Maybe Your College Does Matter

            As a school head, I was always telling parents and students that your choice of college is not a defining moment in your life.  Studies show that the prestige of your college is not a significant determinant of later success, on any measure, from income to fame (e.g. in math and science) to happiness.  Recently Frank Bruni’s Where You Go Is Not Who You’ll Be stated the case thoroughly and reached the Top 20 in Kindle e-books.  (It’s much lower in hardcover results, which may mean a lot more young people are reading it.)

            But I recently wandered into a byway on the Internet and found that in one very narrow professional field, where you go seems to play an exceptionally large role.  If you want to be President, go to a highly selective college.  If you’re okay with being Vice President, go elsewhere.

            The raw numbers are striking.  Of our 44 presidents, 26 went to what we currently consider the 100 most highly selective colleges.  Taking out the four military leaders who became president without college (Washington, Jackson, Harrison, and Taylor), that’s 65% of the presidents.  On the other hand, only 9 of the 31 vice presidents who never made the top spot went to the highly selectives, or 29%.

            Looking more closely, the pattern gets stronger.  The “highly selective" distinction is a  recent one, and in the early days of the Republic, there were relatively few schools besides those that later reached the top tier. Ten of the earliest 25 are now in the highly selective 100.  In the young country, therefore, the distinction was between going to college or not, and geography generally was the primary influence.  So four early presidents, all Virginians, went to William and Mary, the Adamses went to Harvard, and others also stayed for the most part in-state.

           Back then there was little difference between the presidents and the vice presidents.  Through 1844, three presidents and four vice presidents went to the future Ivy League schools.  Oddly, for rest of the 19th century no Ivy grad made it to either of the two offices.

            Starting in 1900, however, the pattern changed almost completely.  Eight of the presidents since Teddy Roosevelt went to the Ivies (ten if we add Ivy Law schools).  Only one elected VP (Al Gore) attended the Ivies, and many of us believe he should have been on the president’s list.  Nelson Rockefeller, who was appointed VP, also makes the list.

            The rise of state universities might have changed the picture, but it really didn’t.  There have only been two state university presidents, one each from the highly selective universities of North Carolina and Michigan.  Of the seven state university VPs only one attended a highly selective school.

            Another odd note: while being a war hero, whether a graduate of the service academies or un-degreed, has been a path to the presidency for seven presidents, eight if we add Teddy Roosevelt, it has never produced a vice president,  including those who later became president.

            Finally, there seems to be a risk associated with selecting a well-degreed vice president. Two of the best-degreed vice presidents are the most infamous of all those holding the office: Aaron Burr (Princeton) and Spiro Agnew (Johns Hopkins).

            So tell your children, if they really, really, really want to be president, and not settle for #2, then where you go may tell who’ll you’ll be, but otherwise, it’s pretty irrelevant.