The Disadvantages of an Elite Education

<p>I don't get the hand-wringing about first generation either Ilsa. LLike somehow students are not only entitled to a college education, but entitled to go to an elite school.</p>

<p>My parents were first generation and my dad went to a commuter school at first then transferred to a land grant college. My mom went to community college. College--ANY college--was seen as good. My brother and I both went to a state flagship--which was seen as a huge step up from community college which was the norm in our family, but my parents aspired to give us a better college experience than they had--they wanted us to focus on academics and not juggle work and other distractions. My daughter is at an excellent private university. So it has taken our family three generations to achieve what some argue should be achievable in one. </p>

<p>The expectation that socioeconomically disadvantaged students who go to mediocre or worse high schools should somehow be proportionally represented at HYPS is well intended but ultimately who is being served here? The students, who in many cases are socially isolated and far from family and other support systems, or the institutions who can feel smug about "diversity?"</p>

<p>I'd rather see limited resources devoted to get 10 students from a lousy high school all the way through community college and a state university than one student through a HYPS.</p>

<p>parentsofbear:</p>

<p>By you definition, if someone who has all kids attending HYP on full need based aid, the kids are elite but family is not elite. It could be true. However, I always thought elite is one who has never lived in impoverish condition It is a person whose family cannot afford to buy milk and bread, How this person can be elite. It is news to me. I disagree with it but I cannot change the perception.</p>

<p>The institution is "elite" insofar as it is extremely difficult to get into and enjoys prestige. Some of the students may be part of the socio-economic elite (at the national or local level) and others may not be. Students can also be part of different types of elites: artistic, athletic, academic.</p>

<p>
[quote]
The expectation that socioeconomically disadvantaged students who go to mediocre or worse high schools should somehow be proportionally represented at HYPS is well intended but ultimately who is being served here? The students, who in many cases are socially isolated and far from family and other support systems, or the institutions who can feel smug about "diversity?"

[/quote]
</p>

<p>For the most part those students that come from these backgrounds do very well and studies have shown that students from these lower SES make the greatest strides. First there aren't that many students IMO who are fortunate enough to get into these elite schools for any number of reasons,and thus statistically aren't that significant. Secondly, of those fortunate enough to make it, the adcoms have done a great job of identifying and recruiting these diamonds in the rough (literally & figuratively) and if the grad rates of these students are any indication, while the transition and obstacles faced may be more challenging, these student are making the most of the opportunities available.</p>

<p>stockmarket all I can suggest is you read some Thomas Jefferson.</p>

<p>This is an interesting piece in the NYTimes that ties in to this discussion:</p>

<p><a href="http://www.nytimes.com/2008/06/23/education/23careers.html?ref=us%5B/url%5D"&gt;http://www.nytimes.com/2008/06/23/education/23careers.html?ref=us&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p>

<p>The video is well done and worth watching. </p>

<p>I took pictures of my son by the gate that he mentions in the video - I felt the same emotion he describes. Most interesting to me is the change the author observes in his fellow classmates.</p>

<p>I think the article is valid, but as we've discussed before, I don't think the elite schools are especially geared toward real-world jobs relative to the West Podunk State U's of the world. The vast majority of kids at West Podunk are majoring in marketing, nursing, education, communications, information technology...fields whose entire purpose is to help the student get a steady job, not learning for learning's sake. We might view teaching or nursing as a public service career when the Harvard kids go that route, but that's not really how the college programs are marketed IME. It's not "Make a sacrifice and save the world," it's "Nurses start at $50k with great benefits!"</p>

<p>Hanna,
I don't understand your reference to "West Podunk U" in relation to this article. I know of people who have gone to small state universities and chose teaching and nursing because they thought they could make a difference while making a living, not because they thought the long term salary sounded lucrative. I think you are mistaken about the motivations behind individuals that choose these professions. As far as marketing, my daughter and I looked at teaching programs across the midwest - there is no marketing - if anything they are extremely truthful about what it takes - 5 years at UW Madison. </p>

<p>I don't have any bias for or against Harvard nor do I have an opinion on whether it's a good or bad trend that they send so many graduates in to banking. It's food for thought. in the same way that the original article is. My son attended a top twenty school, not the elite of HYP, and he thought there was a lot of truth in the article. Maybe he sees it, just as Mini did becasue he came from a different background than most of the students at his school. My guess is that the author of the original article sees it becasue he did not come from an elite world, whether it be money, athletics, education or music. My assumption is that being immersed in the world of academia has changed his view enough and has kept him sheltered enough to the everyday world that he found himself out of touch with the likes of a plumber. </p>

<p>This excerpt sums up the article I posted:
In his commencement speech last month at Wesleyan University, Barack Obama, the presumptive Democratic presidential nominee, voiced a similar theme when he sounded an impassioned call to public service, and warned that the pursuit of narrow self-interest — “the big house and the nice suits and the other things that our money culture says you should buy ... betrays a poverty of ambition.”</p>

<p>Universities are so concerned about this issue that some — Amherst, Tufts, the University of Pennsylvania and Harvard, for example — have expanded public service fellowships and internships. “We’re in the business of graduating people who will make the world better in some way,” said Anthony Marx, Amherst’s president. “That’s what justifies the expense of the education.”</p>

<p>" totally agree that Mini's Ds, children of a Williams graduate and Chicago Ph.D., are more advantaged than the first-generation college students whose parents are perhaps better off financially."</p>

<p>The major advantage that my kids have (and it is a BIG one) is that we homeschooled 'em, and hence made good use of our education! (It probably helped that they grew up in a place in whichthere is no old money, not a lot of new money, virtually no distinctions between "good" and "bad" schools, and students relatively routinely turn down Harvard (or Brown or wherever) for BYU (and that students who attend "prestige" schools - including my d. - never come back, so the prestige value, at least of the eastern schools, is absolutely minimal.) (There are said to be two other Williams alums in my town, but I haven't met them, though there are a lot (relatively) of Chicago MSWs in social work.)</p>

