The old mantra that an Ivy League degree is a golden ticket to success needs to be forgotten for some time now. With top employers aware of the reality of the October 7 protests, Harvard and Columbia graduates may have now lost their edge. Employers know that these Ivy League institutions prioritize protest activism over academic performance, and they are looking to other schools for recruiting.

“The longer I’ve been hiring people, the less of a correlation I’ve seen between prestigious schools and success at my company,” entrepreneur and CEO Liz Elting told the New York Post. “Hiring only from Ivy League schools leaves your organization with a limited and homogenous talent pool. Companies are realizing that talent can come from anywhere, and they’re right.”

Forbes used a survey of employers and introduced the “New Ivies,” which includes 10 public and 10 private universities that are producing smart and motivated graduates desired by all types of employers.

This change in recruitment mindset The incident comes at a time when protests have spread widely on campus All across America.

However, Ivy League colleges have a very rich history, having been shaped over centuries, and this is likely just a temporary trend among a handful of recruiters.

Performative activism at the expense of academia

Hiring managers the New York Post spoke to are afraid to hire anti-Semitic or pro-Gaza protesters. They don’t want to have much association with either side.

“I think a big reason employers focus on second-rate schools is that the quality of students at the actual Ivies can be very low,” Christopher Rimm, college admissions consultant and CEO of Command Education, told The NY Post. “The Ivy League focuses too much on causes of diversity, performative activism, and social impact at the expense of academics.”

“Ultimately, it’s what you do at these universities that matters — how you build relationships, how hard you work,” Rim said.

There are other reasons not to hire students from these premier institutions. Adam Leitman Bailey manages a law firm in Manhattan. He has a reason not to hire these graduates.

“We don’t recruit from the Ivy League,” he told the NY Post.

‘Smart, motivated graduates, not just Ivy graduates’

“We want someone who has the highest grades, who can compete with his or her classmates, who grew up without means and who has a strong will,” says Adam Leitman Bailey of a Manhattan-based law firm. “And we’ve found the best candidates to be top of their classes at second- and third-tier schools.”

Forbes recently ranked colleges that are “producing the smart, motivated graduates that employers of all kinds want,” based on surveys of hiring managers and student test scores.

Smart and motivated employees can ensure better results than graduating from a particular college. Such students can be found anywhere, not just at Ivy League schools.

New schools added to Forbes list

The public colleges on the list are: Georgia Institute of Technology, University of Michigan, UNC Chapel Hill, University of Virginia, and University of Wisconsin Madison.

Private colleges include: Boston College, Emory, Georgetown, Vanderbilt, and USC.

“Those schools are being added to college lists and are being considered just as important as the Ivy League,” Christopher Rimm said. “Our clients want to get into Ivy and Ivy-plus schools — including these so-called ‘new Ivies.'”

MIT, Stanford, Duke and the University of Chicago did not even make it to the Forbes list.

Forbes also conducted a survey, and it showed that 37% of employers said state universities did a better job preparing students for employment and 31% said non-Ivy League private colleges had improved.

While the trend was already on the rise, the pro-Palestinian protests have accelerated it. “It makes my job even more difficult,” he said. “Now I have to compete with all the other businesses that are suddenly after the students I need.”