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In a recent study, we investigated how many of the wealthiest and most influential people graduated college. We studied 11,745 U.S. leaders, including CEOs, federal judges, politicians, multi-millionaires and billionaires, business leaders and the most globally powerful men and women.
We found about 94 percent of these U.S. leaders attended college, and about 50 percent attended an elite school. Though almost everyone went to college, elite school attendance varied widely. For instance, only 20.6 percent of House members and 33.8 percent of 30-millionaires attended an elite school, but over 80 percent of Forbes' most powerful people did. For whatever reason, about twice as many senators – 41 percent – as House members went to elite schools.
For comparison, based on census and college data, we estimate that only about 2 to 5 percent of all U.S. undergraduates went to one of the elite schools in our study. The people from our study attended elite schools at rates well above typical expectations.
Why waste $150,000 on an education you could get for $1.50 in late fees at the public library?
(Score: 2) by ledow on Friday April 21 2017, @09:42AM (6 children)
You thought education guaranteed you a job? Maybe you should have stayed in school for longer.
I have a degree. It's not great.
I graduated, looked around, couldn't find what I wanted to do. Started my own business instead. Within a couple of years, I was earning more than a full-time job for someone twice my age, going home at 3pm and only working half-the-week. I was earning more than my parents had EVER earned in their lives by age 24.
Then I went back to the job market, and everyone clamoured for me. At all stages the fact that I had a degree come up. People used it as a item of trust, but not proof of experience. I demonstrated that in different ways, instead, but the degree showed that I wasn't just bluffing or that I wasn't just memorising current stuff without an ability to learn.
The degree proves one thing: That you can study and learn and not give up. It does not prove competence in any one area, especially in any job-related area. Your open-source stuff? It doesn't prove much. I have that, and I'm not even a programmer. I just do it for fun.
I work in IT. My degree is in Maths. Nobody cared. I studied the subject I enjoy, and then I worked in an industry that needed skilled people and for which I could quickly acquire or use my skills. At no point did it occur to me to get a job using Maths - I hate finance, I can't stand arithmetic (one tiny, teeny portion of maths). I'd be bored to tears having to work with maths all day long, except as an academic exercise. It was never an option for me, when I was choosing my subjects, going to university or looking for jobs. I did what I enjoyed and could do. Then I needed work, so I found a job I enjoyed and could do. The two were entirely unrelated.
If you went to a university to get a degree thinking that gave you some right, or even proved you were able to do, a job, you were severely misled and never bothered to question it.
However, several employers have stated that they considered my degree to be to my advantage and chosen me because of it. To quote my ex-father-in-law (who's a PhD himself) - "When I have a computing question, I come to you and trust you over all my other friends, even the ones who work in IT too, even in the face of outright opposition from them. Because you've got a degree, and they don't." And this guy is the father of the woman I divorced. He still comes to me in preference.
In all your tech degrees, what's your real-world job experience? Nothing. Who's going to hire someone with no real-world job experience? Nobody. Like nobody hired me out of university. I had to work and prove I could do it off my own back and at my own risk. Then people trusted me.
(Score: 2) by kaszz on Friday April 21 2017, @10:37AM (2 children)
What did your business do?
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday April 21 2017, @10:58AM (1 child)
Or, his parents were living on the government dole.
There's no other explanation for his supposedly huge income, given that he went on to work in "IT".
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday April 21 2017, @10:00PM
You have no idea what you are talking about. I have seen guys start up landscaping businesses and expand them to mini empires. Easy enough to do with a tech related company too . . .
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday April 21 2017, @11:00AM
What you describe is the reason that society needs to return to Apprenticeships: Education cannot be separated from experience; education cannot be separated from productive work.
(Score: 2) by DutchUncle on Friday April 21 2017, @02:10PM
You exemplify the problem with the repeated political claims that "Schools need to train people for jobs" or "Companies need better trained workers out of school". I agree with you, finishing school means that you can (1) learn stuff, both subject matter and "how to function in a given competitive environment", and (2) take on a big project and finish it. It does *not*necessarily that you have some particular narrow training that will satisfy one particular narrow need (that will probably last only a short time).
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday April 21 2017, @09:00PM
I have the opposite experience. I am young, yet already hold a director level position, and prior to that senior level and management positions at other places. I have no college. None at all. Never once did any company ask if I went and I don't lie or hide it on my resume that I never have. None of them cared, or if they did it sure never affected my ability to find work. Am I a usual case? No. I'd wager you aren't either though. Just as you say your ex father in law goes to you because you have a degree, I have quite a few who come to me instead of others who have PhDs and Masters degrees. I don't think having or not having college comes in to play much at all unless you're a beginning job-seeker fresh in your career.