Hypothesis: Listing where you got your college degree in a web bio is probably bad for America.

Judging someone's qualifications for a job or their character & ability based on the college they got into at 18 is bad enough when that someone is 23. It's insane to do so when they're in their 40s or 60s. And yet so many adults continue to list that info in their bio.

Like, why does the executive editor of the NYT tell us where he went to college? Are we going to think he's not qualified until we get to the Ivy Degree?

Hey, what's wrong with a little pride?

Well, it reinforces the idea that where you go to college determines your whole life. That leads to the insanely competitive environment in college admissions and a lot of unhappiness among a certain sliver of teenagers.

But it's not just teenagers and their parents who are made miserable by this notion that where you go is the crucial moment of your life and says something about who you are forever. It's adults who continue to believe that. And hire people based on that belief.

I suspect that the executive editor included it unthinkingly. I have. It's a convention.

But listing your degrees and where you got them is a silly convention that reinforces the idea that where you went to college is an important thing about a person.

It's not.

Not that where you go doesn't have an impact on your life or isn't important for you...but knowing where a person went to college tells us no more about that person's ability to do a job or about their character than what state they grew up in.

So, if you're a person with a bio that's published online or in print, maybe just scrub that line.

If you really think what you were up to as a teenager is still important, maybe you could say what the first concert you went to was instead--that's much more interesting.