An Ivy League degree may get you a job as an investment banker or VC, but it won’t increase your odds of becoming a successful entrepreneur.
So you couldn’t get into Stanford, Berkeley or Harvard, huh? Don’t sweat it. You can still make it big. Some people might believe that an Ivy League education provides a huge advantage in entrepreneurship. But after researching this over and over again, I’ve found no such correlation. To the contrary, it seems that those who are born without the silver spoons in their mouths are more motivated to succeed. And those who aren’t members of elite alum societies develop the skills needed to hustle in the rough and tough business world. The Ivy-Leaguers may be able to get their buddies from Sequoia and Kleiner to return emails, but they aren’t going to be any more successful at building companies.
With my affiliations at three of the greatest universities in the world (Harvard, Berkeley, and Duke), I know I’m going to take a lot of flak for this piece. (Yes, I know that Berkeley and Duke aren’t Ivy League — but they are in the “elite” category). It’s not that I haven’t been trying to find the good news. I’ve done three big research projects on entrepreneurship. Each of these reached the same conclusion about education and entrepreneurship: What makes entrepreneurs successful is the education, not the school. It’s the same in India and China. India’s IITs and China’s Fudan University (their “Ivy League” schools) don’t hold any monopoly on graduating tech stars.
In the first research project, we looked at the background of 317 immigrants who started tech companies. We were surprised to learn that Delhi University graduated twice as many Silicon Valley company founders as did IIT Delhi. And that both Osmania and Bombay University trumped nearly all of the IITs. China’s Tianjin University and Shanghai Jiao Tong University graduated more founders than Fudan or Tsinghua.
These were immigrants, and we weren’t sure if it would be the same with American schools. So we looked into the educational background of American tech company founders. We found that the 628 U.S.-born tech founders we surveyed received their education from 287 unique universities. Almost every major U.S. university was represented. The top ten institutions in this group accounted for only 19 percent of the entire sample. In other words, 81% of the tech company founders came from “regular” schools. To make my colleagues at Harvard feel better (and to keep my job), I’ll acknowledge that the Ivies represented 8% of the sample even though those schools only graduate 1.6% of American students.
Then we broadened our research and looked into the backgrounds of the founders of 549 successful businesses across a set of high-growth industries. The proportion of Ivy-Leaguers was even smaller (about 6% of the sample). We also found that MBA’s tended to start companies sooner after graduation (13 years) than bachelors degree holders (17 years). And both these groups were quicker to the startups than PhD’s – who typically waited 21 years from the time they graduated to start their ventures. That’s right, tech company founders aren’t spring chickens. Also, we found that Computer Science/IT grads were faster than MBA’s (13 years vs. 15 yrs) and the applied science majors (20 years).
The most interesting findings however were the difference between those who had college degrees and those who never even got a sheepskin. The average sales revenue of all startups in one of our samples was around $5.7 million, and these companies employed an average of forty-two workers. Startups established by tech founders with Ivy League degrees had average sales and employment of $6.7 million and fifty-five workers, respectively. The success of these two groups markedly contrasted with startups established by tech founders with only a high school degree. Those founders had average revenues and employees of $2.2 million and eighteen, respectively. (Sorry, Bill and Steve). In other words, it didn’t matter so much if you graduated from an Ivy. What made the greatest difference was having a higher degree.
Company founders also value their education. In a paper which the Kauffman Foundation will release on Nov 17 (during Global Entrepreneurship Week), we report that 70.3% said their university education was important. Ivy League graduates valued their education even more, with 85.7% indicating this was important. Surprisingly only 18.8% believed that university or alumni networks were important. Of the Ivy graduates, 28.6% ranked these networks as important.
To be fair, an Ivy League education does provide other advantages. An Ivy degree makes it much easier to become an investment banker at Goldman Sachs (is that a positive these days?), a venture capitalist (most are elite school grads) or a powerful attorney. It probably makes it easier to become a professor, as well. And, as my research shows, it may confer a slight advantage to entrepreneurs. But not enough of an advantage to make any real difference in the equation. So, Mom and Dad, save your dollars. High school juniors, save your tears. Ivy Leaguers, check your ego at the door. What makes you good is what and how you learn, not the name on your framed diploma.
Editor’s note: Guest writer Vivek Wadhwa is an entrepreneur turned academic. He is a Visiting Scholar at UC-Berkeley, Senior Research Associate at Harvard Law School and Director of Research at the Center for Entrepreneurship and Research Commercialization at Duke University. Follow him on Twitter at @vwadhwa.
Exactly.. but you missed a good example over there .Can you anybody guess who it is?
It’s none other than Bill Gates.. He is the best example for Successful entrepreneur who did n’t study much..
How it was posted twice ?something wrong with comments section .. First my comment was not posted so I posted it again ..now it shows me two comments..
TechCrunch’s comment section is brought to by the fine CS majors from the University of Alabama. Row Tahd Row!!
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It is myth that Gates did not study much. He gained access to computers in school because he was Math Olympian -he had won some national contests. He had a compiler for BASIC language (on paper tape).
All successful entreprenuers are “driven & hard-working” – may be not working hard in a formal setting such as a school or university, but still hardworking.
Even after he got married, rumor has it he used to take a bunch of books and spend a weekend with former girl-friend (and VC) Ann(?) Winblad. These books were challenging subjects.
It’s also the best example of a bullshit “rags to riches story”
That’s not true, Bill Gates did study much and work much. He just didn’t get his degree then. Please check your facts before you blurt stuff out, asshole.
