<p>More ad hominem remarks, directed at me and the author. That’s a good indication that what he says is not only valid but that it strikes a very deep chord. </p>
<p>I’m struck by the potential elite school candidates who are proposing to spend four of the most important years of their lives (and in most cases a potfull of mommy and daddy’s money) and who don’t want to spend even 15 minutes reading a thoughtful article by a widely known and respected critic who spent 20 years teaching in that environment. Apparently they are not interested in anything that challenges their already-formed ideas. If that’s not a perfect example of the anti-intellectualism the author talks about, I don’t know what is. </p>
<p>MOWC, I hope and pray your DS is one of the exceptions the author talked about and graduated with his soul not only intact but enriched. </p>
<p>My son has no interest in advocating on behalf of the working class. He neither went in nor came out with a liberal attitude. Actually, he did take a liberal stance on an environmental issue in his senior honors thesis. </p>
<p>These schools have thousands of students. How can anyone think they churn out cookie cutter soulless creeps.</p>
<p>annasdad - you come here in trying to “teach” students a better way. The reason they are not listening(or think you are credible) is because your view is not balanced. There is nothing absolute here. By going to an Indiana directional college does not make one a better person, nor does going to a top tier school corrupts someone’s mind or values. You are anti-intellectual because you believe your view is the only correct one. Many students have posted eloquently on this thread, instead of acknowledging that, you are calling them "ad hominem remarks.: You have posted over 1000 since May with the same theme. I think it is great your two girls are very grounded because they are going to lower tier schools. At the same time, I think it is great other students have different aspirations. </p>
<p>Both of MoWC kids went elite schools, but you would be surprised to know what her kids are doing now. I definitely wouldn’t say they don’t have their souls intact, especially the older child.:)</p>
<p>annasdad, you seem to condemn anyone who doesn’t agree with the author of the article. While he raises some good points, the overwhelming response to this widely-discussed article is that he overstates the problem. And more often than not, those of us unfortunate enough to be disadvantaged by an elite education agree that there could be some truth to what he says, but most of it just isn’t the case.</p>
<p>I don’t think it’s a liberal vs. conservative issue. There are certainly conservatives with genuine compassion for those less fortunate, and some of them are quite generous. As I understand their position, they just don’t want the government compelling them to do so. My FIL is a hardcore tea partier; he recently put $500 in cash into an unmarked envelope and asked DW to slip it under the door of a neighbor whose unemployment had just run out. </p>
<p>As to qualifications to generalize, I do think that the observations of someone who spent 20 years teaching in the environment about the norm deserve some respect.</p>
<p>Thanks, oldfort. Yes, my daughter who is a newly ordained Episcopal Deacon and hospital chaplain is probably less soulless than the Ivy grad. Maybe annasdad would grant an exception for Rice!</p>
<p>Reading the article, he seems to say that there needs to be a better place for the “elite”, and states that non-elite colleges train “for positions somewhere in the middle of the class system”. I don’t see that as any reason to be glad your child isn’t an “elite” student…</p>
<p>oldfort, your post is a perfect example of the ad hominem response. You want to make this about me, not about the points raised in the article. </p>
<p>And you have me confused with someone. None of my children went to or is considering a directional college, in Indiana or elsewhere.</p>
<p>May be what the author was stating was more realistic 10-15 years ago but he has nt noticed the changes in the student population. So he was paying attention to the student body the first 5 years and had a plan to write this article but got around to it 15 years too late. You know them professors never give up those ideas that they originally had.</p>
<p>The Ivies have changed in terms of their student bodies over the last few years quite a bit. They are now 40-45% minorities, about 70+ percent on some level of financial aid, at least 10-20% fully supported financially by the schools, and Harvard and Princeton (Yale and UPenn somewhat) have expanded their affordability factor.</p>
<p>With so many low income and middle class people as well as the rainbow colors of people able to make it to an Ivy, who can support this silly homogeneous student body theory.</p>
<p>There was a white girl from Louisiana with a 30k family income who is going to Harvard this year. She said on CC that had she not received a flyer from Harvard asking her to apply, she would have never considered it. I can’t imagine her not being able to talk to someone from the working class.</p>
<p>Btw, plumbers have exorbitant hourly rates. They may be making more per hour than a new ivy grad in a lot of cases. It is quite possible the Ivy grad is wondering why he got the degree and plumber makes so much more than him and that is what is creating the communication gap! :p</p>
