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Behind the trend

What's the explanation for this extraordinary situation — with Yale/Harvard degree-holders making up less than two-tenths of 1% of the national population, but winning more than 83% of recent presidential nominations?

It's not a reflection of longstanding tradition. Trend lines show increasing, not fading, dominance by the two schools. Compared with the 10 Yale-Harvard nominees since '88, the quarter-century before that yielded only one (Gerald Ford, Yale Law) out of 12.

In fact, many of our greatest presidents attended obscure institutions of higher learning (such as Ronald Reagan's Eureka College in Illinois) or no college at all. Several esteemed chief executives (George Washington, Andrew Jackson, Abraham Lincoln, Grover Cleveland, Harry Truman) never earned a university degree.

Nor can conspiracy theorists plausibly suggest that "old school ties" and establishment connections explain the recent rise of Yale/Harvard grads. In the early days of the Republic, before Yale and Harvard faced scores of academic competitors, and when mercantile and planter elites ruled every aspect of American life, you might expect a self-contained, exclusive group to dominate presidential politics. But before the Civil War, among the first 16 presidents, only two attended Harvard (the Adams boys, John and John Quincy) and none attended Yale. Moreover, in today's academic world there's no clear-cut superiority or special course of study giving Yale and Harvard grads better preparation for politics. Stanford, for instance, offers its students a superb education and, as incubator of the high-tech industry, leaves alumni well-wired into today's power elite. But the last presidential nominee with a Stanford degree was Herbert Hoover.

Yale-Harvard credentials play a more prominent role in jockeying for the nation's top job while college in general has become more important for those seeking a job. A university education doesn't necessarily make an applicant more qualified, but it tells you something about his or her ambition and self-discipline. As recently as 40 years ago, only 11% of adults earned baccalaureate degrees (or higher), so talented young people found many alternate paths to success. Today, half the adult population has a post-high school education of some kind.

With a university education more accessible, it's also more expected. Grads earn bigger incomes than their non-degreed counterparts not just because education prepares them better for their work, but also because the diplomas they've won serve as indicators of drive and determination.

Fierce competition

In that context, the competition has greatly intensified for coveted spots in the nation's two most revered universities. Today, pushy parents struggle to place their toddlers in fashionable preschools in order to gain some advantage in the furious fight for future admission to Harvard or Yale.

In the past, alumni children and graduates of posh prep schools could nurse their "Gentleman's C's" and still expect a golden ticket to Cambridge or New Haven, but those days have ended. Yale and Harvard (and the other Ivies) launched special efforts in the '60s to attract applicants from every ethnic group and economic background, facilitated by the provision of generous financial aid. With applicants drawn from an ever-widening segment of the populace (including the likes of Dukakis, Clinton and Obama), and increased focus by the country's most ambitious kids on just two schools at the competitive pinnacle of the academic heap, Yale/Harvard graduates increasingly came to represent America's best — not just the best-connected.

Today, the most prestigious degrees don't so much guarantee success in adulthood as they confirm success in childhood and adolescence. That piece of parchment from New Haven or Cambridge doesn't guarantee you've received a spectacular education, but it does indicate that you've competed with single-minded effectiveness in the first 20 years of life.

And the winners of that daunting battle — the driven, ferociously focused kids willing to expend the energy and make the sacrifices to conquer our most exclusive universities — are among those most likely to enjoy similar success in the even more fiercely fought free-for-all of presidential politics.

Obama may be a mold-breaker when it comes to his racial background, but in terms of his tightly wound, goal-oriented personality type and his Crimson-or-Blue-Chip education, he fits perfectly into the recently established pattern. 

(Originally published in USA Today on June 11, 2008)