U.S. President Barack Obama’s oldest daughter, Malia, will begin studying at Harvard University
in 2017.
Malia will join a long line of Presidents’ children who have studied at the elite group
of universities.
So what is the appeal of an Ivy League education, and why are these schools so powerful?
Well, the Ivy League is synonymous with elitism and prestige, and its schools are generally
regarded as some of the best in the world.
The origin of “Ivy League” is still a matter of debate, however one legend attributes
the name to the Roman Numeral “IV”, which represented the original four institutions.
Today, the official Ivy League encompasses eight private universities in the Northeast
United States.
Although their reputations and rankings vary, Ivy League schools are collectively known
for having high tuition, demanding curriculum, slim acceptance rates, and enormous financial
endowments.
Together, the eight schools’ endowments add up to nearly $120 billion dollars.
That’s roughly equal to the entire worth of the US state of Arkansas.
Harvard leads the pack by a large margin, reporting a nearly $40 billion dollar endowment
in 2015.
Of course, this only represents a university’s donated assets, which excludes their property,
tuition earnings, athletic income and the millions of dollars they receive in federal
and state grants.
That means an Ivy League school’s total worth is much, much higher than its publicly
disclosed endowment.
The majority of their donations come from alumni.
For instance at Princeton, nearly half of all graduates eventually give back to the
university.
And, because the average mid-career salary for Ivy League is more than $100,000, these
contributions are often huge sums of money.
What’s more, these institutions have a way of holding on to their money, despite their
seemingly high operating costs.
They do this, is part, by spending only about 5 percent of their annual endowment, investing
the rest right back into the school.
And unlike other private institutions, their capital gains go untaxed.
But perhaps even more powerful than their large endowment is their pool of influential
alumni.
Among them are powerful businesspeople like Warren Buffet and Amazon founder Jeff Bezos,
as well as UN Secretary General Ban Ki Moon and 15 US Presidents.
Harvard alone has produced more than 150 nobel laureates, more than any other American university.
This is, in part, what makes an Ivy League degree is so valuable.
The Ivy League name implies a level of prestige that can lead to lucrative or otherwise successful
careers.
In fact, the Department of Education reported that the median annual income for Ivy League
graduates after 10 years is more than double that of grads from all other higher-ed institutions.
But the benefits of an Ivy League degree are not accessible to all, or even most Americans.
Although these universities often describe themselves as melting pots, nearly half of
their students are white, and about the same proportion come from families in the wealthiest
four percent of Americans.
While this is not, in any sense, diverse, it’s still a vast improvement from the Ivy
League’s long history of homogeneity.
For instance, many of these schools only started accepting women in the last few decades, like
Columbia which began in 1983.
With the power to breed the next generation of world leaders, the Ivy League is under
more pressure than ever to reconsider who they let in and, perhaps more importantly,
who they leave out.
Ivy League school or not, learning can be incredibly hard — especially if you’re
an overthinker.
LEARN more about the science of learning in this video by DNews.
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