You could replace those names with Trump and Kushner. Those are the role models/heroes for America's white voters -- slackers who earned nothing, did nothing, took everything for granted. My sense of humor has taken a real hit these past 2 years.
So regardless of your grades in Canada everyone can go to the most prestgious school, no limits on enrollment?
Most universities in Canada are high quality. You're not really shut out of any opportunities to be someone "elite" or have "elite job prospects" in this country because you didn't go to a certain "few schools". You don't get any prestige points because you attended a specific school. My high school classmate got a business degree from a Canadian university and then got an interview with Harvard for an MBA without any work experience, which I understand is unusual. The school in Canada he went to wasn't all that special or difficult to get into. America has a much bigger fixation with elitism, or separation from the ordinary. It doesn't matter to a Canadian employer if you went to Dalhousie University, University of Alberta or the University of British Columbia. No one thinks they're better than anyone else because they did, nor is there degree worth anything extra. The schools all still have the ability to get you into further programs in any academic system around the world or job markets.
I visited him a few years ago in Chicago. He ended up going to Carnegie Mellon and now has a PHD in economics form the Univeristy of Chicago. Smart guy.
Not that different, most state schools give you a good education, but some people probably want brand name schools for 2 reasons, resume and connections. Canada does seem to have some top world universities. https://www.timeshighereducation.com/student/best-universities/best-universities-canada
In law school I went to a talk by a Canadian in- house lawyer for Microsoft. He said that going to a school like McGill Univeristy sounded better for American employers than "The University of......." because they might associate the second category with a state school rather than a private school. He was confident just going to a private school sounding name was more likely to land us a gig south of the border versus "The university of Toronto". Always struck me as strange.
It's the culture here, those kids could have gone to other universities, but they wanted to go to specific universities.
I still don't know why they didn't do it the old-fashioned way. If you pay a coach or an admissions officer, it's bribery. If you write a check to the university, it's "Institutional Advancement" as Seth Meyers pointed out last night.
If there's a Democratic Presidential candidate whose children did not benefit from famous-person privilege, that candidate could make some hay on the campaign trail with this issue. Rail against the breaks given to the kids of the rich and famous. That would be a populist issue that the Dems would win against Trump. Nobody cares to defend the rights of billionaire yacht owners to get special favors for their lazy kids, except for other billionaires.
One is cheaper, they are rich, but not super rich, they are probably below the 10 million a year income line.
I'm not sure how true that is re: the "name" and Canadian Universities. That's based upon where many of my former colleagues attended. Companies that are legitimately looking for talent know Toronto, UBC, etc. When we're comparing the admissions craze in the US vs. other places, it's important to realize the US has a perfect storm of factors that leads otherwise sane people into this trap. English is still the common research language, so unis in countries where English is spoken widely are going to draw more people. This isn't felt evenly though. Older unis tend to have the advantage in accruing reputation and endowments. The UK is probably more classist than the US in this regard. The US university system developed a bit earlier than CAN and AUS though, and the country is huge in terms of population, which naturally leads to greater stratification wrt selectivity/perceived quality/endowments. The US R&D system also relies upon its university system more heavily than most other highly developed countries, so there are a lot of research dollars sitting on campuses you don't see in other countries. I'm not suggesting that this is a good thing, but my alma mater has more $$$ than McGill, Toronto and UBC combined. It's smaller than all of them. People of means worldwide position their kids to go where that "action" is: where the most famous scholars are, where other people who have the "numbers" are going, where they're most likely to land that research internship, where they're most likely to find the kid of that VC baron to fund "ideas", etc. It turns these schools into investment/resource magnets. Just looking at the top 40 of the Shanghai world list: US 27 schools UK 6 schools Other highly developed countries 7 schools Rest of World 0 schools Now toss in the idea that pre-university education here is extremely unequal. School districts matter greatly here. So they create a test to supposedly "level the playing field", which feeds the test prep race. The crowding out effect at the top creates a lot of "trickle down" pressure. The "top" 5-6 schools get theirs, then there is pressure on the "lower Ivies"/"best of the rest" to get theirs to prove they stack up relatively well...and so on right down the line.
