In which industries does college prestige actually not matter?
In the US, it’s pretty well known that the highest-paying careers tend to be dominated by people from elite universities. Tech, finance, and law all seem heavily skewed toward Ivy League schools, Stanford, and a small group of top universities.
In tech, people like to say degrees don’t matter, but when you look at the most senior or highest-paid roles, many of those employees still come from elite schools. Finance feels even more rigid, breaking into investment banking, PE, or hedge funds without a top-tier degree seems extremely difficult. Law appears similar, with many top lawyers and judges coming from places like Harvard and Yale.
Entrepreneurship is often brought up as an exception, but if you look at the most successful, high-growth startups (especially in tech), the founders’ backgrounds are again dominated by Ivy League and Stanford alumni.
So I’m curious: which industries actually allow people to achieve high levels of success ( >400k per year )without elite college credentials?
My guesses would be things like medicine (where licensing matters more than school prestige), traditional entrepreneurship (manufacturing, logistics, etc.), and entertainment (music, acting, sports), but I’m sure I’m missing a lot.
Would be really interested to hear from people who know, or who work in these industries.
Anything where sales a large part of the job. In my field of real estate you can be very successful as a broker (selling properties/land, but also debt/equity placement) and no one gives a shit what school you went to.
Retail sales clerk
Prestige is a primitive form of social capital and it isn't absent from other industries. The examples you chose have their own inherent networks where social capital concentrates opportunities. You are asking the wrong question.
Physical commodity trading is probably one of the few places in finance where traditional prestige doesn't really translate, mostly because everyone has to start at the bottom, whether that's operations, scheduling, shipping etc. Your typical target school kid probably won't want to do that and grind it out.
Also accounting, I think can be non-biased at times just due to the amount of accountants needed.
Just my 2 cents.
Any job where you're selling yourself -- so all white-collar professional services basically -- prestige matters, at least for breaking in.
With some of the other fields you're talking about, I think you're confusing correlation for causation. The reason so many CEOs went to great schools is because many of the admirable qualities they demonstrated at age 18 also led them to be successful professionally. I promise you no board is saying "well we're down to our top 2 candidates for this hire, Jack has been crushing it but he only went to Penn State, so better hire Will instead."
Any kind of non-software engineering generally doesn't give a shit about target schools.
Retirement
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