Out of the tech world you also have Richard Branson in this category, one of the great entrepeneurs of our time!
Do not forget Larry Ellison.
harvard-facebook-MZ?
The thing that strikes me is:
“The success of these two groups markedly contrasted with startups established by tech founders with only a high school degree.”
Now divide 2.2M by 18 (= 122K), 5.7M by 42 (= 136K) and 6.7M by 55 (= 122K) and you’ll actually find out that CEOs without a higher degree get the same value per employee as ivy-league CEOs and only slightly less than average CEOs.
That’s what counts, not the total return.
Go figure.
Hey Prof. I know you weren’t trying to write an academically pure piece and thought you did a great job of conveying the essence of this research. I feel very encouraged — being a Cal grad!!
The sword cuts both ways.
Paraphrasing:
“They already have too many [big name school] alums on their faculty. They aren’t going to hire more.”
I am from IIT and I fully agree with what you said. I find non-IITians in India much more motivated to succeed and work hard.
There are hundreds and thousands of equally smart kids who can’t make it into an IIT or to a Duke. They learn to struggle to achieve success which comes easily to IIT’ians (and Dukies)….
Its really encouraging news for people who werent in the elite schools. But i would like to add a question. Does this mean a lot of times schools dont always take the right people? I am from india and have seen this in our elite schools. A lot of times the people who are selected are not necessarily the ones who deserve it but people who can work the system of admission. You know, say the right things, get the right grades and so on.
Indian education is so fiercely competitive that hardly 1% of the qualified applications get in. That doesn’t mean the 99% aren’t exceptional. India has other problems with the quota system imposed by politicians.
You’re absolutely right about quota. It’s really sad.
Vivek, I don’t think the audience out here understand India or its complicated social structure. So pointing out quota as the (only) problem with Indian education is just feeding wrong information to a crowd which can give valuable suggestions. Did positive discrimination in US education bring down the country to its knees? Or did it help to create a better society?
IMHO the wish to lead a rich, struggle free life drives most of the students in the elite Indian schools as anywhere else on planet earth. How many PhDs are the famed IITs producing? Where are the research papers? And how many of these great students get back into academics?
I would love to see such a research project in India. Oh, and if possible please publish a caste profile of all those Indian entrepreneurs out there in the valley
If there is one thing that still strongly differentiates America from India, it’s the bizarre caste system that apparently still has influence to this day. Even in a steadily declining America, I suspect that the total lack of that nonsense in this country must remain an appeal to would-be Indian immigrants.
You are wrong, Phil.
Many of the well off don’t worry too much about caste nowadays, but are still afraid or don’t want to shake it off their minds. I have been looking to find a partner using Indian matrimony web-sites( Indian version of dating sites) and amazingly almost everyone insist on choosing a partner from the same caste! PlentyOfFish in India will have to add a caste based search option or Markus Frind will go bust
Ask the Indians you know, how many of them decided to move to US to escape casteism, and you can find out for yourself.
Vasu…I have looked at matrimony sites too, and almost all the ‘potential’ matches explored over the past few months (many based in US) are from people speaking a different language…caste doesn’t come into picture. I grew up in Delhi..and did not even know till reaching college, that caste system still exists!!..yeah sounds unbelievable i know..
Nevertheless…in rural areas…where 70% of the ppl live, caste still the most important thing..and India cannot shake this off for decades to come.
Oh golly..we are talking about caste in a supposedly web2.0 blog
DaVinci, please let me know which sites you used. I would love to find an open minded partner. And let me know the search filters you used too
FYI, if you can have a look at Monday’s and Tuesday’s print editions of Times Of India, you will see colorful ads leading you to simplymarry.com/agarwal and simplymarry.com/brahmin. And simplymarry.com claims to be India’s only metro-monial site!! Do you still think caste system thrives only in rual India?
If you never heard about caste before you got to college, its probably because you were born to parents who never bothered about it or because they belonged to the “upper” castes and were well off.
Goodluck for your partner search! Wish me too..
Apparently understanding statistics is not necessary to conduct a statistical analysis of the sample.
“we looked at the background of 317 immigrants who started tech companies. We were surprised to learn that Delhi University graduated twice as many Silicon Valley company founders as did IIT Delhi”
“The top ten institutions in this group accounted for only 19 percent of the entire sample. In other words, 81% of the tech company founders came from “regular” schools. ”
Have you ever heard the notion of “lift”? How much more likely it is for a top-10 graduate to be in this sample, compared to a graduate of a “regular” school? Similarly, for IIT Delhi and Delhi University…
Heh, exactly. He provided data for the exact opposite conclusion of his thesis.
It doesn’t seem that you read the entire post. He says clearly “I’ll acknowledge that the Ivies represented 8% of the sample even though those schools only graduate 1.6% of American students”.
In the next paragraph he says for the next study, Ivies represented 6% of the sample.
So you were probably sleeping in class when they taught you about “lift” like you were when reading this!
I agee that Panos doesn’t know what he is talking about. The article even says in the conclusion that ivy league education provides a slight advantage.
The point is that anyone can be an entrepreneur. You don’t have to be a Harvard grad (which obviously Panos isn’t!).
The point of the article, as stated in italics in the first paragraph: “An Ivy League degree may get you a job as an investment banker or VC, but it won’t increase your odds of becoming a successful entrepreneur.”
And the data show that attending a top-school actually increase the odds of becoming an entrepreneur by 5x.
There are many other problems with the study, this was just the most obvious one.
