So...how long til the next show?

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http://quote.bloomberg.com/apps/news...d=aIMI5Fx8d9sM

Harvard and Wisconsin Tie in Turning Out the Most CEOs in U.S.
July 30 (Bloomberg) -- Ryan Hertel, a student tour guide at the University of Wisconsin's Madison campus, pauses before the Old Red Gym, a former armory firebombed by Vietnam War protesters in 1970. That same year, homemade explosives killed a graduate student in physics working late into the night.

``The bombings are the sad point, the low point in our history,'' says Hertel, a 20-year-old junior, as he leads prospective students and their parents around the 933-acre (378- hecatre) campus.

The University of Wisconsin, the eighth-largest public university system in the U.S., has left those days of political unrest behind while maintaining its tradition of social consciousness, Provost Peter Spear says.

Less obvious to visitors, who can watch cows get milked at the school's working dairy farm every afternoon, is the university's other claim to fame: Wisconsin is a top breeding ground for U.S. corporate leaders.

Wisconsin, with 29,000 undergraduates, tied with Harvard University's Harvard College for first place in educating the most chief executive officers of companies included in the Standard & Poor's 500 Index, according to data compiled by Bloomberg.

The school counts 142 alumni who volunteered for the Peace Corps as of the beginning of 2004, more than at any other U.S. college or university. Its school of social work handed out 188 master's degrees this year, the most of any department.

Harvard, based in Cambridge, Massachusetts, and founded in 1636, is the oldest college in the U.S. and home to 6,650 undergraduates.

Exxon Mobil CEO

Wisconsin's CEO honor roll, from all of its campuses, includes Carol Bartz, 55, CEO of Autodesk Inc., which makes software for architects and engineers; Thomas Falk, 46, who runs Kimberly-Clark Corp., the largest U.S. maker of disposable diapers; and Lee Raymond, 65, head of Exxon Mobil Corp., the world's largest publicly traded oil company.

Harvard alumni include Steve Ballmer, 48, CEO of Microsoft Corp., the world's largest software maker; Franklin Raines, 55, who heads Fannie Mae, the largest source of U.S. mortgage money; and Sumner Redstone, 81, CEO of Viacom Inc., the third-largest U.S. media company.

Harvard and Wisconsin outrank both Princeton University and Stanford University, two private institutions that tied for third place in educating the most CEOs.

U.K. CEOs

Last year, the Princeton Review, which publishes The Best 351 Colleges, ranked Princeton University the second-hardest school to get into and Harvard the third hardest, both lagging the U.S. Military Academy in West Point, New York. The Princeton Review is not connected with the university.

U.S. universities have also produced CEOs of 24 percent of the U.K.'s 50 biggest companies by market value. Five of those executives are Ivy League graduates.

Six CEOs of the U.K. companies attended a U.S. graduate school, including Stephen Green, 55, of HSBC Holdings Plc, the world's second-biggest bank by market value. He has a master's degree from Massachusetts Institute of Technology in Cambridge.

Wisconsin's leadership in educating U.S. chief executives comes at a time when gaining admission to highly selective colleges and universities has never been tougher, says Matthew Greene, a private college consultant based in Westport, Connecticut.

The use of private college counselors is growing, with some parents spending as much as $33,000 on consultants who advise students on everything from writing essays to building impressive resumes.

State Universities

Big state universities like Wisconsin outpace their private counterparts in educating CEOs. Chief executives are four times more likely to have earned their undergraduate degrees from a publicly funded university than from an Ivy League school.

The top 10 educators of CEOs also include the University of Texas, City University of New York and the University of North Carolina.

``There should be more respect for the kind of education you can get from a large public institution,'' says Sim Sitkin, founding director of the Center of Leadership and Ethics at the Fuqua School of Business, at Duke University in Durham, North Carolina.

``Senior executives in large companies need not only come from an isolated elite but need to be able to relate to a wide spectrum of people,'' he says.

A Wisconsin education costs less than a Harvard one: A year at Harvard, including room and board, costs $39,880; at Wisconsin, state residents pay $14,350, while out-of-state students pay $28,360.

Trying Harder

The preponderance of CEOs educated at public universities may result from the schools' numerical advantage: Only 0.8 percent of the nation's estimated 7.5 million four-year college students attended the nation's eight Ivy League schools in 2001.

