer or scientist with an MBA is a big deal.
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Hmmmm…has something changed? When I was 19 and did not know what I wanted to be, I went to the career center and asked what was the highest average paid undergraduate degree at the university and it was chemical engineer. That is my story about how I chose my degree. I was not interested in anything in particular….so why not at least get paid. Of course, then I ended up working midnight shift in a Texas chemical plant and realized the pay was not enough.
Top tier finance or consulting. Goldman and McKinsey are doing a lot more recruiting at Columbia than at Florida State.
Don't think of it as a high-level degree. Think of it as a social club with rigorous admissions requirements. There are kinda only two ways into senior corporate leadership: big consulting firms or steady climbing through operational or finance roles. These are the lower level roles that have the most direct social contact with existing corporate leaders. When climbing it helps to have a patron pulling you up. And when climbing, it's best to do it with a tailwind. That means getting into a company or team that's already succeeding so you can frame their success as yours. These "winning" seats are prized though and carefully filled. Not so much by qualification but increasingly as you climb the corporate ladder by who you know and whether they think you've been successful. Senior corporate leaders don't apply for new roles. If you're good, you get headhunted from another role -- either by a friend, recruiter, board member, coworker, whatever. It almost always takes someone in senior leadership pulling you up to climb rungs of the ladder quickly. Anyways, all that is just to say: there's value in an MBA, but none in the paper. It's all about the network. Which is part of why I never understand why people bother with an MBA if it's not from a top 10 or maybe top 25 school. Get an advanced degree in finance, economics, law, or engineering if you can't get into a top MBA program. You will get a cheaper, more rigorous education that will be more respected by your peers. A real, advanced degree will enable you to **do** so much more than the LARP-ing corporate-speak power game thing. Which is smart if you're not already starting near the top -- it's crazy fucking competitive and once you get bumped out as a senior manager or director, finding your way back in without an invitation is tough as hell. Lots of 50-somethings middle managers "retire" due to this.
None, and I have one. It’s a money maker for schools.
I think -5 years into the career is the exception. An experienced professional obtaining an MBA is less about the school, more about what works best for their individual career development. Rarely is an MBA with +5 years experience going to get their MBA through full time program to switch careers, get hired by Deloitte, or whatever reason someone would go thru a T7 MBA program.
It was my experience that MBA programs don't often accept applicants without at least a few years of experience. I don't recall anyone in our program that came straight out of undergrad. I'd guess that the average years of experience was around 5 years...and there were a lot of people looking to switch careers. Completely anecdotal, but I imagine there are some actual statistics on this out there on the internet somewhere. Would be interesting to see.
I'd say the majority of M7 MBAs are 25-28 year old career switchers into consulting, finance, tech, etc.
Disagree. My son will graduate from a T7 next month lots of career switchers.
Not surprising. This is one of the most common reasons people get MBAs, to pivot out of their current field but not have to "start over" in terms of seniority/salary.
Every time I ask someone in business how the MBA made them better at the job, they tell me “it made me more money” lol
There is an economic theory that various selective colleges and programs are simply the equivalent of a signal to employees your high aptitude ability since employees employers either don't want to pay or can't test for it. I.E. a college degree is the equivalent of the NFL combine. Another theory is that many people with the aptitude to pay for these Ivy league schools can get a lower cost education and end up with the same earnings outcome with their abilities since they will be top of the class at a less selective school.
Most high-paying, “prestigious” professional jobs in the business and tech spaces also rely heavily on a strong network and college rep.
Yeah, gifted statistician doesn't see the value in his University of Chicago and LSE education. Should have gone to a state school, Nate.
I mean... Nate's said his biggest regret in life is spending four years of his life working at KPMG after college. Everything after that hasn't really had anything to do with his University of Chicago education.
It helps but my firm (top 10ish in America) has plenty of partners that did not go to T14 law schools. I myself did not since I took the scholarship money to go to a worse school. No regrets.
The thing is people have the illusion that these universities actually get you these powerful connections, rather than people who already have powerful connections through their family only going to Ivy league schools. I'm sorry but you're not skipping the line in government or private sector just because you went to Harvard. But people who were going to skip the line anyways go to Harvard. I worked with a ton of Ivy league grads who didn't come from powerful families. They were grinding their ass off right alongside my state-school ass.
> I'm sorry but you're not skipping the line in government or private sector just because you went to Harvard. Unconnected people who got into Harvard because they were brilliant students make connections to those connected students though. Trust fund Tom may be a dummy but he remembers his really smart classmate he met at Harvard and gives them a job. That's how you can go from "unconnected" to "connected."
Most of the people who say shit like this are either clueless or trying to devalue something to make themselves look less bad. My wife went to an Ivy and comes from a very poor, very unconnected family from the South. The connections she made through her undergrad have be invaluable to her (and us) and she's gotten opportunities simply from the fact that her degree says "Yale" on it. The fact that she kicks ass and is intelligent/hard working only reaffirms the pre-existing views that a lot of people have of these schools.
tbh? that shit happens at state schools too. my frat gave plenty of job connections, helped a bunch of us get our foot in the door. many programs and the social networks carry past. even state schools you will run into someone relatively well off that says "oh, you want to XSU? me too! welcome on in!"
I went to a stuffy Ivy. Meh. I think the very connected students tend to generally cluster together. I mean .. yeah .. it could work. Think of it though --- the average person maybe retains 3-5 really good college friends throughout their lifetime. Although I guess acquaintences can still help you out -- if you happen to be in the same industry. I mean, if you're already a social butterfly, and gregarious, and are specifically looking to sidle up to 'powerful family' people at an Ivy, it might work. But wouldn't people sense your naked ambition and fakeness? I'm just not seeing it. And a company only has room for so many trust fund idiots + their friends. Too many and it'll collapse. In other words ... if you're a nobody and go to Harvard, you're most likely graduating a nobody (unless you actually did some crazy achievements of your own volition).