Other issues: The sample focused on existing entrepreneurs. Did not sample graduates to see if a higher percentage of graduates from top schools become entrepreneurs, or vice versa. This is a pretty bad flaw.
Also, even if we accept that attending a top-school “increase (or decrease) the odds of becoming a successful entrepreneur”, this does not prove ANY causality. It may as well be that attending a top-school (or “regular” school) is just a reflection of a personality that makes a successful entrepreneur. The education provided there may have nothing to do with the subsequent success.
Panos, from your bio on NYU’s website it seems that you are one of those academics I have come across often who do nothing but nitpick the work of others.
If you read the last paragraph, you would have answered your own question. He says
And, as my research shows, it may confer a slight advantage to entrepreneurs. But not enough of an advantage to make any real difference in the equation.
I fail to see how my bio shows that I do nothing nothing but nitpick the work of others.
Panos, pls correct me if I am wrong… The operative word is ’successful’ entrepreneurs, reflected in the title as well – “…make it big”. So I would assume Wadhwa was trying to quantify odds of ’succeeding’ as an entrepreneur and not the odds of ‘becoming’ an entrepreneur. Not surprisingly, the big name schools are more likely to ‘produce’ more entrepreneurs , not necessarily ’successful’ ones.
My Dad didn’t finish 9th grade and became the president of a large company (for its industry). His time in the excutive seat was the peak of their success (he’s retired now). 5 years later the company is lead by MBA types and it has 1/3 the revenue and the survival is in doubt.
Degree’s don’t mean success, they open a door. It is the individual that is important. A great or a good education is not a substitute for ambition, ideas and common sense.
btw – My father was a big advocate of getting an education and knew he had luck in getting to the top.
+1
Hear hear! I completely agree with you. Common sense and the desire to succeed, combined with putting in the effort to succeed are the most important traits. Your father is a wonderful example, but I think it was much more than luck that got him there.
you know that the external environment has also changed, right? maybe the successors of your father weren’t as competent, but maybe there were other factors leading to the current outcome…
Stu, Sam Walton was an equally great entrepreneur as your dad. Education does help, but as I wrote it doesn’t matter where you get it from.
Knowledge is not dictaded by a degree
You cant really add Bill gates, he was a genius and had a privelaged education. The fact he had access to a computer in the 60s/70s at such a young age shows that his background was not very different to those that complted their education at IVY schools.
I dont think Bill gates should be held as an example of someone who did well without a higher degree…people like Sheldon Adelson and Branson or their tech equivalents are better examples I feel.
I have an MBA. I think degree is merely a bridge to cross to get recognition from society. When I hire people (in technology), I don’t look for ivy league or top colleges. You need “can do” attitude in order to become an entrepreneur.
I prefer rat like cunning in my hires.
Yes, but what about the racial discrimination rampant in higher education?
http://www.usne...n-students.html
http://www.dail...009/10/12/24103
http://www.naca...uments/C313.pdf
“…Stanford, Berkeley or Harvard”
Exactly one of those is an Ivy League school.
“…greatest universities in the world (Harvard, Berkeley, and Duke)…”
Again, you only hit one Ivy League school.
“The top ten institutions in this group accounted for only 19 percent of the entire sample. In other words, 81% of the tech company founders came from “regular” schools.”
No, 81% come from the bottom 90% of schools, not “regular” schools. What is top 10 anyway? Did you include the 8 Ivy League schools and two random other schools that you consider “good”? Did you go by the US News ridiculously flawed ranking system?
Let’s stop casually throwing around Ivy League, and start using a more standard metric for classifying schools. Replace Ivy League in above article with PAC-10 and you’ll see how poorly it reflects on the author when they use a sports league to classify schools by academic ability.
I think he knows that. I downloaded the papers he has linked to the article and they were very clear in the differentiation.
There was a lot more very interesting information in those papers. You have to click on Download at the top of the page which the link takes you to when you get to the page.
A brief scan of Harvard and UPenn alumni throws up:
Gates (Harv), Zuckerberg (Harv), Ballmer (Harv), Hawkins (EA, 3DO – Harv), Tim O’Reilly (Harv), Bosack (Cisco – UPenn), David Brown (SGI – UPenn), Lenat (Cycorp – UPenn), Musk (Paypal – UPenn), Tiemann (Redhat – UPenn)… the list goes on.
Didn’t bother looking at the other Ivies, but I think this pretty much sums it up.
Two years ago, I flew to South America and I bought a Fortune Mag titled something like “400 Most Millionaire on Earth.”
I spent the whole trip analyzing exactly what this article is all about and definitely concluded after reading the mag that Stanford wasn’t going to help me if I wanted to make big $$$.
Having said that: I rejected my invitation to a Stanford LLM and opened a CA licensed mortgage brokerage and made big money assisting the Spanish speakers in the US. Today due to the crisis i closed that biz and have my new internet start up and it’s growing like hell.
I’m thankful I said no to Stanford, otherwise today I’d be working for Jones Day and paying loans while working miserable hours!
Want to check my startup? Email me at asodatsi@gmail.com and I’ll email you the www
Ideas, past experience, connections/network and education can help you (as somebody else said “open the doors”) but success would need execution and persistence.
Per Outliers, book by Malcolm Gladwell, success in anything needs 10,000 hrs. May be that’s what the key to successful startup is.
The fact that they did a whole study on seeing if Entrepreneurs came from Ivy Leagues is a strong example that they are not entrepreneurs themselves, who cares where you went to college, or if you even went to college at all.
