Do You Need A Degree From An Elite College To Have Success In Life?

Madame President:

     Your Sunday newspaper...I have many things to be proud of in you, Pedro, and Luah. All of you have incredible educational achievements. Of equal importance, all of you worked hard and earned your educations in a completely honest manner.

   Right now there is a big scandal in this country about wealthy parents who paid large bribes to get their children into elite colleges like Stanford, Harvard, Yale, University of Southern California, UCLA, etc. The largest bribe was a stunning $6.2 million paid by the owner of a Chinese pharmaceutical company to get his daughter into Stanford. There is a long list including one actress who paid a $500,000 bribe to get two of her daughters into elite schools. One person who paid a $15,000 bribe already got 14 days in jail. Many other still face sentencing. If they had been honest, they could have made large contributions to these colleges. It would have helped their kids to get in honestly.

   There is some question about the value of getting a degree from elite colleges. On one hand let us look at the educational institutions of our last few presidents as follows:

President Bush I   BA Yale

President Bill Clinton: Yale Law School (Hillary Clinton also graduated from Yale Law School)

President Bush II: BA Yale and MBA Harvard

President Obama: Harvard Law School honors graduate (Michelle Obama also graduated from Harvard Law School)

President Trump: Attended Wharton Graduate School of Business

    There is another side of this debate questioning the value of these elite schools. Only 23% of the Ivy League college graduates make it into the top 1% of wage earners in the US.

       Let us look at the curious case of Elena E. Torello, MD. She graduated from the University of Buenos Aires Medical School. Elena spent most of her life speaking Spanish. Before coming to the US, Elena read English but could not speak it. When she arrived here and took the three tests for her US medical license, she scored in the top 5% of those medical school graduates taking the test. She was right up there with graduates of Harvard, Yale, and Stanford Medical Schools. She got accepted to the very competitive Kaiser San Francisco residency program. She did so well there that she was offered a job at Kaiser San Francisco when she graduated. Getting a job as a doctor at Kaiser is like getting accepted to the US Navy Top Gun fighter pilot's school. (Only 1% of the fighter pilots are selected.) Getting hired is not the last obstacle to having a career at Kaiser. After a probationary period, your fellow doctors must vote you in as a shareholder. When Elena started her career at Kaiser, her first office had previously been occupied by a Stanford Medical School graduate who had failed to be voted in.

   A degree from an elite college is not an absolute necessity in life or an absolute guarantee of success.

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