Our obsession with fame/celebrity is the root problem. We want to go to famous colleges, work for famous companies (or start our own famous startup) and companies want to hire famous employees (at least at the executive level).<p>Fame is a fairly reliable way to quickly evaluate the quality of something (without knowing anything about the subject matter) but it severely limits your options and it's expensive.
HN seems pretty sure that the only difference between a top-20 residential college and a rural commuter school ranked in the 300s is the wealth of the people attending.<p>We recognize vast differences in quality between engineers, managers, companies, and code... but not education? Why?
Two thirds of CEOs didn't go to top schools... That means that 1/3rd of the CEOs were drawn from 2% of the schools. Similarly you find that a disproportionate number of entrepreneurs went to a top school. The network and credibility you get are clearly important. I think most parent realize how tough it has gotten and they saw the shortcoming of their own careers.
Growing up, it felt like I was raised with the sole purpose of attending an elite college. I took AP classes, did SAT prep, and signed up for all the right extracurriculars, but my heart was never in it, and I couldn't force myself through in the end.<p>I ended up getting rejected from all but my safeties when applying to colleges. It felt like I was dead inside; I'd go through my daily motions, but I basically lost my interest in living for a while.
> "Moreover, in David and Goliath, Malcolm Gladwell draws upon research that shows it’s actually more advantageous for a student to attend a college where they can be in the top 10% rather than in the bottom half of the class. It’s the top students at every college who receive the kind of attention from faculty and access to special programs that pave the way to more opportunity after college."<p>I thought this theory—mismatch theory—was discredited?<p>To clarify for future responses, check out this amicus brief sent to the Supreme Court in the affirmative action case Fisher v. University of Texas. [0] There is a particularly exhaustive section pp. 14-16.<p>I bring this up (and prepare myself for the inevitable downvotes) because I feel like this mismatch theory exists only in the particular social debate around affirmative action, not because it necessarily is or is not true (even though mismatch theory is probably not true). Malcolm Gladwell's two stories in David and Goliath and in Outliers—general musings about private schools and musing about football players [1]—plus the one study by a journalist and an economist [2] arguing for Fisher are the entirety of the basis of mismatch theory. There may be two more articles supporting it since the Fisher case went to trial years ago. The amicus I link above must reference a dozen studies refuting it, from a variety of researchers in a variety of contexts. You'd have to believe there was a huge multi-academic conspiracy to simply ignore that evidence—you know, the kind that people think exists with climate change research.<p>Mismatch theory may be the only argument that is persuasive to these parents, because on the face of it, mismatch theory is consistent with their values for improving their children's positivist success. But what if it's not true? Trying to ignore the reality that the rat race pays off is not going to reduce suicides.<p>[0] <a href="http://www.scotusblog.com/wp-content/uploads/2015/11/LCCR-and-Mintz-Fisher-Amicus-Empirical-Scholars.pdf" rel="nofollow">http://www.scotusblog.com/wp-content/uploads/2015/11/LCCR-an...</a><p>[1] <a href="http://www.nytimes.com/2013/10/03/books/david-and-goliath-by-malcolm-gladwell.html" rel="nofollow">http://www.nytimes.com/2013/10/03/books/david-and-goliath-by...</a> "As usual, Mr. Gladwell’s science is convenient. He has charts to back up his premise about academic success, but how is success measured? In happiness? Salary? Getting jobs, or keeping them? Read the annotations if you must, but they won’t get you far. Mr. Gladwell needs a David-Goliath school story, so he creates one. His version happens to have common sense on its side, even if it is in no way definitive or complete."<p>[2] <a href="https://www.utexas.edu/vp/irla/Documents/ACN%20Richard%20Sander%20and%20Stuart%20Taylor.pdf" rel="nofollow">https://www.utexas.edu/vp/irla/Documents/ACN%20Richard%20San...</a>