Freedom, countless opportunities and, of course, money, are the great equalizers, found only in the US… something that this “genius” Vivek completely missed [or would not mention. bowing to political correctness...]
The U.S. is clearly the greatest land of opportunity in the world. It is the freest and most open society. And the greatness of this country is that it welcomes immigrants….everyone can share the dream and make it big. It just depends on your motivation and competence.
Well, typically, you need to get in to an Ivy League school, then drop out, then you are set…:)
I love this article! I’ve experienced this too !
This is good to see. I got accepted at an Ivy League school, but my parents wouldn’t even consider letting me go (they just wanted to see if I could do it). I have often wondered what I missed.
You should ask them to invest the $150,00 they probably saved in your startup!
Best post TechCrunch has posted in a very long time. Love it.
Wow, Vivek wrote something with calling Americans xenophobes.
Good story. Creativity, ingenuity, and passion are things that can’t be taught within the walls of any university. Ivy League kids have become nothing more than children of privilege who were never told no in their short lives. Mom and Dad make a nice donation and admissions cranks out an Ivy League acceptance letter. Ivy League whiz kids have brought us all enough trouble recently.
I feel like you’re just upset that you didn’t get into one. Most Ivy League kids are humbled by their surroundings and thankful for the opprtunity to be associated with like minded individuals. While some students clearly have the means to pay for such a prestigious education, Ivy League financial aid is tops and allows those without parents who make six figures a year to enjoy the spotlight.
A big 0 to Tinus for knowing absolutely nothing. If your university didn’t teach you anything about creativity, ingenuity, or passion, then it’s almost likely that you never went to school in the first place, or at least one not worth mentioning.
Yes, it taught me – Nothing great was ever done without passion.
You can’t fake it, nor can you learn it from a book or a lecture. You either have it, or you don’t.
A big 0 to you for knowing everything.
I can only speak for myself.
with 1 year in college I worked for Princeton and have far more recommendations (10+ i lost count) from many professors than 99.999% of all kids at Princeton- including John Nash. As well as letter of termination from Princeton which I keep framed on my wall instead of my PHD, and I did that to get unemployment.
You know how I got the job?
I was 3 hours late for the interview. I brought them a bootlegged copy of Flash and showed it months before it came out.
Its not how you read books- its how you turn every situation into a profitable venture WITHOUT shitting on thy neighbor. Why don’t you give that a shot – you back stabbing cold hearted PHD fools- which for some reason is what you guys come off most of the time. Ever ask yourself why?
Of the Forbes list, only a few actually graduated from a college, let alone the minutae of forbes’ list from ivy-league schools — look at Warren Buffett and look at Steve Jobs as well as most of the others including Sam Walton himself and the richest americans and internationals in history — most were not from ivy-league schools and many of them never went to college.
You seem to suggest that an education is not necessary. But it is… Some of the comments here are referring to exceptions rather than the general rule. Mentioning that “Bill Gates never finished college and he is now a multi-billionaire,” – “then, what is the point? What is the difference? I will drop out of school, because I will also be a billionaire?” Silly.
Vision, dedication, very hard work have not been mentioned here – although they are very much part of Bill Gates, Warren Buffett, Steve Jobs and many, many other successful individuals’ lives.
Bill Gates was accepted into an Ivy League and met his co-founder Balmer in a dorm room. Buffet went to columbia business school.
Another thing, look at the numbers for ivy-leagues and the history — rockefeller, etc. — Most were hardy and just created their fortunes through monopolies.
Interesting research – thanks for sharing that.
I wonder how many of the successful entrepreneurs you studied had entrepreneurial parents. My hunch is that parents play a pivotal role in whether a child becomes an entrepreneur and how successful an entrepreneur they become. With the right guidance (from parents or other mentors), the chances of success are multiplied by a greater factor than any University would achieve.
Jake, the answer is that 38.8% had fathers who were entrepreneurs, 6.9% had mother entrepreneurs. You can get details from this BusinessWeek slide show or better still, download the actual papers which are linked above (those also have extensive analysis)
http://images.b...epreneur/11.htm
There is only so much information that one can include in an article like this and I did have to make some simplifications.
One of the best written articles in TC since a long time. What I love about Vivek’s blogs is the strong data to back up his claims. Unlike most of the other bloggers who seem to be guided by personal attitude or faith Vivek’s articles are based on rock solid analysis. Need More!
Thank to you (and the others)!
Its Mumbai, not Bombay. Vivek, do you want to get in trouble (http://www.hind...le1-460449.aspx)?
I think you should do your homework. The IIT is still called “Bombay” : http://www.iitb.ac.in/
It is IIT Bombay.. not IIT Mumbai. Bombay is the part of the name of the institution. similarly it IIT Madras not IIT Chennai.
With cities having reverted back to their original names it only makes sense to do that to the schools too, no? As ever, a few will resist. But in a democracy, like ours, it’s not the people but the politicians that people made the mistake of electing a few years back make the choice. Meh..
I don’t think Ivy League schools instill in people the training it takes to be successful. Rather, it is those who have what it takes to be successful also have what it takes to get into elite schools.
Meh,
That has to be wrong. If Ivies didn’t instill training it takes to be successful, then what is the big deal about them? Why have they been at the forefront of education for over 200 years and emulated by others for just as long?
Moreover, getting into an Ivy League has less to do about how “successful” one is (whatever “successful” can mean in high school or undergraduate) and more to do with that the university is looking for when one applies. Better people than me have not been accepted and to say they weren’t “successful” enough to get in is an insult to those who have real talent and were passed by anyway.
