<p>The author is a long-time, former professor at Columbia and Yale.</p>
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[quote]
The first disadvantage of an elite education … is that it makes you incapable of talking to people who aren’t like you. Elite schools pride themselves on their diversity, but that diversity is almost entirely a matter of ethnicity and race. With respect to class, these schools are largely—indeed increasingly—homogeneous. … Because these schools tend to cultivate liberal attitudes, they leave their students in the paradoxical position of wanting to advocate on behalf of the working class while being unable to hold a simple conversation with anyone in it.</p>
<p>My D is starting her college career at Cornell today. She is nothing like the students portrayed in the article. I will look closely for signs over the next 4 years that Cornell is ruining her. For “Being glad your kid’s not an Ivy canidate” you sure seem to fixate on them.</p>
<p>I know a few recent Cornell grads and they are nothing like what is described above. I also know grads from non-Ivy schools (solid private schools who fit the mold described above perfectly). </p>
<p>I also know some parents who have raised children to be as defined above. Parents play a very big role in this too by choosing schools, summer camps, vacations, setting an example or lack there of regarding many facets of life, how they spend their time (is it mostly at the country club, working a soup kitchen, spening time with girl/boyscouts, coaching sports, skiing in New England/Canada/Switzerland etc., classes learning a new foreign language, bible discussion, building a treehouse with your kids, singing in the church choir, spending Saturdays at a day spa).</p>
<p>All of those ills may be true of some students, but it’s true of some students everywhere, not all elite students and nobody else. To balance the writer’s assertion of Cleveland State college’s toughness, a friend of mine teaches at a community college; every day her students demand, beg and plead for, expect, and are mightily affronted when they don’t get, extensions on papers after the deadlines have passed. Their expectations of special treatment are just as prevalent as those the author found in his elite students. Many of them think that they deserve special treatment–surprise–because they are less-privileged. Our society is, on the whole, inclined to think the rights of the individual trump those of the group, and rights keep getting confused with privilege. What’s more, the benefit to the group of looking after the well-being of the whole has been confused with socialism, and interfering with individual rights.</p>
<p>In the example of an extension for a paper, you may see this in microcosm. For a professor, there is a huge difference in granting extensions on papers before the deadline, and after. Obviously, an emergency is an emergency, and can’t be foreseen by definition; but students who ask for an extension before the paper is due–even if only a few hours before–will usually receive more kindly treatment than afterward. My friend says so on her syllabus. The reason for this is that it is unfair to the class, as a whole, to ask everyone to work to a standard that individuals can escape by special pleading. Most of the requests for extensions that my friend receives can be boiled down to, I didn’t think the project would take so long. It was harder than I thought it would be. I fell asleep. To ask for an extension a week before the due date, on the grounds that you have two tests scheduled for the same day, is reasonable. To not turn in the paper because you were working on something else, and then email a request for an extension, is asking that you not be penalized for your failure to plan ahead–something that the others in the class had to do. The other students have the right to expect that their respect for the stated terms was matched by the professor’s respect for the terms she has set, and by that of the class as a whole. </p>
<p>The lack of intellectual aspiration the writer points to is also true of our society on the whole; “intellectual” has become practically a dirty word to a large portion of our culture–at least, to a vocal part of it. If we do not value independent thought and ideas, in our politicians and our policy-setters, we cannot complain that our students also find no value in learning to understand other ideas before rejecting them.</p>
<p>But do they get them? I think that is the point. I don’t think the author was advocating that standards around deadlines and attendance should be reduced at less-selective institutions.</p>
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<p>But shouldn’t one of the goals of a college education be to help students move out of that mindset - rather than reinforcing it?</p>
<p>This article has been discussed many times on CC … I’d suggest doing a search if you want to see a few hundred more comments on the article.</p>
<p>PS - as a grad of 3 highly-selective school I found the article to be almost totally crap … my experience, my classmates, and my life do not match this guy’s at all … if he can’t talk to a plumber it’s not the fault of his college; it’s because he is socially inept.</p>
