<p>Here is the answer from the Daily Beast.</p>
<p>Tech's</a> 29 Most Powerful Colleges - The Daily Beast</p>
<p>A lot familiar names, but some surprises.</p>
<p>The rankings look good…</p>
<p>1) Dartmouth
2) Stanford
3) Princeton
4) Harvard
5) MIT
6) Duke
7) Northwestern
8) Lehigh
9) Yale
10) Johns Hopkins
11) Cornell
12) UCLA
13) U. of Illinois
14) Loyola University - Chicago
15) Baylor University
16) Brigham Young
17) UC Davis
18) U. of Pittsburgh
19) Rutgers University
20) U. of Texas - Austin
21) San Diego State
22) Washington State University
23) University of Missouri
24) Michigan State University
25) UC Berkeley
26) U. of Maryland
27) U. of Wisconsin
28) California State U. - Long Beach
29) Purdue University</p>
<p>Methodology: “But which schools really represent a pipeline to the top jobs? To find out, The Daily Beast scoured the biographies of hundreds of key technology executives from the nation’s biggest companies and some of its hottest startups, too. Our goal was to identify which colleges, compared student-for-student (undergraduate enrollment data courtesy of the National Center for Education Statistics), have turned out the most undergraduates destined for high-tech greatness. While our results included many prestigious names, the rankings produced surprises as well. At the top of the list is a spot nearly 3,000 miles away from Silicon Valley. (Here’s a tip, future gadget czars of America. Bundle up: Those New Hampshire winters get awfully cold.)” [Source: thedailybeast.com]</p>
<p>That methodology is truly appalling. The sample sizes are far too small to draw any sort of meaningful conclusions.</p>
<p>
The problem with this methodology is that the guy in the corner office may not be a whiz kid … he/she may not even be tech savvy.</p>
<p>Let’s check out the two companies mentioned in the article - eBay and Hewlett Packard:</p>
<p>eBay CEO, John Donahoe, graduated from Dartmouth with a BA degree in Economics (Btw, Donahoe is featured in the Dartmouth slide as a “Notable Alum”).</p>
<p>Hewlett Packard CEO, Mark Hurd, graduated from Baylor with a degree in Business Admin. Hurd’s predecessor, Carly Fiorina, graduated from Stanford with degrees in Philosophy and Medieval History.</p>
<p>There’s more. IBM Chairman, President and CEO, Samuel Palmisano, graduated from Johns Hopkins with BA in history.</p>
<p>Thanks Collegebiomed for list all the schools.</p>
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<p>Not sure whether it’s appalling. Every ranking has its supporters and distractors, just ask USNWR. The person who did the ranking seems to be a reputable journalist.</p>
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That’s true. At the top level of a company, business savvy is probably more important than tech savvy. I guess that may be the reason CalTech, Georgia Tech and Carnegie Mellon are not on the list.</p>
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My point is that the differences between schools may very well be statistically insignificant. I can’t reach any kind of conclusions unless I see the actual data, but even the “best” schools will still probably have only a small number of CEOs in the very limited sample.</p>
<p>When has USNWR shown its data? I have never seen it. </p>
<p>And how is the data insignificant:</p>
<p>“To produce our rankings, we sought a cross-section of the technology world, from behemoths like Cisco Systems to notable up-and-comers. So we researched the leadership of more than 100 tech companies—starting with every such firm listed on the Fortune 500, along with startups featured in the TechCrunch 50 list and companies selected in the tech category of Technology Review’s Most Innovative Companies list. We then analyzed the biographies of the companies’ CEOs and other top executives—more than 250 “C-level” leaders in all—to tabulate their undergraduate alma maters. (In a nod to Messrs. Jobs and Gates, we didn’t exclude dropouts.)” [Source: thedailybeast.com]</p>
<p>I don’t understand why you keep talking about USNWR. It’s not even remotely relevant to what I’m saying.</p>
<p>They have a sample size of ~250 people. We aren’t told how many attended each school - that’s the data I need.</p>
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<p>You have a point there, but with a few exceptions, the list makes sense. I am often amazed that many times, people spend a lot money and time conducting statistical analysis just to confirm what you can get from intuition. I guess sometimes we need something to backup of intuition.</p>
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Even if the results are statistically significant, it is not possible to accurately determine causation based on an observational study with such a small sample.</p>
<p>“even the “best” schools will still probably have only a small number of CEOs in the very limited sample.”</p>
<p>First, the sample contains all the top firms in Fortune 500. Hence, all the CEO’s of major companies are covered. Moreover, up-and-coming companies are also included. Unless, you want to list every person next door who runs the very small firms.</p>
<p>Secondly, to become CEO of a Fortune 500 company is no joke. Hence, their education has prepared them to be one. College drop-outs such as Jobs and Gates are not excluded. Hence, their universities gets the credit.</p>
<p>Thirdly, the universities are ranked by percapita. Hence, the universities which are able to convert most of their graduates into great businessmen benefit [the true test of any university]</p>
<p>Fourthly, the rankings only account for executives. Some good university might have produced class researchers instead of CEO’s. Hence, they would not project into the rankings. That doesn’t mean they are bad institutions.</p>
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Read your own post. The sample size is not much greater than 250.
You don’t know that at all. Even if the data shows a significant correlation, you have no idea what it means. Maybe people become CEOs because they are driven or because they are good at building consensus or because they are physically attractive or because of many other factors.
Most of their graduates? What on earth are you talking about? Even if we assume that every single one of the 250 attended Dartmouth, that would still represent less than 2% of Dartmouth grads over just the past four years.
