This is self-validating on the part of academia. To the extent it demonstrates value for school (which doesn’t seem proven to me), it’s valuable in getting you more and better school. Much of the world believes that better school translates into real world value, and that’s self-fulfilling (via better job offers), but it doesn’t demonstrate people learn more at school than they would through other uses of their time.
I would strongly expect CEO-ship of a S&P 500 company to be causally downstream of a top-5 business school, a top-20 college, and the kind of high-status professional+social network you get from “more and better school”.
This is self-validating on the part of academia. To the extent it demonstrates value for school (which doesn’t seem proven to me), it’s valuable in getting you more and better school. Much of the world believes that better school translates into real world value, and that’s self-fulfilling (via better job offers), but it doesn’t demonstrate people learn more at school than they would through other uses of their time.
Note this also has been observed in other spheres—E.G. CEOs of S&P 500 companies: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Relative_age_effect#In_leadership_positions
I would strongly expect CEO-ship of a S&P 500 company to be causally downstream of a top-5 business school, a top-20 college, and the kind of high-status professional+social network you get from “more and better school”.