How much does a good university/ college matter?

Work performance and capabilities are important in the U.S. Termination is possible literally in most places for no reason. And thus having a degree from a University with a brand name, a reputation might, as in might help convince a recruiter to hire you, but if you don’t perform, then you might not make it through even the probation period. At my former employer that period was a year and some people never made it past that year. Honestly, some quit before finishing training. We had such difficulty hiring we partnered with a University to pay people to work for us and be trained by us who were in one of their Master Programs with the knowledge that if they did well during their placement with us they would be offered immediate employment and some got there Masters degree, but not the job offer. The employment situation in much of the U.S. is strange in many ways, until you think about it. It’s difficult to get good employees, it’s especially difficult to get highly skilled employees even in fields which pay well to start, but in many places pay isn’t high enough to enjoy a high standard of living. And typically you have to work a lot to be paid well, meaning little time off from work and long hours. Why, because productivity often determines profitability and thus pay. There’s a shortage of good workers based in part on demographics, but also the problem that good workers can and do chose to change jobs to get paid better, get better working conditions, or to do something they actually want to do. And employers often can’t both be highly profitable and pay their workers well, so they don’t attract and keep the good workers. Basically it cuts both ways. Workers are fired easily by employers and employees effectively fire employers by taking jobs elsewhere. Both actions do have significant costs, so the market mechanism doesn’t work perfectly, but it does work. This is in contrast to places which have lifetime employment and worker surpluses. Lifetime employment means workers only have limited motivation to work hard, efficiently and long hours. Worker surpluses mean leaving one employer for another is nearly impossible and so workers tolerate poor conditions of employment, sometimes even abuse rather than leave. In this type of situation the employer is very picky about who they hire and want every tool they have available to ensure the new hire will actually work hard, that means hoping that a worker who demonstrated academic achievement and perseverance will maintain this and having there social standing tied up with their identity as a graduate of a certain University, ensures they won’t quit.