Forbes issued a new report identifying public and private universities across the U.S.

outside
the Ivy-League that employers report are graduating students highly sought by employers.

Congrats to these universities identified by Forbes with associated AURP member research
parks and innovation districts that provide space for university-industry interaction:

UMD College Park, Georgia Institute of Technology, University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign,

University of North Carolina Chapel Hill, University of Virginia, University of Wisconsin
Madison, and Rice University.
FORBES
Apr 29, 2024,06:00am EDT

You’re not imagining things: The Ivy League is forfeiting

its standing as America’s producer of great talent. Here are
the schools producing the hard-working high achievers
that employers crave.
By Emma Whitford, Forbes Staff

For the entirety of America’s existence, the Ivy League has provided an
essential service. In sorting the best and the brightest upon admission and
then rigorously educating them, these “Ancient Eight” universities have
provided employers, investors and even voters a meritocratic seal of approval.
Some one-third of U.S. presidents and the current Forbes 400 list of richest
Americans are Ivy alums, as well as eight sitting members of the Supreme
Court.

But as evident just by reading or watching the news, something feels distinctly
off on Ivy League campuses. While it’s easy to chalk up the ham-handed
protests, policies and presidential resignations to a particular moment right
now, this erosion is several years in the making.

“33% of those making hiring decisions said they are less likely
to hire Ivy League graduates today than five years ago.
Only 7% said they were more likely to hire them.”
“42% of hiring managers are more likely to hire public
university grads than they were five years ago.”

It started with an abdication of trying to find great, well-rounded students in

lieu of, as admissions offices blather, a “well-rounded class” of amalgamated
specialists. Weird, if well-intended, admissions policies that can actually hurt
different minority groups, as the Supreme Court recently ruled, both through
distorted screening and eliminating standardized tests—the best way,
paradoxically, for people from under-privileged backgrounds to show they
belong. (For all this effort, the Ivies still inordinately favor the rich and
connected.) And then, once the students matriculate, the schools undermine
the standard that otherwise makes their degrees mean anything. At America’s
two most august universities, Harvard and Yale, nearly 80 percent of all
undergraduates average an A or A-minus.

And guess what? Employers have figured this out. Forbes surveyed nearly 300
subscribers to its Future of Work newsletter, with three-fourths of
respondents holding direct hiring authority. Among those in charge of
employment decisions, 33% said they are less likely to hire Ivy League
graduates than they were five years ago, with only 7% saying they were more
likely to hire them.
Several of the Ivy League colleges, including Columbia University, pictured
above, have drawn ire in recent months from students, alumni, donors and
politicians for how they've responded to on-campus antisemitism and the war
in Gaza.
NIKITA PAYUSOV/GETTY IMAGES

“The bloom has been off the Ivies,” says Fred Prager, a senior managing
director at Hilltop Securities and a trustee at California’s Claremont McKenna
College whose investment firm specializes in higher education. “What has
occurred more recently, with the pandemic and with all this nonsense going
on, post October 7th, and all the rest has just been a bit of an accelerant.”

Adds Jim Clark, who hires technologists for Kansas City’s HNTB, the nation's
second largest architectural firm: “The perception of what those graduates
bring has changed. And I think it’s more related to what they’re actually
teaching and what they walk away with.”

Perhaps this is an indictment of all of higher education? Absolutely not.

Forbes also surveyed the hirers about public university graduates and the
grads of good non-Ivy private colleges, and the numbers are almost precisely
the opposite of the Ivy results, with 42% saying they are more likely to hire
public university grads and 37% saying they are more likely to hire grads of
non-Ivy League private colleges than five years ago. Only about 5% say they
are less likely to hire from either group.

“37% of those with hiring authority said state universities

were doing better than five years ago in preparing job
candidates.”
“Just 14% of hiring managers said the Ivy League colleges
were doing better than five years ago in preparing job
candidates, while 20% said they’re doing worse.”

“Being able to put yourself in someone else’s shoes is really important,” says
Laura Bier, a San Diego-based management consultant specializing in
healthcare and defense. “Kids who've been to a public school have had a
broader diversity of friends from different backgrounds, teachers from
different backgrounds and are better able to be nimble in those situations.”

It comes down to preparedness. Some 37% of those with hiring authority in

our survey said state universities were doing better than five years ago in
preparing job candidates and 31% thought non-Ivy League private colleges
had improved. Just 14% had similar praise for the Ivy League, while 20% said
they’re doing worse, making this the only segment in which negative
appraisals of the trend in job readiness exceeded positive ones.
One of Forbes' New Ivies, the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign,
offers a "CS + X" major program that allows students to combine computer
science with other arts and science studies.
JEFF GREENBERG/GETTY IMAGES

The conclusion: great state schools and ascendant private ones are turning out
hungry graduates; the Ivies are more apt to turn out entitled ones. And in
creating the latter, the Ivies have taken the value they’ve spent centuries
creating—a degree that employers craved—and in just a few years done a lot to
forfeit it.