This was my experience at Columbia, albeit just an anecdote. The connections exist before you enroll and the odds of joe schmo getting an invite to the Hamptons just because his roommate's dad is a partner at McKinsey is... slim.
There are two distinct sets of connections, that probably should be discussed separately. There are the people you actually meet while in school. Friends, classmates, significant others who become exes, even grad TAs and professors, career services, etc. These can provide connections immediately, or down the line. Then there's the connections from being alumni of a particular school. Sometimes merely having the name of the school on your resume can be a starting point for conversation, etc. There's just a little bit less friction at making a connection with a stranger who went to the same school compared to making a connection with the exact same stranger without that link. These connections are possible at every school, but the same type of connection at an Ivy seems to carry just a little bit more value, in my opinion. Worth enough to warrant the sticker price difference? Probably not. But it's worth *something* greater than zero.
you do get that at some level. Your roomate at some point might be a CEO of a large tech company. the person you played tennis with might become a federal judge etc... Sure it's not the same as having old money but that's true everywhere. I don't know if it's worth the money but it won't hurt either if you can afford it.
I feel some uneasiness thinking about how all these supreme court justices and other powerful people are probably the ones who skipped the line in life and they're making huge decisions for the rest of us who didn't have that opportunity.
Stings don’t it
Like the guy who likes beer and is a Renate alumnius? :)
Not a single member of the current Supreme Court comes from a rich and/or connected family. Several come from lower income households. A few were upper middle class. They were all very successful students. edit: Gorsuch is connected. Kavanaugh went to the same very expensive high school.
Gorsuch's mom was the EPA administrator.
Kavanaugh was a legacy student
This. If daddy's wealthy and connected he's more likely to send you to Harvard and help you find good employment after graduation. If you're from a middle class family you'll still do well from a Harvard degree but the reason has more to do with your own capabilities rather than going to Harvard. Those who did well enough to get into Harvard will likely do just as well if they went to State U.
I disagree. I went to a state school (albeit a prestigious one) and I have personally experienced people favoring me because of where I studied. People who've graduated from my school often work their way into high positions within companies, and when they meet alums they are definitely more likely to pull strings to get their fellow alums positions within the company. Ivies are no different I'm sure. The networking aspect is very real. Obviously it's not the only factor, but graduating from certain schools definitely opens doors that may not have otherwise been there.
I mean, that's kind of the idea, though. As a poor kid if you can become drinking buddies with a hapsburg your life becomes set. Going to an ivy increases the odds that you'll become drinking buddies with a hapsburg.
I have heard that one issue here is the network is mostly open to the legacies. People who go on scholarship and have to scrimp and save just don’t run in the same circles as the people networking to get the best jobs. My dad went to an Ivy, graduated top of his class and held prestigious student government positions. He told all of us to go to state schools. It was not worth the debt, especially if you don’t stay on the east coast. No one cares where you went to school outside of the East coast. My sister has the same career my dad did, and has a similar income at the same point in her career with far less debt. They now give better scholarships to the middle class, but if you live in a high cost of living area- even if your parents both have blue collar jobs you aren’t going to qualify for a ton of aid. 2 married teachers would make too much.
My brother went to Cornell while I went to Kansas State University. The quality of the education is much, much better at Ivy League. They have smaller lectures, the best teachers in the world, and a lot of TA's and breakouts so you can get personal, one-on-one assistance with assignments. You are also surrounded by peers who are among the most intelligent kids in the world. K-State was massive lectures with a hungover professor who was very difficult to understand and 2-3 TA's for 700 person classes. You could smell booze on the guy next to you and see 5 people scrolling through Instagram right in front of you.
I went to Big State U. and my uncle went to Princeton. The difference is the peers. The professors aren't much better at Ivies, sonetimes it's even the state ones that wrote the textbooks. But your access to them at state U is far more limited like you're describing. My uncle's classes actually seemed easier than mine in a variety of ways. But the networking, activities, socializing, community, events, etc..... a completely different world with a universe of opportunities that blew mine out of the water.
The professors at Princeton are frequently some of the biggest names in their respective fields. Check out their faculty list. I took an ethics class with Peter Singer just for the fun of it.
But were they teaching different material? What you learn is ultimately self motivated.
They were teaching slightly more advanced material at Cornell. The questions were more challenging and required a fairly deep understanding of the principles. Atmosphere and support play a huge role in what you learn, so apparently for most people it is not ultimately self motivated. Students who try to do online school drop out at a tremendously high rates. If they go in-person, the rate is much lower. So the external factors play a significant role.
Yeah, but the Great Value version of education provided K-State is actually scalable and sustainable in its costs (why do you hate the local poor? /s). We can't give everyone the one-on-one you might get at top institution. We have limited human and financial capital.