Wisconsin and other state schools may turn out more CEOs because their graduates have to try harder, says Maury Hanigan, founder of Hanigan Consulting Group, a New York-based consultant on human resources strategy.

``The kids who went to Harvard tend to be dynasty kids, fairly privileged, not the kids who scrap hard enough to work their way up to the top,'' Hanigan says.

Harvard is trying to change that stereotype. President Larry Summers is guaranteeing a free education to any student whose family earns less than $40,000 a year.

Equal Opportunity

``We believe that the university has a profound responsibility to help meet our national challenge of achieving equal opportunity,'' he said in his June commencement speech. Summers, 49, a former U.S. Treasury secretary, declined to be interviewed.

William Fitzsimmons, dean of admissions at Harvard and a 1967 Harvard graduate, says the data on CEOs show that Harvard alumni don't have a monopoly on achievement. ``This is one more piece of evidence that it isn't over if you didn't get into Harvard,'' he says.

Still, graduates say it's hard to dispute the advantages of a Harvard education. ``Having been identified as going to Harvard is an imprimatur that is helpful all one's life,'' says 1963 Harvard graduate Stephen Baum, 63, chief executive of San Diego- based Sempra Energy, the largest U.S. natural gas utility.

Baum had to move out of Harvard's Quincy House and back home to Cambridge when his father, an art director, lost his job. Baum worked part-time flipping burgers and picking up his classmates' dirty laundry while his wealthier peers went on ski jaunts and trips to Europe.

`Ambitious'

``People came from families of significant wealth or corporate position, and you feel yourself part of a segment of society that runs the country,'' Baum says. ``I guess it made me ambitious to make money.''

Last year, he earned a salary of $1 million and a bonus of $2.2 million, not including stock options.

Harvard College has educated five U.S. presidents: John Adams, John Quincy Adams, Theodore Roosevelt, Franklin Delano Roosevelt and John F. Kennedy. U.S. President George W. Bush, a Yale University alumnus like his father, graduated from Harvard Business School in 1975 and became the first president to hold a master of business administration.

Rutherford Hayes went to Harvard Law School. Harvard University lists 40 Nobel laureates as current and former faculty members, and its endowment of $19.3 billion is the largest of any academic institution in the world.

`Don't Stress It'

Freshmen dine under the stenciled ceilings of Annenberg Hall, with walnut paneling and Tiffany stained-glass windows -- all inspired by the great halls of Oxford and Cambridge universities.

On a warm May afternoon, Harvard tour guide Kyle Scherer, a junior, stands at the stone steps of Widener Library, which holds 3.2 million volumes on more than 50 miles (80 kilometers) of bookshelves. He tells prospective students they might get the dorm room shared by former Vice President Al Gore and actor Tommy Lee Jones in 1965.

He also tells them not to get their hopes up too high. ``There are a lot of great schools besides this one, so don't stress it if you don't get in,'' Scherer says.

Most students don't. For the class entering in September, Harvard accepted about 2,030 students out of 19,750 applicants, who included 2,800 valedictorians. Fifty-six percent of the accepted students scored 1,400 or higher on their SAT exams; the highest score possible is 1,600.

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Free Bicycles

By contrast, Wisconsin can accept about 14,000 applicants out of the 21,000 who apply for a freshman class of about 5,550. Their average total SAT score is 1,260.

Wisconsin's Madison campus is ranked the No. 2 party school by Princeton Review, behind the University of Colorado at Boulder. Wisconsin's football team holds three Rose Bowl titles. Fans wearing the gear of mascot Bucky Badger regularly pack Wisconsin's stadiums.

A crowded pedestrian mall links the campus with the state capitol. Shops sell Birkenstock sandals, and breweries serve Wisconsin ales like Spotted Cow.

Visitors can pedal a ``red bike'' -- a free, community bicycle -- to their next destination.

Wisconsin has a strong commitment to academics, spokesman Kent Barrett says. The National Science Foundation, an independent agency of the U.S. government, ranked Wisconsin the No. 3 school in the U.S. for research spending in 2001 -- the most recent year available -- with expenditures of $604.1 million.

