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Daniel Gross published an article at Slate entitled "Who Needs Harvard?" in which he discusses the fact that big corporations hire fewer Ivy Leaguers than they used to, and notes statistics such as: "Between 1980 and 2001, the percentage of top executives whose undergraduate degrees came from Ivy League schools fell by nearly a third from 14 percent to 10 percent." Here is a paragraph of his analysis of the situation:

"Something has changed about the character of the student bodies at many Ivy League schools in recent decades. With the rising ability of the wealthy to smooth the path to admission by paying private-school tuition and hiring college advisers and SAT-prep tutors—and with college tuition far outpacing financial aid growth—rich kids are more likely to get in, and to attend, Ivy League schools than in the past. A widely quoted study from the Century Foundation found that 74 percent of the students at 146 selective colleges surveyed came from the top socioeconomic quartile, while only 10 percent come from the bottom half! Harvard President Larry Summers devoted his 2004 commencement speech to this phenomenon. On a percentage basis, fewer Ivy League graduates than public school graduates today need to find stable, high-paying jobs at big companies. More of them can afford to traipse around Asia for a year or pursue a career in film-making. It could be that the already rich and comfortable are simply less interested in pursuing careers in large corporations than their less-comfortable public-school peers for purely economic reasons."

Now here is my alternative theory: Kids who basically buy their way into top schools do not make particularly attractive employees. Feisty kids from more modest backgrounds, who work hard for the privilege of gaining admission to top colleges, and gamble on themselves by borrowing lots of money to finance their pricey and prestigious educations, make excellent employees. But, fewer of them are attending Ivy League schools, where so many of the slots are taken up by wealthy kids with keen senses of entitlement and arrogant and unsupported beliefs in their own inherent superiority. Find out where those feisty kids are going to college now, and I'll bet that is where the big corporations are focusing their recruiting efforts.

And here is where I link this to intellectual property constructs: The product is still more important than the trademark!