“...he said that [Harvard] may have once been [highly respected], but that one could get as good an education from other schools. He said that Harvard was overrated.”
Over 50 years ago, in my graduate classes in Social Psychology, our professors and we discussed the same point, and why Harvard and the Ivy League was overrated.
In the first place, the students were drawn from the economic elite, so many of them went on to become wealthy, if they were not already rich when they attended the Ivy League schools. When statistics were compared of the success of graduates, Old Ivy came out ahead of State because they started ahead of State. This added to the Ivy League’s prestige.
In the case of a school’s academic rating, that rating was done by Academics teaching (or at least on the faculty of) the other colleges and Universities in the country. Harvard had one of the largest Graduate schools in the country, and one of the highest ratios of PHD’s going into academic positions (as compared to private industry or other jobs) in the country, and had for quite some time. When asked to rate the academic standing of the institutions of higher learning, there was a natural bias in favor of one’s Alma Mater. This bias was self-perpetuating, since students who studied under Harvard Grad Profs tended to accept the high opinion of their teachers at face value, and if they became Professors themselves, rated Harvard high, even if they were biased in favor of their own school.
As far as I know, no-one has ever done an objective study of the actual value of the education offered by our colleges and universities in terms of the positive (and measurable) effects on the lives of its graduates, controlled for their statuses and educational backgrounds before they enrolled.
Thank you for sharing that excellent point with me. It certainly makes complete sense.