You do ride a lot on your Harvard education, more than you should. Open up your pretty little eyes: Having a Harvard degree, just by itself, is not going to land you places … When you’re at the elite school level, you don’t get compared against the rest of the pool; you get compared against people from other elite schools. Shitty economy aside, it’s still hard to land a job for us, because we have to measure up to brainiacs from other elite schools with a perfect GPA and a bazillion internships. Your Harvard sociology degree will look like shit next to the MIT econ major’s. — Anonymous Reader

You know, I will be the first to say that I’m completely unqualified to be an investment banker. (Hear that, employers? Lena Chen cannot figure out Excel.) I’m also not qualified for a job at a research lab, a paragliding school, or the local zoo. See? Lots of knowledge that a Harvard education doesn’t equip you with!

But seriously? If our major competition consists of MIT econ majors, we do not have it that tough.

I’ve observed that what I wrote about this topic has rubbed a ton of people the wrong way: both the alums of elite institutions and also those who didn’t attend them. I have a theory why:

1. Those who didn’t go to an elite institution think that the subtext to my argument is that they’re “inferior” for not having a fancy pedigree.
2. Those who did attend an elite school think that I’m dismissing their hard work and writing off their success as a result of their academic affiliations.

First off, I do not think I’m better than you because of where I went to school. Are there advantages? Sure. But that doesn’t mean I’m better. Second, you may work damn hard as the graduate of an elite school, but other people may work comparably hard and do not make nearly as much money. It doesn’t mean that you’re just riding on your degree, but it does mean that you’re — relatively speaking — rather privileged. Take for example, this article from The Crimson, which shows that even newly minted Harvard grads make over $60,000 a year, nearly $20,000 more than the typical American male (who, on average, is probably much older). Obviously, this figure doesn’t represent everyone (it’s like twice my expected annual salary) but it does demonstrate that there’s a real discrepancy in income between those who attend elite schools and those who don’t.

As I wrote in my original post on the topic:

A Harvard degree, of course, does not mean you will definitely get a job, and sure, some of my friends graduated without offers. But let’s be real, their unemployment is temporary and bears little resemblance to the unemployment facing most bewildered college grads. (I don’t just assume this; the non-Harvard grads I know have a much tougher time than their equally unemployed Ivy counterparts.) Unless they are one of the few who come from a truly impoverished background, most Harvard kids are able to get by until they find something. It’s just that many want very specific jobs, often located in New York, which pay a certain wage and select among a candidate pool filled with other Harvard grads. And my unemployed classmates have yet to land one of those jobs yet. There’s nothing wrong with holding out for a good gig, but let’s not fool ourselves into thinking that an unemployed Harvard kid has the same lot as your typical unemployed American who can’t make ends meet. All kidding about my “banking back-up plan” aside, I think you have to agree that an Ivy Leaguer is going to have an easier time on the market.

I think the reason why people are so resistant to acknowledging their privilege is because they see themselves and their friends working really hard. And maybe they haven’t landed the jobs they’ve wanted, maybe they’re having to settle, and maybe this whole post-grad thing is not working out the way they originally planned. Look, I never said that Harvard grads don’t have anything to worry about, ever. But when I write about privilege and the fact that some people have it while others don’t, it comes off as really entitled when some of the responses are, “BUT HARVARD KIDS HAVE IT TOUGH TOO! IT’S NOT SO EASY COMPETING AGAINST MIT!” I mean, really? I know young people who are on unemployment, state-subsidized healthcare, and food stamps. A few are graduates of elite schools, but most aren’t and they would probably laugh in your face if you came to them with your life woes. The job search you’re undertaking may be hard, but it’s still a privileged one. And you know what, recognizing one’s privilege — say, in the case of Male Privilege — is usually interpreted as a good thing, a sign of self-awareness.

As I told one reader:

While I don’t love everything about my school (who does?), I totally acknowledge the fact that it gives me a leg up — and that’s not something that’s just a myth. But part of the problem with explaining that meritocracy is a sham is that there’s not really a nice way of doing so, when so many people are invested on the idea that their hard work means they “deserve” the end result.

We live in a market economy. No one really “deserves” their lot. Almost everyone who makes money in America makes money off the back of someone else, someone who makes less, who lives with less, who may be just as hard-working but was less fortuitous when it came to life circumstances. There’s nothing fair about the way our economy is organized,  and nothing fair about the way my income or your income is determined. When I say, “I have privilege because of my degree, and you might have privilege because of yours”, it’s not that I’m trying to condemn you for having advantages that others don’t have. A lot of people have things that others don’t have. Nor am I suggesting that you rip up your diploma and head for an ascetic life in the mountains. Obviously, that’s not going to change the world either. What will change the world — in my view, at least — is if more people begin to acknowledge the way wealth is distributed, not on the basis of need or on the basis of hard work, but largely on the basis of pre-existing wealth and pedigree. And once enough of us recognize the inherent injustice in an economy such as this one, maybe we’ll also be more willing to challenge the very system that conferred upon us all this privilege in the first place.