Focus on capabilities, not credentials

Two articles.  From The Malicious Dead End of "Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion" by Fancis Menton

Places like Yale, Harvard and Princeton put an enormous amount of effort into keeping track of their alumni and following their careers.  If there was good news to report about the widespread success of their black and other minority graduates in the world, I would have no doubt that they would be trumpeting it to the heavens.  Yet over the years I have searched repeatedly for any such studies or reports, and I just can’t find them.  Maybe somebody else can, if not for these institutions, then maybe for some others (other Ivies? MIT? Cal Tech? Berkeley? Stanford? U of Chicago?).  

What I can find is at least a small number of studies that suggest that obtaining a degree from an elite academic institution does not convey any notable advantage on black candidates in the job market.  For example, there is this 2014 study from the journal Social Forces titled “Discrimination in the Credential Society: An Audit Study of Race and College Selectivity in the Labor Market.”   A summary of the study at Inside Higher Ed in 2015 concludes:

Black students who graduate from institutions like Harvard University are about as likely to get a well-paid job as a white graduate from a less-selective state university, new study finds. . . .  Black graduates at elite colleges not only had a response rate similar to that of white graduates from less-selective institutions, but the employers who responded to black applicants were often offering jobs with less prestige and with salaries that trailed those of white candidates by an average of $3,000.

[snip] 

 

In other words, at this point it is completely known that aggressive affirmative action as practiced in American academia is not to the benefit of the black and other minority students, and indeed likely is an overall harm to them.  But the practice continues for the benefit not of the students, but rather of the institutions, in their competition for prestige among their own group.

Next up is The Fastest Path to the CEO Job, According to a 10-Year Study by Botelho et al

Theirs is a slightly different focus - how quickly can you get to the top and is there a pattern to the fast risers?  

A 10-year study of more than 17,000 C-suite executive assessments looked at who gets to the top and how. A close look at “CEO sprinters” — those who reached the CEO role faster than the average of 24 years from their first job — shows that formative experiences play a key role. Specifically, these ladder-climbers made bold career moves that catapulted them to the top ahead of others. Three types of career catapults were most common. First, lateral or even backward moves allowed the future CEO to build something from the ground up (like leaving a large, prestigious company to start their own business). Second, big leaps allowed the future CEO to skip a level, or even two levels, even if they felt unready. And third, big messes brought the opportunity to turn around a failing unit or division.

But what really caught my eye was this:

We conducted a 10-year study, which we call the CEO Genome Project, in which we assembled a data set of more than 17,000 C-suite executive assessments and studied 2,600 in-depth to analyze who gets to the top and how. We then took a closer look at “CEO sprinters” — those who reached the CEO role faster than the average of 24 years from their first job.

We discovered a striking finding: Sprinters don’t accelerate to the top by acquiring the perfect pedigree. They do it by making bold career moves over the course of their career that catapult them to the top. We found that three types of career catapults were most common among the sprinters. Ninety-seven percent of them undertook at least one of these catapult experiences and close to 50% had at least two. (In contrast, only 24% had elite MBAs.)

I have one of those elite MBA degrees and an undergraduate from another elite undergraduate schools.  What has always struck me in my management consulting career, dealing primarily with upper management, C-suite and Boards, is just how few of the top tier MBA schools are represented.  

It make perfect sense.  There are only a few thousand such graduates a year and there are hundreds of thousands of corporations and business and governmental roles, etc.  24% sounds way too high to me based on experience.  Maybe 5% has been my experience.  I suspect that the 24% number includes evening and weekend MBAs and it encompasses probably way more schools than the top 10-15.  If you restrict it to people who took a full time MBA from one of the top 10-15 programs, I am guessing you are at my experience, perhaps only 5%.

At most clients I work with, most of the top people earned their way to the top by dent of capability and hard work and a lot of them, the majority, have routine MBAs and normal undergrads.  

The point is that while virtually 100% of full-time MBAs from a Harvard or a Wharton are going to have stellar careers (because of their IQs and selected personality traits), only 5% of the top ranks of achievement have those degrees.  There are a ton of high IQ high capability individuals from non-elite institutions.  

Which is a round-about way of saying, institutional credentials don't drive the outcome, it is the capabilities being selected for.  Doesn't matter where you go to school as long as you have the capabilities.  If you have them, you will rise.  Likewise, it doesn't matter where you go to school if you don't have those capabilities, you'll rise to your capabilities and not much more.  

Finding and developing the capabilities, especially the soft skills which are more learnable and less constrained by genes, is the goal, not quotas at the "right schools."