How much does an Ivy League degree really matter? As two people who did a lot of hiring, Jack Welch and I debated this question often, and as parents, even more so. And today, with affirmative action and legacy admissions very much in the news, everyone seems to be in the same conversation.
Jack didn’t give much weight to Ivy League degrees, as Diane Brady noted so accurately in her recent Fortune column. He preferred to hire top students from public universities at GE, because he believed they were just as smart as Ivy grads, but with more grit. He told me once he’d hired one too many “slick-talking” Ivy grads who underwhelmed him when they had to walk that talk.
But actually – that’s my point. Your degree may open a door at the beginning of your career, but it stops mattering the day you show up and have to perform.
Now, I’m not sorry I went to Harvard. Not just for the learning, but for the friends. Yet 40-something years out, it’s not like all those friends are living lives that set them apart from everyone else in business. As Diane Brady’s story points out, of the Fortune 100 CEOs in 2023, only 12% are Ivy grads. That’s just one statistic, but it tracks with my lived experience. https://lnkd.in/gP68VWBT
Right now, at NYU Stern School of Business, I am reminded every day that education is what you make it. An Ivy degree may buy you a coveted interview or second chance when you screw up, but in short order, you have to buy those for yourself anyway. Am I right?
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2moOh, nice! Me too.