“For some, they believe once they've got the sheepskin, that's their ticket. How
dare you question my competency,” says Prager. “I've been running scared my
whole life.” (Prager graduated from Stanford in 1969, before it was
“Stanford.”) The billionaire energy trader turned philanthropist John
Arnold echoed that sentiment on X last week: “I’ve had several conversations
in recent years with people who hire undergrads for highly competitive jobs
(tech, finance, consulting etc) that are moving away from the Ivies and
towards flagship state universities, citing better cultural and professional fit.’’

So if the Ivies aren’t the Ivies anymore, which schools exactly are? Forbes
decided to channel these hirers and determine the New Ivies, the 10 public
universities and 10 ascendant private ones turning out the smart, driven
graduates craved by employers of all types.

Our methodology was as follows. After disqualifying the Ivies (and we used the
Ivy-plus yardstick, which includes Stanford, MIT, Duke and the University of
Chicago, as well as the eight classics Harvard, Yale, Princeton, Brown, Penn,
Columbia, Dartmouth and Cornell), we started with 1,743 colleges of at least
4,000 students (understanding that small liberal arts schools have always
offered a more boutique experience and are hard to compare with research
universities). Using 2022 admissions data, the most recent available, we then
screened for schools with high standardized test scores (our New Ivies average
a robust 1482 SAT and 33 ACT) and where at least half the applicants supplied
the scores, regardless of whether they were required to do so for admission—in
other words, places that still rely heavily on objective measures of success.

Compared to 5 years ago, are you more or less likely to hire Ivy
League graduates?

Why the focus on test scores for our New Ivies list? While many colleges made
tests optional during the pandemic, exactly the time when these tests would
have been most useful, Opportunity Insights’ research shows standardized
tests are both more predictive of success in college than grades and fairer to all
applicants than some other admission criteria (such as counselors’
recommendations), which favor wealthier private high school grads. (A steady
stream of schools, including Ivies Dartmouth, Harvard, Yale and Brown, have
recently announced they're reinstating test requirements. The University of
California, meanwhile, still refuses to even look at applicant test scores, which
is why none of those schools hits our list.)

For similar reasons, we also screened with a selectivity yardstick (below a 20%
admission rate at private schools, 50% at publics). And then from there, we
took the 32 remaining schools and surveyed our hiring manager respondents
about each one.

Many of the schools on our list are well known; Johns Hopkins and University
of Michigan have long been considered Ivy caliber institutions, while
Vanderbilt, Rice and Emory are often referred to as Southern Ivies. Others like
New York’s Binghamton University are already respected in their geographic
areas, but now are attracting wider notice.

None of this suggests that the Ivies have completely lost their luster. It just
means that, through miscalculation and mismanagement, they’ve given up the
centuries-old free pass conveyed by employers—even from their own alumni.
Listen to Jacqueline Reses, a member of Forbes’ Richest Self-Made
Women list and a loyal Penn alum, who’s given $5 million and sits on
Wharton’s Board of Advisors: “I wouldn’t forego the opportunity to hire
brilliant, tenacious, smart, wonderful kids, but I’d be more thoughtful in how
I’d screen them.” Long-time skeptics, meanwhile, feel a dose of vindication. “I
don’t give an edge to Ivy League schools. That’s not to say I won’t hire
someone from them,’’ says billionaire entrepreneur and Shark Tank star Mark
Cuban, who chose to attend Indiana University in the late 1970s because it
offered the best bang-for-the-buck among undergraduate business schools.
“It’s just that I have never believed they make better employees.”

This week, many students who got into very selective schools are choosing
where to attend. In previous years, Ivy admission generally translated into
matriculation. Now, some of these schools, with their universal Latin mottos,
might consider a new one: Caveat emptor.

Data Research by Rina Torchinsky

THE PUBLIC IVIES

These 10 state universities, spread across the U.S., attract high-achievers
and turn out hard-working, highly-regarded employees. (Military
academies were not included in our analysis. California universities were
excluded because they don’t consider test scores.)

THE NEW PRIVATE IVIES

These 10 private schools, located in nine states and Washington D.C., are
attracting the smartest students and plaudits from employers. Our
analysis excluded schools with fewer than 4,000 students, the eight old
Ivies and four Ivy-plus schools—Stanford, MIT, Duke and Chicago.