When my oldest daughter was four years old, I attended open houses for private elementary schools. I was curious to see what education options would be available for her.
I remember one of the parents in attendance asked the head of the school for the school’s track record in getting their students into Harvard.
I cringed at the words since the students being referred to entered the school at five years old and exited at ten years old. None of them had gotten into college because none were even in high school yet.
Many applicants to college engineer their class selections and extra-curricular activities to be more competitive. It’s a game.
Colleges, in turn, are evaluated by rankings. In the United States, the U.S. News Best Colleges report is eagerly awaited each year.
One of the major statistics used in the rankings is the acceptance rate. The acceptance rate = # applicants admitted / # applications.
The universities quickly figured out that if they encourage more people to apply, this makes the school much more selective… and thus boosts their rankings.
The universities play games too.
If a student gets into an Ivy League or equivalent-level school, the entire experience has an implicit message of elitism. You’re one of the elite 5% who got in. You’re special.
If you work in consulting, the elitism continues.
You know how Harvard accepts only 5% of applicants? Well at MBB, we accept only 5% of Harvard students… we’re the elite of the elite… just do the math.
If you get into Harvard Business School (HBS), you’re implicitly taught that you don’t really need to take the finance classes very seriously. The #1 thing you learn at HBS is to hire a really good CFO… from Wharton (the implication being Harvard produces CEOs, and Wharton produces CFOs… a.k.a. Harvard is more elite than Wharton).
The elitism machine repeats over and over again. The names of the institutions may change, but the mechanism at play doesn’t change.
It carries over from employers to country clubs to getting kids into elite prep schools. There’s always yet another more elite organization or level within an organization to work toward.
If you have a net worth of $100 million, you know that’s a lot less than $1 billion. If you have one IPO, that’s not as good as having two IPOs.
The structure of elitism can be never-ending.
Here’s the thing.
Elitism isn’t an inherent law of nature like the laws of gravity or thermodynamics. It’s an idea invented by people. A group of people get together and agree to adopt a shared value… and a culture ensues.
This could be a family culture, a regional culture (Wall Street, Silicon Valley), or an organizational culture (Yale, McKinsey).
If you see elitism in this way, it’s incredibly liberating.
You can visit a country and experience the culture without adopting the cultural values and customs as your own. It’s simply one way of doing things.
The same is true of elitism. It’s not a universal truth. Seeing the world through the lens of hierarchies of prestige is merely one way of seeing the world. But it is by no means the only way.
Just something to think about…
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18 thoughts on “The Elitism Machine”
Hi Victor,
Thank you SO MUCH for calling this out. Elitism = manmade concept. I was nearly a high-school dropout with poor grades, but a supportive teacher helped me see my potential, and I ended up doing a PhD at Harvard on FULL SCHOLARSHIP. And I don’t mean the stipend that they give to graduate students by default, but money from the government of my home country. I then made a discovery that ended up on the front page of the New York Times. After that I burned out, then faced inappropriate and unsupportive mentorship, was traumatized, and ended up hospitalized and without steady employment for several years. Real help was nowhere to be found within Harvard. The elitism machine is NOT in line with human nature – it hurts people – and I don’t see how a system like this can last. I’ve seen that bullies just don’t do useful or impactful science. I also think that part of the cultural violence against the “left” is in response to the elitism machine. I think as smart people come to see the bullying and dishonesty peddled by these “elite” institutions, they/we will take our talents elsewhere, and maybe things will be a bit more equalized.
Thanks for calling out this culture.
Nimet – I’m sorry that you had such a negative experience. Thank you for sharing your story. I think it’s a topic that should be discussed more often and more openly. I appreciate your contribution to the dialog. -Victor
Hi Edoardo
I do think having elite credentials is a useful social signaling mechanism. I certainly use my resume to convey the perception of competence. I didn’t invent the culture, but I’m happy to operate within it to achieve my own personal objectives.
I’m thinking of this idea in a different context. If I’m speaking to someone that doesn’t have an Ivy league background, I will still listen to that person and see if they have something useful to say. Others will automatically dismissing that individual on pedigree alone. If someone from Harvard says 2+2 = 6, I don’t automatically believe them to be correct just because they went to Harvard.
Socially, I believe in being respectful to all including administrative assistants, waiters, blue collar employees. Some that subscribe to the elitism cultural mindset see the world as having important people and unimportant people. They’ll be disrespectful, ignore, or overlook the “unimportant” people and only pay attention to the “important” ones instead.
One of my secrets at McKinsey was to listen to all the blue collar employees in my clients. They had a wealth of information to share and most of my insights came from them. I would then write up my insights in McKinsey format, put on my “McKinsey” consultant hat…and present that data to the CEO who was 7 levels of corporate hierarchy higher than the blue collar employees. You would think those employees might be upset that this worked. They were just relieved that after 20 years of trying to get someone more senior to hear their ideas, someone took the time to listen to them and saw what they had to say as having value.
From a career planning perspective, I tell my kids that where you go to college is really useful for your first few jobs after graduating. After about 5 years, you’re valued much more on what you accomplished during those jobs. If you went to Harvard and accomplished nothing in the first 5 years of your career, compared to someone who never attended college but started a business that was generating $10 million a year in annual revenue at the same age as the Harvard grad, the kid who didn’t attend college will certainly gain access to more opportunities than the Harvard kid.
