<p>I read that article a few months ago, and was unimpressed. Deresciewitz seems to be looking for things to blame on elite universities, from his own inability to speak to his plumber to the career choices of the students. It simply doesn’t occur to him that colleges and universities don’t create their students, or the society they grew up in. Yes, I agree that the selection process is biased toward hard-working, compliant students. I agree that the majority of students go on to professional jobs, something that Deresciewicz, the humanist, seems to believe makes these people somehow worth less than other people. (I shudder to think what would happen if all the elite colleges and universities suddenly started turning out Ph.D. candidates exclusively.) his contention that an elite education forecloses a large number of less prestigious career choices is nonsense – if students view some career choices as beneath consideration, it’s more likely to be due to parental expectations and general upbringing than to the efforts of institutions of higher learning. He may be right that true intellectuals are scarce at top colleges… and shockingly, they’re scarce everywhere else, too. That is a product of our culture and our nature as people, not a product of our educations. As for Cleveland State, I hope he’s not suggesting that an irrational adherence to deadlines makes the state unis a more noble, character-building place to go to school. Seems to me that the elite schools’ flexibility is more reasonable, and should serve as a model up to a point (though not to the point where students who commit sexual assaults get to stay on campus and finish their degrees). Finally, if Deresciewicz (again, the humanist) can dismiss all the students he knows as “vanilla,” maybe it’s because he’s no more capable of talking to them than to his plumber.</p>
<p>@mimk6. I loved your line about thinking. My son asked me if he could answer a college app question about what he does with free time with the answer, I like to just sit and think! The author is obviously taking a polarizing position to bring attention to himself. As they say, there isn’t any bad publicity when you are trying to sell a book!</p>
<p>Oh, doG, is that crappy article being dredged up AGAIN??</p>
<p>“Disadvantages of Elite Education”</p>
<p>Forget about that article. Elite education is too expensive to many. Not worth the money that they don’t have.</p>
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<p>On the other hand, there was a sort of “elitism” prevalent at such magnets of not suffering fools gladly…especially those of the upper/upper-middle class snobby set. </p>
<p>If that piece had been published back when I was at one of those magnets, we’d be putting on our best mocking impersonation of him as an upper/upper-middle class snob with lines like: “Ruprecht, do be so kind to bring over the tray of cucumber sandwiches for the afternoon tea.” or “Ruprecht, I beseech you! Save us from this revolting water closet!!” :D</p>
<p>I think the article is dreck, as well, but I am putting in a plea to people whose posts include the author’s admittedly difficult-to-spell last name: Can you please use the actual spelling? It’s Deresiewicz. If you don’t know how to spell it, look it up. Sorry, but it’s a pet peeve. People’s last names generally don’t come with multiple spellings.</p>
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Maybe this is because we’re so elite we can only spell names like “Chatsworth” or “Frothingham.” This fellow’s name is…well…</p>
<p>I’m sorry, absweetmarie, I actually can’t spell his name and type at the same time. :p</p>
<p>I’ll just leave this here.</p>
<p>[Getting</a> Tenure Back on Track | The New Journal](<a href=“http://www.thenewjournalatyale.com/2007/04/getting-tenure-back-on-track/]Getting”>Getting Tenure Back on Track | The New Journal)</p>
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<p>A lot of accomplished writers, artists and scientists belonged to that category of students in their youth–and they did turn out to be smarter than their teachers, just as they thought. They’re the people he was thinking of, it seems, when he made his point.</p>
<p>There’s a lot of defensiveness on CC about certain universities’ ability to identify and select ‘brilliant’ candidates. There was a recent thread on the outcomes of ‘unconventionally brilliant’ students in which someone made the suggestion that places like Harvard, Yale, Princeton, etc. sometimes miss out on those people because they don’t always perform well in high school. That was immediately countered with some statistic about Rhodes Scholar production rates, as if the Rhodes Scholarship has anything to do with unconventional brilliance.</p>
<p>It is not a slight on the Harvards and Yales of this world to say that they sometimes miss out on brilliant people who couldn’t be bothered to do well in high school. It is the truth. A lack of interest in academics might be a red flag for you, or for a high school math teacher or for a middle-level human resources manager at some accounting firm, but it can very easily go together with literary/artistic/scientific genius. It often does, in fact.</p>
<p>Also, a lot of people seem to be missing the point of the plumber anecdote in their haste to assure us that their well-educated children are socially adept. I really don’t think the author is 1. saying he can’t talk to his plumber; or 2. blaming Yale for not teaching him how to talk to plumbers. That passage, which was admittedly the most obnoxious part of the essay, was more about privilege.</p>