Grads from top schools have all the advantages. They have the benefit of a great education, access to top tier networks, a good brand to ride off, and great classmates. Heck, they even get great press! A Harvard/IITian startup gets lapped up by the press.
So logically, they must be the most successful.
But whats decisive, is that they are also the most risk averse, chip-on-the-shoulder egotists around. And that kills whatever potential they have.
A man is defined by what he stands for, and how far he is willing to go to get it.
Not which school he came from.
Really? When taking a closer look at who founds and then ultimately ends up running these companies…
Google: Schmidt, Sergey, Lawrence (Princeton, Berkeley (G) and Stanford (G),
Facebook (Sandberg)- Harvard and HBS,
Yahoo- Jerry (Stanford), Carl Ichan (Princeton)
MySpace- Tom (Berkeley)
Zynga- Mark Pincus (Wharton and HBS)
…seems riddled with Ivy to me
But that’s just your list of five consumer-focused websites/products you visit/use every day. There are plenty of technology companies out there that have higher revenues and headcounts than a zynga, facebook or myspace. Five data points does not a statistical study make.
Great success is achieved with great imagination
With great power comes great responsibility.
read outliers http://www.glad...iers/index.html
I failed my first year of college smoking pot, went straight to work and 2 years later at age of 20 was making 150K+ as computer consultant. At age of 22 I worked for Princeton University!!!
10 years later I am working from home and making 200-300K a year. I hired 40+ overseas in turn investing 500K+ into my own business.
Its not what you know – its how you hustle- bitches!
You can go to university websites and find what books they read for which course and that will provide with 90% of your education as it did for me.
Most Ivy league graduates spend tons on education when you can get it for free by auditing. All you have to do is ASK, and you don’t have to do homework!!!
Reading Books =/= Education
Though you may have a point with the auditing comment.
So you’re making 200-300K a year and waste your valuable time commenting on TC and you use the words “hustle” and “bitches”…ya it’s clear, you received no formal education.
+1
check the hating at the door
I’m the opposite of moderate, immaculately polished with the spirit of a hustler and the swagger of a college kid
Allergic to the counterfeit, impartial to the politics
Articulate but still would grab a n–ga by the collar quick.
TI ftw
@Tommy,
Man, you are The God. You can beat Chuck Norris as well. Peace.
Not sure where you’re auditing classes for free. At any institution I’ve been to, auditing has a price attached, usually half the standard course fees.
Is that still worth it? Perhaps, but I’d say “no”.
Ever wonder what facebook would be like if it started at a public school instead of harvard? Just look at myspace and you’ll see…. (I believe Tom from myspace was from a public school)
Guess who did his undergrad at a public school? Sergey Brin, that’s who.
It’s not the school as much as the quality of the student body. But I shall concede that the avg. Harvard grad is likely far smarter than the avg. Public School grad.
Actually Larry Page did his undergrad at a public school. Brin went to UMD and Page to UMich.
If you don’t know who they are, Google them
Actually, I know several Harvard school grads and I hate to burst the bubbly image, but I find no evidence that the Harvard average is any smarter than the average grad elsewhere.
What they did have in excess is access to resources that enabled them to have their essays edited by pros, access to personal coaches, personal trainers, basically anything that they lacked. Weak in math? Here son, here’s your personal mathematician who will work with you for the next 6 months during your course.
In one case, we used to make fun of this one kid who had half a dozen coaches.
We used to say it’s a good thing she was born well off, otherwise she’d be a moron.
its not what it looks like- its the traffic- stupid
But myspace looks pathetic – we got rid of auto-playing music when we chucked out MIDI files thanks, so it’s lost traffic to FB.
Design & Fuctionality => Traffic.
To start twitter.com you surely do not need Harvard education, high school is sufficient. To find a job on Wall Street you better have that Harvard diploma.
i disagree
I worked on wall st and finished highschool
Ivy league schools are just for bragging rights. These schools make you work your ass off, just to be like the ‘OTHER GUY’ before you….And the ‘OTHER GUY’ that will follow you behind. ***There’s Nothing new there***
BTW, Great Post!!!
Editors: fact check please.
Berkeley, Stanford, and Duke are not Ivy League universities. It’s a small point but a common theme in TechCrunch articles these days – editors seem to be busy doing other things than making sure articles go out intelligently. Sometimes, I feel as if the editors are overachieving Harvard-Westlake students (”Ivy League” of high schools) who are using this website as fodder for Ivy League interviews and essays.
The kind of information this website reports is crucial for us tech people who aren’t content with just new iMac rumors over at Engadget; we have a genuine interest in following the market so that we can better understand it either out of personal interest, academic persuit, or career interest. These kinds of glaring omissions in editing (see statistics post above) not only put into question the authority of this blog, but sometimes reduce this blog to nothing more than a journalism assignment in finding what’s wrong. Now I have to look up these foreign universities in China and India to make sure they are, in fact, “Ivy League” equivalents.
Thanks for the homework.
Sincerely,
An Ivy League Student
“Now I have to look up these foreign universities in …. India to make sure they are, in fact, “Ivy League” equivalents.”
Please do check the IITs in India. And please don’t fall from your chair as much to your shock and awe you will find that acceptance rates at IITs make them about 20-30 times more difficult to get into than in any of the Ivy League schools. Ahem. Still with me?
And by the way, the entrance is via a nationwide, gruelling test covering Physics, Chemistry, Math. and English that lasts over two days. If you still have your ego intact, you may want to try out a few sample questions. After all, those tests are meant for high school graduates (12 graders) Good luck to you on that. And please let us know what you find out.
