Hmm, I'm skeptical that it was a cultural issue. I went to a suburban high school and the issue wasn't that we didn't somehow know about the top schools, it's that you had virtually zero chance of getting in.
My best friends were the top couple students from my year and the year before me and I watched them mortified as the pattern played out -- they each applied to several top tier universities and were deflated when the stream of rejections came in (though one got into Notre Dame). Just being a valedictorian, active, national merit scholar wasn't enough. Most ended up going to their "safety" schools -- either University of Texas or Texas A&M.
My takeaway from that was that if you were white, middle class and middle-American suburban, that there was almost nothing you could do distinguish yourself enough to get into the country's top schools. As such, I think this announcement is more meaningful for folks from genuinely poor backgrounds than for those from relative suburban privilege.
90% of my graduating class fits that description. Out of a graduating class of 500 I'd say close to 10% of my class got into an Ivy League. Hell we had 9 get into Cornell alone. The 2013 class sent about 5%. It is a public HS but they offered tons of AP/extra curriculars/etc.
My school district, an amalgamation of suburban enclaves and small towns, only had about a third of that. I think being close to a larger city means probably a more sophisticated suburban population (I don't think I'd ever met anyone who'd been to an Ivy-ish school prior to college) and larger schools, which allows for more stratified educational tracks.
No sour grapes, that's just the way it is.
I'm skeptical this is a problem. There are some FANTASTIC public universities (many people choose to go to out of state).
> "By the time most kids learn how the culture works, it's too late, they're already in whatever college and life track they happened to fall into."
There's absolutely nothing wrong with choosing to go to a public university. Many of us decided to attend one instead of private ones.
All of this makes a big difference when getting your first couple of jobs. After that, it doesn't matter as much.
http://cognitomentoring.org/blog/how-much-does-where-you-go-...
In regards to the online content, keep in mind that this content has been developed and published with the knowledge that tens of thousands of people will watch it, so it is important to ensure it is of high quality.
After that point, performance bonuses in their many forms can have such a large impact and that doesn't seem to be represented in salary comparisons.
That is probably true, but there are undeniable benefits from the networking that happens at schools like Stanford. So if you have motivation and talent, you may derive even more benefit from going to an Ivy or similar school.
This is a huge problem that, in retrospect, was rampant where I came from. A pretty typical middle-class suburban high school, but one which rarely to essentially never sent any graduates to Ivy League schools. Why? Because it wasn't part of the community's culture.
How do you fix this? In anything other than upper to upper-middle class suburbs, the parents themselves probably went to state schools and have middle class jobs (which themselves are under pressure now). So the parents and neighbors didn't know anything about Ivy League schools or how to propel their own kids into the upper class.
By the time most kids learn how the culture works, it's too late, they're already in whatever college and life track they happened to fall into. It's takes especially thoughtful parents or other older role models (like great teachers or counselors) to see a kids potential and tell them about their life options.
Some kids have this experience (maybe it's a family friend or distant relative that happens to be very wealthy and shines a light on possibilities to the kid), but most do not.