Re: Ivy League - I will take a Service Academy graduate or a Land Grant School graduate ANY DAY over an Ivy Leaguer.
How about a graduate from the Cornell Univ School of Agriculture (an original Land Grant College)?
One Freeper even put forth a reasonable argument that these two were among the poorer presidents and certainly the worst of their era.
I also find Hanson's following statement amusing: cf. the con of mostly white candidates claiming some sort of Native American ancestry . . .
The actual probability of a white person being able to claim some Native American ancestry is quite high if they can trace their ancestry in this country back to the 18th century. It becomes even higher (close to 75%) if they can trace it back to the 17th century. The reason is simple math-- the number of direct ancestors doubles every generation and the pool of available people shrinks.
Yeah, I know, we're talking 1/32nd or, in the more common cases, 1/64th or even 1/128th (or less) Native American blood. But it is based on facts, however small. And it is a trend likely to continue as long as special rights are conferred on certain minorities.
I wouldn't be so sure. I've taught at both a Land Grant University (my current permanent job) and an Ivy (as a TA and later as visiting faculty). Business? I'll take the B.A. from Wharton over the B.A. in business from a land grant school (I've taught the math service courses for both programs, no comparison in the student motivation and ability, the Ivy wins hands down, and I suspect the programs at Wharton and Harvard Business are more rigorous than those at land grant schools' colleges of business).
Math? The best and brightest among undergrads at both institutions are comparable and get comparable educations (if the ones going to the land grant school had calc in high school so they can skip over the lower division courses and end up topping off their major with a few low-level grad courses), but at the land grant school we have maybe one major per year in an undergrad program which graduates about 20 majors per year, that falls into that category, at the Ivy there were two in the twelve person class I taught while visiting.