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The story
The original poster was enrolled by their high-school-educated parents in an elementary and junior high school affiliated with a national university, but now, after graduating from college, they say they’re unemployed — a NEET (“Not in Education, Employment, or Training”). Most of their classmates went on from elite universities straight into top-tier corporations, and when the poster asked 5ch’s “Nandemo Jikkyo G” board (a general chat/live-discussion board) whether it was fair to chalk the gap up to “genetics,” it sparked a lively debate. Most replies pushed back with “it’s environment, not genes” and “it’s effort, not environment,” and a string of posters shared their own stories of getting into elite universities despite having only high-school-educated parents. The original poster, however, refused to budge to the end, insisting “my parents putting me in a national school is the root cause,” and kept blaming environmental factors for striking out completely in job hunting. Even when others suggested research work or grad school, they brushed the ideas off as uninteresting, and the debate stayed at a standstill.
What people said
BTW, pretty much all my classmates went elite university → top-tier company.
I can blame this on genetics, right?
I don't think it's genetics — I think it's because your parents, being only high school grads, just didn't know any better.
They're high income though.
Their future's bright.
They've got social credibility.
Or did you think you were the main character and slack off out of spite?
I don't care about anyone besides me.
My parents are both high school grads too, but I got into Tokyo Tech, and a friend of mine — also raised by a high-school-grad single parent — got into Meiji University and is doing great.
That's because your parents, despite not being highly educated, are actually sharp.
Most of it is decided by what kind of education the parents gave the kid — in other words, it's on the parents and on your own effort.
Between genetics and environment, environment has a massively bigger impact.
Rich kids don't get into good universities because they're genetically smart.
They get in because their parents set them up with a good environment.
My home environment was bad.
Everyone around me had it good.
Apparently there was a case in Japan a while back where a rich family's baby and a poor family's baby got switched at birth — the one raised rich ended up a college grad, and the one raised poor ended up only a high school grad.
No way.
Everyone who became an elite had good genetics AND a good environment.
Sure, since I had to teach myself everything, it took me longer to build up cultural knowledge than classmates from other households (they'd been exposed to high-brow literature and music as a matter of course since childhood), but it just goes to show effort can get you anywhere.
I think I would've gotten in if I'd taken the exam.
If you've got what it takes to become an elite, a national school's probably the better bet.
I'm a NEET now.
No idea when I'll start working.
Gonna take a while to make peace with not landing a top-tier job.
What university did you go to?
A second-tier company should be a breeze then.
I get that things can work out if I put in effort from here on, but landing a top-tier company job just isn't happening.
Top-tier companies aren't the only definition of success.
I'm in research, and I know plenty of people who went to grad school around age 30 and ended up hitting it big.
Put in effort from here on and you can become anything.
Isn't becoming a success outside of a top-tier company way too much of a gamble?
No way people like that actually exist.
A lower-tier regional national university.
Then that's got nothing to do with your parents, does it?
Sounds like the kind of school you wouldn't want handling nuclear engineering.
No wonder a top-tier company's out of reach.
If it's regional, not getting into one of the old Imperial universities (Todai, Kyoto Univ., and the like) already seals you as a loser — checks out.
Being a NEET is my parents' fault too.
Them putting me in a national school is the root of everything.
Got rejected by just two companies during job hunting, my spirit broke, and I became a NEET.
Making about 6 million yen a year now (roughly $40,000), so I've turned things around somewhat, but it's still not proportional to what my parents invested in me.
Job hunting's brutal, huh.
If your parents were NEETs at some point too, maybe it is their fault.
Nope.
Still their fault.
They put me in a national school.
Then raised me in a bad environment.
Isn't it kind of pointless to go now?
Won't help my chances at a top-tier company anyway.
Job hunting might be tough since you're not a fresh grad anymore.
Go back to undergrad again, or head to grad school.
Then straight into a research job or a foreign firm.
Not interested in research though.
Isn't a research career basically impossible for humanities majors?
Saying flat-out "not interested" just sounds spoiled.
Re: #99
That mindset's normal for humanities majors, I guess, but even in the humanities, research means creating your own subject of study.
Nah, there's basically no such thing as humanities research.
I'm only interested in landing a top-tier company job.
So there's no point going to grad school.
Background and Key Points of This Discussion
Elementary and junior high schools affiliated with national universities were originally set up as training sites for student teachers, and admission is usually decided by lottery or aptitude test — they aren’t necessarily “elite feeder schools” directly tied to the university itself. Even so, as commenters pointed out, it’s a well-established idea in the sociology of education that one’s surrounding family environment and level of educational drive strongly shapes one’s path. What divided the thread was the classic debate over whether “genetics” (innate intelligence) or “environment” (parents’ educational investment and one’s own effort) determines outcomes — with voices favoring the latter winning out, while the original poster stood apart by sticking to “it’s my parents’ fault” right to the end. The “rich and poor babies switched at birth” story mentioned in reply #54 appears to reference an actual newborn mix-up case in Japan, in which the child raised in the wealthier family went on to graduate college while the one raised in the poorer family only finished high school — a case that later went to trial and is fairly well known. While a statistical correlation between education level and income does exist, it’s a common misconception that an individual’s job-hunting results can be explained by environment alone.
*This article was compiled and summarized from the 5ch (Nandemo Jikkyo G) thread “My high-school-grad parents put me in a national university’s affiliated elementary/junior high school, and here’s how it turned out.”
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