That's the kind of friend you want controlling your superhere underwear.
I find it extremely weird and juevenile that a) some colleges have "secret socities" and b) the members are interested in retaining exlusion even post-college.
I went to my reunion over the weekend, and the only "secret" society of which I am aware, Mac Naked, had a brief resurgence--multiple streakings sighted!
Oh, and the Shutting Down the Bar Society convened for a while, and now the I Still Feel Drunk 32 Hours Later Society is in session.
It's not juvenile, unfortunately--those goddamn secret societies actually do control the world. It was much noted that both the candidates in the last Presidential election were from the same (most exclusive) secret society. Being able to network exclusively is probably pretty valuable.
Almost every job I have had post-graduation, I got through my fraternity alumni network.
I think the impact of these societies is oversold. Much like the effect of the Ivy League itself. That said, L should have gone to Wellesley over Tulane, and U of M (for free!) over both.
I'm not sure that that sort of study does a good job at estimating the impact on, say, ruling the world as opposed to the impact on future earnings. (Or other things that don't show up on earnings--I dare you to deny that Lampoon alumni don't have a substantial leg up in comedy circles. Admittedly the Lampoon is slightly meritocratic.) But perhaps I should say that the secret society members think they have something to gain from keeping the network exclusive--I bet that's so.
Totally agree with Matt W. Earnings are just one small way to measure the impact of these networks. Lots of prestige jobs aren't necessarily high-earning, and while they don't require being plugged into the ivy network, being plugged in is a huge advantage (and not necessarily in getting them, but, more importantly, in knowing about them). One always feels compelled to say, of course, that the people who get jobs through the network are smart and capable and deserving, but let's not pretend there aren't real advantages.
Ok, now we can all trade anecdotes!
I am fairly sure that going to an Ivy helped me get into philosophy grad school. Which, of course, was a gut punch to my earning power.
I don't have access to the actual paper, so maybe it addresses these things, but:
(1) "However, the average tuition charged by the school is significantly related to the students' subsequent earnings. Indeed, we find a substantial internal rate of return from attending a more costly college. Lastly, the payoff to attending an elite college appears to be greater for students from more disadvantaged family backgrounds." This seems to suggest that what matters is attending an expensive school. Money's a better exclusionary factor than anything that is putatively meritocratic (SATs, Ivy admissions, etc.), so one could make the case that the synopsis actually argues that non-meritocratic factors like money or the social connections necessary to get into a secret society are better predictors of future income than the actual reputation of the school.
(2) How did they deal with women? Not to be misogynistic, but a high-school class of 1972 may have a number of women who went to selective schools and then exited the work-force when they achieved their MRS.
(3) You'd want to price in the value of possible career moves that people don't take. So, if no one heads a Fortune 500 company but for an HBS degree, that makes the degree more valuable, even if most HBSers end up in a different position. A lottery ticket is worth something, even if you are all but guaranteed not to win.
Just a sidenote, can we not use "achieve the MRS" and variants thereof; it's kind of nasty, no? (I know you don't mean anything by it, SCMT; it's just always made me uncomfortable.)
Ogged is just upset because he never got his MR.
I agree the study isn't perfect, but it's very powerful evidence that a) you should really think twice before paying 30K a year for college, b) inefficiencies in the US employment market are less important one might fear.
There's no doubt that for certain Mandarin-path careers, the Ivy league is a huge help. Elite journalism, law (although that re-sets at the grad school level), and academia come to mind. It also smoothes the path for finance and consulting. (although not enough to much dent the $ figures, it seems.)
Also, once you think about it, is it not interesting how few of these "prestige" careers actually improve the human condition or meaningfully increase economic growth? Perhaps the Ivy League is just a mechanism for those who prefer prestige to results to satisfy that preference over a lifetime.
Not that there's any symmetry there. Oh well.
It also smoothes the path for finance and consulting.
Like in Help!. "This is from Harvard, it ought to work.".
nitpick: baa, not true with law. most of the "elite" law schools (hell, all of them, as far as i can tell) only care about your LSAT (and, to a lesser extent, your gpa). if one has high scores in both, one can go to an excellent law school no matter where one got the undergrad degree. i should know, i went to an public undergraduate institution that was way shitty, and it didn't seem to hurt me at all - i have classmates who got their degrees from princeton and yale.