This is another reason not to draw conclusions from this data.</p>
<p>noimagination,
At a certain level, you won’t have enough samples to conduct a strictly meaningful statistical analyis, but some inference can still be made. For example, you look at the alma maters of the US Presidents, Yale and Harvard have probably produced the most so far. However, their numbers are still not statistically significant, but this will not prevent people from calling them the cradles of the presidents. Most people would agree that a person graduated from these schools probably has better chance of becoming the President than other people these days because they have produced four in a roll.</p>
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- Even if you do all the right things, becoming president still requires a whole lot of luck, historical connections, or both. I would argue that these factors probably have more to do with the eventual outcome than the school. How much does the probability of becoming president rise if you choose Harvard over Northwestern?</p>
<ol>
<li><p>There is a strong tie between law and politics, and Harvard and Yale have the two best law schools in the country.</p></li>
<li><p>You might be surprised by some of the stats: [List</a> of Presidents of the United States by education - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia](<a href=“http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_Presidents_of_the_United_States_by_education]List”>List of presidents of the United States by education - Wikipedia)</p></li>
</ol>
<p>The most powerful tech schools are the one producing the greatest alum. And the truly powerful positions are either founder/co-founder, or CEO., the true “industry tycoons”, not some 2nd-rate VP of strategy. The person who came up with the list knows nothing about technology companies. There are basically four (or five) schools that can be said to produce the majority of tech industry tycoons. The main ones are Berkeley, Harvard, MIT, and Stanford.</p>
<p>Berkeley and Stanford, for obvious reasons, as they’re the two great schools that have basically upheld the pillars of silicon valley and the bay area tech scene. Alumni? </p>
<p>Berkeley alum include founders of Intel, Apple, HTC, Sun Microsystems, Marvell Technology, VMware, Apache Software, and are currently CEOs of Google, Intel, Adobe Systems, Qualcomm, and many other tech giants.</p>
<p>Stanford alum include founders of HP, Nvidia, Yahoo, Sun, Google, Cisco, and are CEOs of HP, Intel, Nvidia, Cypress Semiconductor, and many others.</p>
<p>MIT and Harvard, though, don’t have Silicon Valley/bay area tech scene, are basically the only other two schools that have come close to Berkeley/Stanford in these terms.</p>
<p>MIT alum have founded or co-founded TI, HP, Qualcomm, Analog Devices and others.</p>
<p>The case of Harvard is interesting - most of the industry tycoons are Harvard MBAs, not undergrads/grad students (in the scientific/engineering fields, that is), since Harvard has obviously never been as strong as MIT/Berkeley/Stanford in the tech fields. I can’t name any off the top of my head, but we have the requisite Bill Gates, who infamously was a dropout however (and wooed his college buddy Steve Ballmer to drop out of b-school years later to be CEO of his then-fledgling software startup).</p>
<p>So, silverfang, that implies that the dominant days of MIT, Stanford, Harvard and Berkeley are over. Since, I can’t see their recent graduates dominating the top CEO positions (according to the rankings) nor any have recently founded any top companies(not featuring in up-and-coming techs part of the rankings).</p>
<p>People can be a “founder” of the company. However, the business acumen of the current CEOs or your so-called “2nd rate VP’s” either takes companies to great heights or makes them a complete failures. Founders alone cannot take a company to Fortune 500 and later maintain the status.</p>
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First of all, I am not sure that you know more than he does, maybe you do. The guy was the Washington Bureau Chief of the Wall Street Journal and I assume that he knew something about business inlcuding technology business.
Second, you even have less data than him to make the claim. This is an UNDERGRADUATE per capita ranking. You include a lot people from GRADUATE schools. For example, out of the people you listed for Stanford only a couple have their undergraduate degrees from Stanford. In addition, you didn’t consider the size of the undergraduate population. Dartmouth, for example, is only 1/6 the size of UC berkeley.</p>
<p>try Trip Hawkins, the found of Electronic Arts</p>
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<p>Silverfang:</p>
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<p>Youre mixing and matching yourself wrt these persons undergrad and grad educations yourself, per your Harvard MBA argument. Id like to tighten up the argument, since this is a message board for those choosing schools for undergrad educations. And I think this site listing the tech leaders tries to remain true to that. Top tech leaders come from all over, but their grad educations might be more focused on certain schools as you mentioned.</p>
<p>The founders of Google have undergrad degrees from universities of Michigan and Maryland Im sure though, both attribute their success to Stanford for ideas, incubation, etc.</p>
<p>Eric Schmidts bio says he has a BS from Princeton and MS and PHD from Berk.</p>
<p>I didnt look at the bios of the others.</p>
<p>GoBlue:</p>
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<p>Im not sure why this is relevant. Wasnt Facebooks Zuckerberg studying sociology at Harvard? One doesn’t have to study something tech-related to be tech-savvy, especially for those whiz-kids at Harvard.</p>
<p>Professor:</p>
<p>I agree with you wrt your USN’s College Rankings. Some here recite them as gospel. And we know that there are schools that will cook their numbers to ascend the rankings.</p>
<p>Another quoted here often is Payscale’s school median salaries for those with just baccalaureates. A school like Berk and Stanford and Santa Clara benefit from the premium salaries doled out by Bay Area firms, often > 10% over the rest of CA. </p>
<p>So naturally Berk grads boast of their salaries via this site over other UCs. This means taht Berk is by far the most prestigious UC, lol.</p>
<p>Is this thread really necessary? Does this line of thinking really inform any prospective student about becoming a technology leader? </p>
<p>IMO, there are literally dozens of undergrad places that can put one into various aspects of the info tech business (interesting that there is so little mention of Texas colleges-LOL). But the real value added comes from the graduate school connections. Trying to predict leaders from the undergrad origin is a waste of time and energy. Trying to predict from the grad origin is highly effective due to the excellent professional networks/contacts that one gets.</p>