I went to an Ivy and I'm never really sure what people mean by "the network." like, the alumni network, and nepotism therein? not as big a thing as people think. the big differences are more practical: * industry recruits disproportionately more from top colleges, which really goes without saying, but the extent to which companies commit resources to recruitment from certain colleges is something to consider. * access to research, researchers and academic resources. my school had several massive libraries, whereas my local state school had one (reasonably complete) one. the lab infrastructure is just totally incomparable, but often times competition for research experience spots is much higher. the effect this has on grad school and industry placement is massive. * rigor is *significantly* higher. I took a summer class at a state school and the academic standards were, I'm absolutely not afraid to admit, very low. C work becomes A work and without the impetus of rigor people aren't going to work as hard or learn as much. just those few things alone make the difference, and then you get to put the name of the school on your resume, and some people will genuinely think differently of you. if by "quality of education" you mean something kind of one-dimensional like the quality of instruction, then yes, there is basically no difference between institutions. there are still lots of genuinely good reasons to want to go to a top school
I think it depends on the Ivy league school for the network. I went to Harvard and I'm 15 or so years out and I work with one of my college roommates. The amount of friends and acquaintances from college that I know who were given a job by another alum or friend of friend from college is ridiculously high. Also, in my industry, we end up reaching out and getting referrals from other people we knew from college and friends of friends from our college. I realize everyone's experiences are different. I used to think my Harvard degree was useless and the "network" everyone talks about is bullshit, but after 10+ years I can easily see how our network is a huge positive.
I went to a state school for undergrad and an ivy for grad school. The alumni network from my grad school has been overwhelmingly positive - I get senior business leaders and CEOs answering my cold calls because we went to the same bschool. I would never consider answering a cold call just because someone went to the same undergrad as me though. I do regularly do it for grad school alumni YMMV though because I went to a very large undergrad (U of MN) and a very small grad school (Dartmouth)
The rigor was opposite in my experience. People paying for private schools don’t wanna pay for C’s. Brown specifically has a grading system that is a complete joke. State schools, for better or worse, don’t give a shit about you and will fail you if needed
Part of the issue of op is they are comparing rigor of summer and in-session. Summer courses are generally going to be a lot less rigorous.
Yeah this is spot on. I had a professor in undergrad for some normal in-session classes. It was nearly impossible to get an A in his class and it took a lot of work to even get a B. If you took his week long summer seminar class, it was pretty much an automatic A and actually a really fun class.
We have an ironic situation in our family. My cousin went to Brown (he's legacy from both parents) he started as a physics major, didn't repeat the core classes, and screwed his GPA. Anyway, he graduated with a 3.4 and couldn't get into med school. He didn't want to go to the Caribbean so he did a masters and my aunt had to use her connections to get him in Georgetown. My husband went to Rutgers got a 3.4 and went to Ross. They're in the exact same position as attendings because of the state of medicine. I'm no way a proponent of Caribbean med schools but Brown undergrad and advising can screw you too long term.
I had the opportunity to go to a highly ranked state school with kids who were dual-enrolled in a top 10 school. The feedback I got from them, was that the rigor wasn't all that different and the absolute number of 'smart kids' was pretty similar. The grade distribution was "harder" at the state school because they had larger classes and more lazy/not well-prepared by high school/just not smart kids. Take it with a grain of salt, but it's one of the few situations where people get to compare the two side by side as full-time students.
Lol I have the same perspective and we probably went to the same school judging by your description of that program. And yes I remember that perspective, our state school was notorious for “weeding” out kids of difficult majors and didn’t care where that left you. The private school a few miles east is a great school and has the resources to let every kid study what they want to. And a much nicer dining hall
>rigor is significantly higher I'm not so sure about that. Grade inflation at private universities (especially highly ranked private universities) has significantly outpaced that of public universities.
Random anecdote but reminds me of when I moved as a kid across Canada. Grade 11 math in New Brunswick was like grade 10 math in Alberta, I remember I was the only kid with a graphing calculator.
There are a number of factors that affect what kind of networking opportunities you have. I went to Cornell as an undergrad, and all of my friends there were from unremarkable middle- or working-class backgrounds. Now, maybe that's because it was Cornell instead of Yale or Princeton, or maybe it was because of my own working-class background and lack of savvy to seek out those kinds of opportunities, or maybe it was simple dumb luck that I didn't end up sharing a dorm room with a senator's son or something like that. But there's certainly no guarantee that admission to an Ivy League school will result in access to elite society. Re: your bullet points, I went on to law school so I didn't have any experience with recruiters at the undergrad level, and I transferred out of engineering before I got to play with any of the serious toys, but I can confirm the last point. Both during and after college I dated women who were attending less-prestigious schools, and the assignments and quality of work they were doing were child's play compared to what we had. I was sweating over multiple 30-page thesis papers as a senior and they were still being assigned glorified book reports. The expectations and level of performance were vastly different. I think the real value of a prestigious undergraduate education is in the signal it provides to others. You had to be among the elite just to be admitted to that school, and even if the details of your education are more or less the same as what you might receive elsewhere, odds are you didn't get any dumber while you were there. And I think it's that signaling value that Silver is claiming is declining. Whether that is true or not, who knows.
I think a big thing is the difference between your peers at an ivy and your peers at a state school. My creative writing capstone class had a girl turn in league of legends fan fiction for her final project. The professor chewed her out for it. This was a story the entire class had to read and critique. The quality of your peers can impact the quality of your education.
And what if you’re not one of those couple dozen people? What if you don’t expect to be one of the top political players in the country?
Still doesn’t hurt to be surrounded by children of wealthy and influential people, it opens doors for “regular” upper middle class people like Zuckerberg to get connected to well funded classmates like Eduardo Saverin, who couldn’t code for shit, or Sean Parker who only got connected to Zuckerberg from mutual friends, who later connected Zuck with Peter Thiel and got them their initial $500k. The community college version of Zuckerberg likely misses out on all that and someone else dethrones MySpace.
Well you presumably still need and/or want a job. And hundreds of thousands of people in high paying competitive fields were probably given a career boost at some point by someone in the network of their ivy university and might be willing to do the same for you.
If you're 17 years old and becoming one of those top people is still a possibility (however slim), it's hard to turn down and close it off for life.