Sincerely,
An IITian, Berkeley MBA, and *NON* Ivy Leaguer
I’m sorry you missed the entire point of that comment, though your comment does help to prove the point of the author: just because you graduated from a fancy school doesn’t mean anything. My comment is merely a culmination of a trend that I’ve noticed while being a TechCrunch reader for a few months now and it so happened that it was this article. Editors have a responsibility to make sure the articles being released in their publications are correct – grammatically and factually. Articles that are published with statistical non-evidence and mislabeling of such a simple concept as the Ivy League (http://en.wikip...wiki/Ivy_league has the list of all the Ivies) reflect poorly on the editors and the publication as a whole.
What you did here was read my first sentence, my last sentence, and decided that was that the crux of my argument. Maybe a part of that “grueling” test should be English because, not only is the irony of you spelling “grueling” wrong highly amusing, but, more importantly, your lack of reading comprehension is astounding.
Good luck with that MBA
Pal, chill. It is as if you never had a typo. And for your information, it is not all a question of reading comprehension. I wasn’t commenting on your main point. I specifically wanted to address your comment about the wanting to “look up these foreign universities in” India. Nothing more, nothing less. [And that's why I quoted those lines in my earlier comment. Got it?]
I now have no doubt in my mind how well you would have fared on that test. So while you still can, hide behind that Ivy tag.
Q.E.D.
FC got a PHD in hating
Please don’t hide behind a veneer of correctness. You were greatly offended that he didn’t consider IIT to be on the level of an Ivy, and from what I’ve seen they really are not.
First, the most obvious reason: The most capable Indians go to Harvard et al. on a scholarship. There’s just no reason for them to settle for second best. And Harvard along with some of the ivies are still the world’s best.
Second: So the admission rate is even lower than Harvard. But as I mentioned already, there is greater self selection for applicants to Ivy schools like Harvard. I am willing to bet that the quality of applicants are higher than IIT.
Just because India has a billion people does not mean that they are all equally intelligent. In fact, dumber people usually have dumber, and more offspring. Using acceptance rates to prove IIT is better than Harvard is foolhardy at best.
Third: http://en.wikip...tional_rankings
From these rankings the IITs are not highly recognized by international lists at all. Often times they are placed sub-100 or even sub-500.
One of the main reasons is because they produce meager amounts of research. This pretty much reinforces the experience that I and many others have had with IIT grads, that they are first-class human calculators and regurgitaters, and not the automatic Einsteins that people like you would have us believe.
FC,
I did B.S from IIT and Masters from Harvard. I feel getting in to IIT was more difficult than Harvard and same for education, overall IIT was much more competitive.
Third Paragraph:
“Yes, I know that Berkeley and Duke aren’t Ivy League — but they are in the “elite” category”
We’re happy for you’re Ivy league education, but maybe the piece itself was meant to inspire those of us not quite fortunate enough to attend an ivy league school but still have aspirations. If you’ll excuse me now, I have to go feed the pigs…..
Respectable publications don’t get points for pick-me-up motivational pieces and good-will towards mankind. The you-know-what-we-mean attitude in modern publications is frightening because it degrades the value of real information and removes responsibility for that information from those that give it. TechCrunch has a valuable position in this industry, the real world side to unboxing photos and snarky comments about CEOs. There is a time and place for everything. Real reporting belongs here.
Two things.
1. Persuit? Judging by your disdain for TC’s lack of editing and your penchant for pointing out the errors of others, I must assume you’re infallible. Thanks for introducing this word into my vocab.
2. As much as I like TechCrunch, it’s a tech news blog, nothing more. If your interests are academically inclined, you could probably do better as far as online literature. Of course, coming from the Ivy League, you must know that…
Indeed.
I am not surprised.
Vivek, did you also look at those statistics over time? I think I remember Carl Schramm saying that two or three decades ago, the most successful founders dropped out of college, in the last decade they had a college degree and in the current decade indicators show that they have and advanced degree. Did you find any evidence for that? What trend would you predict and why?
Carl is right, but I have not researched this. I’ve found very little practical research in this area. That is why I decided to take these research projects on. I have several other papers in progress.
As Einstein said: “The only thing that interferes with my learning is my education.”
I’ve believed for quite some time that every fiber of our society has reached a point of corruption – our churches, our government and, yes, our education systems. How is it that medical students graduate without even a rudimentary knowledge of nutrition? How is it that Ivy League universities are graduating MBAs with no knowledge whatsoever on actually running a business for long-term sustainability?
I would be surprised if any college professor could successfully run a business. Education is generally not for the entrepreneur.
can’t agree more. what’s the deal with that that you have professors teaching business and fancy formulas to students where they haven’t ever been involved in business activity
modern education is hugely flawed in many ways that continue to amaze me
+1
enterprising behaviour is a personal trait that doesn’t have anything to do with education per se; or with status or whatever for that matter… there is huge controversy on the matter of developing enterprising characteristics and the entrepreneurial individual. I personally believe that people are born with certain characteristics which then Can be developed by the environment. it is all very much unattached to education or anything in particular. of course I agree that uni can influence and steer you in the right direction, but…
anyway school and college education (with little exceptions) has always been about employability rather than entrepreneurship
+3
Average college ads:
Start your career here !
I constantly hear this argument regarding health insurance – its really annoying.
How about no coffee, cigarettes, pizza and sleep?
No wonder people need health insurance working 9-5
PS. Full timers pay hefty taxes= while working for yourself you can expense what full timers are unable.
