How to Fix Forbes’ 30 Under 30
On January 3rd, Forbes released their 6th annual 30 Under 30. It includes many individuals you have heard of, like Kylie Jenner, and others that you may not have, like entrepreneur Mitchell Hashimoto, who runs a 60-person startup software company that recently raised over $34 million. While that is incredibly impressive, as are the accomplishments of all members of Forbes 30 Under 30 list, and while its purpose of highlighting and bringing together outstanding young people all while “offer(ing) an annual opportunity to embrace the optimism, inventiveness and boldness of youth” is fine, the list has some issues.
Before we dive into this, let’s get one key question out of the way. Is the primary issue I have with it that I’m not on it? YES. Great, I’m glad we could take care of that.
All kidding aside, Forbes’ list does showcase some of the brilliant young minds of our world. With much fanfare, it shines a flashlight on young stars who are already burning brilliantly before us; NFL players, Grammy-nominated performers, the aforementioned Kylie Jenner, and others who are known in their fields. Check out Forbes’ boast about the list’s exclusivity:
“This year the competition was more extreme than ever: 15,000+ nominations for just 600 spots. That’s an under 4% acceptance rate; making it harder to get into than the nation’s two most selective colleges, Stanford University (4.8%) and Harvard University (5.2%).”
“Wow,” the reader thinks, “harder to get into than Harvard!” Ok, sure, but let’s dive into this a bit. First of all, that makes no sense. Harvard is a renowned institution of higher learning that bases its selections on test scores, GPAs, and a generally comparable body of work that its applicants submit. Students who attend are challenged by the University and receive an extremely valuable degree in exchange for their hard work.
Forbes invites nominations (wut), has editors arbitrarily sort through those nominations (huh), and then passes a short list on to people like Jason Derulo to select the final group. No, seriously, Jason Derulo.
They then place the 600 finalists into their magazine/website/conference circuit and write nice things about them like:
“30 Under 30 alum Halsey met Li at a party and months later asked if he’d pretend to be her manager at a label meeting. He teamed with punk band manager Aron and together they launched her 2015 debut, “Badlands,” which sold more than 1 million copies.”
Halsey is a judge for the Music category, by the way, and her managers made it onto this list. I’m no legal expert, but that certainly seems like a conflict of interest.
This brings me to my next point, though, the fact that there are actually 600 people included in the 30 Under 30. Sure, there are 30 each in 20 categories, but that is hardly a “30 under 30”. Some of these categories make sense, Education for example, but others are curious. There’s one for “Hollywood and Entertainment, but another for “Music” and yet another for “Media”. I’m not saying there’s no difference between these categories, but Forbes does seem to be splitting hairs.
My personal favorite category? Games.
My point is that Forbes is rather arbitrarily breaking things down. Are there 600 young people under 30 doing amazing things that deserve to be recognized? Yes! Should we throw them all together in randomized categories and then claim that being part of our exclusive list is more exclusively exclusive than getting into an Ivy League Institution? NO.
Let’s get back to the Harvard comparison. Last year, Ben Casselman wrote a piece for FiveThirtyEight about how silly it is to continually reference Harvard when discussing colleges. He notes that “more than three-quarters of U.S. undergraduates attend colleges that accept at least half their applicants” and less than 1% of students attend colleges that accept less than 10% of their students. By propping up Harvard and schools like it, the media does a disservice to the reality that most individuals face. By promoting this list as “harder to get into than the nation’s two most selective colleges” you’re not celebrating accomplishment, you’re celebrating elitism.
In perhaps the most obvious non-twist in history, Forbes points out that the 5 most attended universities of its 30 Under 30 population are Harvard University, MIT, New York University, Stanford University, and the University of Pennsylvania. In other words, exclusive, elite schools…and NYU (just kidding) ((but seriously)).
Not only is that kind of thing not attainable for most people, it’s not even on their radar. I’m reminded of an episode of Malcolm Gladwell’s Revisionist History where he discussed how Ivy League schools often have difficulty finding low-income applicants from poor areas. Gladwell theorizes that this is most likely because the metaphorical ladder disadvantaged young people must use to climb out of their situations does not give them enough rungs to reach the point of even taking the SATs or applying to college. It stops much closer to the ground than that.
Forbes, with this list, is essentially putting another ladder above the bell for its already elite members to climb.
This bums me out. For one, it’s celebrating people that have done extraordinary things but who do not need to be in another magazine. Forget about whether or not she cares, do you think Kylie Jenner even knows she was selected? Perhaps she does, perhaps it is of great importance to her, but you understand the point. It’s another award on the mantle collecting very expensive dust.
For another, since it shines the light on those who are already quite bright, this list leaves out normal people who surround us every day. The world is full of people who are not worthy of being on Forbes very exclusive 30 Under 30 list, but who are most certainly worthy of being recognized. In the spirit of being a good, ambitious millennial (receives pat on the head and an enthusiastic “who’s a good boy??”) I decided that I would be the one to do this.
Over the next few weeks, I’m going to publish some profiles about people that surround me. They’re not going to be millionaire entrepreneurs, and you probably won’t have heard of many of them, but they’re the real people under 30 who have their impressive accomplishments that make up our world. If you’re interested in participating, tweet at me.
Hopefully, this series will shine a light on places and people that aren’t always seen. Stay tuned!