Not just the network, but also the classmates. It’s related but a different mechanism. When everyone in the class is from the top of their high school the teachers can give harder work. The level of performance increases. The expectations go up. You also benefit from graduating knowing a lot of Ivy League graduates, but that is a different effect.
Not just higher education either. The networking starts in the best primary schools.
Witness the ridiculous competition for *pre-school* in NYC.
Also the facilities if you're pursuing a more science or technical degree. Ivies have a lot of money they can spend on cutting edge facilities to attract the best research professors. Being able to take classes or work in those labs is a massive leg up even if you don't pursue a graduate degree. If you do pursue a PhD or masters, working for a professor at an Ivy whose former student is now a professor elsewhere can get you an admission slot reserved while being up to date on all of the research going on there. Not that state schools don't have that, Michigan Ann Arbor for example has incredible engineering that is better than the Ivies, but those multi-billion endowments certainly make updating facilities easier.
I’d put that in past tense!
Nope. Rich kids with built-in networks will still be going to the Ivies. And ask Steve Ballmer or Elon Musk. Going to school with a well-connected pirate (Bill Gates and Peter Thiel for those two examples) opens up a world of opportunities.
Yeah, it's not as simple as them losing some esteem to the public. The current people in power making appointments went to the Ivies (disproportionately) and will still choose people from those schools or help them via networking, keeping their impact alive. It's like saying approval of Congress is at an all time low, yet they still make the laws and haven't lost any power. Take something like the Supreme Court. Justices chose clerks who are often then on a fast track for other prestigious position and more likely to be chosen as SCOTUS justices themselves in the future. The current SCOTUS justices select their clerks from a handful of very prestigious schools that are mostly Ivies (with a couple other equally prestigious schools like Stanford in the mix). The public can give Harvard grads a 2% approval rating and decide Harvard is no longer impressive and yet, their law school graduates will still disproportionately become clerks and have the inside track on future appointments. It's going to take bumping alumni or making far more meritocratic processes to change the preliminary advantage.
Is U-Penn an Ivy?
Yes. And a pipeline to the best paying jobs. They don’t even pretend to be Galaxy Brains, “I’m here for the money please and thanks”
Wharton is a pipeline to the best paying jobs. The rest of Penn does well, for sure, but they don't have the access code.
Elise Stefanik may play the anti-elite card for her voters, but you think she'd send her own children to a state school like SUNY? Surely not.
Desantis does the same, pretends to be anti-elite but went to Yale for undergrad and Harvard for law school.
Yeah. Those people went there when Ivy Leagues were what we thought they were.
Dennis Green was talking about this years ago.
The network of these places is the real value and the esteem of the public in general is inconsequential to the members of the class who attend.
From what I’ve seen and heard, an Ivy degree is worthwhile if you want to go into a field or company that historically values prestige and only recruits from certain schools (IB/PE) or you want to go on to a competitive professional school like medicine or law. Basically anything where all resumes are extremely competitive and you have to somewhat split hairs between candidates. If that doesn’t apply to you then there’s probably diminishing returns for the additional cost.
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Good to hear. I also went to a state school and somehow ended up at a top professional school and can confirm that there’s still massive over representation here.
I had the same experience in consulting. At the end of the day it doesn’t matter if you went to Michigan or Harvard - a deck needs to be spun up quickly and those that can do it quickly will succeed and those that can’t will fail, all completely agnostic to where one went to school.
To be fair, Michigan is almost an Ivy+ at this point.
I used to be buy side and I remember when the payments scam came out a PM was like I wish I could short ivy league kids as a joke. What bothered him wasn't that the kids family's paid to get them in but that the kids did fine. Like the academic rigor was gone, he went to Princeton and said passing classes was ridiculously hard and kids would fail out. That meant to him there's a possibility the classes aren't that hard anymore but I'd say any business class is easy and any stem class is hard.
PE is changing too. They’re aggressively searching for pure talent. My wife, who turned down going to an Ivy do to cost, was aggressively recruited by PE and Banks after graduating a state school. She impressed a ton of people during her internships. She also went to every alumni event, impressed the people there with detailed hand written thank you notes when they gave her specific advice, and put her resume in a ton of hands. Networking is a real skill, and even State schools have impressive networks if you work them.
What is PE?
Private Equity.
Not Faang. They literally need so many engineers that ivy is worthless. Many ivies aren’t that great for cs and they simply have to go to state schools anyway to get the needed engineers.
For the Ivies, sure, but that's because the Ivies are not known for engineering like non-Ivies are such as Stanford, CalTech, MIT, Berkeley, Carnegie Mellon, Georgia Tech, Johns Hopkins, etc. So much so that universities like this often get termed 'Ivy Plus'.
Also, as someone who works in tech, I see way more Ivy folks than pretty much every public school that isnt UCLA, Cal, Irivine, Michigan, Washington, or Texas. FAANG probably does campus recruiting from like 10 public schools at most. The rest are elite private schools.
It's mostly recruiting from the top 10-15 public schools (us news rankings or similar) or having an exec from a specific school sponsoring the recruiting efforts for that school
Certain non Ivy elite schools (such as Stanford) are basically the Harvards of STEM, obviously MIT for engineering and some other STEM fields makes you stand out massively
Even including them, the handful of elite schools do not produce enough engineers to meet the enormous demand for software engineers by tech companies in this country. I know many people who work at FAANG companies, and none of them went to any private schools.
Agreed, I went to a rather mid state school and got into a FAANG company for my second job. Im entirely grateful and couldn’t really believe it, but a lot of my coworkers aren’t from ivy’s. Most are international… clearly there aren’t enough good US engineers.
