Tag Archives: Oxbridge

America: A flagging model | The Economist

April 6, 2015 By in Business Administration, Education, People, Politics Tags: , , , , , , Leave a comment
English: Stanford Memorial Auditorium, as seen...

English: Stanford Memorial Auditorium, as seen from Hoover Tower in Stanford University, Stanford, California. (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

This is an outstanding, must-read, article from the Economist. Check it out!

via America: A flagging model | The Economist.

The article focus on the declining quality of US education. Interestingly, although not featured in the article, the cited evidence for the UK in relation to maths was even worse.

However, I was truly shocked by the cited research evidence of recruiting patterns of 120 recruiters from American law firms, management consultancies and investment banks. Let me summarize the results:

  1. The principal recruitment filter was the applicant’s university, effectively cherry-picking people from top institutions, like the ‘Ivy League‘;
  2. Next preference was given to ‘extracurricular activities, preferring the team sports — lacrosse, field-hockey and rowing—favored by well-off white men’; and
  3. Grades were subordinated below the above in the weeding out process.

Although many of the problems in the US are home-grown and cultural, there are important parallels in other countries. For example, there is evidence of a polarized education system in both France and the UK. In France, the top-jobs go to the privileged graduates of the elite ‘grand ecoles’, and recruiters know that the quality of education from the state-system is an ‘also-ran’. Similarly, in the UK, there is a major divide between the older universities and the ‘red-brick’ institutions that were formerly polytechnics and renamed by a former opportunist government – typically a private education gives a far higher chance of securing a place at a top university, and from their a top-job.

In my earlier career, I was a part-time tutor at one of France’s ‘grandes ecoles ‘. I witnessed first hand very high standards of academic screening.  An important part of the program was helping students gain work experience, often in top investment banks or management consultancies. The students often literally worked around the clock to impress their employers, and some were indeed offered jobs after completing their course.

Sadly, the competition for jobs at top employers from these students from privileged backgrounds is often taken to the extreme, including death. See ‘Bank of America Merrill Lynch intern Moritz Erhardt found dead after working long hours‘; this is one of my most popular blogs.

As the Economist article mentioned, the funding at top US universities is often ten times greater than a poor state institution. But surely it’s not just funding that differentiates state-funded education? State-funded education is more bureaucratic and process oriented, with the staff generally heavily unionized – also the politicians meddle more in the state-funded model of education.

Thoughts on either education or recruitment?

 

 

 

 

 

Opinion – Income inequality: poverty falling faster than ever but the 1% are racing ahead | News | The Guardian – John Gelmini

March 30, 2015 By in Business Administration, David Cameron, Democracy, Ed Miliband, Education, Growth, Healthcare, NHS, People, Politics Tags: , , , , , , , , , Leave a comment

Dr Alf raises an interesting point via this Guardian article but this trend is now unstoppable.

The wealthy often have London property and other assets which shoot up in value, so are making money all the time even whilst sleeping. They have disposable income, so that they can make further investments and they can use a 5 flags strategy to nullify any tax liability.

The poor have debts and no disposable income, even if they are working (GE produced figures in 2007 which showed that 80% of people in the UK had less than £500 gbp in their bank accounts at any one time, hardly enough for a cheap holiday let alone an investment).

16% of the UK population cannot get access to finance on standard terms, so they are unable to realistically finance a business.

The wealthy have access to cheap money and the powerful connections necessary for putting lucrative deals together, whereas the poor have no such access.

The same goes for the children of the rich who through schooling, university, internships and lodge memberships from an early age are put into the frame for success.

For the great unwashed who do not know how this works and lack the drive to figure a way out of their financial prison there is little in the way of meaningful advice let alone practical help.

The public school and Oxbridge educated apparatchiks at the Guardian should save their mock surprise and stop pretending that they care about the poor. So far their record in terms of tax avoidance through Guardian Media Services and their record of non egalitarianism in that they usually hire from groups of left-wing champagne socialists, like themselves demonstrates their utter hypocrisy at every level.

John Gelmini