On education/class, this has been my company's experience (exclusively white-collar, research oriented firm) - 1) Private vs. public universities matter not. 2) What degrees were earned matters not. 3) GPA does matter, quite a bit. 4) The tier of university matters greatly. For example, we don't recruit at any Big 10 schools but Michigan, Wisconsin, Illinois, and Northwestern. 5) Almost all our recruits, whether from private or public universities, are from comfortable to outright rich families. 6) We have had occasional good results from non-wealthy kids coming from lower-tier universities, but they have to have killed it there -- a 3.9 GPA or better, plus some evidence that they were otherwise busy. Truly high achiever types.
My old practice within public accounting had a slightly different recruiting strategy. Our practice area was considered more "technical" than the bulk of the other practice areas at the firm, so the school rep was a bit more meritocratic because we tended to poach from within to find those who came from a more inclusive list of schools. Of the people who made it past the analyst level, the breakdown was something like: 40% selective private university. Mainly U Chicago, Northwestern, Notre Dame, and Washington U. A couple of random Duke, Rice, etc. 40% from certain Big Tens. Heavy on Illinois, Wisconsin, Michigan, Purdue, Indiana. 20% everything else. Folks from N. Illinois, W. Michigan, Ohio U, UIC, an HBCU, etc Direct from school hires never came from that last pool. They were always people with high GPAs who showed something to their partners in other practice areas that led them to believe they were a good fit for us.
That's broadly similar. We don't recruit from that third pool (and neither did you, it seems). They need to find us. That is a good sorting mechanism; when we do attract such candidates, a high percentage of them are the cream of the crop. Whereas with on-campus recruiting, any schlub will show up, even if you put language in about how the company seeks high GPAs, high achievers, etc. Finally, we don't bother with people from outside the Midwest any more. Even if they say they want to be in Chicago, within 3 to 5 years they head back from whence they came.
All of our people were either Midwest or non-US citizens from US or Canadian universities. The practice liked them because if they left, they could plug them into the firm in their country of origin. What's interesting about the groups I mentioned above is that no one from Pool A became a partner. On average, the technical writing and creativity wrt problem solving was superior in this group. Most weren't accounting/finance grads, but they had stronger econ/math backgrounds with enough finance/accounting to ramp quickly. This group also tended to be the group the partners fell back on when projects went south to figure out how to patch things up quickly. People in this group either got poached themselves or they had an existential career crisis and changed things up: "why am I spending my life doing tax avoidance for rich guys/multinationals?". In terms of raw execution on bread and butter projects and towing the company line, the folks who found the practice from "lesser" schools like DePaul, N Illinois, etc. were the ones most likely to make partner. They tended to be more loyal (maybe because their options were more limited) and they just did the work and went home.
Gilded America's problem in a nutshell. Self-perpetuating cycle Does your firm actively recruit minorities?
Well I dunno. The chicken came before the egg. When the company started, it didn't have many kids from advantaged backgrounds, or from fancy colleges, because it didn't pay for shit and nobody had ever heard of it. And most of those people washed out. The hit rate became higher when the company became attractive enough to attract a wider variety of applicants. So the hiring habits came from what worked for the business. As for minorities, we have a whole damn lot of minorities (and immigrants) if you consider Asians minorities. Otherwise, not much.
I assume you are about the same age as I am. There were parts of USC that were good, at least from when I was around. The dental school was quite good, film was top notch, and IIRC, some finance/business areas were quite good as well. But I also know there was a lot of "I see you went to USC, too. You're hired." And when I was in LA, USC athletics was more legacy than current. I am also speaking from the perspecitve of my mom getting her MS there.
Well I guess it's good that she's a Psych major https://nypost.com/2019/03/20/posh-couple-paid-in-facebook-stock-to-get-daughter-into-ucla/