I will never do full time after running my own business. Its disturbing to pay 50% tax (add up federal, state, sales etc), while small business gets 30% off on anything it buys for the company.
Modern slavery.
In the end, you can make 2/3 of what full timer makes and still have more.
true. and business gets more and more benefits and support these days
SMEs are supposed to make things better and save people from the sh#@ that big fish cooked
An education, especially the way it is taught today, teaches you structure. Entrepreneurship at a very fundamental level is about breaking out of structure and envisioning things that don’t exist. It obviously makes sense that some of the very successful people have no education. Privilege also makes you soft and takes away the edge required to “succeed despite the odds” – which is at least my definition of entrepreneurship
Ritesh, good points. I think we agree that anyone can be an entrepreneur. Education helps, but it usually doesn’t matter from where you get it.
Totally agree…this is what I was going to say, but you just put in better terms. (I just said it in ‘very’ simple terms, earlier.)
Based on the limited data you shared, I think your sample draws the opposite conclusion.
8% of the sample is from Ivy schools, but only 1.6% of the population graduates from Ivies. That means that Ivy league grads are 5X+ more likely to start a successful tech company than a man on the street. That’s incredibly significant!
Tim, that is what my colleagues at Harvard say and that is why the IIT’ians say. But the common perception, as you can read in some of the comment above is that the Ivy leaguers have some kind of monopoly. The point is that 92% of the successful tech entrepreneurs aren’t Ivies. So let the Harvard grads be happy that they have special advantages, and the common folk know that they can achieve extraordinary success if they put their hearts and minds into this.
The point of the article as listed in the first paragraph: “An Ivy League degree may get you a job as an investment banker or VC, but it won’t increase your odds of becoming a successful entrepreneur.”
Well, it not only increases the odds but, from your own numbers, it increases the odds considerably.
As Tim mentions, they are “5X+ more likely to start a successful tech company than a man on the street. That’s incredibly significant!”
Learn to read the numbers properly. Do not try to tell your story, no matter what the numbers say.
Again, read the conclusion. “And, as my research shows, it may confer a slight advantage to entrepreneurs. But not enough of an advantage to make any real difference in the equation”.
He makes the point is that any student from any college can become successful.
I know you probably overpaid for your education!!!
Actually, I paid $0 for my education. (But my own education has nothing to do with the article and the analysis.)
” any student from any college can become successful”.
The question is whether being educated in a “top” school helps or not. And the design of the study simply does not allow any conclusion about this question, in either direction!
Vivek,
One point you have not mentioned in your article is that since those who are admitted to the Top schools (note I don’t say Ivy League) are on average much smarter and more motivated than the rest of the crowd, perhaps their success (the 8% vs 1.6%) is due to the fact that they are just smarter and more motivated. Most likely, if these same students had gone to normal state schools, they would still be much more likely to be successful than your average candidate. This helps your point that the “Ivy” education itself may not add anything.
So youngens: apply to top schools, prove you can get in, but don’t go. I wonder if it would be acceptable to explain on your resume that you got into Harvard, but instead used that money to start your business.
Tom, you’re right that Ivy league grads are usually very smart and highly motivated. I don’t want to put them down in any way.
The purpose of this piece was to generalize on detailed academic data (which is rock solid) and present it in a understandable way (academic papers are usually boring and filled with unnecessary verbiage, equations, etc).
Vivek, when you using phrases like “the silver spoons in their mouths”, you do want to put Ivy league grads down.
Hi Vivek – Reading over your description of your research, it strikes me that your sampling methods are a bit flawed, and can’t help you reach the conclusions you’re looking for.
By only looking at people who did found startups, you’re sampling on the dependent variable. To be able to comment on the relationship between a person’s education and whether they go on to found startups, you have to include people who do as well people who don’t.
Only then could you, for example, note that while only 5% of top-school graduates found companies, 18% of non-top-school graduates do. Or vice versa, giving us a true sense of whether a top-school education really did make it more likely that someone would go on to found a company.
By analogy, the reasoning behind the research that you lay out is a bit like saying “We looked at 400 CEOs and discovered that 89% got up early – clearly getting up early is key to becoming CEO”.
Continuing with this example, suppose you looked at a totally random sample – you’d then realise that tons of people get up early (including janitors, teachers, hell anyone), and only a microscopic amount of them go on to be CEOs, radically altering (and improving) our understanding of the relationship between the two factors.
Keen to hear your thoughts.
Pierre, no the sampling methods are not flawed. Please download and read the actual papers (which are on SSRN and linked above). These were coauthored by some of the most competent and respected academics in the world.
I am not writing for an academic audience here and trying to bullet-proof every statement in case some PhD who wants to show off his calculus rips in to it. The purpose was to present a lighthearted version of the conclusions — an opinion– on the findings.
That is the difference between an academic journal (which hardly anyone reads) and has no relevance in the real world and the business press/blogs.
Hi Vivek – Just had a look.
The ‘Education and Tech Entrepreneurship” openly states that you surveyed 652 U.S.-born tech founders; in ‘Family Background and Motivation’ you likewise got hold of 40% of 549 respondents, all of whom were founders.
So as I mentioned above, the research actively discounts people who weren’t founders, thereby removing your ability to comment on whether any factor – education or family background – affected their becoming a founder.
The finding that I really liked when I read about your research a few weeks ago was that “Entrepreneurs are usually better educated than their parents”. Perfect example. Given the rising levels of education in the US over the last generation, most people are more educated than their parents, period. My guess is that there is nothing remarkable about those who found companies in this respect – either way, we can’t comment because we haven’t looked at the mass of people who weren’t founders!