Peace Forums

James Thomson, a Wisconsin professor, pioneered embryonic stem cell research there in 1998. The culture of Madison was shaped by leaders of the Progressive movement, such as Robert La Follette, a governor and U.S. senator from 1906 to 1925.

The state was among the first to introduce direct primary elections, a civil service system and workers' compensation. That same spirit pervades the campus, says Provost Spear, 60. ``It is a part of the culture to question and express your opinion -- and to have a social conscience,'' he says.

The Progressive, a 95-year-old monthly published in Madison that has opposed nuclear weapons since 1945, still holds peace and social justice forums on the campus.

Wisconsin's intellectual environment challenged Michael Critelli, 55, CEO of Pitney Bowes Inc., the world's largest maker of postal meters, to think critically, even more so than his other alma mater, Harvard Law School, he says.

Drop Outs

``Wisconsin really opened my mind,'' says Critelli, who graduated in 1970 with a degree in communications and political science.

Critelli says he got a career boost from his Harvard degree and the network of contacts he built there. Regional connections that students make at large state schools may offer an even bigger boost in the business world, says counselor Greene, who has co-wrote six college guidebooks with his father, Howard.

``Evidence about the greater monetary value or career opportunities of going to a highly prestigious college or university as opposed to a reasonably well-regarded public or private college or university seems sketchy at best,'' Greene says. ``It matters far more whether you went to college than where you went to college.''

And it doesn't necessarily matter whether you graduated. Bill Gates, 48, the founder of Microsoft Corp., became Harvard's most famous dropout after he started the Redmond, Washington- based software giant in 1975.

MBA is Preferred

Michael Dell, 39, chairman and former CEO of Round Rock, Texas-based Dell Inc., the world's largest personal computer maker, left the University of Texas in 1984 after his freshman year.

At least 16 current CEOs never got an undergraduate degree. Steve Jobs, 49, CEO of Apple Computer Inc., quit Reed College in Portland, Oregon, after one semester.

Other dropout CEOs include James Cayne, 70, of Bear Stearns Cos., the seventh-biggest securities firm, who left Indiana's Purdue University, and Wayne Inouye, 51, CEO of PC maker Gateway Inc., who left the University of California, Berkeley, to join a blues band.

For CEOs who did finish college, an MBA is the preferred graduate credential. More than a third of the 500 U.S. chief executives -- 37.5 percent -- earned their MBAs, and they were three times as likely to have gone to Harvard Business School in Boston than to any other school.

Two British CEOs have MBAs from Harvard Business School as well: Todd Stitzer, 52, of Cadbury Schweppes Plc, the world's largest maker of soft drinks, and Martin Sorrell, 59, of WPP Group Plc, the world's second-largest advertising company.

Degree Importance Fades

Harvard's MBA program has educated 42 U.S. chief executives, including Henry Paulson, 58, CEO of Goldman Sachs Group Inc., the world's third-biggest securities firm, and Stanley O'Neal, 52, of Merrill Lynch & Co., the biggest securities firm.

Other Harvard MBA graduates include Jeffrey Immelt, 48, of General Electric Co., the largest company by market value, and former Bank One Corp. CEO Jamie Dimon, 48, who is slated to become CEO of J.P. Morgan Chase & Co., the second-biggest U.S. bank, in 2006.

Harvard business students prepare 500 case studies during their two years of study. ``The students' classroom experience is an intense, interactive engagement,'' Harvard Business School Dean Kim Clark said in a statement. ``As a result, they are especially well prepared to take on leadership roles.''

By the time executives are considered for a CEO job, their degree often fades in importance, says Tom Neff, former chairman of executive search firm Spencer Stuart Inc. ``It's a rare occasion when a client says I want a graduate of an Ivy League school or Harvard,'' Neff says.

Track Record

David Nosal, head of CEO recruitment at Korn/Ferry International, the world's largest executive search firm, looks at a candidate's ethics and experience.

``A track record of success in building organizations, a record of leadership and delivering the highest level of results are far more important for a CEO than attending an Ivy League college,'' he says.

CEOs who graduated from public universities say working their way through school helped instill a strong work ethic.

