Wat percentage of Harvard College acceptances come from low-income families? A dinner bet around this question by Professor Evan Mandery at the John Jay College of Criminal Justice quickly led to a larger discussion over what kinds of actors elite institutions were, whom they served, and how complicit they may be in weakening social mobility. In 2022, Mandery published Poison Ivy, a book that addressed the growing wealth disparity in America’s elite academic institutions, and he cofounded Class Action the next year. The organization asks students, academics, and everyone in between to think about what elite universities owe students and their communities.
Of course, Mandery isn’t alone in asking these questions. In 2015, Daniel Davis, Nick Bloom, and Amy Binder—a member of Class Action’s board of directors—studied the postgraduate job outcomes for graduates of Harvard and Stanford University, exposing a pattern of “career funneling.” Despite a diversity of majors and initial career aspirations, graduates from elite institutions disproportionately accepted offers in consulting, finance, and technology.
At Princeton, between 2016 and 2024, for example, the school’s career center reported that the largest industry of first destinations for graduates was finance, followed by technology and consulting. At Harvard, around 64 percent of the graduating class of 2024 choose careers in those fields.
Read more at The Nation.
