In January, Forbes ran an article that 4% of funded CEOs are women. Even people who are horribly sexist have got to think that the existing partners are missing a huge group of potential leaders (often who perceive market opportunities that are utterly hidden to young men who typically pitch them). 96% / 4%? That's just ridiculous. Further they often fund specific schools preferentially. Nothing against the schools of course but those degrees really are just degrees - not risk control.
I think there's a lack of liquidity the arises from these unsophisticated methods of risk control. For example, one reason people "can't find good help these days" is because they are looking for certain indicators they believe will bring down risk as opposed to developing a method for explicit evaluation.
In other places in the financial industry such as investment banks, it's just tough (for some) to figure out where to put someone who hasn't just received or is soon to receive an MBA. The MBA screens for people willing to pay
money to learn the ropes and who expect to work insane hours (many of
which may be of dubious productivity because they're novices).
It's a way to propagate a culture: take someone young, make it an
all-or-nothing game for them, and require total immersion. It keeps
people from questioning the status quo much. And it's easier to manage
people who are just like you.
But creating structures that screen out everyone other than those who have the highest probability of success isn't an effective risk management technique, it's a broad-brush risk avoidance method that necessarily tosses out a lot of opportunity in order to oversimplify the risk management process.
