I recently posted a link to this blog on Facebook, and an acquaintance responded that he didn’t understand the purpose of the site. What exactly was I trying to accomplish? After a bit of reflection, I realized that “The Ivy Lie” is rather a hodgepodge of article links and personal commentary, so I’d like to take a moment to point out why I set this site up in the first place.
I’ll repost portions my friend’s comments (with personal details removed), as well as my responses. Hopefully this will give a better idea of what this blog is all about.
He stated: “I’m not sure I understand the blog fully. What does the institution have to do with difficulties in finding jobs? I think some of the stories were of people that are expecting six figures because they went to an “elite” school […] Getting a piece of paper from a fancy school doesn’t make you any smarter or capable than anybody else, and certainly does not entitle you to high salary jobs.”
And I replied: “Precisely! But I’d venture to say that many if not most students who choose to attend these sorts of schools expect precisely that. Maybe not that they are entitled to a six-figure job after graduation, but that the education they will receive at such an “elite” school is genuinely good enough that they will have the necessary knowledge and skills to land a highly paid (and interesting) job, and certainly not have to deal with unemployment or poverty. I definitely wouldn’t have gone to Duke if I had thought otherwise, but my experience was precisely the opposite: Instead of finding my dream job, I wound up a broke, unemployed emotional basket case, living in my mom’s basement and wondering what the hell I had done wrong… when in reality, the whole thing was an illusion in the first place.”
He also said: “I received my BS [in an engineering discipline] from [a state university] and I have no problems [finding work].”
To which I replied: “That’s exactly the point of this blog – to demonstrate that state school educations are perfectly adequate, and that it’s all about what you study, not where you study it. But there are tens of thousands of students every year who swallow the Ivy League pill, believing that it will open doors that would be totally absent otherwise, and instead wind up under a mountain of debt and are left with a degree which sounds prestigious but that provides no practical skill set. Instead of focusing on building useful practical skills for which there is real demand in the job market, they get caught up in the experience of being at an elite private school. They fail to realize that it does matter what they study, instead assuming that the name recognition alone will carry them (it’s an attitude along the lines of, “I went to Harvard – what more do you want?”). Suddenly, four years later, they get a dose of reality when they’re forced to look for work and can’t find it. For me at least, it took a long time to realize that my degree was basically useless, that I’d been lied to, and that I had to go back to school and start over if I was going to succeed in life. Basically, I’d like to get the message out to all these potential suckers (by which I mean Ivy League applicants) before they get themselves into a world of hurt like I did.”
Oh, here I thought you might be revealing the reasons behind why the Ivy schools continue to perpetrate their heinous lies. 🙂 Silly me!
I really should devote something to the untouchable endowments. Thanks for the comment.
My fellow Harvard classmates who’ve been dealing with perennial unemployment (yes, there are a fair number of us) have often speculated as to why. I’ve heard a variety of reasons over the years, ranging from “a cold, calculated attempt by the entrenched power elites to suppress any competition they may face from talented upstarts” to the more benign “it makes their own look better when the school’s statistics and accomplishments are boosted by the talented people they sucker into attending.”
I’m not sure how the untouchable endowment factors into this, and I’m eager to read your thoughts on the matter.