Imagine paying up to a hundred grand (US) for an Ivy League degree — and finding out that no-one wants to hire you.
Students at formerly-prestigious US colleges are at the “find out” end of the equation. The same people who were screeching, “Free speech has consequences” for the last decade are finding out, to their shock, that that applies to them, too.
A recent Forbes survey found employers have grown more skeptical of applicants from the most prestigious schools in the U.S. in the past five years – a period marked by race-based admissions, grade inflation, antisemitism, plagiarism, and leadership “double standards.”
According to the survey, one in three employers said they are less likely to hire an Ivy League graduate than they were five years ago. Meanwhile, only 7 percent said they were more likely to hire them.
Employers’ hesitation was specific to the Ivy Leagues, too.
And specific to some degrees, more than others. Of course, you’re probably thinking of the proverbial “Feminist Dance Theory” degree, but no! Even once-coveted law degrees from Yale and Stanford are rapidly becoming expensive toilet paper. As reported by The BFD in early in 2023, a group of prominent judges announced that they would no longer hire law clerks from either university. Their reasoning was that these students were indoctrinated and devoid of the critical thinking ability and robust argumentation necessary to being a lawyer: “Imagine hiring a lawyer who is so fragile, he or she can’t even bear to hear an opposing argument.”
Now throw in drooling anti-Semitism, and employers are walking away en masse.
The survey found 42 percent of hiring managers are more likely to hire public university graduates and 37 percent private university graduates, compared to five years ago.
What’s more, hiring managers were three times as likely to say public universities have improved in preparing students for jobs than Ivy League universities. Just 14 percent said Ivy Leagues have gotten better at preparing students, while 37 percent said public universities have, the survey found.
Forbes reports:
“The bloom has been off the Ivies,” says Fred Prager, a senior managing director at Hilltop Securities and a trustee at California’s Claremont McKenna College whose investment firm specializes in higher education. “What has occurred more recently, with the pandemic and with all this nonsense going on, post October 7th, and all the rest has just been a bit of an accelerant.”
Notably, too, for all the blatherskite about “DEI”, major universities have become monocultures of ideological conformity.
Laura Bier, a San Diego-based management consultant specializing in healthcare and defense [says…] “Kids who’ve been to a public school have had a broader diversity of friends from different backgrounds, teachers from different backgrounds and are better able to be nimble in those situations.”
The blowback is hurting the universities themselves, too.
Harvard and the University of Pennsylvania lost several major donors – and later both their presidents resigned – amid criticism about their handling of antisemitism on campus.
Major law firms and judges also have issued letters to top law schools that raise concerns about their priorities and warn students about antisemitic activism.
The College Fix
As the trial judge tells attorney Frank Galvin (Paul Newman) in The Verdict:
I have no sympathy for you.
