The advantages and disadvantages of an elite schooling

[bigbadwolf]

Thought-provoking essay by William Deresiewicz:

In short, the way students are treated in college trains them for the social position they will occupy once they get out. At schools like Cleveland State, they’re being trained for positions somewhere in the middle of the class system, in the depths of one bureaucracy or another. They’re being conditioned for lives with few second chances, no extensions, little support, narrow opportunity—lives of subordination, supervision, and control, lives of deadlines, not guidelines. At places like Yale, of course, it’s the reverse.

Elite schools nurture excellence, but they also nurture what a former Yale graduate student I know calls “entitled mediocrity.” A is the mark of excellence; A- is the mark of entitled mediocrity. It’s another one of those metaphors, not so much a grade as a promise. It means, don’t worry, we’ll take care of you. You may not be all that good, but you’re good enough.

It’s no coincidence that our current president, the apotheosis of entitled mediocrity, went to Yale. Entitled mediocrity is indeed the operating principle of his administration, but as Enron and WorldCom and the other scandals of the dot-com meltdown demonstrated, it’s also the operating principle of corporate America. The fat salaries paid to underperforming CEOs are an adult version of the A-.

...

We are slouching, even at elite schools, toward a glorified form of vocational training.
Indeed, that seems to be exactly what those schools want. There’s a reason elite schools speak of training leaders, not thinkers—holders of power, not its critics.

...

Being an intellectual begins with thinking your way outside of your assumptions and the system that enforces them. But students who get into elite schools are precisely the ones who have best learned to work within the system, so it’s almost impossible for them to see outside it, to see that it’s even there. Long before they got to college, they turned themselves into world-class hoop-jumpers and teacher-pleasers, getting A’s in every class no matter how boring they found the teacher or how pointless the subject, racking up eight or 10 extracurricular activities no matter what else they wanted to do with their time.

 

[Yike Lu]

I saw this a while back and I agree on a lot of the points.

 

[bigbadwolf]

The writer is a bit unfair as it's not a uniquely American state of affairs. The same situation holds in Britain, France, and Japan. And historically, universities everywhere have tended not to produce the kind of critical thinkers the writer refers to. Why should they? They're part of the establishment, not subversive institutions. And professors typically do not speak truth to power: it would endanger their jobs. For informed criticism and dissent one has to look outside the groves of academe.

 

[nickbyfleet]

Thoughts

I really enjoyed reading this article--one point though, I live near Cleveland State and my impression after having visited the school is that it is extremely mediocre. Adherents of the author's viewpoint should remember that there are genuine advantages to attending an elite school beyond the prestige and "old boys club."