Comment by uasm | Hacker News Reader

Comment by uasm | Hacker News Reader

The true solution though, would be for people to wake up and realize that in most cases, those so-called "ivy-league" colleges set you up for nothing you couldn't have gotten elsewhere. That you're NOT in-fact better off at 22 with a 150,000$ debt, which you could've avoided by attending a different institute. That the quality of education in "less prestigeous" universities doesn't necessarily "fall" from that of Harvard's.

Edit: Addressing the comments about how it's all about joining that Alumni circle.

I've attended an ivy-league alumni dinner party recently (graduates from multiple "high profile", internationally acknowledged institutes). Save for several senior people with interesting stories, most others were working on their "next Lyft"/"next Airbnb"/"Facebook for %s"/"%s but with AI!" startups. Everybody had a suit and a nice lapel pin to show for it though. Some even wore a bow-tie, no less!

At some point it stops being a club of outstanding members of society, and instead, it becomes a "I took a huge loan to buy my way into this" club. Make of it what you will.

This is a misconception that kind of bugs me. At the top schools they give a tremendous amount of need-based grants (i.e. money that never needs to be paid back). Elite institution grads are not the ones who have debt they can't pay back. Its people at middle of the road private institutions and many other scenarios that have this issue. You are confusing the sticker price with what the bulk of non-rich students actually pay which is far lower. This narrative bugs me because it is just incorrect and focuses on the wrong places as sources of a very real issue.

> would be for people to wake up and realize ... nothing you couldn't have gotten elsewhere

The whole point of this song and dance with Harvard is that the education alone isn't the point of going to Harvard. You can probably learn most of what Harvard teaches from free sources online + youtube lectures.

An exclusive club grants you great networking potential, which is why people want to go, and why Harvard wants to keep strict control over who/how it lets people in. If they didn't exert Quality Control over the network, their primary selling point would be weakened. If you go to Harvard and pay full price with merely the intent of getting an education, you've totally missed the point and they probably don't want you.

Harvard knows this and is uncomfortable saying it out loud, and its also the reason for this ongoing mess.

(If Harvard truly believed that they were giving a world class education and that the education made all the difference and made the world a better place, they'd use their gobs of money to expand and teach more people. This would ruin the exclusivity.)

Is that actually correct? I'm speculating here because I don't have data on hand one way or the other, but I think that college attendance in the Ivy league (and MIT, Stanford, etc) strongly correlates with significantly higher lifetime income.

I agree with you that the quality of education is maybe not worth the price compared to a UC say, but at the highest tiers (say top 10), the network and the name alone will get you pretty far. Also, if you're close to prodigy level in your field, then it's probably worth it to go to the best schools.

The people who are really screwed are those who paid $50k a year for a low-demand major at some private school no one's heard of.

> nothing you couldn't have gotten elsewhere

Well, for example prestigious clerk positions are filled from Yale Law and Harward students. If you study law elsewhere, the most ambitious positions are effectively closed. Look at supreme court and see which school are represented.

Ivy league causes people trust you more. There are prestigious places that stock from almost exclusively from those schools.

So yeah, it attracts all those highly ambitious kids for a reason.

Going to college isn't all about "quality of education"; it's also about networking and building connections. Plenty of State Universities provide a high-quality education, but don't offer the same opportunities to build connections to elites, future elites, and their families.

The education isn't anything special. For certain circles, though, the status of an ivy sheepskin is of utmost importance. State U isn't good enough for the silver spoons. Harvard is also not indebting those lucky enough to attend given it's generous scholarships.

The value in elite universities is the network

People who go to HYS et al. aren't paying for the quality of education; they're paying for the signaling device and the network opportunities.

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