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David is an occasional blogger, software engineer, Nintendo fanboy, liberal, news magazine addict, voracious TiVo user, and bibliophile. He was born in St. Louis, grew up in southern Indiana, and returned to St. Louis to attend Washington University. He hasn't managed to escape yet. He's a fan of free wine tastings, too many tv shows to name, and eating out. David makes his living developing web applications used internally by his employer. He doesn't blog about work because he's heard too many stories about that causing workplace troubles. There's more on the about page. |
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13 January 2005 - 1:36 pm
Slate has an interesting article about Ivy League graduates representing a smaller portion of top management jobs at Fortune 100 companies than they did 20 years ago. The author's opinion on why this is the case is fairly provocative and touches on the changing nature of elite education in America:
Something has changed about the character of the student bodies at many Ivy League schools in recent decades. With the rising ability of the wealthy to smooth the path to admission by paying private-school tuition and hiring college advisers and SAT-prep tutors—and with college tuition far outpacing financial aid growth—rich kids are more likely to get in, and to attend, Ivy League schools than in the past. A widely quoted study from the Century Foundation found that 74 percent of the students at 146 selective colleges surveyed came from the top socioeconomic quartile, while only 10 percent come from the bottom half! Harvard President Larry Summers devoted his 2004 commencement speech to this phenomenon. On a percentage basis, fewer Ivy League graduates than public school graduates today need to find stable, high-paying jobs at big companies. More of them can afford to traipse around Asia for a year or pursue a career in film-making. It could be that the already rich and comfortable are simply less interested in pursuing careers in large corporations than their less-comfortable public-school peers for purely economic reasons.
Posted by on 13 January 2005 at 1:36 PM
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