What a Wharton professor’s viral tweet really reveals

A tweet that has gone viral should make the finance world stop and think.

There are students at one of the most prestigious business schools in the U.S. who think a salary of at least $100,000 a year is the norm for workers. Nina Strohminger, a legal studies and business law professor at The Wharton School, said in a recent tweet: “I asked Wharton students what they thought the average American worker makes per year, and 25% of them thought it was over six figures. One of them thought it was $800,000. Really not sure what to make of this. (The real number is $45,000).”

Yes, you’ve read that right.

Strohminger continued: “A lot of people want to conclude that this says something special about Wharton students—I’m not sure it does. People are notoriously bad at making this kind of estimate, thinking the gap between rich and poor is smaller than it is. This was indeed why I asked b-school students. I was curious if they were as biased as everyone else.” 

I contacted Strohminger for further insight but have not yet received a reply. However, Wharton Dean Erika James talked about the tweet in a LinkedIn post on Friday. “It’s likely some student responses were representative of what we psychologists call the ‘anchoring effect’ or having our personal experiences and backgrounds serve as reference points for how we view the world,” James explained. “And while we cannot change where we come from, we can and should work to understand where others are coming from.”

She noted educators have the responsibility to create opportunities for personal views to be part of meaningful discourse. Strohminger did not say whether she was teaching an undergraduate or graduate class. But James offered statistics for undergraduates. Nearly half are female, and 20% are non-U.S. citizens. In the class of 2025, more than 60% self-identify as students of color and 12% are first generation, James wrote.

Strohminger also tweeted a link to the report, How Much (More) Should CEOs Make? A Universal Desire for More Equal Pay. The researchers set out to answer the question: do individuals from different countries and backgrounds have similar preferences for how much more the rich should earn than the poor? They found individuals across the globe and “from all walks of life would prefer smaller pay gaps between the rich and poor.” That’s encouraging. But future finance leaders are really the ones who should be pointing out the existence of large pay gaps.

“Oh, good. I went viral,” Strohminger said on Twitter. I’m glad her tweet went viral, too. Not to shame students or slam Wharton as many social media users are doing. I think the tweet serves as another red flag to our collective society that inequalities are being glossed over.

For instance, the wealth gap, globally, has been exacerbated by the COVID-19 pandemic, according to a new report by Oxfam Policy and Practice. “The wealth of the 10 richest men has doubled, while the incomes of 99% of humanity are worse off,” the report stated.

A new Fortune opinion piece points to a survey by Edelman that found in the U.S., Black, Latinx, and Asian respondents reported disproportionate discrimination across the financial services spectrum. Areas include banking, asset management, mortgage, auto lending, and insurance. “This ingrained partiality imposes barriers to entrepreneurship and wealth creation, and it prevents later generations from building on prior generations’ success,” the Edelman execs wrote. 

For the next generation of financial leaders to solve these complex problems, it will require not only educators but employers to guide the way.  

See you tomorrow.

Sheryl Estrada
sheryl.estrada@fortune.com

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Courtesy of Sisense

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