Regardless of your perspective, Harvard's looking pretty bad right
now. Although I think that's actually great for America
. I'm Alison Schrager and I'm a columnist for Bloomberg
opinion. Claudine Gay has fulfilled the shortest tenure as
a Harvard president in history. She only lasted six
months and the last couple of months have been particularly
tough on her. There was a lot of criticism
of how she handled the October 7th attacks in Israel
and then does calling for the genocide of Jews violate
Harvard's rules of bullying and harassment. Yes or no
. It can be depending on the context. And
then there were a lot of accusations of plagiarism and
it seemed to be at that point that she couldn't
lead the institution anymore and she ended up resigning after
just six months. So mistakes were definitely made.
But I am sympathetic to the view that in some
ways this was a lot bigger than her and in
a lot of ways she was set up to fail
. Maybe not in the way you think, but
really the problem has become the way Harvard has cast
itself as this big cultural icon, the shaper of
the elite. And once you put yourself in that
role, whoever leads the institution is always going to
be a target. Let me explain. So thinking
about this, like an economist, it really comes
down to signaling, signaling is a very powerful force
in economics and it comes down to when you hire
someone, you don't really know, you know,
how productive or how good they're going to be in
a job. So you look for certain signals that
help, you know, anticipate what you're gonna get
. And there's actually a big debate in economics about
whether or not colleges signal sort of maturity or responsibility
or whether or not they actually impart new real skills
. So signaling from elite schools like Harvard is even
more powerful because it suggests that if you went to
Harvard, you are among the best and the brightest
of your generation or at the very least are really
well connected for signaling to work and without signaling to
persist, it really also has to have value.
You have to actually keep hiring people from Harvard and
observe that they are better employees than rest. So
does college actually have economic value? This is a
very controversial issue. Some people think just going to
college doesn't really have any intrinsic value, but just
the fact you went signals all these wonderful things about
your character, your discipline. Other people think you
actually learn valuable things in college that make you a
better employee. I'm actually more inclined to the latter
point of view. I think that college does have
value. I think it does impart a lot of
skills. I think it values a lot of maturity
. And I think we see this in the college
way premium that people get paid more. If they've
gone to college, not only do they get paid
more, but over the course of their lifetime,
their wages grow much, much faster. Which to
me suggests that there is some skill development that goes
on Ivy league schools ha take on an extra signaling
value again because they're so hard to get into.
So either you're brilliant or you're well connected and this
signal has taken on a lot more value in recent
decades because of a lot of changes in the economy
. Specifically, there's something called the superstar effect that
economists have served, that certain people earn way way
more than everyone else and there are in certain jobs
that just make them fabulously wealthy. Now, the
evidence suggests that on average, if you go to
an elite school versus say a state school, um
you will earn about the same. But if you
go do go to an elite school, your odds
of getting into that very top tier, that superstar
are much higher. So that is why the signal
from Harvard has become just super valuable and super designed
. Because if you do go to an elite school
, your odds of being in the 1% are much
better. So this was a very powerful uh position
to be in, it was to be signaling your
way into the 1%. But it turned out to
really backfire for Harvard and a lot of other elite
universities because I said there's a limited number of them
by definition. And so they're effectively acting as we
call an economic, an oligopoly respectively, unchecked market
power, the ability to confer this very valuable signal
turned out to be very toxic for Harvard and other
elite schools. And we know from economics, when
you have this all powerful oligopoly, particularly one that's
in the business of conferring, you know, wealth
and privilege, then you know, that can corrupt
the institution. And all of a sudden the institution
starts seeing itself is not just producing research and education
, but really sort of a great social project that
is sort of determining and curating our nation's elite.
And it's hard not to honestly then start getting a
little higher in your supply and start feeling like it
is your mission to hand pick who those people are
gonna be. And at that point, you sort
of start getting away from the university's core mission,
which is scholarship and merit. And then all of
a sudden as well, you become subject to a
lot more criticism and a lot more scrutiny because who
are you to be making these choices? So how
do we solve this problem for Harvard and America?
It might sound counterintuitive. I think the best thing
that happened for Harvard is the fact it looks a
little diminished right now, which means it's signal,
this special signal, sort of the sheen has run
off it a little bit. And I think that's
actually the best because Harvard can go back to what
Harvard is good at, which is great research,
great scholarship and sort of really great education rather than
feeling like they are the ones tasked with shaping the
elite. Because America has a lot of great universities
with a lot of really talented students and faculty all
over the place. And we just put less value
on this small handful of universities that would be better
for everyone.