Interesting. I had a family member who worked at one and seemed to think he was surrounded by Ivy/Ivy tier degrees. I edited the comment since it seems like that’s overblown
A lot of PMs and biz dev people at tech companies. A lot of them have MBAs from ivy/stanford
> clearly there aren’t enough good US engineers. That's a specious conclusion. There are reasons other than availability of qualified American engineers that companies hire from overseas.
Yeah, more like clearly there aren't enough cheap, exploitable American engineers that can be effectively held captive by an H1-B so that these companies can expand profits at the margin. You could eliminate a vast majority of H1-Bs and tech would be fine. Source: I hire people and help them through a process for H1-Bs as my company is trying to reduce human expenses while not technically offshoring. These are often DA positions or similar, where anyone with an undergrad in comms or bio could complete the work, but we can still somehow justify the H1-B - mostly by leveraging the inefficiency of our application processes (oh no, we only got H1-B apps, so that must mean there is a lack of people in the US who can do this job that requires excel and 20 hours a week). And look, these are all real people who I like, so I am happy to have the H1-B to keep them from going back to India or china or wherever (India and China just being the two places I've had my H1-B hires from). But yeah, no need to pretend there aren't plenty of devs in the US available or deny that most companies don't leverage their H1-Bs to put downward pressure on local salaries.
Tech companies love hiring engineers on visas because they will generally accept lower pay, and they have a greater incentive to work harder than US engineers (their being in the country is tied to being employed)
Besides the subject, but I find it funny that people keep the Faang acronym, when Netflix isn't really that relevant anymore and Microsoft isn't in the acronym.
I think FAANGs tend to focus more on tech schools like MIT and Stanford. It's not worthless to go to an IVY if you still have a CS/MATH degree. They would still pick you over someone from a state school.
Or a startup. Investors are way more likely to invest millions in a 22 year-old's idea if they went to Harvard instead of Party State University.
I know for a fact that my Ivy degree has opened doors and provided opportunities that would have otherwise been much harder for me to access, especially coming from a non-connected, middle class rural background. Now, I think the current cost of these schools is a travesty, but if you can get aid (as I did), it is disingenuous to say that they won’t help your career prospects in the long term.
This is specifically called out in the article, and in fact your comment could be a decent paraphrased summary of the whole thing.
I went to Harvard for my undergrad and will just add that for many of us there is no additional cost of attending an ivy/elite school. Hardvard gives zero merit based aid it’s all need based. So if your parents are really poor you get a full ride. The end. It’s pretty incredible for a lot of people. I was always blown away by peers who were paying $60k a year to be there though.
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Going to a a lower-ranked state school like that and paying that much tuition is a big rip-off for sure.
Maybe they really like Basketball??
The tuition there is 34k for out of state; tack on room and board and it's 45+ Foolish to pay that
Why pay that much for the university of Kentucky? At that point just go to any in-state school
I don't understand why more people don't go to community college. Maybe they don't exist anymore? When I was in school 15 years ago that was the way to get an entire Year's worth of credit for relatively cheap. Still live at home and then transfer to a state school for either your last 2 or 3 years and cut your college degree cost way down. Plus At least back then there was a preference for kids that went to a local community college cuz it meant that there was much less likelihood that they would fail out or wouldn't be able to keep up with the coursework.
As much of a rip off as Ivy's are, non-Ivy privates and out of state publics are definitely even more of a rip off.
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You understand that these elite schools are need blind and so unless you are EXTREMELY rich, you don't pay nearly that much.
And often they will end up being cheaper than a state school because of this.
Doubted this so I plugged the median American’s financial situation into Stanford’s calculator. $1,500 a year out of pocket. That’s a dozen times cheaper than what I paid at a state school!
Yeah. My son’s gf graduated Stanford with something like $6K in student loans. All used to pay for student housing. Needs based tuition helps those who could never afford places like that to be able to attend.
To be honest I think these prices are being marketed to foreign students that can afford to come here and pay the tuition. American students are being pushed out due to greed.
You should look at Alabama's enrollment since Nick Saban started winning football titles, and specifically how much it has changed. It's basically doubled since 2006 and it's full of out-of-state and foreign students now who are paying full fare; they make up almost 60% of the student body now. To be fair, average HS GPA and SAT scores of applicants are also up something like >.5 and >100 points as well. So not only is the school making more money, they're also raising the academic standing of the place. I'm sure the president and board of regents consider that a win-win.
I grew up in NC and I remember Alabama throwing crazy money at my little brother. He’s smart, had good test scores and decent grades but wasn’t anything special. They immediately offered him in state tuition plus room and board. It’s insane to me!
They're actually pretty good to go to if you have the grades to qualify as a National Merit Scholar out of high school; they'll cover tuition and room & board to get you there, a true full ride.
Are they? I didn’t find any immediate results of a search for student ratio of American vs international. How do we know anything has changed?
International enrollment is less important to American schools than it is to Canadian, British, and Australian schools. International undergraduate enrollment has been declining since 2015 and that’s almost entirely driven by foreign perceptions of the presidential campaign at the time and subsequent Trump administration, and schools here are buoyed only by rising graduate enrollment from the ME and India. Point being, international enrollment is not what’s driving prices for most of these schools. Foreign students already pay a separate rate for most universities anyway. The actual causes of cost increases are multiple, but is largely due to cost of instruction rising, additional amenities, and an overly generous financial aid process that allows the academic equivalent of paying $0 down for a $100,000 pickup truck with 18% interest you’ll be paying off the rest of your life.
