Where do global elites study? [A summary of a recent paper]

Executive answer: Harvard

This is the subject of a paper by Ricardo Salas-Diaz and Kevin Young. They collected elite biographies across the globe.

https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/abs/10.1111/glob.12509

They classify elites into several groups: (1) Corporate elites: CEO and board members, (2) International Organizations: World Bank, IMF, ILO, BIS and the like, (3) National Elites: Head of state, central banker (4) Third sector: think tanks.

Executive Question: Where did 6,000+ global elites go to college?

Their paper has a cute title - with all things H

They explain that they do not consider people who have done “summer executive program” or taken semester-long courses in some elite universities. They only include people who have *proper* degrees from those institutions. So, Bill Gates is not included as a Harvard graduate - even though he got an honorary degree from Harvard decades after he quit his studies there.

The paper is a product of the World Elite Database.

This is their sample. [If you add up the first column, you will get 6,353. This is because there are overlaps of people. Similarly, some people have several nationalities. Hence, the last row gives a “Unique” number.]

https://worldelitedatabase.org/

[Don’t search there, they will *not* let you have the data used!]

How large does Harvard loom?

Executive summary: For the entire world, over ten percent of the elites have studied at Harvard. No other university comes anywhere close.

For the US elite, fully 16 percent of all the elite are from Harvard.

Executive side note: When people mention Harvard and Yale in the same breath, they don’t know what they are talking about!

Rest of the world

For the non-US global elite, Harvard still dominates everybody else by a mile.

Harvard by groups of elites

Recall their classification

(1) Corporate elites: CEO and board members, (2) International Organizations: World Bank, IMF, ILO, BIS and the like, (3) National Elites: Head of state, central banker (4) Third sector: think tanks

Here is the result for each group

Executive Result: Harvard’s win is the biggest among the think tanks and in the corporate elite groups.

There is a very clear Anglo-American hegemony when it comes to degrees.

Countries have a Home Bias

There is a clear home bias.

Biggest home bias: Over 93 percent of US elites studied in the US.

The Americans, the French and the Russians have the biggest home biases.

Among all foreigners, India has the largest bias towards the US. Thirty six percent of Indian elites have been educated in the US.

Full disclosure: Half a dozen of my students graduated from Harvard.

Executive final note: Neither author of the paper has any degree from Harvard.