A surprising share of the global elite went to Harvard
By Ross Pomeroy | Published: 2024-12-19 15:43:00 | Source: The Present – Big Think
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A duo of economists recently conducted a survey of where 6,141 members of the global elite went to college. The results show that few academic institutions graduate the most powerful and influential people.
Ricardo J. Salas Diaz He is a lecturer at Dartmouth and Kevin Young He is an associate professor at the University of Massachusetts-Amherst. Together they prepared a list of the world’s billionaires, national political leaders, directors of the 150 largest companies, heads of international organizations, and directors of major research centers, foundations, and non-governmental organizations. They then browsed these individuals’ resumes with a simple question: Where did they receive their college education?
Salas-Díaz and Young found that global elites tend to enroll in institutions within their home countries. For example, 92% of American elites attended universities in the United States, while 85% of French elites were educated in France, and so on. When young elites ventured beyond their national borders, they often sought degrees in the United Kingdom or the United States. Most strikingly, the global elite attended a relatively small number of prestigious institutions. Nearly one in five went to an Ivy League school in the United States. Leading institutions identified included the University of California at Berkeley, the University of Chicago, the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Yale, Columbia, Oxford, the University of Pennsylvania, and Stanford.
They went to Harvard
But these places of learning were small compared to Harvard. Nearly one in ten of the world’s elite wandered into Harvard Yard on their journey to power. Among America’s elites, 16% earned their degrees there. Forty-one Harvard graduates They were CEOs of Fortune 500 companies in 2022. Eight of the 45 US presidents have gone there. Harvard’s lofty status is evident in the chart below, which displays the number of degrees awarded among the elite.
This overt imbalance demonstrates the superiority of aristocracy over meritocracy. As the study’s authors note, elite education serves as a simple selection tool for employers, corporations, and other elites. Prestigious institutions flout their recognition and showcase their famous graduates. Attendance exudes an aura of success, worthy of acceptance into an exclusive club
The status quo serves both academic institutions and the people who attend them. Members of the global elite want their offspring to attend Harvard, Penn, or MIT, fully aware of the prestige they offer and the doors they open. This is why some wealthy parents resort to illegal schemes to ensure acceptance for their children. At the same time, officials at prestigious universities are seeking to grow their list of distinguished and influential graduates. They know that the sons and daughters of elites are disproportionately likely to become elites themselves when they grow up. A recent study showed that applicants from families in the top 1% are 55% more likely to be accepted into elite universities than working-class applicants, even if they have the same test scores.
The findings “support the idea that global elites are a social group with a high concentration of academic status in their backgrounds,” the researchers wrote.
To be sure, many administrators, teachers, and students at elite institutions like Harvard like to believe that meritocracy dictates outcomes within their esteemed halls. The truth, as this analysis suggests, is that elite academic institutions legitimize the idea of modern “royals.” A large portion of the world’s population now realizes that the gods do not grant leaders divine rights. Today’s global elite is not chosen by God; They were surveyed at Harvard University.
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