Does your undergraduate education matter?
Université du Québec professor Daniel Lemire doesn’t think so. Read his comments on a previous post of mine where I discussed the importance of school rankings.
My stance is that while rankings are important, they aren’t everything. One can move within a certain range of rankings and maintain a similar quality. I also believe that the competitiveness of the student body is important to teach you and to build a strong network.
Daniel believes that an undergraduate network is outgrown shortly and that a brand-name school is ultimately useful for nothing more than the first job. The name or reputation of an undergraduate program is inevitably overcome. Read the details here.
I recently discovered Daniel’s blog, and it’s fantastic. I highly recommend it for reading about academia, research and programming. He’s a professor that actually took the time out of his day to read my blog and comment–what a cool guy. Connecting teachers and students through blogs; now that’s education in action.
My argument is simple.
If all you are 2 years after graduation is “a graduate from big University Y”, then you are failing.
If your network, 2 years after graduation, is made of the people you met at big University Y, then you are probably in trouble.
If people still hire you based on the reputation of the school you went to several years ago, then you obviously failed to get good jobs and achieve success.
What big University Y can do for you is get you this big first job (engineer at Google or IBM, or in a government lab). However, if you screw up your first job… good luck recovering. Also, do not expect the average start-up founder or the venture capitalist to be impressed by big University Y. They’ll wait to see what you can do before giving you credit.
Comment by Daniel Lemire on October 28, 2008 at 7:09 am