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<p>It’s probably more the remnants of the hippie philosophy so prevalent in the 60’s than anything else. By the 80’s, though, the values of those same Baby Boomers had shifted toward more materialistic ends.</p>
<p>“Whether it’s 20% or 50%, can we all agree that our nation’s brightest minds would be better used in literally anything but finance or consulting? It’s tremendous squandering of our greatest social capital.”</p>
<p>Financiers and consultants can’t finance or consult on anything unless there are other bright minds inventing, creating and marketing goods and services. And there’s no shortage there. This is a MORE entrepreneurial age than our era. </p>
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<p>I don’t think that’s true historically and I don’t think that’s true now. LOTS of good stuff happens because rich people give $ to make it possible. </p>
<p>The Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation–lots of money spent to help with health care issues in impoverished countries; Gates Millenium Scholarships to help the poor gain access to college, the Gates Cambridge Scholarships to give top students from around the world a chance to study at Cambridge, money spent in the US trying to improve the quality of inner city public schools…lots of other good stuff. </p>
<p>I went to Shakespeare in the Park this summer–fantastic and free. Lots of corporations and rich people give $ to keep it free. There are 3 on-line lotteries–everyone, those 65+ and the disabled. The disabled get the best seats. I watch PBS–lots of $. One family foundation keeps “Mystery!,” which I enjoy , on-line.</p>
<p>I go to the NYC public library. Many of the branches are “Carnegie libraries.” Andrew Carnegie gave hundreds if not thousands of free public libraries across the US. His game plan? “I’ll give you a free building, if the town/city raises sufficient funds to pay for books.” If I go to the Schwarzman–the building with the lions out front–I use the Bill Blass reading room, the Milstein Division of Local History, etc. And the library would have been closed down completely if it weren’t for the generosity of Stephen Schwarzman. </p>
<p>I went to a museum last week and really enjoyed a special exhibit. Even the elevator has a name! </p>
<p>I go to a public park in my neighborhood. Outside the park is a list of donors who made the park possible. Lots of private $ goes to the Central Park Conservatory and the Madison Square Park Conservatory. The latter has a really cool playground paid for by private donors. </p>
<p>If I go to a hospital, I’m sure to see the names of lots of wealthy donors. They paid for the fantastic facilities and equipment that help lots of people. Heck, Bloomberg gave Baltimore a new, state of the art children’s hospital at Johns Hopkins. For that matter, Johns Hopkins gave Baltimore Johns Hopkins Hospital in the first place. And his will specified that poor “colored” be treated there for free. Yes, it was segregated when built, but there is no way the State of Maryland would ever have created a public facility that gave African Americans the same quality of health care. </p>
<p>There’s an organization for struggling single parents I really believe in. It does good things like running after school programs in about half a dozen public shelters, so that kids are supervised. It gets some public funds, but a lot of its funding comes from wealthier single parents. It does some small things that make a big difference. For example, lots of summer camps take a certain # of poor kids, but you usually need a up to date physical to go. Medicaid pays for one a year–or at least that used to be the rule. If you got one to start school, then you’re not eligible to get another for summer camp. Enter this organization, which gets volunteer physicians to fill out the forms for kids to go and buys the kids things like swim suits, goggles, the labels needed for clothing ,etc. so that it’s possible for the kids who go to camp for “free” to take advantage of the offer. </p>
<p>Ever heard of Kickstarter? It’s a great way to fund projects. The founder grew up in my NYC neighborhood. It’s made lots of creative projects possible. </p>
<p>The Robin Hood Foundation, which JFK, Jr. was instrumental in getting off the ground, does a heck of a lot for poor people in NYC and Metro NY. <a href=“Programs | Robin Hood”>http://www.robinhood.org/programs</a> Thank God for it during Hurricane Sandy. </p>
<p>So, don’t assume that private $ can’t do good things. It can and it does.</p>
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<p>“my experience, this is more often than not resume padding for a grad school application or to score a prestigious non-profit interview (post experience).”</p>
<p>Does it matter, if the good gets done? I don’t like to assume other people’s motives. </p>
<p>If the kid from East Whoville State looks at TFA, Peace Corps, etc is that different from an a Ivy/elite kid doing so? </p>
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Baloney. I’ve known multiple kids (and adults) who did these things, and this wasn’t the reason for any of them to do it. Considering how much work these things are, it would also be stupid to do it for this reason.</p>
<p>“MiamiDAP has a daughter in med school, therefore she knows a lot about the medical field. Or not. Mental health problems are common amongst med students and physcians.”
