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Yale or Podunk:  Who Cares?

FUNDfire, September 2, 2007

By ANDREA JAMES

By the time she reached high school, Krisanne Combs, an East Coaster by birth, knew that she was expected to attend a top college.

“I don’t think it ever occurred to me that there was another option,” said Combs, a 36-year old manager at REM Medical Corp. in Seattle. “I went off to the University of Virginia, secure in the knowledge that I’d been accepted at one of the top public schools in the country, but also disappointed that I didn’t get into other schools I applied to.”

She later earned her Master of Business Administration at Duke University—another school that would give her esteem among peers with whom the initial question, “Where did you go to school?” was standard.

But then she moved to Seattle and found that none of that really mattered much. She said she likes the laid-back attitude she finds here. 

“Around Seattle, it seems that a lot of people grow up here and live here or close by for their entire life,” she said. “Professional networks are built around the local and regional universities, not so much around the prestige of the school attended.”

University prestige matters more in the Northeast than most parts of the country, and everywhere it matters less today than it did 30 years ago, said Michael McClain, a partner at Battalia Winston International, a New York firm that finds executive hires for companies.

“No one has asked me probably in at least eight years that they’d like to see someone with an MBA from a top 10 MBA school,” said McClain, who has recruited for 22 years.

When Christopher Morgan’s clients tell him to find candidates with a prestigious degree, it “narrows the candidate pool pretty significantly,” he said.

Attending an elite school today is now more of a bonus in a job candidate than a requirement, he said.

Still, many people say that pedigree matters, particularly for those entering the legal, accounting and consulting fields. The top schools have star appeal, said Mark Stevens, author of “Your Marketing Sucks,” a Business Week best-seller.

“They say, ‘Hi, I’m Jane and I went to Harvard University.’ Suddenly, she’s Jane Harvard Smith,” Stevens said. “And when you have Bob Podunk Green, I don’t believe anybody is going to say they will interview Jane Harvard Smith and not have a higher expectation of how she is going to perform.”

Going to a top school is like buying into a brand, said Stevens, who acknowledged that he leads a successful life despite having attended “a generic supermarket-brand school.” He wishes he had gone with the elites, he said.

“The one who is going to get in the door first is the one who looks good on paper and Harvard is always going to look better on paper than Podunk.”

But those who do attend the prestigious schools have to live up to expectations, or risk looking like imposters hiding behind a great brand, Stevens said.

Azita Arvani, who has 20 years’ experience in management, said her school choices have helped her to establish credibility in her professional life, but she doesn’t flaunt it.

“Once in a while, having prestigious degrees may come across as intimidating,” said Arvani, a president of her own California management consulting company who holds degrees from Stanford University, the University of Southern California and the University of California, Los Angeles. “I’d definitely not mention it on dates early on. Or, sometimes, people have strong beliefs against it. But as long as you don’t show it off and just subtly mention it, when asked, it is fine.”

But a lot of folks don’t agree that a prestigious degree is necessary (Stevens says those people are lying about their true feelings) and some even say that an elite degree can be a hindrance.

“Some people say, ‘We want people who are willing to get their hands dirty and work,’ “ McClain said.

When Reed Hackett, president of DeVry University’s Seattle metro region, spoke to the Seattle P-I about the topic, he appealed to that concept.

His graduates “are not going to be high-maintenance employees,” he said. “They are going to be ready to start work the day they set foot on the job.”

In 2006, more than nine in 10 graduates from DeVry’s Seattle campus found employment at an average salary of $42,000. The university has more than 48,000 students enrolled in more than 80 locations. It is not as nationally known as an elite school, but Hackett said it has its own sort of prestige.

“Harvard takes people that are already bound for success and they move them a notch,” Hackett said. “DeVry takes people that are typically the first person in their family to go to college—we actually move our students a much greater distance.

“Quality of the education is ultimately what we’re all judged by,” he said.

A recent poll of 1,400 chief financial officers by Accountemps found that executives were split in their opinions of whether university choice mattered in hiring.

“For some employers, I think they believe how prestigious a school is is going to reflect on how motivated and determined a person is, and in some cases that could be true,” said Josh Warborg, president of the Pacific Northwest district of Accountemps. “It depends on what the employer is really looking for.”

“My guess would be that most people think that if they didn’t go to a prestigious school, they have a complex about that, but they probably shouldn’t,” Warborg said.

That’s because “most companies are bread-and-butter companies. They put up light poles. They pave streets,” he said. And they don’t care where someone’s degree comes from.