Ye Olde Boys' Club

 Have you ever heard of the term, "old boy's club"? I'm going to break it down as much as I can, as much as I understand. Also, my focus is going to be on prestigious universities. I first thought about this when I was finishing up my education at Nyack College and tried to utilize the services of their career services center. Nyack's services were abysmally inadequate.  I was nearing the end of my time there, I was close to having my degree. I needed help finding a job after my graduation. I figured, Nyack is the official college of a whole religious denomination. Where can I expect to find better networking to plug me into a place that can use my services? 

Unfortunately, the answer was "anywhere". I'd have more luck posting on Monster or Indeed getting a job than using the Nyack Career Services office. They wanted to help me make a resume. No leads. No connections. Just a resume. What a waste of space and time. 

Which got me thinking about how prestigious places, like Ivy League Universities, do their thing. Well, they build their business off the backs of their reputations. Harvard, MIT, Yale, Columbia, Brown, Penn State. They're all known to be excellent institutions, all known to provide the best and the most cutting edge of any education you can get anywhere. Even without their direct assistance, getting a job with a degree from Yale or Harvard or MIT is going to be a LOT easier than getting a job with a job from anywhere else. A well-paying job. So, the premium they put on that education is almost worth it, for that reputation alone. But they go so much further than this!

First off, their alumni game is super strong. Obviously, if their students were gifted and moved on to work in prestigious law firms or investment corporations, become renown doctors at prestigious hospitals, or become big tech moguls, they have money. Thankfully for those people with money, their alma maters, as long as we're talking about the Ivy League schools, are all nonprofits and therefor serious tax havens. These folk with money can make serious donations to the schools and count them as charitable donations, giving them freedom to write them off as far as income taxes are concerned. And the schools know how to return the favor. They act as functioning networking organizations. If you have a degree from Harvard, you need a lawyer, who better than a Harvard Law graduate? You need a doctor, a specialist? Who better than a Harvard Medical graduate? You got a degree in Business, where better to get a job than an investment firm owned or mostly run by Harvard grads? Also, what else do these great alumni get? Legacy placements. There are a certain number of seats open to students that are descended from graduates, whether or not they meet the strict academic standards the other students have to meet. This allows rich folk to get their kids the prestige of having a degree from a super-prestigious school without having to worry about whether or not their kids are actually smart or excellent enough to earn them. A lot of these networking situations happen less formally under the umbrella of fraternities or sororities that exist on campus. I mean, how does a hiring manager choose between two equally qualified candidates for a position, especially if they both went to great schools? Well, if the hiring manager was in the same fraternity as one of the applicants, where do you think that job is going?

Some people leave large portions of their estates to these schools. 

Thankfully for the schools, too, because they are nonprofits, they are allowed to have savings. They are even allowed to have investments, as long as any income made off of those investments is carefully recorded and accounted for. I mean, Harvard has over 50 billion dollars in investments. MIT has almost 30. Money they just make because they already have money. In fact, this is how a real capitalistic economy does education. They have spent centuries cultivating their reputation, using it as a resource to 

So much of capitalism is so easily abused, it's no wonder the villains are winning. But, really, the tools themselves are mostly morally neutral. Why couldn't we utilize these techniques to bring about actually good changes to how things are done?

I've been reading a book, Reclaiming Your Community by Majora Carter. It it, in chapter 8, she talks about heading a program for filling the demand for green jobs, jobs in ecologically friendly and sustainability related fields. One page 60, she talks about one of the main differences between her program and other programs that were out there. Her program took the time to match people up who've been educated and trained in skills needed in green careers with potential employers actually looking for those in demand skills. Other programs didn't bother doing that, leaving the impetus to connect on the shoulders of the students, who may not have any idea where to look for those kinds of careers. Obviously, the success rate and placement rate of her program was impressive, reported at 85%. I can only imagine how useless the other programs were. 

This is the kind of thing that I feel like most churches and ministries are awful at. I guess we don't want to be seen as being too savvy in business, because a lot of people already think we're just in the religion business for the money. I mean, with jerks like Joel Osteen, who can really blame them? But too often, churches and ministries in economically depressed areas are incompetent in their efforts to help their neighbors, sometimes insultingly so. They offer classes on resume building, or how to dress for an interview. But they don't actually get them interviews with decently paying potential employers. They too often offer financial literacy classes to people who make poverty wages and can't realistically "save their ways" out of living paycheck to paycheck. These ministries don't do enough to help their constituents. 

Can we please take a page out of the Big Boys' playbook? Can we find people real jobs, not insulting poverty wage positions? Can we develop reputations for developing really valuable employees, leveraging those reputations into real, well paying jobs? And hold onto those contacts, because one successful employee can be a bridge to more positions. Don't be the Career Services Department at Nyack, the waste of space and money paying those positions represented. There are reasons why Nyack couldn't afford both campuses anymore and abandoned the one A.B. Simpson was buried on. How many Catholic universities out there provide reputations nearly as good as the Ivy League? Nyack had a chance, as the official college of the Christian Missionary Alliance. Can we not repeat their mistakes, please?