-Did not hear about a single case, while heard about many very unusual cases (without details that cannot be communicated). I do not know anything about medical field at all. I can only report what is communicated to me. Those who put themselves into very rigorous and supposedly stressful situation are also people who have learned how to deal with this, they know what relaxes them, they know how to take care of themselves, they are not stupid. I believe that it is accepted here that we are talking about bright people. The level of brightness could be measured by the level of adjustability. So, who cannot adjust, fall out. I do not know about 25 activities, while spending at least 3 hours every single day (and weekends) on just one EC, but many unrelated activities are absolute must for many who otherwise would feel under presure of tremendous focus, which does happen for short periods, it is inevitable, but then they know that they have to unwind, let it go, switch the focus, dilute it. Again, they are aware of it, they are not stupid.</p>
<p>“But the most sacrosanct of values includes pushing more power to the top 1 .1 .01%. Topics like thriving artist communities, orchestras, upward mobility of the middle class, health care for the average or lower income person - these are always absent during the fawning of the wealthy”</p>
<p>I would pay $100 to turn on the news at night and NOT hear a discussion about health care for lower income people. Not because I don’t think it’s important- I do- but because after the last two years, the Right has said everything it can possibly say (overturn Obama care, it will ruin America, the end is nigh, it will make hospitals filled with poor people with wretched diseases chasing out the folks getting cosmetic surgery who can pay privately) and the Left has said everything it can possibly say (if you object to any particular part of Obama care you are a soulless cretin, even if the legislation hasn’t fixed many of the core issues facing poor people and their health needs.)</p>
<p>Have you been living under a rock to have missed the debate on health care for low income people since the beginning of the current administration? Both sides of the aisle and both sides of the media have been obsessed with covering this issue. We are only now dealing with ISIS and Syria since we spent so much time and political capital arguing over Obama care and birth control, Obama care and in-network/out of network.</p>
<p>You must live somewhere where there is no CNN or Fox or MSNBC or ABC if you don’t think we talk about healthcare enough in this country!!!</p>
<p>" like thriving artist communities, "
-There are no such things, everybody knows that if you are not Picasso, or Brad Pitt (or his wify for that matter), then you need to work to sustain yourself and family. I always correct people who call me an artist, I always say that I am not an artist, I am an IT proffessional (I usually use “stupid programmer”). There is an artist in everybody, but there are also financial responsibilities, so one got to find something that one likes that can actually provide a financila support. Again, if you are not a Picasso (but there are Picasso’s among us, there is no question), but unless you are the one, then what is thriving about art, except for your art?
In regard to health care, nobody cares about this talks any more since no talks make any sense, they do not porduce results, results are produced by the stroke of pen of ONE person and NOBODY else, so what is there to talk about, but talk they do, over and over and over, I guess all this talks make some peole healthier, then why not, let them talk, I have no intentions of listenning though.</p>
<p>I think Deresiewicz raises good questions about what education should even be about. Personally I have a bionic hamster of the STEM variety entering college fall 2015. At turns I’m thinking about him “reading Kierkegaard in his pajamas” or studying “medieval tapestries” but I probably couldn’t get him to do those things under threat of horse dragging. He’s pretty stem-y so he’ll be fine finding work. Heck if he skipped college he could enter the job market as a programmer. But I want him in school to mature and broaden who he is. I want him to meet kids from all over the world and to be challenged, perhaps perplexed, by the kids majoring in medieval tapestries or poetry. My sense is that the liberal arts are under attack - derided and devalued. And that “the financial penalty for taking a job that’s fun/fulfilling/creative/interesting keeps getting larger” in my mind is a problem. </p>
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Maybe, but not at Yale, of all places. If your son should happen to go to Yale, he will have distributional requirements that will force him to get at least a semblance of a liberal arts education, even if he’d rather take all STEM classes.</p>
<p>Miami, the statistics on drug abuse among physicians is not a secret in the medical world. Use your friend Google. Most people would not say that becoming addicted to Oxy is a coping strategy for a stressful job- it is a highly self-destructive way of self-medicating.</p>
<p>There is no financial penalty for taking a job that is fun, fulfilling, creative, etc. My S is a future artist that isn’t really concerned about his future financial struggles because as he says, “I eat art.”</p>
<p>If he has any stress, it’s me trying to convince him that he needs money for necessities and perks in life. He tells me that he’s preparing to live with as few needs as possible.</p>
