Category: Social Analysis

Want to know what I’m talking about?

Read this article on the differences of American and Canadian culture. (Tip of the Stetson to Southern Appeal.)

This article from a writer with the CATO Institute makes a very interesting point.

It starts out talking about the problems with affirmative action programs. There’s not much new in that quarter. Those problems have been explored by many before.

But then it goes on to make a point that is really interesting. According to the article:

[E]conomists Stacy Dale and Alan Krueger found that name-brand colleges [such as Harvard, Yale, Cornell, Stamford] are the modern equivalent of the Dutch tulip craze. Prices go up and up, but elite colleges offer no financial benefit that less selective schools do not.

Dale and Krueger compared students rejected by selective colleges with students who attended those schools. They discovered that when students’ entering credentials, such as high school grades and test scores, were the same, the rejected students made just as much money as those who attended “top tier” universities.

Students know something about themselves that admissions committees do not. If you think you are Cornell material, you are – even if Cornell doesn’t notice – and statistics show that you are just as likely as Cornell grads to succeed in the game of life. This means that preferences don’t raise minority incomes.

Racial preferences can’t send more minority students to college and don’t raise the incomes of those they move around, but they do reinforce a harmful myth: the myth that credentials, not skills, are the key to success. Students of all backgrounds suffer because elite schools perpetuate this myth.

Ivy league institutions maintain their status by rejecting far more applicants than they accept. To keep applications coming – and parents paying tuition – they practically claim to have bottled success. Anyone can rub elbows with the brilliant and powerful, they imply, and be set for life.

But studies show that skills, not name-brand diplomas, determine advancement in the real world. Harvard grads do well, but they do well because they are skilled and driven, not because they have Harvard degrees.

This confirms something I’ve observed–that there is a low correlation between academic prestige and professional ability. Indeed, some of the most effective and productive folks I’ve encountered do not even have a degree in their selected field. Apologetics is particularly noteworthy in this regard in that nobody in the Catholic world offers degrees in apologetics. (Indeed, I myself am an example of this: My degree is in philosophy, and not from an Ivy League school). But the same is true of others I encounter as well. Often the best people are “self-made men” who lack credentials.

My experience is that native intelligence and drive count for far more than credentials. With intelligence and drive you can acquire the skills that no college program can give you. Careers in academia definitely open doors for one, and do give one a leg up in knowing one’s field, but no matter how prolonged academic careers are, most professional learning is still acquired by on-the-job training. People who are fresh out of school in any field aren’t nearly as skilled as those who have been working for some time. And the sharper and more motivated you are, the more you will push yourself to acquire the skills need to do top quality work.

Admittedly, not all the Big Name Universities are Ivy League, but we might well call the prestige associated with having a degree from such schools “the Ivy League myth.”