<p>In the first paragraph the author says the plumber is wearing a Red Sox hat, so why not talk about baseball? The ad hominum argument makes sense in this case because the author is an exception to the rule. Most people that go to elite universities are perfectly capable of talking to anyone, to the same extent that people who don’t go to college at all can talk to anyone. </p>
<p>I went to a 4000 student high school where well over half of the students don’t go to any form of 4-year or CC, and I go to a top 30 university. I have no problem talking to any of the kids I went to high school with. At school I work at a job where literally none of the 20 people I work with have gone to college. I have no problem talking to them at all. My boss has the thickest Boston accent I have ever heard, and he is the funniest person I know.</p>
<p>If you can’t talk to people of a different class than you, then it definitely has to do with your upbringing and socialization. Schools may teach you about literature that you can’t talk about with everyone, but it also teaches you about a wide range of subjects with the goal of making you a well-rounded person. </p>
<p>Also, I go to a school notorious for having kids who didn’t get into an Ivy. Most of my friends went to some sort of boarding school or elite private school. Obviously elite schools, which are the most expensive, are going to attract the most affluent students. You don’t learn to be elitist in college though, you learn it as you grow and develop, and your surroundings shape your personality. Having taken many psychology classes, including a class on Personality Psych, I know that personality is almost entirely shaped by surroundings.</p>
<p>Annasdad, you seem to be mixing correlation and causation on this particular issue.</p>
<p>DJE, yes, and he also points out that you can have a wonderful life somewhere in the middle of the class system, yet the option to do so is effectively shut off for elite grads (with exceptions, if course) because of the expectations of parents and the rest of society, which are reinforced by the schools. One of the scenarios he cited resonated with me because of a recent thread right here on CC: the student at an elite school whose parents were trying to throw a guilt trip on him because he was thinking about a teaching career, after all the money they’d spent. </p>
<p>FWIW, the income disparities are far worse at non-elite universities. The reason, of course, is that the elite ones have the funding to be need-blind and full-need, with generous package “bonuses” as well (like no loans, laptop reimbursement, etc.). Upper-income students are heavily represented because achievement is very highly correlated with income. But at the non-elite colleges the problem is worse: only the students who can pay are able to attend. This isn’t as bad at public universities, but low-income students are severely underrepresented even there, and upper-income students are severely overrepresented. There are three times as many private universities as public ones in the US, and the vast majority of these schools are populated by students with high incomes. This socialization - of learning to speak only to those of your class and not to ‘the plumber’ - is theoretically a problem at every kind of university. Ironically it’s the elite ones where this is less likely to be the case.</p>
<p>The problem is not the elite universities. As is widely acknowledged in the debate on socioeconomic diversity in higher education, the problem is K-12 education and the perpetuation of the ‘lower classes’ through a lack of opportunities. The K-12 system in the US is terrible, and the income inequality in the US is one of the worst in the world (there are some 60+ countries with a better Gini coefficient). That is the root of the socioeconomic disparities in higher education, and elite schools, just like every other college, are a reflection of that. But the elite schools are the ones with the money to change how that reflects their student bodies; non-elite schools don’t have that luxury.</p>
<p>flightlessbird, have you read the whole article? If so, why are you obsessing over the first paragraph, which introduces only one of the author’s points. </p>
<p>^ha ha yes, the bill was $357 for responding to a leak, which he couldn’t find! I didn’t mind paying him, though, because he was so friendly, helpful and articulate.</p>
<p>phant, your points are on point and, IMO, well taken (a welcome change from the tenor of most of the responses on this thread), and with most of them I more or less agree. Those elite schools that have made recent strides to open up to lower income students are to be commended, IMO. </p>
<p>But the article is only partly about income disparities. It also focuses on the sense of entitlement these schools engender and the anti-intellectualism they promote. That’s why I wouldn’t want my D going there, though I wouldn’t stop her if she wanted to and could get in with FA that made it affordable. I wouldn’t worry about her not being able (or willing) to talk to plumbers. </p>
