Why Hiring Managers Are Widening Their Gaze Away From The Ivy League

Forbes

You’re not imagining things: The Ivy League is forfeiting its standing as America’s producer of great talent. Here are the schools producing the hard-working high achievers that employers crave.  0:00 Introduction 0:10 New Survey Finds Lowering Trust In The Ivy League 2:16 "Entitled" Ivy League Grads? 4:32 What Should Administrators Take From This Survey? 8:53 What Should Alumni Do? 10:05 What's Next?  Read the full story on Forbes: https://www.forbes.com/sites/emmawhitford/2024/04/30/why-hiring-managers-are-widening-their-gaze-away-from-the-ivies/?sh=26da403537d4  Subscribe to FORBES: https://www.youtube.com/user/Forbes?sub_confirmation=1  Fuel your success with Forbes. Gain unlimited access to premium journalism, including breaking news, groundbreaking in-depth reported stories, daily digests and more. Plus, members get a front-row seat at members-only events with leading thinkers and doers, access to premium video that can help you get ahead, an ad-light experience, early access to select products including NFT drops and more:  https://account.forbes.com/membership/?utm_source=youtube&utm_medium=display&utm_campaign=growth_non-sub_paid_subscribe_ytdescript  Stay Connected Forbes newsletters: https://newsletters.editorial.forbes.com Forbes on Facebook: http://fb.com/forbes Forbes Video on Twitter: http://www.twitter.com/forbes Forbes Video on Instagram: http://instagram.com/forbes More From Forbes:  http://forbes.com  Forbes covers the intersection of entrepreneurship, wealth, technology, business and lifestyle with a focus on people and success.

Transcript

00:00 Hi everyone, I'm Maggie McGrath, Senior Editor at Forbes, and today we are joined by Randall Lane,

00:08 Forbes' Chief Content Officer, and he's going to talk about a new Forbes survey that shows

00:13 declining trust from America's hiring managers in Ivy League institutions.

00:18 Randall, thanks so much for joining us.

00:20 Thanks Maggie, thanks for having me.

00:21 So this survey is really provocative. It's finding that hiring managers have less trust

00:27 in the Ivy League than they had even just five years ago. What is at play here?

00:31 Well, I think we now have numbers that kind of confirm something I think a lot of people,

00:39 a lot of hires, have felt anecdotally, which is what is happening. You know, I mean,

00:46 if we want to even take a step back and think about what the Ivy League means, the Ivy League for

00:50 literally hundreds of years, you know, in Harvard's case, more than 300 years,

00:55 yeah, more than 300 years, has kind of served as kind of America's meritocracy filter where it's

01:01 basically, we're going to try to pick the highest achievers, we're going to train them through a

01:06 really hard regimen so that employers can say, hey, okay, well, you know, you're a Harvard grad,

01:12 you're a Dartmouth grad, whatever it is, I know what the product I'm getting.

01:16 And what this survey shows, and just to back up, we've surveyed 300 people, 300

01:23 subscribers to our future of work, Forbes future work newsletter, but three quarters of them are

01:28 direct, make direct hiring decisions. So we focused on that cohort. And we said five years ago,

01:33 more or less likely to hire from the Ivy League, 33% said less likely, only 5% said more likely.

01:40 So you could say that's an indictment of the entire education system, except when we asked

01:43 them about public universities, 42% said more likely and only 5% said less likely. That's an

01:51 incredible, it's almost parallel universes where you see a clear shift, a numeric shift, a real

01:57 shift from that idea of an Ivy League pedigree. What's going on now is that a lot of employers

02:03 are saying, I want folks who are smart, hardworking, and maybe are a little hungrier,

02:09 and a little less, you know, feeling special, quote unquote, which is some of the criticisms

02:14 we saw in the survey. - Hiring managers said that Ivy League grads are too entitled and feel

02:21 too special. - Well, we did, you know, we did, you know, Emma Woodford did such a good job

02:26 reporting this out, but as she was then talking to the, that was the anecdotal feedback on the

02:32 numeric proof that, you know, right now, an Ivy League degree from a hiring perspective is worth

02:38 less. And again, I think that also explains to some degree, some of this, you're seeing what

02:45 happens, you know, what's going on in campuses across the country. And again, with, you know,

02:51 some of the Ivy campuses being at the center of it, it just creates this idea of what, you know,

02:56 what the product, which is the students, you know, what's being served up to the employers who want

03:02 to hire them. And again, a lot of this, this has nothing to do with the students themselves. It's

03:07 really this entire, you know, we've seen this, and I think what the survey points out is that

03:11 this has been kind of this trend has been happening for several years, not just this week.

03:16 Employers are more sour on the Ivies. It's that this has been going on for years.

03:21 - I was going to say, there was a Gallup poll last summer that showed overall public trust

03:26 in higher ed has been declining. Is this part of that same story, do you think?

03:31 - I think the dichotomy that when we asked, and coming up with this new Ivies list,

03:38 the idea that when we asked about trust in Ivy league, way down, trust in public universities,

03:42 way of trust in non-Ivy universities, up, well up. So it's not, I think the Ivies are kind of a

03:52 representative of this, you know, a certain kind of, again, I think, you know, you mentioned just

03:57 the word entitled, the idea of schools that kind of don't, you know, they're in their own kind of

04:03 bubble. And you're seeing that with these numbers because the trust from hires is mixed. It's down

04:10 for the super elite Ivies and it's a great public university, and in fact, in coming up with our new

04:15 Ivies list, the idea was, let's look at, they were ranked and chosen based on the feedback from

04:23 people who were hiring their students. So these are the schools that employers are saying are

04:29 producing smart, hardworking, the kind of graduates that they want. >> This survey has implications

04:35 for administrators at schools, for kids applying to schools, and for kids currently in schools.

