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If you have followed ap.com for any amount of time, you have realized that I really like Paul Graham’s ideas. He has just published an essay where he uses data from his Y! combinator to prove that having a degree from an elite university does not increase your chances of being successful when going for a startup. He argues that the ’startup test’ is a lot more useful to infer a person’s value than the tests that she needs to pass to e.g., getting good grades during high school or getting accepted in a prestigious college: “a high school record that’s largely an index of obedience”. I agree. I think his logic is impeccable.
This new essay just adds on his idea of “prestige is just fossilized brilliance”. Elite institutions capitalize on prestige, but it is not clear -at least from Paul’s analysis- that prestige converts well into real-life success, which I guess is what companies try to hire for. I think academics fight for prestige (clearly, money is not the currency they fight for!). And I think prestige is the wrong thing to look for!
About the author: Jose Quesada wanted to be a matador, an acrobatic pilot, or a painter, but found those activities not demanding enough, so he chose an academic career. He secretly hopes to orchestrate a system that produces papers without any human intervention (particularly, his).
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AMA citation:
Quesada J. Paul Graham: It doesn’t really matter where you went to college, measured by startup success ratio. Academic Productivity. 2007. Available at: http://www.academicproductivity.com/2007/paul-graham-it-doesnt-really-matter-where-you-went-to-college-measured-by-startup-success-ratio/. Accessed August 28, 2008.
APA citation:
Quesada, Jose. (2007). Paul Graham: It doesn’t really matter where you went to college, measured by startup success ratio. Retrieved August 28, 2008, from Academic Productivity Web site: http://www.academicproductivity.com/2007/paul-graham-it-doesnt-really-matter-where-you-went-to-college-measured-by-startup-success-ratio/
Chicago citation:
Quesada, Jose. 2007. Paul Graham: It doesn’t really matter where you went to college, measured by startup success ratio. Academic Productivity. http://www.academicproductivity.com/2007/paul-graham-it-doesnt-really-matter-where-you-went-to-college-measured-by-startup-success-ratio/ (accessed August 28, 2008).
Harvard citation:
Quesada, J 2007, Paul Graham: It doesn’t really matter where you went to college, measured by startup success ratio, Academic Productivity. Retrieved August 28, 2008, from <http://www.academicproductivity.com/2007/paul-graham-it-doesnt-really-matter-where-you-went-to-college-measured-by-startup-success-ratio/>
MLA citation:
Quesada, Jose. "Paul Graham: It doesn’t really matter where you went to college, measured by startup success ratio." 6 Sep. 2007. Academic Productivity. Accessed 28 Aug. 2008. <http://www.academicproductivity.com/2007/paul-graham-it-doesnt-really-matter-where-you-went-to-college-measured-by-startup-success-ratio/>
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April 27th, 2008 at 9:30 pm
The Degree from an elite is often used a barrier to entry. People that hire on that qualification are often just justifying their own decisions in life. If the person hiring, graduated from an Ive League School he/she may look down on thesomeone with a “lessor degree”.
The real test of a college education should be the person’s ability to do a job competently. It seems this is not only about prestige but the level of the degree archived. Many progressions such as nursing and physical therapist require higher degrees to enter the workforce than in the past. This decreases the amount of available workers in the field and thus increases cost and lowers quality.