<p>"I also get the sense that you may be very sensitive to what you might perceive as snobbery or slights (even inadvertently) from people with more wealth? If I'm off base, please correct me, it's just an impression I get."</p>

<p>I have written extensively on this site that the major educational and life benefit that I received from my college education was what I gained from watching how folks with much, much greater income than I had got on in the world, and a growing realization that I could pretty much do the same, without the money! (And I would note that I believe I have been pretty successful in that regard, and to that extent, my "elite" education was a terrific success,a dn for which I am forever grateful. The data, by the way, supports this - as studies indicate that the greatest beneficiaries of those who receive "elite" educations are those with low-incomes to begin with.) And yes, there was snobbery and slights, some intended, most not - (how could others have possibly known how the nightly pizza run made me feel, why should I have even have expected others to, and what models did I have to even talk about it?), and most of which could have been avoided had social and economic class been a subject of honest and respectful dialogue at the college (which it wasn't). And this is why I have gone out of my way to applaud Dartmouth for its efforts in that regard (Amherst and Smith already had programs, but Dartmouth is the first Ivy to have instituted one.)</p>

<p>I also began posting about the impacts of Princeton's initiatives more than two years ago, noting that the first part of the initiative (no loans) was directed primarily at students in the top quintile in income, but below those who would be expected to pay full-freight ($100k-$180k). Later policies have increased the percentage of low- and middle-income students back to the point where Princeton is now basically where it was in 1980. Whether that is good or bad is a matter of opinion; my point was not that it is "good", but that it is quite different from what the data indicate about Yale, which is the jumping-off point for the article (and where, statistically, there really are very few middle-income students.) So you can't generalize about HYP anymore.</p>

<p>Thank you for clarifying, Mini. I'm sorry I must have missed those earlier posts. If there is a link with a particularly cogent summary (not that all of your posts wouldn't be cogent!), I would appreciate it.</p>

<p>
[quote]
The major advantage that my kids have (and it is a BIG one) is that we homeschooled 'em, and hence made good use of our education!

[/quote]
.</p>

<p>I agree that that this was a BIG advantage.</p>

<p>One disadvantage of an elite education that I see, being a rather pragmatic working class person, is the constant exposure to the most ridiculous decisions made in the name of PC, cultural sensitivity, or some bizarre mindset which to me seems Ivory Towerish. The latest yesterday from S: S' friend's dorm advisor sends e-mail to residents of her building that despite the fact that their dorm does indeed have A/C, the administration will not be turning it on out of a concern for campus equity. If not everyone has A/C, then no one should. Excuse me, but, isn't that why there's a housing lottery? To make access to unequal dorms as fair as humanly possible? Based on seniority and random number assignments, you get your pick. So, should dorms with new carpets have them covered over with old rugs since some dorms only have old carpets? What's next? Even if we assume that they are justified in their concern for campus equity, why not instead come up with a way to lobby or fundraise to get A/C for the other dorms? And this is only the latest. A favorite from last year was the college apologizing for another's college's un-PC mascot, even though the party assumed to be offended by said mascot declared they were not, but rather very proud of it.</p>

<p>Edit: Oh, and I suppose the administration doesn't see any problem at all with invalidating their own lottery system. If A/C was a priority and a senior used her high number specificly to obtain that benefit, let's say over a larger room or a single or whatever, they just shafted her badly.</p>

<p>not to mention, GFG, that it might encourage a whole new social dynamic, attracting other dorms to hang out in the A/C dorm, creating unexpected friendships & fab study-groups.</p>

<p>Nah, let's all be miserable together.</p>

<p>The GFG: Is that unique to elite institutions? I've read about plenty of PCness in state universities.</p>

<p>Indeed. That sort of thing is endemic in higher education; it's hardly confined to the elites.</p>

<p>"Deresiewicz's lamentation is just a facade for an opportunity to expound upon how 'deep' he is." -Easy</p>

<p>This nails it. End of discussion.</p>

<p>"5 years at UW Madison."</p>

<p>Madison ain't West Podunk U by a long shot. Anyway, the most popular college major (by FAR) in the US is business, which isn't even offered at most of the elite schools discussed in the article. So I don't see how they confer such a disadvantage. Nor is it clear to me that an adult person who's unable to talk to his plumber has anyone to blame but himself.</p>

<p>UW Madison is very well known for marketing, IME.</p>

<p>I just got an email from a friend of mine studying abroad who enclosed the following anecdote about her encounter with a guy from Harvard that encapsulates my sentiments:</p>

<p>"We were walking around as he was taking photographs ("I wouldn't feel right taking snapshots, photography is a process...." -- he says this as I'm "snapshotting" with my cannon) and then out of nowhere he goes, "this might sound pretentious, but whenever i'm in really old, important places like this, I get the same feeling i get whenever I walk up the steps of the Harvard Library and I think about all the great men who have walked there before." I actually did throw up a little in my mouth. I looked at him and he goes, "did that sound pretentious?" and i was like "that WAS pretentious."</p>

<p>It's not that people from "lesser" schools hate the Ivy Leaguers, it's just in settings where people from different schools interact (like Model UN for instance) they come in feeling "destined" to do well and their actions, statements, and reactions reflect that. I think that confidence is both a help and a hindrance. For some people it might be a benefit on the whole, but from my experiences at a state school and my interactions with Ivy Leaguers, I can't help but think a state school education can be just as beneficial in a different manner, for many of the reasons stated earlier in this thread.</p>