It may be, for example, that 98% of people who are more educated than their parents can’t stand the idea of a startup, and that a gargantuan 15% of people less educated than their parents become founders.
I mean this with all due respect to you and your co-authors, but your methodology discounts your conclusions and opinions on them, regardless of how lighthearted you want them to be for us avid techcrunch readers.
It’s gotten a lot of press recently – dangerous stuff to be spreading around!
So we agree that the sampling methods are not flawed. I agree that it would be great if we had more comparable information on people who were not founders or whose companies failed. My hope is that other academics do this research.
The research I would be most interested in is the difference between successful founders and unsuccessful. (Frankly I don’t care about comparisons with the general population…interesting but irrelevant).
We could easily get information on successful companies from Onesource and analyze their revenue, headcount, age, etc. But where do we find the failures? The people who launched in their basements and couldn’t get their first product complete, raise angel capital, or just didn’t have what it takes?
I’m doing what I like doing — initiating the debates and let others prove me wrong if they can. So far, no one has succeeded!
PS – I got muddled in the 3rd paragraph from bottom – should read:
It may be, for example, that 98% of people who are LESS educated than their parents can’t stand the idea of a startup, and that a gargantuan 15% of people MORE educated than their parents become founders.
Thanks.
Vivek, since you seem to be willfully skirting my point: Your sampling methods and entire study are critically flawed.
You didn’t have a control group in your research.
Mentioning that you are associated with various universities, that your co-authors are highly respected, or that you like to initiate debate is all fine – except that your research is off. Stating the opposite and hoping it’s the case doesn’t change anything!
Show it to any experimental researcher at any of the universities you can think of, and they will say the same thing.
I mean no personal offense to you whatsoever, btw.
Pierre, did you get your degree for free too like your buddy (or your alias) Pierre? Cut the academic nonsense will you. Gosh! You’re posting on TechCrunch, not Nature.com!
That’s what I hate about pretentious academics. They nitpick everything. Just because they can’t get published themselves.
Hi Sam – I’m not an academic, and I don’t have an alias. What are you referring to?
This just might be just a personal observation, but it’s as if people from Ivy League backgrounds don’t feel as special anymore with great schools like Stanford, Berkeley, and Duke making such an impact.
In fact, it’s a growing trend that people are turning down Ivy Leagues to go to these more entrepreneurial schools. (I turned down an Ivy League education to go to Berkeley, and many of my friends here and at Stanford have done the same.)
Colleges are getting better, and there’s more to a name-brand that makes the education special. For example, the Claremont Colleges in Southern California are picking up steam. Perhaps the liberal arts education there exceeds the quality of education you’d get at any elite school!
We have to be careful not to confuse correlation with causation. Just because you’re more likely to find more alumni from better universities as successful entrepreneurs doesn’t mean that the university helped them at all with getting there. Smart students often have their choice of schools, and they just so happen to choose schools that will get them closer to reaching their personal goals.
In classical psychology, projection is always seen as a defense mechanism that occurs when a person’s own unacceptable or threatening feelings are repressed and then attributed to someone else.[1]
An example of this behavior might be blaming another for self failure. The mind may avoid the discomfort of consciously admitting personal faults by keeping those feelings unconscious, and redirect their libidinal satisfaction by attaching, or “projecting,” those same faults onto another.
Jessica, you’re right. By the way, I consider Berkeley one of the “elite” universities. It is one of the highest ranked institutions in the world and is extremely difficult to get into.
On the other hand, I wouldn’t call Berkeley “entrepreneurial”. Stanford does fit that description because of its success in turning out successful companies, but not Berkeley.
This is consistent with recent studies showing that “generics” are rising in popularity relative to “brands”.
Store brands like Kirkland (Costco) are becoming ever more popular to the detriment of P&G for example.
The same is true with educational institutions. There was a time when simply graduating from HBS got you the corner office, but those days are long, long, gone.
I don’t know if it’s been pointed out yet.
But when the top 10 schools in a sample of 287 (= 3.48%) graduate “only” 120 out of the “entire sample” of 628 tech founders, I can only say props to you for knowing the ins and outs of presenting data to your advantage.
If I discovered that the top 3.5% of schools graduate nearly a fifth of my sample population, I would never put that in an article that tries to show that there is no correlation between the university you go to and the likelihood of being a a tech founder. Because the data itself demonstrates the opposite.
Nice post Vivek. Elite educations are great to have for those that can get them, but they are a certainly not the be all and end all. As a VC, when I’m evaluating management teams some of the most important qualities I look for are the ones that can’t be taught. I’m talking about determination, tenacity and a willingness (desire even) to fight against the odds.
Thanks. For a VC, you’re okay!
I’ve been saying for ages in the UK you don’t need a degree to be a success – the result of pressure to go to university on young people and increased cost of a degree.
Having hired Ivy-league MBAs to work for and with me, I have reached one inescapable conclusion: If they were as good at doing real business as they are at negotiating their compensation packages, they would dominate the world of business. However, they just seem to dominate the world of compensation, which may be all they really care about anyways.
” What makes you good is what and how you learn, not the name on your framed diploma ”
The name on my framed diploma teaches me how to learn, and that’s what makes it Ivy.
College dropout during Sophomore year, $1M/year income from my Internet business for past 5 years straight, ’nuff said.
Just curious, what is your internet business?
Trolls ‘R Us?