It doesn't matter.

That's right, it doesn't matter where you go to college. So says Frank Bruni.

Forget Harvard and Stanford. It really doesn

 

For a lot of people, I really don't think it does matter.

I'm an HR person. I supervise a staffing specialist who graduated from Cornell's School of Industrial and Labor Relations, arguably one of the best HR programs in the country. She's been a staffing specialist for fifteen years. Why doesn't she move up? Because she doesn't want to. She has told me a number of times how she likes being an hourly employee. She let her PHR lapse because she didn't really feel like it was worth keeping.

She could have that job with a degree from the University of Phoenix (though, she paid less for a Cornell ILR B.S. than she would for a UofP degree, just sayin').

There are people who will go out and light the world on fire with no degree. There are people who will settle in at lower levels despite having impressive credentials.

The question is what do we do with that information?

Does that mean no one should apply for top programs? Does that mean everyone should just go for the cheapest degree?

I don't think so.

I think that there are always going to be people on the extreme ends of that spectrum. But there are a lot of other people who benefit but happen to fall "in the middle." If you want to get into hospitality, having a degree from UNLV or Cornell is going to open doors in the hospitality industry. Can you get at those doors another way? Sure. Maybe.

But it all comes down to why you are choosing that top program. Are you wanting to go to Harvard because you've been indoctrinated since youth to believe that Harvard is "the best" university in the country (maybe even the world? Or do you want to go to Harvard because of the cutting edge research they are doing there in the field of [whatever it is you care about]?

You should want to go to UNLV because they are uniquely positioned to educate you in a manner dissimilar to the hotel management program at a community college in rural Idaho. But if you want to go somewhere just because the name is flashy, you're not approaching your education very well (and I would bet you'll approach your career in a similarly dysfunctional manner).

 

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=syxHO3AFIug

FWIW, Joe Elliot does sing "It Doesn't Matter" at the very end (3:11).

 

When you get to a certain point in your career where you went to school doesn't matter. I've been working for 16+ years now and where I got my degree (and what my degree was in) is of little consequence now. However, not all schools are created equal. Where you went to school can be a deciding factor if you are young in your career for certain positions/companies. For example, which looks better on the resume, 2.5 to 3.0 GPA from MIT or 4.0 from University of Phoenix? Fair? Unfair? maybe but it is a reality. Ultimately at the end of the day the question must be answered, "can this candidate do the job I need he/she to do?"

 

I don't think this article really explains how it doesn't matter. "Ivy League or equally selective college" is a really small selection of schools. It could be possible that going to a Top 50 or Top 100 school does matter out of the 4,000 or so colleges out there. There is also the possibility that an Ivy League or overall equally selective school is not even a top school in a particular industry.

 

These are some interesting points. There are people who assume that "Ivy League" is always the top. However, Johns-Hopkins Medical has ranked higher than its Ivy peers pretty consistently. I cannot imagine that anyone would reasonably argue that Stanford or MIT would be "safety schools" for those who simply cannot get into Ivy League institutions.

Without devolving into our previous discussion about ROI and ranked programs, I think it worthwhile to simply add that, perhaps, just as this author has painted all colleges and universities with too broad a brush, so too, others often paint students with too broad of a brush.

There are other factors at play in the success of a student beyond the ranking of his or her program.

I used to live in the Wilkes-Barre/Scranton area. There were 12 different degree granting institutions in a relatively small space. Let's say you earned an MBA from Wilkes University. Is there anything wrong with Wilkes University? Not really. But their MBA doesn't really compete, on a national level, with an MBA from PennState (which had two campuses in this area). That's good to know. But what if you never leave that area? What if you have no intention of leaving that area? There are plenty of people who are married to a specific area like that.

Will the PennState degree matter to those people? Maybe it will. But the rankings for PennState are so high because recruiters actively pursue PSU graduates. But those recruiters are not hiring people to work in Wilkes-Barre or State College, PA (PSU's main campus). So if you earn say, an MBA, from PSU but decide you wish to permanently settle in State College, PA, I would be rather astonished if you achieved the level of success of the graduate who was willing to move where the money was.

 

It depends on how you gauge success, and this author chose to gauge success by looking at CEOs of Fortune 500 companies. Even within that narrow scope, I don't think the author has shown how where you go doesn't matter.

 

Success is indeed relative. Even if you land a job as an associate at Goldman, if your father is a billionaire, you might still be the family screw up.

I will agree with you that the author has not demonstrated that the program doesn't matter. I think my main issue is that it is an attempt to make some very broad statements with anecdotal observations. OK, a Disney executive has a bachelors from Ithaca College and no MBA (for what it's worth, Ithaca College is ranked #9 for Regional Colleges - North. It doesn't really hold a candle to its "arch-rival" Cornell, also located in Ithaca, but it stands on its own). As we've discussed previously elsewhere, it is difficult to extrapolate any meaningful conclusion from that particular instance.

