<p>
Zuckerberg is the founder, that’s the difference. This survey should focus on the founders rather than the business people who take over as CEO’s. Most of these business type CEO’s didn’t come through the technical track; they got there more because of their Harvard MBA’s.</p>
<p>
Depending on who you ask.
Maybe, it is more informative than no information.
Hawkette, I am glad that you did not say going to undergraduate school is a waste of time. Where are all those graduate students coming from? It is true that graduate schools play a significant role, but you cannot prove that undergraduate schools did not play a role in developing these leaders.</p>
<p>drax, thanks for pointing out to silverfang that the topic is undergraduate schools and not graduate schools</p>
<p>hawkete, on this disturbing comment by you:</p>
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</p>
<p>who are you to question whether people would be interested in reading the article that was posted by the OP?</p>
<p>prof,
I’m not trying to prove anything, but common sense and experience tells me that the oomph! of an undergrad degree in developing a technology leader is usually about as strong as a gnat’s burp. Teaching leadership is not often part of the college curriculum plus we’re talking about young kids just getting out of college, the vast, vast, vast majority of who are not qualified to be leaders in anything. </p>
<p>Plenty of schools will give kids the requisite skills that they need to gain an entry-level spot. While there can be huge differences in the intellectual caliber of the students (notice that the Top 10 here are all highly selective schools), the schools themselves don’t take a hugely different approach in educating their undergrads. Yes, certain schools may attract a higher caliber student and have a greater alumni pipeline into certain companies and/or regions and thus a greater flow of their grads get entry-level jobs in techland—that is worthwhile info—but the determining factor of whether that student develops into a leader has everything to do with the student and almost nothing to do with the undergraduate college.</p>
<p>Hawette, I am pretty sure you went directly to the college without going through high school. Maybe you were born with innate skills to multiply, divide, solve Maxwell equations, and make your own galvanized cells. That’s why you directly went to the graduate school without attending elementary, middle & high schools, and especially undergraduate college since “it usually about as strong as a gnat’s burp.” Right?</p>
<p>cb,
Sorry, but we just disagree. Individual skills trump what the school gives you…by a lot. It’s hard to make a silk purse out of a sow’s ear and I don’t think that the colleges add much differentiated value beyond what they assemble during the admissions process. That’s why I think that the most selective environments will almost always be the winners in such comparisons. Individual talent is the reason. Not the school.</p>
<p>
Misinformation is usually worse than no information because the latter at least does not provoke incorrect responses.
But hawkette does not have to unless she is advocating for a specific course of action. The burden of proof lies on anyone who is advocating for an approach that differs from the status quo.</p>
<p>Let’s look at the warrants I would expect any such study to develop before reaching conclusions:</p>
<ol>
<li>Do the data indicate a statistically significant result?</li>
<li>Were controls in place to prevent lurking variables from skewing the results?</li>
<li>If the results are statistically significant, do they represent a pragmatically significant change?</li>
</ol>
<p>In this case, I’d say that none of those burdens have been met.</p>
<p>I don’t see why Princeton wouldn’t be in the mix with Stanford, Berkeley, MIT and Harvard for tech leaders. Despite being a fraction of the size and without an MBA program, Princeton alums were CEOs/Founders of the three biggest/influential tech companies of the last two decades…eBay, Google and Amazon.</p>
<p>
I don’t consider this is misinformation and quite to the contrary, I think that this provides a snapshot from another angle about undergraduate education, just like people looking into the number of Noble Prize winners or the number of Rhodes Scholars a school produces. If you think that this is misinformation, tell us what the correct informatioin is and what your criterion is. Your main objection is that this is not statistically significant and I already explained this to you in Post #13.
I am sure that when you do a study that meet these requirements, people will question the results too. If you looked at the reactions to the Revered Preference study done by some top professors, you’ll see what I mean. For example, if you have controls, are the controls correct? People will start to argue about the controls.</li>
</ol>
<p>In addition, I doubt that you’ll find any college ranking so far that meet your requirements.</p>
<p>
I’m not going to comment on those alternative criteria given that I have not researched them thoroughly. However, any datapoint is only useful if examined closely for relevance.
TDB claims that these schools “do the best job crafting technology leaders”. They do not give us sufficient warrants to justify that conclusion. Period.
I don’t think you ever responded to my comments in post #14…</p>
<p>Anyway, I’ll grant statistical significance just for the purpose of fostering better debate. Even if that correlation is shown, causation is not even remotely certain. There are too many other factors at work: student ability, location, student inclination, nonrandom sample selection, etc. The author blithely assumes causation with no evidence whatsoever.</p>
<p>But even if we accept the assumption of a causative relationship, the most serious problem with this article still remains. Knowing that the action of picking Dartmouth over Cornell matters is actually counterproductive unless we can quantify the degree to which the effects occur. That’s the issue of pragmatic significance - do the differences (even if statistically significant) actually matter enough to us on an individual level to warrant a change in our decision-making process? TDB’s failure to provide the actual quantitative results of their analysis makes their journalistic effort utterly worthless.</p>
<p>EDIT: You edited #29. People will always have complaints, and we need to consider those complaints and decide whether they have merit. Dismissing all dissent based solely on the idea that some dissent may be unfounded is not logical. Also, I really don’t care whether any college ranking fits my requirements. That isn’t relevant to this thread at all. Either this source of information is accurate or it isn’t - the availability of alternatives does not change that.</p>
<p>double posted. deleted. Post 29, Revealed Preference, not Revered Preference</p>
<p>
Hawkette, I wonder which one of these statements of yours is true, talent or school, or both?</p>
<p>prof,
As posted earlier, IMO the connection between one’s undergrad degree and becoming a “leader” in anything is a major stretch. </p>
<p>Re the later comment, I was referring to graduate schools when I talked about the value-added. But again the value is not provided so much by the schools and what they actually teach, but by the networks that the students can access. Relationships trump functional knowledge, can last much longer and can be broadly applied. </p>
<p>The key in both situations–undergrad and grad–is that the probability of success is most determined by the admissions process. Admit and enroll the best students and they will ultimately find a way to succeed. I don’t think that the school and the faculty is the reason for the success of the student, but rather the individual’s skills.</p>
<p>
What you said here makes sense, but admission is part of the education process. I also agree with your prior assertion that the technical skills that schools teach probably don’t vary that much for many of these schools, but some colleges more than others provide an environment where you can build relationships and friendships, factors you consider important.</p>