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Sadly, they are a very small percentage of those who have this attitude–most of them end up unemployed, living off relatives, and complaining about how unfairly they have been treated.</p>
<p>Ghostt, I simply don’t read the plumber anecdote the way you do–but I do think it shows some things that Deresiewicz doesn’t intend for it to show.</p>
<p>Some of us have seen this article so many times we are intentionally missing the point of the plumber lament…for fun. :p</p>
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<p>Wow, I guess I came from an “underprivileged” background. In my town plumbers made more than my parents (teachers). Now they’re being compared to homeless people living in a box? CC parents are really out of touch!</p>
<p>I feel like the phrase “can’t be bothered” has a really negative spin on the truth. I think I’m sort of the kind of kid referred to in that section: I’m a hard worker who isn’t–and wasn’t–afraid to question a lot of things that “everyone” does (i.e. “everyone” lives on campus freshman year; “everyone” who wants admission to a good school takes four years of math; “everyone” who plans on being a serious [insert my career choice here] takes these electives in high school…etc.), and some of my teachers didn’t appreciate my desire to do things my way. They wanted to put me into the mold that everyone else didn’t mind fitting. </p>
<p>I remember my counselor reading one of my essays and saying, “but it sounds like you don’t want to go to college–you just want to work.” I reread it many times, struggling to figure out how to phrase things, only to conclude that the essay showed who I was and, with a few minor word tweaks (not the large-scale revisions the counselor wanted), I sent it off, knowing full well that I didn’t want to go to a college that didn’t want me. </p>
<p>My point is that I get the mentality. Do I agree with the word choice? No. But I get the point: some people have a hard time going with the “average.” No, that’s not to say that HPYS et al. kids are “average,” but they have a skill when it comes to figuring out how to please teachers. Some of us aren’t necessarily good at concrete “this is how things are done; time for you to do the same thing everyone before you has already done” messages.</p>
<p>A Harvard graduate who went on to become a plumber. That’s quite the ripping yarn, old chum. That’s like using the Stealth Bomber to deliver pizza with anchovies. That’s like directing the Hubble Space Telescope earthward to take a few snaps of Aunt Mervin as she gobbles the holiday cake. That’s like a triple Whopper with bacon, and a small diet coke, because, watching calories.</p>
<p>^^You don’t listen to NPR’s Car Talk, do you?</p>
<p>oddly, the plumber story is true. Fact being stranger than fiction and all. 
But it was not Hahvaad. It was “an ivy.” </p>
<p>Carry on.</p>
<p>A friend of ours from college – private school lifer, Yale BA, Harvard JD – is married to a plumber. So. presumably, she was perfectly able to talk to him, despite 20+ years inside the elite-education bubble. (Yes, I know, maybe they didn’t talk much. But, trust me, this one didn’t get married without talking. A lot.) Plus, he wasn’t even exactly a plumber yet when they got involved – he was a plumber’s helper, and she already a lawyer.</p>
<p>In our old neighborhood, there was a handyman/carpenter we used frequently on our old house, who had BA and MA degrees from Cornell, in urban planning.</p>
<p>I think Deresiewicz is the one sitting around congratulating himself- that someone is willing to print what he writes, that he has tapped into the “college fears” nerve. In his own way, he perpetuates class warfare and poses as some “elite” observer.</p>
<p>Of course the elites miss out on some alternatvely brilliant kids- they can only take so many and want the group to be, to some extent, proven. They aren’t in the biz of- and I’m not sure they should be- taking kids on some off-chance he’ll turn out to be a genius, playing by his own rules. If you want to play by your own rules, go where that is appreciated and encouraged. To succeed in a highly challening academic environment does require some rule-following, a pattern of motivation, per the standards that exist. If you think you are a brilliant budding whatever, go to a school that reponds to your self-assessed brilliance.</p>
<p>And, yup, of all Prof DH’s friends, the one most into the intellectual and cultural is- the plumber. Just random, I think- or is it secretly something about plumbing? He once spoke to me about the art of tying pipes, creating that perfection.</p>
<p>I don’t think an inability to talk to a handyman is an elite college thing. Courtesy is taught by the family, if at all.</p>
<p>The article’s not that impressive. After all, Ken Lay was graduated from the University of Missouri. At some point, the argument becomes, “everyone I don’t like is bad, therefore elite and snobby!”</p>
<p>I found a blog post by Harry Lewis, a former Dean of Harvard College reposted at a Harvard.edu address. I am not a fan of Harvard, but I think it makes a good argument that they aren’t looking for some sort of a stiff, hidebound “elite.” (I added quotation marks to set off the section Dean Lewis quoted.)</p>
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[“Weird</a>” Harvard Students :: Bits and Pieces :: Berkman Planet Test Hub :: TagTeam](<a href=“http://tagteam.harvard.edu/hub_feeds/27/feed_items/284]"Weird”>http://tagteam.harvard.edu/hub_feeds/27/feed_items/284)</p>