Semi-OT: M among 10 U.S. colleges that have produced most billionaires
Sorry if already posted and I missed it. Michigan is 10th on this list of U.S. colleges that have produced the most billionaires. Pretty good company.
- Harvard
- Stanford
- Penn
- Columbia
- MIT
- Cornell
- Yale
- Chicago (t-8th)
- USC (t-8th)
- Michigan
sooooo much easier to make money when you start with money (or have access to it via family and friends).
My parents were sometimes full of hot air, but I wouldn't go that far!
wouldn't that relieve the pressure?
less than $100,000/ year wealthy, but I also strongly disagree that it is harder for someone from that family than it is for someone that grew up poor. The opportunity costs, connections, and all that are always greater if you grew up with more money. Kids that are poor and are hungry in school are going to have a much harder time than a middle class student who is at least well fed. The stresses of being poor (I did not grow up poor, this is from readings, not personal experience, I was in the middle class pool), are large. Transportation, food, housing, all get very stressful the poorer you are.
No one is arguing that poor people can't become rich and rich people can't become poor. Ths is America, and there are plenty of stories of rags to riches. But people are stating that it is much easier to go from Riches to riches than rags to riches.
than your wife even though you grew up poor and she was middle class, but i am guessing that this cannot be applied universally to the poor and middle class families.
I do think there is still a massive hole in the affordability of College for Middle class families. I consider my wife and I to be upper middle class as we both work (nurse and Engineer), and I am not sure how I will afford my 3 kids education at this rate of inflation. Not going down that political lane.
I don still think the point of the conversation, it's easier to grow up rich and be a rich adult than it is to grow up poor and be a rich adult holds true for populations.
It probably doesn't, but it's a very interesting world view that you won't hear often.
One side of the political aisle insists if you work hard everything takes care of itself (not recognizing that many work very hard, as hard as them, and it still doesn't work out due to race, upbringing, environment, etc), the other side insists all decks are stacked against the have-nots, and the haves are only where they are due to race, upbringing, environment, etc.
The truth obviously lies somewhere between. But both sides are too busy trying to one-up LOL each other on twitter that they must remain in extremes.
I worked for a moving company in the summers during college. There was a good range of people there, some smart and some as dumb as rocks. As a mover, especially loading a truck, you are tasked both mentally and physically. You have to go into a house and look at the stuff and plan for how it's all going to fit as tightly as possible into the truck to keep things from moving around and also to fit it all. These guys worked hard and did not make a lot to live on. 80 hour weeks lugging in 100+ degree weather can suck. This is true of a lot of different occupations. There is money to be made if you own your own truck, but you have to be relatively smart to do that and let me tell you, some of those guys are as dumb as a rock.
I work hard, and a lot of my success is based on that fact. I also am above average intelligence in Math and sciences, which means engineering was easier for me (I was not doing well in SNRE) and this allowed me to go to Michigan and get a career that pays relatively well. Lucky to be born with some smarts. Also have had no major health issues, which again, luck. My family was middle class, which allowed me to do extra curriculars when younger, focus on studies during the school year (working mainly over the summers), attending a good school, and having food to eat. I didn't earn any of that. I was born to that. Luck. Just being born in America means I am ahead of the game compared to Chinese and Indian coworkers who have to come on Visas. Again, luck. I didn't choose to be born in the USA.
Like you said, it's complex, and anyone who ever says, just pull yourself up by the bootstraps and you can make it, or who see themselves as predestined to a fate based on birth are oversimplifying a complex issue. There are built in advantages in this world. To deny that is stupid. If you don't work hard, no matter what, the likelyhood you will succeed is small.
Imagining the mgobloggers who want to neg this post have fainted before having a chance to do so.
When you say "many billionaires have come from that faction"... please elaborate
Facts and figures are much appreciated. Points will be deductted if Counter-Strike is cited as a primary source
Actually, it is harder than ever before to move from the poorer class into the wealthy class. Here is a good read:
The Birth of the New American Aristocracy - The Atlantic
heh, whoops. I should have read this before I posted mine below.
This is silly, nobody is saying the it is impossible to become rich if you were born poor or vice versa. But the odds of that happening is pretty low. Most people end up in the same class, income wise, as their parents. Why is that so hard to understand?
"My point is just because you grow up poor it doesn’t mean you always have to be poor and just cause you grow up rich doesn’t mean you will always be rich (but you probably will)"
Pretty much every economic study ever undertaken about this topic completely disagrees with you.
The answer is that, yes, while there is a way out of poverty - and a way to squander wealth - odds that you will do the latter are far, far less than the former.
