Elite recruitment in US finance: How university prestige is used to secure top executive positions

Abstract

Status attainment theories assert that individuals are recruited based on the length and functional background of their training. Elite theories assume that top managers often deviate from these socially acceptable mechanisms of status attainment to entrench their advantage. In this study, focusing on the US financial sector, we investigate whether educational institution prestige—rather than the subject or length of education—increasingly influences appointments to top executive positions. We analyze 1987 US top executive managers affiliated with 147 firms from both financial and non‐financial sectors in 2005 and 2018. Our study demonstrates that alumni of prestigious universities have a strikingly higher likelihood of attaining a top executive role in finance than in non‐finance. Within finance it is no longer investment banking, but private equity, that contains the highest proportion of elite university graduates. Our findings suggest that notwithstanding the major power shifts between finance and non‐finance—and also within the finance sector—elite groups still dominate the most symbolically valued education, and as a result, top managerial positions.

Firms and the Intergenerational Transmission of Labor Market Advantage

“…But schools not only impart skills, they are also sorting devices (Domina et al, 2017;Hirsch, 1977;Thurow, 1975). Especially at the higher end of the institutional hierarchy, a small number of schools serve as pipelines for elite employers (Binder et al, 2016;Bühlmann et al, 2022;Rivera, 2016;Weinstein, 2018). In the Scandinavian context we study, field of study can be a more powerful source of stratification than institution (Borgen and Mastekaasa, 2018;Hällsten, 2010;Hällsten and Thaning, 2018).…”