Ivies Loosing Their Clout

[Adam's Apple]

Relevance of Elite Universities Appears to Be on the Decline
By Frank Greve, Knight Ridder Newspapers

WASHINGTON - Only a half-dozen Harvard College alumni have won coveted MacArthur Foundation "genius" grants in the past six years. Yale’s, just five. And that’s out of 144 winners.

It’s just one recent hint that attending an elite college may mean less than anxious applicants think it does. Another is a Harvard Business School analysis due out next month that finds the number of alumni from prestigious undergraduate schools declining among top business leaders.

The fellowships recognize what the foundation calls “exceptional merit and promise for continued and enhanced creative work” in many fields. A secret network of 100 nominators, whose membership rotates frequently to minimize string-pulling, scours the country for candidates, who can’t nominate themselves. A smaller secret panel winnows the nominations to about 30 finalists. The foundation’s board makes the final selection.

A Harvard Business School study of the 20th century’s top 1,000 business leaders, due out in October, finds similar academic diversity. The executives, handpicked for innovation, management skills and bottom-line performance, turn out to have attended more than 200 different colleges. Among them are scores of uncelebrated ones, such as Abilene (Texas) Christian University and Muskingum College in New Concord, Ohio. Moreover, while Ivy League graduates dominated U.S. businesses in the first half of the century, the study reports that their numbers fell sharply after 1950.

According to Anthony Mayo, the executive director of the business school’s leadership initiative program, “Ivies now have less relevance as a status marker for people who are moving up.”

He’s co-author of the HBS Press book “In Their Time: The Greatest Business Leaders of the Twentieth Century,” which explores the shift by comparing the backgrounds of business leaders who graduated before 1950 to those who graduated in 1950 and afterward. Among its findings is a big increase in the last half of the century in the number of business leaders from schools outside the U.S. News’ top 100.

A separate study by Spencer Stuart, the New York-based global executive search firm, also finds declining Ivy League representation among chief executive officers of Standard & Poor’s 500, a list of blue-chip companies traded on the New York Stock Exchange. Harvard College and the University of Wisconsin now tie for the most CEOs _ 15 _ on the list, according to Spencer Stuart. Also among the top 10 are the University of Texas, the City University of New York and the Universities of California, Missouri and Washington.

for full article:
http://www.realcities.com/mld/krwashington/news/columnists/frank_greve/12655619.htm

 

[5stringJeff]

If you want a really elite school that will train you for the real world, try choosing between:
www.usma.edu
www.usafa.af.mil
www.usna.edu

 

[archangel]

Relevance of Elite Universities Appears to Be on the Decline
By Frank Greve, Knight Ridder Newspapers

WASHINGTON - Only a half-dozen Harvard College alumni have won coveted MacArthur Foundation "genius" grants in the past six years. Yale’s, just five. And that’s out of 144 winners.

It’s just one recent hint that attending an elite college may mean less than anxious applicants think it does. Another is a Harvard Business School analysis due out next month that finds the number of alumni from prestigious undergraduate schools declining among top business leaders.

The fellowships recognize what the foundation calls “exceptional merit and promise for continued and enhanced creative work” in many fields. A secret network of 100 nominators, whose membership rotates frequently to minimize string-pulling, scours the country for candidates, who can’t nominate themselves. A smaller secret panel winnows the nominations to about 30 finalists. The foundation’s board makes the final selection.

A Harvard Business School study of the 20th century’s top 1,000 business leaders, due out in October, finds similar academic diversity. The executives, handpicked for innovation, management skills and bottom-line performance, turn out to have attended more than 200 different colleges. Among them are scores of uncelebrated ones, such as Abilene (Texas) Christian University and Muskingum College in New Concord, Ohio. Moreover, while Ivy League graduates dominated U.S. businesses in the first half of the century, the study reports that their numbers fell sharply after 1950.

According to Anthony Mayo, the executive director of the business school’s leadership initiative program, “Ivies now have less relevance as a status marker for people who are moving up.”

He’s co-author of the HBS Press book “In Their Time: The Greatest Business Leaders of the Twentieth Century,” which explores the shift by comparing the backgrounds of business leaders who graduated before 1950 to those who graduated in 1950 and afterward. Among its findings is a big increase in the last half of the century in the number of business leaders from schools outside the U.S. News’ top 100.

A separate study by Spencer Stuart, the New York-based global executive search firm, also finds declining Ivy League representation among chief executive officers of Standard & Poor’s 500, a list of blue-chip companies traded on the New York Stock Exchange. Harvard College and the University of Wisconsin now tie for the most CEOs _ 15 _ on the list, according to Spencer Stuart. Also among the top 10 are the University of Texas, the City University of New York and the Universities of California, Missouri and Washington.

for full article:
http://www.realcities.com/mld/krwashington/news/columnists/frank_greve/12655619.htm

I am the example of a State run University of several decades ago.....I agree...whole heartedly....Yale may have Skull&Bones..but I had Gamma Delta Psi....alot of fun....without all the political BS.....he he he!