In Scott Galloway on getting rejected — and then accepted into UCLA and Scott Galloway compares elite colleges to luxury brands, college professor, entrepreneur, and thought leader Scott Galloway makes the strong case for broadening access to post-secondary education and training. In the short above, Galloway asserts that colleges and universities are public goods and that, as such, their goal should be to educate the maximum number of young people. He also takes on Dartmouth College which has not increased enrollment in (editorial comment: a gazillion) years and yet has a massive endowment. In the longer vid, Galloway suggests a greater investment in the public education system, investing in programs which do not confer college degrees (like vocational programs), and lifting up the idea that college is not the end-all-be-all to life generally and certainly for good, well-paying jobs.
These two videos remind me of the many from author and podcaster Malcolm Gladwell. The argument that stands out and I’ve personally adopted is articulated in the 2016 Revisionist History podcast My Little Hundred Million. Story hero Hank Rowan, a successful businessman in New Jersey, is contrasted with the fundraisers of Stanford and other elite institutions.
In the early ’90s, Hank Rowan gave $100 million to a university in New Jersey, an act of extraordinary generosity that helped launch the greatest explosion in educational philanthropy since the days of Andrew Carnegie and the Rockefellers. But Rowan gave his money to Glassboro State University, a tiny, almost bankrupt school in South Jersey, while almost all of the philanthropists who followed his lead made their donations to elite schools such as Harvard and Yale. Why did no one follow Rowan’s example?
The latest of Gladwell’s disdain for elite institutions and clarion call for supporting small and public institutions is explained in Malcolm Gladwell’s problem with America’s elite schools and Malcolm Gladwell Goes After Conan’s Alma Mater | Conan O'Brien Needs A Friend. (tl;dr young people who play country club sports are rewarded in a kind of affirmative action for rich (white) people)