-Victor
Victor:
Does race and/or skin color factor in “The Elitism Machine”?
JP – I think all demographic factors play an implicit (and unfair) role in elitism. Male tends to be perceived as more competent than woman. Tall more capable that short. White more so than other skin colors. French accents favored over Chinese. Good looking favored over average looking. Similar to me, favored over unfamiliar to me. Elitism also manifests differently in different countries. The structure is similar (some people are perceived to better/more important than others), the details will vary. The same is true within families as well. -Victor
Thank you for sharing your reflections Victor, I’ve been a reader of yours for quite a long time now and I appreciate your articles! They offer an opportunity to reflect on relevant topics from interesting and diverse points of view.
Just one thought – although I agree with you that being part of an “elitist” group does by no means AUTOMATICALLY make you “better” (more capable, more righteous, more reliable, etc.), it TENDS to give people around you some certainty about what your qualities are. If you are the CEO of a major company, you are LIKELY to be a capable individual. If you entered and achieved high grades in an excellent university, you are LIKELY to be a driven and promising student (you must have worked hard to pass the selection and perform so well in the exams). And so on.
It’s a game of probability. If I had to hire a consulting firm for the first time for an important matter, I’d probably feel more “safe” with a company that has a strong brand, rather than one without any memorable track record (the former are LIKELY to provide more value to me).
In the same way, if one day I will have kids, I’d like them to engage and focus in whichever activity they choose (school, sports, music, etc.) not to prove that they are better than others, but to be free to have options and do what makes them feel accomplished as adults (whatever that may be). If they do well in school, they have more chances to get in a good university; if they get in a good university, they are more likely to have an OPTION to choose between more companies to work for (while, in the opposite situation, it would be more difficult to have this freedom of choice, and would tend to have to “settle” for something that is not ideal).
It is still entirely possible to be an accomplished individual without having been to an “elitist” school/organisation/company… I think it just makes it more difficult and adds extra “steps” between where you are and where you want to be. There is some value in working hard towards an ambitious objective, especially when this makes you more likely to do something that makes you feel realised as an individual.
We can see this behavior at different levels of society, even between people with less economic advantages playing this game. From a very early stage, I noticed that even between kids, there is a similar game showing off the toy that other kids don’t have. Reputation is the same: being more religious, brave, doing more things, or going to more places. Having more becomes a competence game.
However, at any game, we observed good and bad winners as wells as good and bad losers.
I consider myself to have a competitive personality. I realized it is important to learn how to be a good competitor, compete against yourself, and play the culture game, the career game, with the right rules, and don’t fall into obsessions. As you mention, it is a good strategy to see elitism as a group of ideas so we can detach from the game to see the virtuous part that drives us to improve and avoid the corrupted version that would lead us to demean others.
Thanks for the great article.
Guillermo – Yes once you know to look for it, the patterns can be found in many contexts. -Victor
Dear Victor, I like your insightful analysis and I am a regular reader and beneficiary of your articles. Some of your articles changed my perceptions about set business rules particularly communication.
I like the point of view in your article, however, I believe that the executives within the desired industrial economy are being developed and functioning well in the system. As the well performing members, with the mindset they developed in the elite universities and families have the needed skills to succeed in this industrial framework. The system to select champions of the framework is that it requires people with certain IQ, groomed in the certain universities and who belonged to the certain affluent family backgrounds is working well in majority of the cases, we meet some exceptional executives from outside the system as anomalies.
If you have the character, skills, talent, courage and will to stay out of this framework and achieve the same objectives, you will be honored and recognized by the society as an elite “class of of your own person” no doubt about it. Just a thought! 🙂
Hi Victor,
Thanks for sharing your thoughts , I also find it toxic and alarming that reputed institution’s be it in education or industry vehemently promote this ideology and wonder why won’t they give a thought about the consequences this structure may lead to.
Also I want to share this article across my network if it’s okay with you? Please let me know.
Ranganath – Feel free to share the article with whomever you’d like. If it’s on my public website, you’re welcome and encouraged to share. No need to ask. Thanks. -Victor
This is so true. I have personally experienced this. I have to admit, I have also done this on multiple occasions, especially while recruiting for our organization (we run a Food Tech startup based out of Bangalore, India).
We were wanting to hire PMs from IITs. But the most successful recruit turned out to be someone not from the IITs. A humbling lesson as the recruit outperformed the other “elite” grad school PMs.
Kaustubh – I had similar experiences. Some of the most talented people I worked with, worked for, or got to know professionally were not in the “elite”. Nice job noticing. -Victor
Hi Victor, this is a good read. I like how you draw parallels between elitism and diverse cultural beliefs. And I personally find this distinction helpful because often the world makes it look like a ‘fact’ when it’s a perspective. Thanks for writing!
Hamsa – I took it as “fact” for a longtime. It’s just one of many ways to see the world. -Victor
Hi Victor,
Thank you for posting this! I was just thinking to myself yesterday about how many of the most impactful people I’ve met went to universities that were not considered “elite” or “prestigious”. I think this is a timely post as Covid pushes people online and the temptation to compare lives becomes ever greater with social media. It’s always grounding to realize the importance of comparing myself to my previous self when measuring personal growth. Thanks again for sharing!
Best,
Sam
Sam – You’re quite welcome. I’ve had the same experience. Some of my mentors and the people I admire did not elite universities (or any university). -Victor