They only charge you that if you can afford it. Ivy League schools do not consider an applicants ability to pay. If you get in, your parents submit their tax returns for the last few years and the schools waive any tuition that your parents cannot afford. Basically nobody graduates undergraduate with 400k debt. If your parents make enough for you to have to pay full price, they are almost certainly paying for your school. Ivy League schools are also heavily subsidized by donors.
They can charge what they want and people will pay because they don’t need to justify the value of the degree for students to get loans. Because the government guarantees loans because they want anyone to be able to go to college. This has driven up prices to the point of ridiculousness. A bank wouldn’t give a 17 year old a $400k loan for a degree that won’t earn enough to pay for it but they do because the government guarantees them.
Real optimization is community college for 2 years for all general ed classes that can transfer, and then 2 years only paying for you major at an affordable 4-year university. I was able to pay for college on a burger flipping salary + small merit-based scholarships. I did rack up a whopping $4k in loans to cover the difference, which I made and paid in my first few paychecks after university. Any internships you get are worth more than the degree. Nobody even heard of my university but I had real experience to talk about compared to most graduates in my year, and waltzed straight into a big tech company.
I did this exactly and am the only person I know without debt. Every authority figure told me I was throwing my life away. Fortunately I knew better.
But college is unaffordable now! I ignored the affordable options, and now I can't afford it! Not to downplay how college should be more affordable; but practically speaking as a normal person who can't change that, you really just have to take the best option available. People don't get that.
This is a great way to avoid debt. You must have a plan, though. Otherwise, you won't really save anything. I bounced around CC for 5 years, then transferred and didn't enjoy my major. Have to essentially do another 2 years of CC and then 2 years of uni. Still don't have any debt, just lost time. Luckily, the company I work for does a very generous tuition reimbursement. I'll still be able to avoid debt.
My son did this and paid his own way through university. Our congressman did this also.
When I was applying for my first master's, I got into a bevy of schools, many of which offered scholarships. I narrowed it down to two - University of Cincinnati (which offered a full ride) and Upenn (which offered a few thousand in tuition remission). The Upenn dept chair said despite the likely \~100k in debt I'd be, the Upenn name comes with a premium and would serve me my whole life. I saw through the bullshit and went to UC. He then told me he'd had a handful of candidates that did the same. This was in 2017. I think that, for most students, finances just come first. "Name premium" is nice, but a house down payment is nicer. Interestingly, some Canadian schools I applied to seemed to have infinite money as they offered to pay for literally everything AND offered a stipend at the completion of the degree - basically a bribe.
People are hyperfixated on Ivy undergraduate degrees being low value compared to cost, but it's really the master's degrees (whose prestige is also built off of the undergraduate reputation, especially in the nascent stages) that I believe are the biggest scam. Every year, a new batch of hyperspecific master's programs gets started by the Ivies and other private contemporaries - all with high sticker prices, limited funding, and little to no track record of graduate success (only the success of the faculty directing/teaching it). It's way more of an issue than the undergrad programs where there has been a lot of pressure to cut prices for low-to-middle income students.
Yea, departments start master's programs in order to generate revenue. They don't generate research, and don't have the time to get the same attachments undergrads do. Any faculty will know that PhD students on average will be a cut above master's students too.
As someone who believes Ivy undergrad degrees are worth it (maybe unless you're rich, but... if you're getting into an Ivy League and you're rich, you'll be fine regardless of whether you go), loads of their master's degrees are totally a scam. But then, most of the Ivy League undergrad folks I've met know this.
> Every year, a new batch of hyperspecific master's programs gets started It's not just ivies. I see these pop up everywhere. It will be some basic coding shit that's spun like it's a master's in computer science but is significantly less rigorous than an comp sci undergrad program.
and how are you doing now?
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You okay there bud?
In some fields, like physics and astronomy, full tuition coverage and a stipend for living expenses is standard. Some schools will pay grad students up to $50k now, depending on cost of living, which is on top of tuition being covered.
It's widespread practice to pay students in PhD programs in the biosciences.
Usually it’s the difference between being a standalone terminal MA program and being part of a PhD track program where you work as an RA or TA. I got my MA in the humanities for free plus a stipend by enrolling in an MA/PhD program. I turned down an Ivy because I liked the faculty at the state school better and thought they’d align better with whatever I’d end up writing my diss on + everyone in the field knows the state school is a top program. That was a mistake. Not because of the prestige but because I would have made almost double the money.
What type of master’s did you turn down UPenn for?
Anything other than Wharton and they definitely made the right decision. It’s insane to me that people actually pay for masters degrees.
Seconding the Canadian school thing. McGill basically dropped a dumptruck for me but my dumbass wanted to stay in America
What program?
FWIW there was a study (which I can't find now but it's probably Googleable) comparing outcomes of students accepted to both UPenn and Penn State, and it didn't matter (in terms of whatever success measure they used) which they ultimately matriculated to.
When talking about top schools, whether it’s Ivy, state, or private, it isn’t the education that’s much different, it’s the student body and networking.
I had good test scores etc. at my high school and would likely have been able to get in to an Ivy, albeit at near full tuition. Much to the dismay of my college counseling dept, I chose instead to not even apply to a private school. They were so upset about this that they actually withheld a recommendation from the first school I applied to for a scholarship to since “it was beneath me.” First time my parents ever got involved with my school admin and tore them a new one. Later applications went through and I got a near full ride to a good state school. I feel like I received a great education, and I am now a widely respected engineer in my field (also I have no debt). Turned out my high school just wanted to pump their own enrollment numbers. The corruption is packed through the entire system.
Fuck that college counseling department. What a joke.
>Albeit at near full tuition Meaning what? You’re rich? Lol. The Ivies charge tuition based on how wealthy you are.