<p>If you need confirmation of the author’s conclusions, just review the postings here on CC. The knee-jerk response to “Is [exclusive college] worth the money” is almost never “Yes, because it will improve your ability to interact with others and have a satisfying intellectual life.” It is almost always “Yes, because with a degree from there, you’ll get a good job and make a lot of money.”</p>
<p>That is probably less of a function of elite universities than it is of elite socialization in childhood, whether it is attending an elite (private or public magnet) school, or simply living in an economically homogeneous upper class area. Going to a university is four years out of one’s life; if someone has extensive social interaction with people not like him/her before (or after) that period of time, then going to university won’t make him/her incapable of talking to people not like him/her.</p>
<p>All universities are “elite” to some extent in the overall scheme of society – only about a third of the 25+ year old population has completed a bachelor’s degree (somewhat more have “some college”, but that includes taking of a course or few out of personal interest at the community college).</p>
<p>If you read the article, the author makes the point that it’s not just the university. But is the function of a college education to allow one to remain safely inside one’s comfort zone or to force one into new worlds?</p>
<p>(I know what many would answer: the function of a college education is to prepare one for a good job and the heck with the rest of the nonsense.)</p>
<p>If you were to attend, to pick an example I know well, Northern Illinois University, you would come into contact with many students whose socioeconomic background is very different than your own. D of a friend graduated from there in June; father is a disabled cop, mother cleans houses and works PT in a convenience store. Both are HS grads only. She’s far from unique or unusual at NIU (and would think every other state U in the country); many students are first generation college students whose parents are blue collar people. I’m sure there are a few tokens like that at exclusive colleges, but they are just that, tokens.</p>
<p>To their credit, a few of the exclusive colleges are making a serious effort to make it financially possible for the less-well-off to attend. But as you point out, few children of the lower socioeconomic spectrum have the advantages needed to qualify for those programs.</p>
<p>Annasdad: no, they don’t get the extensions, except for truly extenuating circumstances, and they are very annoyed about the professor’s heartlessness. My point is that the expectation of special treatment is not limited to “elite” students; it is true of students across the spectrum of college life. The article asserted that only elite students are guilty of such expectations, and elite institutions of fostering them by buckling to them. In my own experience, it is very difficult to refuse extensions and so forth, because the students can be very unpleasant if you do–it’s not that at elite colleges there are people to run interference for them, the students are perfectly happy to advocate for themselves. Professors refuse them anyway, on the grounds I gave above of fairness to the rest of the class, but again, the students are less concerned about fairness to others than about their own situations (there was a thread a while ago started by some kid who was really steamed that, when he slept through his midterm, his teacher had the nerve to refuse to allow him to take it later). </p>
<p>And my other point is that colleges, in my experience, try very hard to foster critical thinking and intellectual rigor, but if the society that produces the kids thinks that critical thinking and rigor are merely symptoms of pandering to the liberal left, the kids will be very much less receptive to the colleges’ attempts to ask for intellectual integrity. The viewpoint that says, “since I am right, there is no point in allowing for discussion” is anti-intellectual, and damned proud of it, and it permeates our culture today. The more colleges try to counter that viewpoint, the more they are accused of a liberal, leftist bias, of being bastions of narrow-minded political correctness, etc., etc.</p>
<p>In full support of the article and original post, my kid is an Ivy candidate and he is a total pain in the ass. Additionally, I am reasonably certain he is a commie.</p>
<p>I just reread the relevant section and I don’t see that at all. I see nothing about whether students at non-elite schools have such expectations or not, only that the kind of accommodations made at the Yales of the world don’t work elsewhere. Unless you can give me a quote?</p>
<p>The students at NIU all went to a four year university.</p>
<p>That was true of about 40-50% the graduates of the high school I attended*, so NIU would be “elite” compared to the high school I attended (when I attended, not now), even though (even then) the high school was significantly above average in terms of college attendance.</p>
<ul>
<li>Another 30% or so went to community college, but most community college students do not eventually transfer to a four year university. Most of those who went to a four year university as freshmen went to mid-level or local state universities that are probably comparable to NIU.</li>
</ul>
<p>I look at it from a different perspective. I think the lower classes should try to understand finer things; in that way, small talk would be less awkward when they are carrying our bags, cleaning our messes, or driving our cars.</p>