04:40 Let's start with the administrators. What do you hope that the nation's college administrators

04:45 take from this survey? >> I think what we're seeing, part of our methodology here,

04:50 you're seeing a walk back standardized test scores created a lot of this kind of distrust

04:58 in some of these graduates. I mean, if you think about, again, look at the Ivy League,

05:04 what it's supposed to mean, and then what happened when, you know, coming out of COVID,

05:08 a lot of schools did away with mandatory testing. Some systems like the University of California

05:13 won't even look at it if you do submit it. So, you know, what that tradition of,

05:20 you know, using as many metrics as possible to get the class that's most likely to get a C

05:25 kind of went out the window. What happened was the Ivies, I think, admissions directors at the

05:29 Ivy League specifically talk about their desire to have a well-rounded class, but that what they

05:34 meant, and they said this, and this was kind of a very pervasive thought, was that well-rounded

05:41 class meant, you know, people who are exceptional at one thing, and together it's a really well-rounded

05:47 class. But what we lost out on was well-rounded individuals. And, you know, what happened to the

05:52 mere, the kid who's, you know, it's not enough just to be a valedictorian and have perfect

05:58 board scores. The board scores go out the window, and there are a lot of kids who have perfect

06:02 school grades now because of grade inflation. And so what happened when schools did away with

06:07 standardized tests was, or mandatory standardized tests, was they kind of put an X factor, and

06:13 actually a lot of kids weren't, you know, it actually disproportionately, the people who were

06:18 hurt the most were students from underrepresented groups. You know, there was just a big survey that

06:23 came out with very conclusive proof about that. And the reason is because the universities couldn't

06:28 tell from somebody from a different background if they could handle the workload. A standardized

06:32 test is meant to say, yes, this kid is just as smart, probably smarter than the other kids,

06:36 because of what he or she had to overcome. And so in bringing back standardized tests, and you saw

06:41 Dartmouth agreed to do it, and then Yale followed, Brown followed. What's happening is you're seeing a

06:48 return to that. And while again, there are problems with standardized testing too,

06:52 make taking that away actually did a lot of damage to the represent, the Ivy League.

06:58 Now, I was looking at admissions numbers and application numbers for the Ivy League for this

07:04 past season, and Penn, my alma mater, had 65,000 applicants, and yours, and yours.

07:11 Yes. 65,000 applicants, all-time high for school, for the school. How do you square that? You know,

07:17 other Ivys were down a little bit year over year, but still were reporting their third largest

07:22 applicant class, second largest applicant class. Kids are still applying to these institutions.

07:27 Of course. Listen, these schools, you know, Penn has 275 plus years of brand, but as Warren Buffett,

07:35 of course, famously said, you know, you can build a reputation over 20 years, and it takes five

07:41 minutes to blow it. And maybe for these schools, it's 200 years of reputation, five years to blow

07:46 it. What's happening is, again, with the Common App, it's a lot easier to apply to more schools.

07:54 And so, you know, you're going to continue to see those trends. There's such a craving for these

07:59 credential degrees. So, you know, so many of the top schools are up. But if you, you know, again,

08:04 if you're looking at, again, just you go this week is the week that students decide. And if you just

08:08 go look on social media, you see a lot of people are actually agonizing between schools that used

08:13 to be at automatic and these new Ivy's that we listed, where I think there's a lot of, you know,

08:19 there's a lot of feeling that the degree is also prestigious, but maybe there's a big better focus

08:25 on producing the kind of students who then will excel when they get out of school.

08:30 And of course, financial aid is a big consideration. I know I was saying that.

08:35 That's right. And that's why these great schools, for sure, if you look at these state schools,

08:39 they're under great schools and they cost half of what the sticker price is on the Ivy's. But yes,

08:45 you know, in a private school, financial aid is everything. And the Ivy's also,

08:48 of course, have very good financial aids with those giant endowments.

08:51 Yes. Which brings me to my question, which is selfish, but I just finished paying down my

08:57 student debt from Penn last year. And I'm someone who wants to see the value of my education

09:01 increase year over year. So for alumni of these institutions that are falling out of favor with

09:07 recruiters and in public eye, what should we do? How should we think? What's your message?

09:12 I think, again, it's a what's great about and what's different about this survey is different

09:19 about this ranking of schools is that we're ultimately looking at the people who are,

09:23 well, you know, when you graduate, what your what your diploma is worth is, of course,

09:28 it's worth what you carry in your head and it's worth the networks that you make. But ultimately,

09:33 the number one customer is who then hires out of there. And so in in listening to what these

09:40 respondents to this survey said, I'm sure there'll be follow ups to this. I think schools would do

09:45 well to understand that, that when and again, in every field, in every sector, whether it's

09:50 hospitals or or startups or nonprofits, if the people who are hiring those great job,

09:57 who have the great jobs and are hiring are happy with your graduates, the worth,

10:01 the value of the degree goes up. And if they're not, it goes down.

10:04 You said you're sure there will be a lot of follow ups. What is your number one follow

10:09 up question or trend that you will be looking for in the months to come on the back of this survey?

10:14 I think, again, this is a snapshot. And I think it'll be interesting to see, especially with,

10:22 you know, so much, you know, just what's going on on campuses right now. So,

10:29 you know, I think whether or not this is a snapshot of a time or whether this is something

10:33 that's more permanent, I think will be very interesting and something we're to keep an eye on.

10:37 Excellent. Randall Lane, thank you so much for joining us.

10:40 Thank you.

10:42 Thank you.

10:43 Thank you.

10:44 Thank you.

10:45 Thank you.

10:46 Thank you.

10:47 [BLANK_AUDIO]

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