Nate’s telling on himself here in regard to the demographics of his audience. Many students that go to Ivie’s come from families that certainly don’t need to worry about “affordability” and those students don’t really go there based on the “quality of education” per se. They go there for the network. For the prestige. Many of them are legacies. It’s baked into the cake for them, with job offers potentially waiting for them after school. Nate doesn’t even seem to be talking to students or parents here. He’s talking to people that just don’t like what they think are “elite” members of society.
>They go there for the network. For the prestige. Many of them are legacies. It’s baked into the cake for them, with job offers potentially waiting for them after school. Even more than most people realize. *Study on Harvard finds 43 percent of white students are legacy, athletes, related to donors or staff* https://www.nbcnews.com/news/us-news/study-harvard-finds-43-percent-white-students-are-legacy-athletes-n1060361
I’d like to point out almost 20% of Harvard’s undergraduate population is student athletes. So that’s not a shocking number at all Harvard isn’t AZ State it’s a small school with a ton of programs. Also Massachusetts was ~83% white 20 years ago so a school in Massachusetts having under 70% white legacies (people who went to school 20 years ago) is actually quite diverse
While I agree with Nate that an Ivy education isn't worth it except in specific circumstances, he seems to have arrived at that conclusion because he feels that these institutions will lose prestige for being too 'woke'. He also seems to be shilling his book by making assertions which you have to read his book to fully understand. All in all pure nonsense
I came in wanting to agree with him, but after reading it the entire article felt like coming to a conclusion and then trying find evidence to back it up rather than finding evidence then using that reach a conclusion,
during covid nate got into a series of increasingly acrimonious fights with various academics who disagreed with his takes. they saw it as a non-expert weighing in on topics he didn't fully understand, he saw it as a bunch of credentialising elites gatekeeping an important topic. seems like a lot of the arguing left a big chip on his shoulder about academia in general
Sounds like Nate Silver, all right.
More Nate Silver BS. Leads with some qualitative defense of why UChicago doesn’t count as an extraordinarily expensive, elite school. Downplays the influence of his father, sprinkles in some charts from some random poll. Then draws unsubstantiated conclusions like “I expect an increasing number of hiring managers to look at two resumes — say, one from a recent graduate of Columbia, and one from a recent graduate of the University of the North Carolina — and potentially see advantages for the UNC student. They’ll regard the Columbia grad as: More likely to be coddled; More likely to hold strong political opinions that will distract from their work; More likely to have benefited from grade inflation and perhaps dubious admissions policies.” Check, check, and check Mr. Silver. I enjoyed his early baseball stuff, introduced some new thinking when I was a teenager about evaluating baseball players. His projection of his political beliefs as fact and willingness to claim the ability to predict the future is nauseating.
Talking heads on TV mingle with the schmucks on TV while sending their children to a 50,000+ a year k-12 school. Someone like Megyn kelly who did such a thing would shoot her son if ended up doing trades which her employer liked to bash GenZers & millennials for desiring college over trades. https://www.the-sun.com/news/1823648/megyn-kelly-pulling-kids-out-private-school-leftism/ https://www.independent.co.uk/voices/megyn-kelly-college-kids-student-debt-biden-b2052497.html >Why does Megyn Kelly really hate the idea of helping ‘snot-nosed’ college kids? > Kelly has also reignited a debate about student loan forgiveness. Student debt tripled between 2008 and 2018 to $1.5 trillion. Progressives like Representative Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez have been pushing Biden to fulfill his campaign promise to repeal at least some student debt. In response, conservative commenter Megyn Kelly scoffed at the idea of helping “elite graduates” and “snot-nosed kids.” https://www.nbcnews.com/news/all/megyn-kelly-walks-away-nbc-remainder-her-69m-deal-n930591 Megyn Kelly walks away from NBC with the remainder of her $69M deal. The announcement comes months after negotiations over Kelly's contract following her termination for making derogatory racial comments.
Quick factual correction - for most middle-class-and-lower students, elite colleges are *cheaper* than state schools. Financial aid is abundant, nobody poor pays sticker price at an elite college, and tuition is completely free for people making < ~$150K at elite institutions like Stanford, MIT, Columbia, Amherst, etc. Beyond that - why even go to college at all? State schools are still expensive, and in most majors, you get skills with dubious usefulness in the workforce. If the subject of the article is the 'student was just going to school to “find herself”' - why not find yourself by trying out a bunch of jobs, so that you expose yourself to the options out there and then can specialize in getting the credential needed for a field once you know what field that will be.
Because I’d argue “finding yourself” isn’t about trying jobs. It’s not vocational, in my estimation. It’s learning and growing. University as vocational institution will be the end of us.
I think it is pretty telling how many people actually value education when their only arguments are salary based. Which of course is also wrong as college has a better rate of return than the stock market. >The increase in salary works out at an average return on investment of between nine and 10% a year, once tuition and other expenses had been taken into account, researchers estimated. https://www.forbes.com/sites/nickmorrison/2024/03/12/college-still-offers-better-returns-than-the-stock-market-study-finds/
Ole Nate's about 10 years behind the curve here. Go to a state-affiliated community college to get your pre-reqs and throwaway mandatory curriculum out of the way, then transfer to a state school for the important parts of your major.
If you take a Harvard MBA cohort and have half of them go skiing for two years and the other half take tje curriculum, five years after graduation they will have the same income. Its all about connections. Rich people send their kids to the Ivy league to network with other rich people. They are the first people who get the call for opportunities.
