No, I’m Not Impressed By Your Elite University
Even though the United States doesn’t hand out official titles, we like to find ways around that.
I mean, look at me with a CPA after my name. And I still find it weird that my students call me “Professor” instead of Tim.
More commonly, large swaths of society attach worth based on the University a person attended, often decades after that 4+ year stint is over.
We once had a recruit who went to Cornell and Notre Dame, and one of the managers said, “I don’t care about the rest of her resume. That right there is enough for me!”
(Note to that coworker who went to those schools: you’re a wonderful person and I really enjoyed working with you, but I am going to dump on your schools a bit.)
Sure, proving to a hiring board that you were academically amazing in high school is no small feat, but am I really supposed to be impressed by that when you’re a middle aged middle manager writing late night tweets? How is this not just the nerd equivalent of bragging about being the homecoming king?
So much of the media doesn’t help, either, focusing on the acceptance practices of these small schools, as if who gets to be part of that small 13k undergrad class should have any baring over the other 300 million of us.
Actual accomplishment should matter so much more. But looking at that is hard. So we replace it with these certificates and markers, hoping that showing “Harvard” on the resume actually means something in terms of quality of work.
The Exxon Tale
I grew up with my dad telling me tales about his time at Exxon. He had a lot of memorable stories from his relatively brief stint, but one that stuck to me was about his hiring class.
As part of the group they hired with him, they brought on board a large group of MBAs from Yale. It didn’t take very long for the group from Yale to prove they’re very good at one thing: bragging about going to Yale.
As for the actual work, according to my dad, there was nothing particularly impressive to recommend them.
Now, obviously since my dad was not one of the ones from Yale, he had every incentive to talk up the non-Yale students. So maybe his perception was not completely based in reality. But from a young age, before society taught me I was supposed to bow down to the Yale brand, I associated it with bragging over results.
Lining Them Up
I grew up in a relatively small town in Northern California. Most of my peers had dreams of going to UC Davis or Chico State rather than the Ivy League, so the elite university talk didn’t come up much.
That changed late in high school. I was one of the top students in my class in terms of grades, and I had a teacher pushing me to diversify my university search. Since I wanted to go into engineering at the time (a dream that quickly died once I entered college), I told her MIT to placate her.
She praised my bravery for branching out from BYU, which is where I really wanted to go.
I didn’t bother applying to MIT. East coast? Eww.
Later, that same teacher called up all the students who were accepted into Berkeley so we could clap for their great accomplishment.
She thought it was special. I thought it was just another school in the politically crazy part of California (it’s a common trope that those living in the far northern part of California hate the Bay Area).
Hiding Your Degree
A few years ago, I was on this fun tour in Ouray with another family with kids about the same age as mine. At some point, the discussion of schools came up, and the husband mentioned that he went to school in Menlo Park.
“Oh, yeah, Stanford, right?” I said. I got pretty excited…not because of the school, but because of the NorCal connection (my hate for the Bay Area diminished after moving from the state).
Apparently I hang out in the wrong circles, because I later discovered that this has been going on since…well, at least The Great Gatsby. People will say they went to school in “Boston” or “Connecticut” or, apparently, Menlo Park rather than saying Harvard or Yale or Stanford.
But should we really care about any of that? Whether the city/state is used rather than the school name due to humility or condescension, who really cares? They’re just other universities.
Isn’t it enough to celebrate graduation from an accredited university?
Maybe Just Take People As They Come
Final story before I sign off on my rant. During one meeting with a client with all kinds of specialists involved (they were going through a big transaction), someone had this great idea to introduce ourselves and say what university we went to. Everyone was going around…until we came to a man who grew up in the UK.
“I didn’t go to University,” he said. “It’s really not that important in England.”
That shut everyone up.
Being an American (and an adjunct college professor), I’m still big on the college education. But it helped put a new perspective on how we treat people in the work environment.
We have this tier system of Elite University > Big State University > Local College > High School Only (with more than a few steps skipped in the hierarchy).
We want to weed people out based on a name on a piece of paper. It’s an easy way for us to stereotype and turn off the brain.
Yes, some certifications mean you have at least a basic understanding of a concept. But beyond that, we need to figure out a better way to sort people.
Like, maybe the actual work they do. It’s hard for the recent graduate, but after a decade, it should be much easier to figure out.
Think I’m going too far in my rant? Not far enough? Let me know! I’m willing to change my mind…unless you dunk on my school, of course.
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