On higher Ed:<p>There is far more to a degree than the classes and the piece of paper with a GPA. It is also an environment where young people grow as themselves for the first time in their lives in many ways. There is also more that can be done to ensure strong job placement, like my alma mater, RIT, in requiring a full year of paid co-ops before they grant a degree.<p>On hiring:<p>There are infinite metrics that assign value to a candidate regardless of the school they attended; culture fit, for instance.<p>However, hiring is an expensive and labor-intensive process, and every moment an engineer is looking over resumes or conducting interviews is time that could be spent fixing bugs or creating valuable features. Pedigree, for better or worse, simplifies the decision. When you have a stack of resumes to deal with, half from small colleges you&#x27;ve never heard of, and the other half from, say, Cornell, whom do you prioritize?