When I hear an interview with someone who attended a “top-tier”, “elite”, or “Ivy League” university all the graduate ever seems to mention are the connections they obtained while attending the university.  Ivy League graduates also point out that there is no other place they could have made such connections.  The quality of the education goes unmentioned.  As I am creating a web startup based on connections, connection making institutions fascinate me, but I wonder about the educational value of these institutions.  The institutions select their graduates by exclusive criteria by an measure, but for fields that are not connection based (I am defining connection based fields as government, politics, American big business and the like) I can’t recall that many Ivy League graduates.

I’ve been trying to think of musicians, authors, comedians, software developers and bootstrapped entrepreneurs who attended elite American universities and I’m coming up with very few names.  Are these schools just self-selected connection factories?  Stressing connections over education may well be a more productive strategy for our networked society.  Do Ivy League universities spend much time on teaching the fundamentals of their degrees?  My brushes with Ivy League graduates in the business world (this is quite a small sample mind you) have generated the following observations:

• The Ivy Leaguer will always tell you where he or she attended college with no prompting.
• The Ivy Leaguer will always be young for the position he or she is in
• The Ivy Leaguer will not seem particularly competent at the position
• The Ivy Leaguer will name drop like crazy
• The Ivy Leaguer will mangle the concepts of “Tactics” and “Strategy” to avoid specifics of their ideas

Perhaps creative people don’t need college at all (my thought), or if they do, they don’t mention it anywhere near as much.  The status given to Ivy League institutions could just be a magnifier of that fact.

Just random thoughts on a Thursday morning.

photo credit: rawheadrex

• Owning Money – how much money do you have in the bank account, or can be converted to cash quickly.  Most people regard money wealth as the only wealth
• Owning Time – How much time do you have in the average week/month/year that is under your control?  Do you spend 90 hours a week working in a job you hate?   Do you spend 30 hours a week doing housework, maintaining electronic gear, smiling at people you don’t care about, or commuting?   If so, you possess little time, no matter how much money you can spend.  Tim Ferriss is the best explainer of this notion.  Read his blog (and book).  (I include  his book, The Four Hour Workweek on my all time top ten list of books.  I intend to write a time-wealth calculator at some point.)

Up until reading the Farmville article I limited my definitions of wealth to the above two categories.  Reading the article crystallized my notion of clan wealth.

Please note, I’m using the Southern American definition of Clan, which I define as a group of people related by blood, marriage, friendship, or history of friendship which has an intricate network of mutual obligations and debts and acts as one unit on divisive issues.  (Please also note, nothing in this post relates to the KKK).  In American pop history the Hatfield and the McCoy groups serve as the best example of clans.

I define Clan wealth as membership and position in the clan.    Clan Wealth is a product of relative position within the group times the overall strength of the clan as a whole.  Someone rich in clan wealth would be someone able to make decisions for a powerful group of people, much like Joseph Kennedy.  IIRC Tim Ferris writes about this in his book, but he defines clan membership as a means to the other forms of wealth, i.e. a tool, not wealth in and of itself.  The Farmville essay delves deeper into the inner workings of mutual obligations.  I do not intend to invest many resources into this version of wealth, but quiet millions of people are investing their time and money (the other two forms) into developing clan wealth right now.

More thoughts on this to come I’m sure.

Update: 4-27-2010 corrected link

photo credit: Jeff Belmonte

As it’s one of the fundamental theories, I thought I would link it here.