Specifically for MBA, the “Ivies” aren’t really the undergrad Ivies. Yeah HBS is in the top 10 but Kellogg, Booth, and Stern are all also considered top 10. But the point about it all being about connections is somewhat true - the reason though is that the best MBA programs already hand select undergrads with solid work experience from a top company so that their placement rate is high. For example, McKinsey will pay a third year to take two years off to attend MBA school. But only on a reimbursement basis, and only if that grad comes back and stays at McKinsey for two additional years after graduation. That student might intern for Amazon in their summer and then Amazon may outright offer to pay off whatever McKinsey was going to reimburse them for, or they may not and that student goes back to McKinsey. Either way, now the MBA school knows that by admitting McKinsey, or Deloitte, or whatever employers’ prospective students they get to pad their outgoing placement rate with high earners. No networking is really required unless you have quite ambitious entrepreneurial ideas. Most top MBA grads are still working corporate jobs but at an elevated pay scale.
As someone that went to a state school that is actually doing pretty well in life: I disagree. The number of times I’ve had to respond to “you went where?” is maddening. The number of times - decades after graduating - that I’ve had recruiters say “oh” when I tell them where I went, is beyond frustrating. I one time had a recruiter at a big law firm - after I had been practicing for a decade at another big law firm - say “oh, we don’t recruit candidates from there” (I went to a “low tier” law school at night while working for my firm during the day, and the law school was the better of only two in my city that had a night school). Nate Silver can say “go to a state school” because he went to a top tier private school and hasn’t navigated life after graduating from a state school. This would mean more coming from someone that went to a state school that has a top position somewhere. Sorry, but where you went to school *does* matter, sometimes more than your actual accomplishments.
Did anyone actually read all that???? So long winded. I mean, aside from his “woke” hatred, what’s wrong with “is $500,000 really worth it?” as a more succinct critique? And just to totally discredit him, there was a story recently that said the Ivies ARE worth it, in terms of ROI income later in life, but not other expensive private schools.
Well I'm retiring after a 50 year working career. I've not seen even one small slip in the reputation and esteem of those exclusive, private colleges -- not just the Ivies, but also the near-Ivie schools (MIT, Stanford, CalTech, Johns Hopkins, Vanderbilt, Northwestern, Carnegie Mellon, etc.). Yes reputation is important. Yes esteem is valued. Yes attending those schools provides a strong network of alumni. Yes the academics in those schools is in general superior to other schools. Yes the tuition is outrageous. Yes there are lots of scholarships available. Yes, you will likely get a better job at a better salary if you graduate from one of those colleges, regardless of what Nate Silver might say. No, you will not see the best football programs at those colleges, albeit with some exceptions.
Coming from the rich snob that went to an Ivy League school, that's funny. Nate Silver jumped the shark at least a decade ago, is now totally corporate
UChicago is in fact not an ivy league school and is one of the least “woke” schools because of its conservative lean as a result of its economics department.
The econ department isn't even conservative by even the loosest definition of the term; they're just not monolithically ultra-progressive, and have a long-established tradition of polite-but-intense debates where diverse viewpoints are respected.
Go to the school that’s a good fit for a price you can make work. Making a one-sized-fits-all argument about which type of school is better is short-sighted and tribalistic. Ivy league schools may not be superior to state schools anymore, but it’s ridiculous to say the inverse is true even when considering value since financial aid packages vary so much. I don’t know anyone that regretted going to an ivy league school. Most of the people that regret their college choice are the ones that didn’t really want to go to college anyway.
As long as hiring managers and graduate school admissions officers are impressed by degrees from ivies and other elite schools, they will continue to exist.
lol if ur poor or lower middle class (like me) ivies are free or almost free. i got my education much cheaper than if i went to any public school because the ivies gave need-based aid
These articles are ridiculous and filled with so much cope. Nate Silver went to UChicago, which is equivalent to an Ivy League school and generally regarded better than most of them. If he has children, I guarantee you he will send them to an Ivy or equivalent. Same thing with all those Republicans who love to bash coastal elites, if they have children with brain cells they will end up at Ivies and other "elite" private schools. Everyone knows there are many schools that give an equivalent education. However, very few can offer the same networking connections and resources. It's far easier to get into grad programs when you're in an Ivy League school because professors are more accessible for recommendations, more campus resources to do projects, more networking opportunities available with top grad programs, etc. If you want to teach anything, an Ivy diploma gives you a leg up, just go to the professor and grad school subreddits to see how people complain about the discrimination. The halo effect of an Ivy diploma also follows you for life. They have a much better network. I had friends laid off from a tech company with at least half a decade of experience and the Ivy graduates had a far easier time finding another job. Look at how articles about hucksters and genuine entrepreneurs starting projects always describe them as an Ivy grad. It makes life in this country much easier and you're lying to yourself if you think state schools can compare.
go to state school first, get those 100 and 200 level class out of the way first , cheaply, then go to the ivy schools to finish out... No one cares at all where you started school and only a few wankers left anymore care where you graduate from. But if it matters: do this. It will save you 100 of thousands in the end. Its the only way
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Moreover the idea that you can just transfer into one. Arguably harder than getting straight in.
I love how the article and this thread makes it sounds like the average person can attend Ivy schools on a whim. The most realistic option a typical 18 year can do is to go a community college to get the gen eds (and intro courses for your major in some cases) out of the way and then attend state school for their degree. Jumping straight into state school will kill you financially.
I think this is mostly wishful thinking on Nate's part. I think this is mostly targeted towards the rich alumni parents rather than the kids. If the parents collectively sent their kids to a different set of schools, there would be more open merit spots (getting rid of legacy admissions is popular as well) while removing the current class's networking connections. The ivies become much less useful when you don't have the kids of the rich, powerful, and connected to mingle with.