Ivy League POTUSes

On one of the sites that I frequent, a discussion is being had wherein unrest in this country is a concern. Several points were raised and I brought to the discussion the fact that in this country, too many of our politicians are from the Ivy League, as if attending one of those fine institutions is a guarantee that the person is endowed with intelligence, discretion, judgment and virtue.  Although there are plenty of examples of graduates possessing those traits, we've also seen all too many graduates of those august schools who are severely lacking in them as well.

During the recent men's NCAA tournament, one wag said that since this is supposed to be a tournament for universities, schools of higher education, perhaps it would be a good idea to rank the teams according to the number of Nobel laureates with connections to each of the sixty-eight schools.  Harvard, of course, ranked first, but the third- and fourth-ranked schools were not Ivy Leaguers:  Illinois and Michigan.  So I delved into the online archives to see just where these latter two schools ranked in Nobel recipients, and I was pleasantly surprised:  My alma mater has received the twenty-third most Nobels, and Michigan has received the thirty-second most -- in the world.  If you consider only the American schools, Illinois ranks fourteenth and Michigan nineteenth.  Other non-Ivy League schools and their rankings among American schools:  UC-Berkeley (5th), Johns Hopkins (9th), NYU (10th), Cal Institute of Technology (12th), Rockefeller University (15th), Washington University (16th) and UC-San Diego (17th).  The Ivy League (and similar schools) rank:

1. Harvard
2. Columbia
3. Chicago
4.  MIT
6.  Stanford
7.  Yale
8.  Cornell
11.  Princeton
13.  Penn

There are more Big Ten schools on the list than there are Ivy League schools (I say that with no small amount of pride and just a little smirk of a smile).  So it's obvious that although the Ivy League boasts, quite correctly, some very fine institutions, it isn't alone when it comes to academic excellence.  Either way, the number of Nobel laureates is an arbitrary way of judging presidential timber, but it also shows that schools outside the ambit of the Ivy League also excel academically.

Why, then, are we focused on the Ivy League?  I can only speculate, and my observations will come off like sour grapes.  Besides, it's not as if I'm suggesting we abstain from ever considering anyone with credentials from these schools, but that we expand the pool to include public universities and graduates from other, non-Ivy League public schools.  Smart people attend those schools for a variety of reasons: Location, discipline, professors, scholarships, upbringing, whatever.  It's not as if anyone who didn't attend an Ivy League school applied to and was rejected by them.  Some people just don't want to attend them.

But that's only the inquiry involving intelligence.  That doesn't address either morality, discretion or judgment.  There is no accurate measurement for these qualities and admission to or graduation from an Ivy League school can in no way guarantee that a person is ethical, discreet or decisive in a sound way. In fact, there is an argument that all too often graduates of the Ivy League are lacking in one or more of those qualities, having grown up with the mentality that the world is theirs and the rest of us are here to serve them.

For a supposedly egalitarian society, we tend to pay far too much attention to pedigree, as evidenced by our national fascination with royalty.  For a country that once threw off the cloak of elitism, we sure do like to see what the royals are doing.  Unfortunately, we have also created royalty in this country, with certain families allowed to be treated as if they're somehow different than the rest of us.  This is supposed to be a meritocracy, with upward mobility determined by the sweat of one's brow, not his bloodlines or his bank account statement.

It's time we looked beyond the Ivy League for our leaders.  We won't necessarily be doing worse.

(c) 2013 The Truxton Spangler Chronicles