LSN : Daily Signals : Ivy League colleges can help secure prestigious career paths but not higher earnings

NASA enters streaming space with NASA+

NASA+, Global

US – NASA has stepped into the entertainment arena with the announcement of its new on-demand streaming service, NASA+. The service will provide live coverage of upcoming launches, documentaries and series programming. Although currently in development, NASA+ will be accessible through the NASA app on iOS and Android, and via streaming media players including Apple TV, Fire TV, Roku and the web. Despite the name, the streaming service will remain ad-free and open to all users without the need for a subscription.

Jeff Seaton, chief information officer at NASA’s headquarters, stated: ‘Our vision is to inspire humanity through a unified, world-class NASA web experience.’ The launch accompanies a redesign of NASA’s flagship and science websites, as well as an enhancement to the NASA app, aimed at making content more accessible.

The platform will also introduce new original video series alongside NASA’s existing collection. In our Extraterrestrial Innovations Market, we looked at how brands are recognising the potential of space to be used as a testbed for innovation. NASA+ can prove to be an important platform in this market as it is already an established and trusted voice of authority for all things extra-terrestrial.

Strategic opportunity

As commercial space tourism will soon become a reality, it unlocks a new wave of marketing and advertising opportunities – plus new viewpoints on our world that are set to influence consumer perspectives. How can you as a business make good use of this untapped space?

Ivy League colleges can help secure prestigious career paths but not higher earnings

The Polo Ralph Lauren Exclusively for Morehouse and Spelman Colleges Collection, US

US – A report released in July 2023 challenges the notion that a degree from one of the US's top colleges directly translates to higher salaries and reveals that the true value lies in access to elite career opportunities.

The research by Opportunity Insights covered 2.4m students at eight Ivy League universities, plus Stanford, MIT, Duke and the University of Chicago, and looked at their high school grade point average, test scores and non-academic credentials. It identified that Ivy Plus graduates had a 17.6 percentage point advantage in getting hired by prestigious firms compared with state school graduates.

'Do you become a highly paid professional at a very good company? For those kind of outcomes, the school you go to matters a little but not a ton,' Raj Chetty, a Harvard economist who co-authored the study, told The Wall Street Journal. 'Where it matters enormously is reaching the upper tail, the path to becoming a CEO, leading scientist at a top graduate school, political leader.'

But the study also underlines the access gap, revealing that wealthier families' children hold greater admission chances than middle-class peers with similar qualifications.

With the June 2023 US Supreme Court decision which essentially ended affirmative action at universities, tomorrow's leadership is likely to fall into the hands of a lucky few who attended the same universities – and who now look the same. That's exactly why out-of-work networks and local communities will become a must among young non-Ivy League graduates on the hunt for a job.

Strategic opportunity

To attract and retain a diversity of talents, employers should focus on fostering an inclusive and diverse workplace culture that values skills, talents and achievements from across a wide range of educational backgrounds

Stat: Debunking the real environmental impact of veganism

The Grill by Tom Booton at The Dorchester, London, UK

UK – What is the real impact of our diets on the planet? New extensive research reveals that plant-based diets lead to 75% fewer climate-heating emissions, and less water pollution and land use than meat-heavy ones.

Data estimating the environmental impact of food habits tend to rely on modelled dietary scenarios, which fail to represent the food’s footprint accurately. A new study led by University of Oxford researchers gathered dietary data from more than 55,000 vegans, vegetarians, fish eaters and meat eaters in the UK to shed light on the impact of each diet on the environment.

Findings stress that low-meat diets incorporating less than 50g a day have half the impact of high-meat diets in terms of greenhouse gas emissions, water pollution and land use, but the differences between these low-meat, pescatarian and vegetarian diets is not significant.

If opinion divides on whether meat alternatives are sound sustainable choices subsist, this data supports the idea that substitutes helping people cut down their meat consumption are key to alleviating our food footprints.

Strategic opportunity

When marketing animal protein alternatives, make sure to clearly communicate the key benefits consumers will get from your products, as better-for-you and better-for-the-planet products will not necessarily appeal to the same groups