The most successful and influential Americans come from a surprisingly narrow range of ‘elite’ educational backgrounds
Bibliographic Data
| ID | 22235682 |
|---|---|
| Authors | Jonathan Wai (0000-0002-7686-1312, Arkansas Department of Education, corresponding author), Stephen M Anderson, Kaja Perina (Information Today (United States)), F C Worrell (0000-0002-7122-527X, University of California, Berkeley), Christopher F Chabris (0000-0002-7379-7378, Decision Sciences (United States)) |
| Year | 2024 |
| Volume | 11 |
| Issue | 1 |
| Publication date | 2024-09-03 |
| Peer Reviewed | Yes |
| Open Access | Yes |
| Type | ARTICLE |
| Venue | Humanities and Social Sciences Communications (JOURNAL) |
| Journal identifiers | ISSN: 2662-9992 • E-ISSN: 2662-9992 |
| Publisher | Springer Science and Business Media LLC (PUBLISHER) |
| DOI | 10.1057/s41599-024-03547-8 |
| OpenAlex | W4402194623 |
| Language | EN |
| Citations received | 4 |
| References cited | 33 |
The highest-achieving figures in politics, business, academia, and the media dominate public discourse and wield great influence in society. Education—perhaps especially at “elite” colleges and universities—may lie at the heart of the divide between the general public and these top achievers. In this paper, we build a new data set for the American “elite” and systematically examine the link between selective schools and outstanding achievements. In Study 1, across 30 different achievement groups totaling 26,198 people, we document patterns of attendance at a set of 34 “Elite” 34 schools, the 8 Ivy League schools, and Harvard University in particular. In Study 2, we surveyed 1810 laypeople to estimate how well they are aware of the key empirical facts from Study 1. We found that exceptional achievement is surprisingly strongly associated with “elite” education, especially obtaining a degree from Harvard, and the general public tends to underestimate the size of this effect. Attending one of just 34 institutions of higher education out of the roughly 4000 in the U.S. appears to be a critical and surprising factor separating extraordinary achievers from others in their fields
Elite · Political science · Politics · Sociology · Engineering · Higher Education Governance and Development · Higher Education Research Studies · Intergenerational and Educational Inequality Studies · Psychology
Attacking the Elites
Pedigree
Systematic inequality and hierarchy in faculty hiring networks
Who Becomes an Inventor in America? The Importance of Exposure to Innovation
Estimating the Payoff to Attending a More Selective College
The Missing "One-Offs"
Human capital versus signaling is empirically unresolvable
Academic Freedom Is Social Justice
Building a Better America—One Wealth Quintile at a Time
Where is the land of Opportunity? The Geography of Intergenerational Mobility in the United States
Education and Lifetime Earnings in the United States
Where Ivy Matters
The Educational Backgrounds of American Business and Government Leaders
The Elected and the Anointed
Americans overestimate social class mobility
Mere Description
The validity and utility of selection methods in personnel psychology
Meritocracy revisited
The Sociology of Elites
| Unique citing works | 4 |
|---|---|
| Citations per year | 4 |
| Citation span | 2025 - 2026 (2) |
| Citation velocity | current |
| Highly cited | No |
| Citation types | Neutral: 3 |