"If you graduate from the right schools, your education is so respected that you are guaranteed a top leadership job in government or business for life, even if you are ineffective. It is a bit like becoming part of the nobility."
Kind of like Harvard, Yale, Princeton, etc.....
Are there any French people registered on free Republic? Is this allowed?
The comparison is tempting but in France it is a whole nother thing.
Here, your daddy may get you into an Ivy League college and then your path may be greased into some excellent, undeserved opportunities. But, ultimately, when you are forty or fifty years old, I don't think even a Harvard degree means much if you have accomplished nothing.
In France, you can be shuttled in and out of top government jobs for your entire life based on absolutely nothing but that fancy degree. It is, as I said, more like being admitted to the nobility.
(I agree that the snot-nosed prestige attached to some of our elite schools is undeserved and the institutions and graduates should be taken down a few pegs. Even our president, I will not concede to be an especially educated fellow, Yale and Harvard notwithstanding.)