ARE ELITE UNIVERSITIES REALLY THAT ELITE?

I’ve recently come to the conclusion that elite universities aren’t actually as elite as people think. Don’t get me wrong, they often provide a good education and a solid foundation of technical knowledge and skills. Plus, let’s not undervalue the network and connections that students build up over the years with people they’re likely to encounter later in their careers. I don’t want to underestimate that — I speak from experience. I attended an elite university myself and my brother attended several of the most prestigious unis in the UK (or even the world, if you fancy opaque rankings by famous newspapers).

 

Of course, you will find brilliant minds in these institutions, and thanks to the often centuries-old traditions of these schools, you’ll see some impressive names on their alumni lists. But here’s the question I’d like to ask: is the average student at an elite university really that much smarter or better prepared than the average student at a non-elite university? I’d like to think the answer is no.

 

It’s easy to take an arbitrary indicator and compare elite and non-elite universities, concluding that elite alumni are better performers. Take Nobel Prize winners, for example: sure, if you look at the top 10 universities with the most Nobel Prize-winning alumni, it’s the usual list of elite schools. But if you expand that list to the top 50, you’ll find lesser-known schools like the universities of Berlin, Manchester, or Leiden (for my American readers, that’s a small town in the Netherlands). My point is that truly brilliant minds can be found anywhere, and the so-called elite universities enjoy a branding power that allows them to secure funding for research and other academic endeavors.

 

If the differences are small even at the highest levels of academia, I can’t imagine there being a significant gap in the average preparation of students across universities. And let’s be honest, we’ve all seen this play out in real life: I’m sure we’ve all had colleagues who performed exceptionally well and came from non-elite schools, and on the flip side, we’ve probably worked with underwhelming colleagues who somehow graduated from elite universities. You can’t help but wonder how they managed to get that degree in the first place.

 

Given this, the only truly “elite” feature of these universities seems to be the professional networks they foster. But the problem with these networks is that people often misunderstand them. They assume elite university graduates are better prepared and intellectually superior to others, so they believe the network is a group of high achievers bound by their alma mater who naturally support each other in their careers. The idea is: “I’m an elite university graduate, so I only want to work with people who have similar backgrounds to mine because they must be as exceptional as I am.”

 

But this view breaks down once you realize that, on average, elite graduates aren’t necessarily better prepared than anyone else. The real reason elite universities maintain their status isn’t because their education is superior — it’s because their alumni have a vested interest in keeping that perception alive.

 

Alumni from these institutions, when faced with a hiring decision, gravitate toward candidates from their own alma mater. Not because these candidates are necessarily better, but because hiring from the same elite circle validates the alumni’s own sense of superiority. It’s purely an ego-driven feedback loop. By continuing to recruit from elite universities only, they perpetuate the idea that these institutions are exclusive and exceptional, thereby reinforcing their own personal success story tied to that brand.

 

If they broadened the hiring pool and took a chance on non-elite graduates, they would risk undermining the belief that their own education set them apart. Admitting that someone from a less prestigious school could perform just as well — or even better — forces them to confront the uncomfortable possibility that their own university experience wasn’t as “elite” as they’d like to believe.

 

This self-reinforcing cycle means that students from elite schools continue to get opportunities not because they’re more deserving, but because the alumni doing the hiring are motivated to protect the myth of their own exceptionalism.

 

The real shame in all of this is that well-prepared, hardworking students from less prestigious universities often get locked out of opportunities right from the start — they’re not even given a chance to compete with graduates from elite schools. And this is true even though we all perfectly know that in your first job, you’ll have to relearn everything from scratch, regardless of where you graduated. In the end, elite universities are perceived as elite not because their students are inherently better prepared or more hardworking, but because their alumni can’t admit that their university choice wasn’t as special as they believe.