Elite American universities are mostly overrated
Regardless of your perspective, Harvard looks bad right now—and that’s good for America. The resignation of Claudine Gay as president has brought the university unwanted attention for lacking both academic standards and moral clarity. She made mistakes, but in many ways, Harvard set her up to fail.
Like all of America’s top universities, Harvard has taken on an unhealthy role in the US economy and society. America’s best universities need to return to their original mission: producing academic excellence, not just signalling it. These schools have used their reputations for excellence to form an oligopoly with outsized power.
An Ivy League degree, or even just attendance at an Ivy League school, conveys a powerful signal that this person is among the smartest and best-connected the US has to offer. Signalling is a powerful economic idea. When you enter an economic transaction, such as hiring a recent graduate, you don’t always have complete information.
Will they be smart, productive, collegial? How do you know? You look for certain signals. Economists debate whether college has any economic value: Does it teach valuable skills? Or is just a signal that this person had the discipline and maturity to sit through four years of classes? Going to an elite school always signalled something extra: unusual brilliance, perhaps, or just good connections. Either way, the degree saved employers time and energy on screening candidates.
The signal was always imperfect, but in the last few decades, it became more valuable and less accurate. When fewer Americans went to college, getting into a top school was hard but not impossible. Three decades ago, Harvard accepted 10% to 15% of all applicants.
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