``I think it's a very telling tale about an individual,'' says Terry Lundgren, 52-year-old CEO of Cincinnati-based Federated Department Stores Inc., who likes to hire graduates who also put themselves through school.

As a student at the University of Arizona, Lundgren cracked oysters and peeled shrimp at a Tucson restaurant, working his way up to manager.

Giving Back

Autodesk's Bartz, one of just seven female CEOs heading S&P 500 companies, worked her way through Wisconsin on the cafeteria line and graduated with $6,000 in debt.

Wisconsin's successful CEO alumni and their spouses have shown their gratitude by giving back to the university. John Rowe, 59, CEO of Chicago-based Exelon Corp., the second-biggest U.S. utility operator, got his undergraduate degree in history and his law degree at Wisconsin.

He recently endowed a chair in Byzantine history for $1 million.

``I'm fanatically loyal to Wisconsin because it took this kid off a Wisconsin farm, who was bright and had a lot of ambition, and exposed me to different cultures, races and radically different intellectual points of view,'' says Rowe, whose office houses an ancient Egyptian sarcophagus dating as far back as the 26th dynasty (664 to 525 B.C.).

`Risk-Taking'

Rowe says he recalls sporting a ``Barry Goldwater for President'' button while attending a civil rights rally with two friends in 1964. One was head of a libertarian group, and the other was a Democrat, who turned to Rowe and said, ``Nowhere but here in Wisconsin would three people so completely different be together in a common cause.''

Such glowing testimonials about Wisconsin may make parents wonder just how important that Ivy League degree really is. James Wright, president of Dartmouth College in Hanover, New Hampshire, defends its worth.

``What I'd like to think a Dartmouth or an Ivy League school does well is less the pedigree and more the education, encouraging independent initiative and risk-taking that will serve them well when they move up in higher levels of management,'' Wright says.

Both Goldman Sachs's Paulson and General Electric's Immelt earned their undergraduate degrees at Dartmouth.

For the record, Wright was born in Madison and got his own bachelor's degree in 1964 from Wisconsin State University, which is now the University of Wisconsin at Platteville. And he received both a master's and a doctorate in history from the University of Wisconsin at Madison.

For shareholders of S&P 500 companies, there may be an even better argument for a Wisconsin education. In the 12 months ended on June 30, stocks of companies led by Wisconsin grads returned 27.4 percent -- a little more than 2 percentage points better than companies led by Harvard grads.



To contact the reporter on this story:
Liz Willen in New York at ewillen@bloomberg.net.

[TheEnforcer]

http://www.wisconsin.edu/news/2003/r030822.htm

UW campuses earn high marks in U.S. News college rankings
MADISON—University of Wisconsin System campuses scored high in the rankings included in the “2004 America’s Best Colleges” guidebook, published by U.S. News and World Report.

Five UW System campuses are listed among the top 10 best Midwestern master’s level public universities, including UW-Eau Claire and UW-La Crosse, which are tied for third; UW-Stevens Point, ranked sixth; and UW-Green Bay and UW-Whitewater, tied for 10th.

Among all master’s level Midwestern universities, UW-Eau Claire and UW-La Crosse are tied for the 26th best, while UW-Stevens Point is ranked 30th.

The system’s flagship campus, UW-Madison, is ranked 7th on the guidebook’s list of the best public doctoral universities and 32nd among all national universities.

Other rankings show that UW-Platteville is tied for the fifth-best industrial/manufacturing engineering specialty among all master’s level universities nationwide. The Platteville campus ranks 33rd best nationally for engineering programs at non-doctoral universities.

“These rankings reaffirm the exceptional quality of Wisconsin’s public system of higher education and its campuses,” said Linda Weimer, UW System vice president for university relations. “They also underscore why public investment in the UW System is so critical and so worthwhile.”

Under “Programs to Look For,” the guidebook notes the undergraduate research/creative projects programs at UW-Eau Claire and UW-Madison. The first-year experience, learning communities and study abroad programs at UW-Madison are also highlighted.

U.S. News and World Report weighed campuses using several criteria: peer assessment of academic reputation, retention of students, faculty resources, student selectivity, financial resources and alumni giving. Graduation rates were included for national universities and liberal arts colleges.

More detailed rankings are available at the U.S. News and World Report website: http://www.usnews.com.