Good Luck!
Rusty Guinn
March 18, 2019·4 comments·Politics
A major admissions scandal exposed wealthy families paying hundreds of thousands to get their children into elite universities. The response from observers has been predictable: this will damage these institutions' reputations and weaken the prestige attached to their degrees. But there's a curious contradiction at work. If the value of an elite credential were actually built on institutional merit or proven outcomes, the scandal should matter enormously. Yet the evidence suggests it won't.
- The performance paradox is decades old. Managers consistently report that elite-school graduates don't outperform peers from other universities, yet those same hiring managers still call back Stanford resumes. The gap between what we know about credentials and how we treat them has only widened.
- Scandals rarely topple powerful narratives. The NCAA has survived rampant cheating, sexual abuse, and brain injury cover-ups with minimal cultural consequence. Universities have accumulated vast endowments while raising costs that saddle students with $1.5 trillion in debt. The institutions persist.
- Reform actually protects what it appears to challenge. When universities fire individual administrators and tighten policies, they're not weakening the narrative about elite credentials. They're making it more resilient by removing the friction points that might force deeper questioning.
- The abstraction runs deeper than facts. The power of elite institutions rests on something more fundamental than evidence of their worth. It's embedded in how we structure childhood, measure success, and distribute opportunity across the entire system.
- The real question is whether the system's foundation can be questioned at all. Right now, the political and cultural incentives that created this credentialing system are too valuable for anyone to seriously threaten. So the scandal becomes another scandal, the reform becomes another reform, and the narrative holds
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I have the impression that you and Ben are suffering from confirmation bias when it comes to fitting events into your analysis of the zeitgeist. The most-read story on CNBC today was about Jamie Dimon’s critique of inequality in the U.S. economy. It quotes him as follows:
“It’s not about a college degree,” said Dimon, who graduated from Tufts University and Harvard Business School. “Having gone I know just how worthless a college degree is sometimes.”
Dimon called the education system “broken” and said his bank stopped giving philanthropic dollars to colleges years ago. Instead, the company is focusing on community colleges and training programs.
Sounds like this Nudging Plutocrat didn’t get the memo about the Narrative of Elite Institutions, doesn’t it?
Good luck, indeed.
As a passport stamped member of Team Elite, I offer two insights.
I led analyst recruiting for a number of years for my I-banking department and subsequent investment management firm in the 90s. I restricted my on-campus recruiting visits to one “elite” east coast school. I didn’t do that because I believed that the top kids at that school were better than the top kids at any other school (elite or otherwise)— my employers were not prestigious enough to get the top kids anyway; I did it because I could spend a day and interview a dozen kids and find 9 of them capable and willing to do the job, as opposed to other schools where only one or two would fit the bill (and then would likely turn down my job offer anyway). It was a screening process to make me more efficient— but I was searching for competence over excellence.
My son is a high school senior who just completed the college admission process and will be going to a top 30 university next year. What is most frustrating to students (and parents) about the process these days is the sheer randomness of it. A student can check all the standard boxes (board scores, grades, academic rigor, extracurriculars) but without a “hook” (athletic recruit, mega-donor, nationally ranked in something, 1st generation college), the odds of getting into a “most competitive” school is probably sub 20%. Logically then, to reduce variance, the student must apply to a lot more schools to be assured they get into at least one of them. That of course leads to all these schools getting even more applications and lowering the odds of acceptance further. Wash, rinse, repeat.
If you have an ‘elite’ degree, you will feel, or will be made to feel, inadequate without an appropriate amount of ‘success’. Without an elite degree, you may feel, or may be made to feel inadequate despite an appropriate amount of success. Did we get the message? Good luck!
Well now, what a surprise (NOT). Just released by the White House:
PROPOSALS TO REFORM THE HIGHER EDUCATION ACT
“Unfortunately, many colleges and universities have been unable or unwilling to provide the necessary
types of education in a cost-effective manner.”
https://www.whitehouse.gov/wp-content/uploads/2019/03/HEA-Principles.pdf
And the timing of this release in the wake of last week’s indictments is purely coincidental, right?
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