There was an incredibly well-written and hotly debated article in the Atlantic recently on this topic (https://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2018/06/the-birth-of-a-new…). One quote here:
"none of this matters, you will often hear, because in the United States everyone has an opportunity to make the leap: Mobility justifies inequality. As a matter of principle, this isn’t true. In the United States, it also turns out not to be true as a factual matter. Contrary to popular myth, economic mobility in the land of opportunity is not high, and it’s going down.
"Imagine yourself on the socioeconomic ladder with one end of a rubber band around your ankle and the other around your parents’ rung. The strength of the rubber determines how hard it is for you to escape the rung on which you were born. If your parents are high on the ladder, the band will pull you up should you fall; if they are low, it will drag you down when you start to rise. Economists represent this concept with a number they call “intergenerational earnings elasticity,” or IGE, which measures how much of a child’s deviation from average income can be accounted for by the parents’ income. An IGE of zero means that there’s no relationship at all between parents’ income and that of their offspring. An IGE of one says that the destiny of a child is to end up right where she came into the world."
"According to Miles Corak, an economics professor at the City University of New York, half a century ago IGE in America was less than 0.3. Today, it is about 0.5. In America, the game is half over once you’ve selected your parents. IGE is now higher here than in almost every other developed economy. On this measure of economic mobility, the United States is more like Chile or Argentina than Japan or Germany."
This is literally the same exact thing as being poor. So what you're saying is, it's harder to get rich when you start poor than to get rich when you start poor.
Logic!
Also, even if your well-off family isn't paying for your education, you still reap the benefits of a well-off family in countless other ways. Coming from a poor kid who went to Michigan, I can tell you there is still a massive difference.
Just..... read the post and think on it, okay? Reeeeaaaaally think.
Just being a smartass to a smartass. Sorry you got caught being an asshat.
1. Graduate high school
2. Hold down a job
3. Wait until married to have a kid
People may be born in poverty, but in this country there is no one to blame but yourself if you stay there.
This is just a factually innacurate statement but ok.
Maybe if you want to work difficult labor for your entire life and come home miserable every night; but for those who want to pick their field and make more than $40k, you better go to college.
It's 2018, not 1920 - graduating high school doesn't get you anywhere these days.
billionaires who inhereted a significant portion of their wealth (came from family money). Those folk will be more likely to go to Ivy League schools and the like.
The list with those folk not included would be a bit more interesting.
It costs $61K all in for out of state undergrad students. Very limited, if any, financial aid.
While Michigan is a great school, it is way more expensive and out of reach of most upper middle class and especially middle class families out of state. It wasn't that way when I started in the mid 80s ($5,500/year tuition). Yes, all places are more, but Michigan is more expensive than any other public university out of state.
I'll encourage my kids to take their chances in the University of California system.
in terms of the quality of education. Biggest difference between Michigan and an Ivy League school is being public vs. private, of course.
I used to live in Michigan. IMO, if U-M is going to make a choice between "increasing cost of attendance for in-state folk" vs. "increasing cost of attendance for out-of-state folk", I hope they ALWAYS choose the latter.
I knew a few people from less economically-advantaged (rural Manistee County, the Upper Peninsula) areas that were able to attend U-M. It was a great boost for them as they made their life journey. The school truly served as a resource for those particular residents of the state of Michigan.
But for undergrad, if you look at the rankings, we aren't in the same class as Ivy League schools. There isn't an Ivy League school ranked below us for undergrad programs with one exception...Cornell's B school is ranked lower than ours. It's not even close. https://www.usnews.com/best-colleges/rankings/national-universities
I can see how Michigan has such a good reputation for its B School, but I just don't see how spending a minimum of $250K for 4 years is justified. My connections from Michigan undergrad hasn't helped me at all. I'm closer with my fellow Carlson (Minnesota) MBA students.
My friend's daughter got in to UC Davis and wait listed at U of M. He asked me what she should do. I said go to Davis because it's nearly as good of a school at 50% of the cost. She graduated and is now headed to law school. Her U of M degree wouldn't have opened any more doors for her. If you are in state in Michigan, great. But private universities hand out much more financial aid so the value isn't there out of state.
is ranked above Cornell along with some of the other BIG schools.
You can get a very good education at many state schools, especially in places like CA, MI, WI, IL, VA, NC, WA and even TX.
However, rankings can matter based on where employers recruit. Many employers will recruit based on proximity to campus, where the executives went to school and their school loyalty, and also rankings. But let's not kid ourselves that someone would take a student at Bemidji State over one from Harvard or Penn, even though the education may be comparable. And major also matters.
My point was that I don't believe that the cost of a Michigan degree justifies attending there. I was a history major and other than maybe an edge in grad school applications, it didn't help me in finding a job after graduation. I struggled as much as others from less prestigious schools.
You majored in pre-unemployment (history). You would have had a hard time finding a job no matter where you went to school.