Jonathan Wai Ph.D. posted an article concerning the Frank Bruni’s opinion about role of elite schools. Frank Bruni is sure that it does not matter what school the person attends. The author of the article agrees that very often it is a person him/herself who is responsible for his/her life but finds contradictions in Bruni’s biography. Talking about unimportance of school rate Frank Bruni himself graduated from rather high ranked institutions and that is why Jonathan Wai has doubts about success and school independence. Bruni also tries to confirm his thoughts with the results of the research made among top 100 companies. He claims that only thirty chef executives attended elite schools. Wai is more precise in this statistics. He carried his own research examining all top 500 companies and both graduate and undergraduate schools. He found that 38% of CEOs went to elite schools and this result is rather surprising in comparison with Bruni’s results. Wai carried one more research to investigate the educational backgrounds of successful people and found out that almost all elite graduated from college. This research shows that anyway the percentage of elite groups that attended elite schools is higher than that of common people.
Wai agrees with Bruni only in one point: not all students have the chance to attend elite college but to speak about the unimportance of college category is senseless. Jonathan Wai is sure that attending an elite college the student has more chances to have a successful future and to enter such a college a person should definitely have brains. Wai does not blame US elite for their wish to place their children to elite colleges because they want their children to have the same opportunities in life that they have. Elite colleges will definitely promote their children and increase their chances for success in life.
In conclusion Wai notes that actually if a person is aimed to success he or she can achieve it through different ways not obligatory graduating from elite college. At the same it is proved that those elite colleges open doors for successful future and raise students’ chances for success.
This article reminded me of some instances from real life connected with the topic. For example, my friend’s father has no an outstanding education and he didn’t attend elite school for sure. I cannot exactly describe his educational background but it is known that he comes from an ordinary family and they would never think of a high-ranked college.
Nevertheless, with efforts step by step from a low-ranked worker my friend’s father became one of the managers of the office. This example proves that if a person is talented and eager to succeed in life he or she can do it even without perspective start that elite colleges give. Still, such a path to a successful carrier without support is quite difficult and only a strong and hard-working person may bear it. I think there is not an enormous quantity of the stories of the kind but still they do exist.
It is true that it is more naturally to become prosperous having all possible opportunities for it including good and respected education. Although I believe that sometimes even those opportunities have nothing to do with the personality. The success can be achieved only having brains and motivation as Wai in his article said. The person actually may get a very good education and start carrier in a flourishing company owing to a reputation and status but this person can turn out to be a rather ordinary worker. This may also be caused by parents themselves because very often longing for the best education for their children they press on them and children may simply resist parents’ pressure or may not like their choice.
The article is very thought-provoking and even philosophical. It was interesting to analyze the authors’ arguments concerning the necessity of elite education and the article clarified the question almost completely. Both Jonathan Wai and Frank Bruni whose point of view was under criticism have interesting ideas concerning elite education. Both of them are right in some aspects and the fact that their opinions do not coincide with each other completely makes the article more engaging because the reader has an opportunity to decide whose opinion is more preferable to him/her. What remains interesting for me is what exactly influences the carrier after graduating from high-ranked colleges. Is it a perfect education there, college reputation that opens many doors in future life, or useful acquaintances that a person can develop? I guess that it is a whole of all those measures but still it would be interesting to investigate the question deeper.