But everyone claims to hold the "secret" to success. This author is no different.

As I type this, I am idly flipping through the Directory of Venture Capital and Private Equity firms (it came with my office, it is the 2012 edition). It's a great little (huge) directory that indexes PE/VC firms in the U.S. with their top executives. What's cool about it is that also has a college/university index (it also indexes by executive name and industry). To give you an idea of why this is so fascinating, allow me to quote a few numbers:

Ithaca College has 5 alumni listed
Salve Regina has 1 alumnus listed
JFK University has 1 alumnus listed
University of Phoenix has 4 alumni listed
DeVry has 5 alumni listed
PennState has 52 alumni listed
NYU has nearly 100
UChicago (including Booth and non-Booth graduates) has about 130 alumni listed
Princeton has over 100
Harvard Business School fills three full pages (four if you add in the Harvard grads who didn't graduate from the business school)

There are some limitations with this index, mind you, as the index appears to be based upon how individuals report their education. So there are some duplicate headers. For example, there are alumni listed under "U.S. Naval Academy" and another set of alumni listed under "United States Naval Academy." Likewise, some people who graduated from NYU's business school are listed under "New York University Stern Business School" while others are listed under "Stern Business School." It isn't the best index, but it is interesting nonetheless.

Do what you will with this information. It seems that the University of Phoenix has nearly as much representation in this highly competitive industry than Ithaca College. I think it would be foolish to use that as a basis to compare the programs themselves, but I think it does make a statement about how much those programs "matter" to the real world. You'll notice a significant void between the ranked business schools (like PennState, Harvard and Princeton) and those that are unranked (Ithaca College is ranked as a regional college, but their business program is not ranked).

Some of this is also likely attributable to geography. For example, I don't think anyone here really wants to argue that UofP is "better" than Aalborg University. However, I can only imagine that Aalborg grads don't flock to the U.S. and the number who would then enter the PE/VC world is likely significantly lower.

I suppose I'm just proposing this as a quick sanity check about where graduates land since the data is present and hasn't really been manipulated. Top business schools have greater representation in the top levels of management at PE/VC firms. That doesn't mean you can't be a success if you don't have a degree from a top program. But overall, the top program might position you for success in ways that the unranked programs simply cannot.

 

Also, I recognize that my earlier post only addresses PE/VC firms. There are many areas of the business world where one might find success. I just happen to have a directory for that one. I will also admit taht some of my very round numbers are just estimates because there were too many to count.

If anyone has a college/university they would like me to look up I'm happy to do so.

 

This same article is being discussed on another forum. A poster there brought up an interesting point that the Ivy Leagues and equivalents still have a disproportionate number of CEOs. They account for 30% of the CEOs, but they do not have 30% of the college students. You are right that those numbers you pulled do not prove that UoP and Devry are just as good as Ithaca. That actually supports assertions that they aren't. UoP has hundreds of thousands of students versus Ithaca's less than 10,000 students. I just think the author of this book is making a mistake by only looking at a small group of schools. Penn State is not an Ivy League equivalent, but it's not just any school just like Ithaca is not just any school. They certainly have much better reputations than schools like UoP. I won't be buying this man's book, but it would have been more interesting to see him prove that someone having graduated from schools like UoP or Devry have just as much of a chance for success (however you want to gauge it) as someone with equivalent experience who attended a school with a better reputation.

I think books like this are more geared toward traditional-aged college students and their parents. A lot of people with a lot of work experience aren't really stressing over getting into the best colleges; they just need to check the box.

 

I agree.

For a lot of mature learners, the college program may not matter. For a lot of traditional college age students the program may not matter (depending upon their goals). But honestly, if you were a high school student who really wanted to work at a private equity firm I cannot imagine looking at the book I referenced above and thinking "Geez, I should just get a degree from DeVry." The program you choose can absolutely matter because certain programs in certain fields have a pipeline to some really nice careers. Others do not. Can you bypass the established pipelines? Sometimes. But why would you actively try to make the process harder on yourself?

 

Here's a follow up from the author of the book, Frank Bruni:

Exploring the Roots of College Admissions Mania | Frank Bruni

 

Here's a counterpoint to Frank Bruni.

Frank Bruni is wrong about Ivy League schools – Quartz

 

It depends on where you live and what your field is. What does matter are the connections you make. I don't think the education at Harvard is any better than a lot of state schools, but the connections certainly are. Who you know matters. If you're going into a field where you need the connections, then it matters. If it's about the education you receive, I don't think it does.