Also, once you think about it, is it not interesting how few of these "prestige" careers actually improve the human condition or meaningfully increase economic growth?
Yeah, who needs the press, the law, or scholarship?
actually improve the human condition or meaningfully increase economic growth
Why the disjunction, dearie? Ya slippin'.
And of couse, just like Weiner and ogged said, power doesn't correllate at all neatly to earned income. Working in a big law firm, I rub elbows with a dozen people who earn more money than President Bush every day. Plenty of those guys, I'm certain, have non-Ivy league undergraduate degrees. Showing that that didn't get in the way of their making serious coin doesn't mean that it didn't lower their odds of achieving larger-scale power.
I'm sorry I took so long to meaningfully increase economic growth. I masturbated a lot as a child.
Though GWB's chance to obtain power doesn't come from Yale and Skull and Bones--they have a common cause. OTOH--or perhaps that's the third hand--in a world without Skull and Bones, the presidency might be less likely to pass down to the eldest son. Or, GWB might have been less likely to get all the business opportunities that eventually made him a thinkable gubernatorial candidate.
(To non-haters: Please don't try and pretend that GWB might have got the Presidency if he hadn't been GHWB's son. I won't listen.)
Matt, I don't understand your belief. GWB:
Went to Andover Prep, which prepared him to excel at Yale.
He went to Yale, where he did well.
He then served in the Air Force, flying on the razor's edge of the Cold War, prepared to intercept Cuban MIGs.
After the Air Force, he worked for a Senate campaign.
Then GWB returned to school, earning an MBA from Harvard.
A natural entrepreneur, he returned to his native state of Texas, where he started several companies, eventually becoming part owner of the Texas Rangers baseball team.
This is a man who went to the best schools, served our nation in a time of war, worked in politics from his 20s onward, ran several businesses--how was he not a natural fit to be Governor, then President?
Silvana: Just to clarify, we are in complete agreement. I meant to suggest that where you go to law school matters a lot for a legal mandarin path.
Matt: I am sure there's some case of in which helping humanity is not identical to increasing economic growth. Give me time, and it may come to me...
Standpipe: The article you reference is now tragically behind the observer's archive firewall. So sad!
And one general clarification. I'm not arguing that old boy networks don't exist. That would be crazy. I so think, however, the power of these networks is overestimated. Kerry isn't a senator because he was in Skull and Bones. He's a senator because he's ambitious, able, and rich.
Check the poster's handle and URL on 24, Matt.
Matt, I don't understand your belief.
I'm 80% sure your comment was tongue-in-cheek, but just in case the 20% wins, I'd maintain that each of your qualifications was only available to GWB as a result of being the son of GHWB, so by the transitive property of equality or some such...
Well, since this all kicked off with my claim that the secret societies control the world, I should admit that that was unjustified hyperbole. Probably the desire to exclude non-members is partly juvenility and partly a wish to keep the benefits of the old-boy network that does exist.
the desire to exclude non-members
Keeps the open bar bill at gatherings significantly lower.
I did check the handle, but I have seen stuff like that said with a straight face.... (And from the URL, this shocked me. And I really like Radiohead. Originally a Talking Heads song, since you asked.)
Kerry isn't a senator because he was in Skull and Bones. He's a senator because he's ambitious, able, and rich.
He's big rich now, by marriage -- was he seriously wealthy before that? (I know his family had a certain amount of money -- comfortably in the 'sending their kids to Yale' class. I'm drawing a distinction between seriously rich, and just the typical Ivy Leaguer of that era) I could easily be wrong, but I didn't think he was particularly well-off personally before he married into ketchup. The whole running a small bakery while practicing law business seems like a weird hobby for someone who didn't need the money.
And Bizarro is Chopper, or at least shares a homepage with him.
Yeah, that was me. My boss walked in shortly after I commented, so I didn't have time to disclaim it until now. (Yes, it was a joke. It was really hard to write--the disconnect from reality was killing me.)
Matt--
I don't understand what you don't understand. The Talking Heads song is a completely different song from the Radiohead tune. (Not that I really know much about either--that was my buddy Bietz who made that post.) My posting name there (and real name) should be obvious to anyone who scrolls down a bit on the front page.
LB, you are of course correct about Kerry's pre-Heinz finances (rich, but not rich rich). Sloppy of me.
