> All the positions above a certain grade need a college degree, and often an advanced degree.
And often an advanced degree from a particular set of schools followed by work experience from a particular set of institutions. With the rise of a "professional manager" class, many (most?) companies prefer to recruit their executives not from within, but from places like McKinsey, etc. Now don't get me wrong--these are smart and hard working people. But they're also generally very privileged. Not in a "my daddy is a hedge fund manager" privileged (though often that privileged), but almost always in a "my daddy was upper middle class, so I had all the educational support I ever needed, could afford to do extensive community service instead of working in HS and get into an Ivy league school, never had money distracting me from my grades, etc."
> Unlike the old aristocracies, there's no noblesse oblige; those at the bottom deserve to be there.
And often an advanced degree from a particular set of schools followed by work experience from a particular set of institutions. With the rise of a "professional manager" class, many (most?) companies prefer to recruit their executives not from within, but from places like McKinsey, etc.
When I hear this, I can't help but wonder if the poster is taking an overly narrow view of the "world of companies out there that one could work for". I mean, yeah, if your view of the world is just the big, famous, hugely important companies that everyone has heard of, then maybe that's true. maybe. But... if you consider that outside of the Fortune 500 there are thousands, tens of thousands, hell, maybe millions, of other, smaller companies, I'm not convinced that the statement above holds water.
OK, I mean, I'll admit I could be wrong, and I haven't done a scientific study on this or anything. But I strongly suspect that if you went out and, say, studied all the textile manufacturers with 200-1000 employees, in NC, VA, GA and SC, you'd find a LOT of CEOs, VPs, managers, etc., that did not work for McKinsey, did not go to Harvard, and generally don't fit this picture that is being painted. You also largely won't read about these companies in the WSJ, see them advertise on TV, or really even know about them unless you go looking. But they're out there, doing business and making money, and they're just as real as the "big boys".
> All the positions above a certain grade need a college degree, and often an advanced degree.
And yet, some of the most wealth has been created by college dropouts - not just for themselves but also for shareholders of companies they created: Jobs, Gates, Ellison, Batista, among others.
See : http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_college_dropout_billion...
In fact : "The average net worth of billionaires who dropped out of college, $9.4 billion, is approximately triple that of billionaires with Ph.D.s, $3.2 billion. Even if you remove the world's second richest man, Bill Gates, who left Harvard University and is now worth $66.0 billion, college dropouts are worth $5.3 billion on average, compared to those who finished only bachelor's degrees, who are worth $2.9 billion. According to a recent report from Cambridge, Mass.-based Forrester Research, 20% of America's millionaires never attended college."
But that latter is a bullshit statistic. The number of dropout billionaires is so low (32 out of 1400) that a factor of 2 difference in average wealth is not statistically significant.
And often an advanced degree from a particular set of schools followed by work experience from a particular set of institutions. With the rise of a "professional manager" class, many (most?) companies prefer to recruit their executives not from within, but from places like McKinsey, etc. Now don't get me wrong--these are smart and hard working people. But they're also generally very privileged. Not in a "my daddy is a hedge fund manager" privileged (though often that privileged), but almost always in a "my daddy was upper middle class, so I had all the educational support I ever needed, could afford to do extensive community service instead of working in HS and get into an Ivy league school, never had money distracting me from my grades, etc."
> Unlike the old aristocracies, there's no noblesse oblige; those at the bottom deserve to be there.
Relevant: http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2012/06/07/chris-hayes-book-he...