The Ivy Lie

Unfortunately, elite schools don’t necessarily provide any real-world job skills. In spite of all the hype, the sad reality is that many of these supposedly superior universities are churning out students with no marketable skill sets whatsoever. And although I don’t have a statistic to back it up, I’d bet dollars to pesos that this lack of practical skills is the most common reason for post-graduation unemployment.

I repeat: Just because you graduated from Princeton doesn’t mean you’ll be able to land any job that you want. A famous name is great to have on your resume, but especially in hard economic times, employers are unlikely to take you on just because you went to a good school. You’ve also got to have a relevant skill set. And where are you likely to find that? An advisor gave me one answer, when I voiced my frustration with not finding work and asked if there was something more that my degree was useful for. She responded: “I’m sorry, but Duke is not a vocational college. Perhaps you should call Durham Tech.” So, in other words, “we don’t provide any real-world skills – what you want is a simple community college, which costs 1/10th of what our education does, and might actually help you find a job when you finish.”

And yet, this was something that continued to frustrate me for quite a while after graduating – how can an employer reject me, for God’s sake? I’ve got a degree from Duke! I was one question short of a perfect SAT score! I mean, I’m clearly head and shoulders above the competition when it comes to brains and learning ability, so why don’t they hire me? So what if I don’t have all the skills they need? They ought to train me, and they ought to recognize that it’s a good investment to do so!

But after a time, I began to realize: Actually, in most cases, it’s not worth it for employers to provide training, especially of it’s extensive. It’s easier and more financially pragmatic (especially these days) to hire the guy from Indiana State or Portland Community College who already has all the skills the company needs. Eventually, I came to appreciate that the employer’s perspective makes more real-world sense. My degree doesn’t make me a shoo-in for any job I apply for.

I don’t care if you graduated Summa Cum Laude from Harvard with a degree in Nuclear Physics – if you don’t have the skills the company needs, you’re probably not going to get the job.

But then, if an Ivy League degree won’t land you a job that you couldn’t have gotten otherwise, then what is it good for? I still haven’t found an answer to that question.