<p>I do also take issue with many of his other points, though the socioeconomic one is what I’ve studied the most and is also the one that he seems to build much of his argument on.</p>
<p>Regarding the self-congratulatory nature of elite colleges, I do think there’s a lot of that. But it’s not, as he suggests, that students think of their own value in terms of their SAT/GPA/GRE, by any stretch of the imagination. I don’t believe any student focuses such accomplishments, given that most students have much more impressive ones to their name. No, the self-congratulation comes from simply being selected as one of the few, the proud, the elite. At the same time, you can’t completely blame them for being pleased with themselves: the competitiveness of admission is absurd, and being chosen is an honor in itself, objectively, no matter how much he despises the attitude it engenders.</p>
<p>I flat-out call BS on his points about these elite universities going “easy” on students - giving extensions out like birthday cards, “an endless string of second chances.” That simply isn’t the case at Stanford and I seriously doubt that it’s any different at Yale, Harvard, etc. No “smiling clerk” hands us our education, and no one is actually coddled. Sure, there are lots of resources, and there are tons of opportunities that are less competitive than they are at Huge State U. But who cares about advisers? Everyone knows that they’re a little-used resource even at universities where they’re plentiful (like HYPSM). </p>
<p>He also condemns benefits that I don’t think can legitimately be condemned, like:</p>
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</p>
<p>That’s just not something to complain about, nor can such amazing opportunities realistically contribute to his thesis. As a side point, if non-elite schools had the funds to give their students these opportunities, they would. And in fact, that’s what they strive to do (the honors colleges at many of the non-elite schools, for example, work hard to give their students these opportunities).</p>
<p>His points about grade inflation make me think “lies, damned lies, and statistics.” He neglects to mention the profound influence of student selectivity on grade inflation (both of which have increased hand-in-hand). He also doesn’t mention that small classes always - at every school, elite or not - give out higher grades on average. So these elite universities, the ones who have achieved a faculty:student ratio sufficient to provide tons of small classes, can find the root of much of their grade inflation simply in the common small class setting. Which isn’t a terrible reality: small classes are provably better for student learning, as modern pedagogy has found that students learn best in an interactive environment. So they’re simply more likely to learn better and to earn better grades.</p>
<p>He goes on to rant about “the opportunities it shuts down”:</p>
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</p>
<p>This is such a watery argument, it’s painfully obvious he’s grasping at straws. Of course, he could have a point, but he doesn’t seem to stop and ask himself: do these students want these opportunities to be more, well, mundane? The proof is in the pudding: students at elite schools overwhelming want expanded horizons, the opportunity to go far, to be above average. These schools simply garner more students who have their sights set high. He can’t legitimately fault people for simply wanting more, so he can’t fault these universities for not attracting more people who want to be average.</p>
<p>I also highly disagree with his assessment that elite university students are anti-intellectual. This is simply from my own experience, but almost all my peers in college were extremely passionate, learn-for-the-sake-of-learning types. They like the big ideas, the big picture, the big questions. But yet again he condemns elite universities for a problem that’s endemic to higher education: “Places like Yale are simply not set up to help students ask the big questions.” And then he goes on to bash universities that don’t emphasize the humanities and liberal arts. That’s a point that most will just have to agree to disagree, because that’s a war that’s been waged for a long time now and will likely continue for a long time. IMO it’s not a hallmark of a failing education, as he seems to suggest.</p>
<p>All these glaring problems, along with his inclusion of snide remarks meant to jab students at elite universities, along with his metaphors that are a little more than a stretch (the “gates” metaphor, the “CEO salary vs. A-” metaphor), make it really hard to agree with him. And for a reader who might be a student at an elite university and who doesn’t agree with most of his assertions, it’s hard not to take many of his claims personally, when he often, though not always, makes sweeping, unqualified statements about students as though his claim is universally true.</p>
<p>A final consideration: he’s probably hyperbolizing in order to a) make a point (which is more easily understood if it isn’t heavily qualified), and b) cause more of a splash. Sensationalist journalism is always more successful and highly read than something which is heavily qualified to be fair - because that’s just not as interesting to read. So that’s another reason it’s hard to take his article seriously, or at face value.</p>