<p>It’s his choice. He clearly knows what he’s getting into, he knows the most talented will win and that getting known requires years of sacrificial labor and even then, there are no guarantees of wealth and recognition. He wouldn’t whine about people pursuing high paying occupations because it’s not his thing. He’s not losing because someone else is so bent on winning. Reality is not a penalty. Just like high pay is often not a reward, it’s compensation for a lot of hard work.</p>
<p>Honestly speaking, no degree, no college pedigree, nothing is a guarantee of future success.</p>
<p>Innovation is almost sure to turn everything on its head. Engineers are in demand now but engineering is going global thanks to technology. </p>
<p>An American engineer will compete against engineers in Mumbai who work for half the pay. The same is true of the sciences and math fields. </p>
<p>And the hot jobs of today will grow to excess and start downsizing because too many young people were encouraged to flood into those professions.</p>
<p>Robots and other machines that never complain, file lawsuits, call in sick and rob employers will replace workers in more and more areas.</p>
<p>Everything is in flux and maybe then, the artists who can create in unique ways that computers never can will rise in respect and influence.</p>
<p>Even Wall Street will be, as it is already becoming, dominated by computers making transactions and decisions.</p>
<p>“I want him to meet kids from all over the world and to be challenged, perhaps perplexed, by the kids majoring in medieval tapestries or poetry. My sense is that the liberal arts are under attack - derided and devalued.”</p>
<p>it’s at the more elite schools that he’ll have more chance to meet the kids majoring in medieval tapestry or poetry, compared to the type of school that I linked to before, where many of the majors are explicitly pre-professional. So I don’t know why you’re bashing the Ivies and similar schools - those are the holdouts.</p>
<p>As it happens, I DO think that too many of our sharpest young people are going into finance vs. other fields. But it’s not the Ivies’ fault that this is happening – it’s a function of high up-front pay. That’s how economic incentives work! </p>
<p>Nor is it true that the finance-bound kids at Ivies are dominating the others or even that they aren’t immersing themselves in liberal arts and creative campus life while they are there. I’ve pointed this out before, but the one Goldman Sachs-bound kid in my social circle (read: a cappella group) was summa cum laude in Classics, aka Latin and Ancient Greek. He was in the Glee Club as well as our group. Great musician. You couldn’t find a better example of a student devoting himself to the arts and to traditional, purely intellectual pursuits on campus.</p>
<p>It is absolutely true that being at HYP can make you feel like nothing you are doing is good enough because your classmates are all off riding Hillary Clinton’s campaign plane or whatever. It does create a feeling of pressure to do something impressive. But I don’t think it creates an atmosphere where there’s only one respectable path. People went off to be amazing in a hundred different directions. One of my transfer-mates (a physics major!) became a writer on A Prairie Home Companion. I assume she didn’t make much money there, but boy, that impressed me a lot more than any of the finance guys.</p>
<p>“As it happens, I DO think that too many of our sharpest young people are going into finance vs. other fields. But it’s not the Ivies’ fault that this is happening – it’s a function of high up-front pay. That’s how economic incentives work!”</p>
<p>Let’s suppose, hypothetically, the Ivies were to stop allowing the Goldman Sachs and McKinseys and so forth to recruit on campus. Then they’d be dinged for not enabling their poorer students to have access to the sources of class mobility. Can’t win for losing!</p>
<p>I’m not bashing any school. I’m saying the author may have a point that Ivy undergraduate schooling has become a money chase. This thread had different posters beating their chest about how many VC’s came from this school or that school. And even at the end of the article <em>he’s</em> not blaming the ivies either.</p>
<p>“Waste of a great mind.”</p>
<p>What do you want those law school admits to do instead? What type of career or graduate school wouldn’t be wasting a great mind that loves theories of government, the written word, and tough problems to solve?</p>
<p>I don’t claim to have a great mind, but whatever mind I have was blown away by the intellectual challenge of law school.</p>
<p>"Class mobility? His argument is that the data shows these elite college students are mostly already from upper middle class backgrounds. "</p>
<p>But he’s wrong. They aren’t “mostly already from upper middle class backgrounds.” Indeed, these colleges go out of their way to recruit at lower SES levels, which causes untold ANGST about upper middle class kids who are “shut out” by poorer kids with lower SAT (etc) scores.</p>
<p>There is some truth to that in a larger moral, Mother Theresa type sense. But its a free country.</p>
<p>The real question for those who can identify such endeavors as a waste is: what is a superior alternative? We’re all ears. And we might agree, I suppose. </p>
<p>But so far, my verdict is its largely just ***ching about people with high incomes. Feel free to provide some evidence to the contrary. </p>