35: Ah. Blush to admit I'd never looked at your page (or had forgotten about it). Sorry I didn't send you vibes--hope it went well. (Then you won't need to disconnect when your current boss walks in!)
36: That Bietz didn't know the Guide reference.
I was under the impression that Kerry's first wife was possibly rich rich, if not rich rich rich like Teresa; don't know if that helped his early career.
1. Ogged - sorry about the "MRS" thing. I didn't mean it to be mean; I was trying to sound clever and knowing without actually being clever and knowing. I do think that, at a time when many select schools were just opening up to women and there was much more gender descrimination than there is today, marriage was a more reasonable strategy for assuring economic status than perhaps a career was.
2. Baa - I may be misreading things, or the paper may make moot this point (both eminently possible), but this:
Indeed, we find a substantial internal rate of return from attending a more costly college
makes this claim:
you should really think twice before paying 30K a year for college
make sense only if you mean that there are institutions that will charge you 40K a year.
She wasn't poor, but not fantabulously loaded. In any case, I take it we all agree there is no skull and bones link to Kerry's ride. Wealthy well-conncted people go to the Ivy league, and get invited to join secret (or not so secret) societies. But I don't think the societies are force-multipliers.
It's not juvenile, unfortunately--those goddamn secret societies actually do control the world.
You seem to take the secind clause as a refutation of the first. I see it as support.
I rub elbows with a dozen people who earn more money than President Bush every day.
But don't oversell the disconnect between political and economic power. I doubt any of them have more net worth (might need to count W's inheritence there) or could command greater sums. W wants tens of millions, W gets tens of millions. He has no need to earn it.
Michael--first point--hyperbole, it should be juvenile, maybe in a way it is juvenile, but what I meant to suggest (and what I'm not too sure I stand by) is that there's serious stuff at work here.
Second point--very true, but I think the point was that the specific study at issue measured only earning power. So someone who's currently in the Senate or on the Federal bench comes out as less successful than one of LB's partners; and a kajillionaire lawyer comes out as equally successful as a kajillionaire lawyer with a good shot at becoming President.
(I note, also, that SCMT's point hasn't been addressed. I hadn't heard about that at all. I'm going to propose that Texas Tech raise its tuition to 40K and use this as its tag line.)
In any case, I take it we all agree there is no skull and bones link to Kerry's ride. Wealthy well-conncted people go to the Ivy league, and get invited to join secret (or not so secret) societies. But I don't think the societies are force-multipliers.
I don't think I do agree, or at least I don't agree exactly. S&B might not be an independent cause of increased access to power (scholarship kid from inner-city Detroit gets tapped for S&B on a fluke; consequently a whole new world of possibilities opens up for him), but I wouldn't be surprised if it, along with the other societies like it, is a better marker of who is well-connected in that sense than merely attending an Ivy League school.
Given that, any venue where the well-connected associate with each other without having to mix with the rest of us does have the effect of increasing the power of their network. It's not particularly S&B, of course, it's S&B plus thousands of other ways in which wealthy, well-connected people network with each other.
Michael-
I saw your post on preview, and agree absolutely. I think (didn't actually read it) that the study baa linked addresses earned income, not wealth. While the causation issues are much more complicated when you're talking about wealth, I'd expect there to be a much tighter relationship between Ivy league and wealth than between Ivy League and income.
Being in a finals club at Harvard better predicts being connected than merely being at Harvard. And networking has a lot of power. I wouldn't deny either of these. That said, I think it's clear that the relevance of being connected to "the establishment" is less important now than it was fifty years ago. The results from the Dale and Krueger study came as a surprise to me -- a welcome one. It's telling us somethink important about the way America works now.
I think it's clear that the relevance of being connected to "the establishment" is less important now than it was fifty years ago.
O yes. Just when they start letting Jews in, too.
I thought Jews were the establishment?
Only when they're not drinking the blood of Christian babies.
I thought Jews were the establishment?
Not publicly. Read your Protocols, dude.
Nah, it's still the same old WASPs. Jews in power are mostly a smokescreen.
Jews in power are mostly a smokescreen.
Exactly what they want you to believe, right Matt?
Read your Protocols, dude.
Yesterday, I read Will Eisner's "The Plot." Not nearly as funny as advertised.