“The Disadvantages of an Elite Education”
I just finished reading through The Disadvantages of an Elite Education by William Deresiewicz in a Summer 2008 exhortation of The American Scholar. You might imagine that an elite education by sheer definition would be beneficial to you as a student and seeker of truth, beauty, and goodness, but Deresiewicz is determined to shatter your preconceptions.
“The first disadvantage of an elite education, as I learned in my kitchen that day, is that it makes you incapable of talking to people who aren’t like you.”
The problem which most have talking to strangers is that people in general have difficulty talking to people who aren’t like them. If two students went to the same University, it’s the same as two people from the same town or city transplanted elsewhere. I guarantee that if I (now in NYC) bump into someone who lived in Sexsmith, Alberta we would be able to break the ice as easily as if I run into another Cornellian.
“The second disadvantage, implicit in what I’ve been saying, is that an elite education inculcates a false sense of self-worth.”
If you want to measure “worth” objectively you will arrive at some education versus income charts and begin to understand that the marketplace places worth on your elite education. If the marketplace considers you a more valuable asset, by what other valuation can you claim that a reasonable sense of self-worth is false? Students at elite universities have the opportunity to receive the best education possible in their fields.
“The final and most damning disadvantage of an elite education: that it is profoundly anti-intellectual. [...] Being an intellectual means, first of all, being passionate about ideas.”
OK, maybe us engineers are boring as all hell, but I promise you there are students in the Arts and Sciences whose curiosity exceeds even my own. Deresiewicz probably doesn’t consider athletic pursuits to be intellectual, but athletes share a common passion, if a different object. Besides academics and jocks on campus, we also boast republicans, anarchists, musicians, dancers, poets, writers, engineers, chemists, etc. All of them passionate about their field of study and self-improvement. Whether considering passions of the mind, body, or soul, the human endeavor cannot be reduced and limited to Deresiewicz’s notion of intellectualism.
In the end, Deresiewicz’s point–that the modern student lacks the passionate imagination and curiosity to innovate or engage complex ideas–could be equitably applied to students from so-called “elite (read: ivy league) universities” or those studying at public institutions. The determination “elite education” rather than education in general needs significant improvement betrays the author’s bias. The piece, littered with unsubstantiated jabs at prestigious universities, goes down tasting of sour jealousy. And, if Deresiewicz were to be believed, as a lifelong ivy-league academic (5 degrees in 13 years from Columbia University followed by a professorship at Yale) by his own admission he must lack the faculties to introspect and condemn the elite education he himself has been a part of.
If you must read, treat the premise as an assessment of the current apathy present in all higher education. Grade inflation, student apathy, “dumbing down,” the culture of standardized testing, etc are all symptoms of an increasingly unhealthy academic culture. To the degree in which they present variously in different institutions, they are problems in all of them–Cornell included.
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Had you included something more than the dry theses in the article and went on to elaborate on some of the extremely valid points of it, you’re response would have been a tad bit more accurate.
As a graduate of an Ivy League college, your opinion is obviously bias. The antics allowed to continue at these colleges are absurd; cheating, outrageous extended deadlines, the ongoing controversy over the grade inflation rate, what have you, is EXACTLY what Deresiewicz was talking about. These universities preach humanity while setting their students up for a world where everyone is working for them, even their own professors. They are designed to mold their students into believing a fallacy, that because they got better grades, that they are simply “better”. And you completely disregard that the funding that these schools attain is in large quantities through their alumni. So it is pretty evident why Ivy League Universities will push their students into pursuing careers in such lucrative fields as Medicine and Law, and show less appreciation for the students that maybe want to pursue a degree in teaching or poetry. More importantly, responding to this article while completely ignoring its most valid ideas, makes your argument not only invalid and ignorant, but down right stupid. But as a graduate from such an elite university, you probably knew that already.
Lisa
Student at the less prestigious, Middlesex County College
Comically, your response supports his thesis.
Not only did you not understand his point about self worth, you tried to respond to his big picture idea with small picture thinking.
This may be a shocking idea, but self worth goes beyond how much money you make. To one of his first points:
“Graduates of elite schools are not more valuable than stupid people, or talentless people, or even lazy people. Their pain does not hurt more. Their souls do not weigh more.”
Your response to his big picture idea was even foreseen by him:
“So when students get to college, they hear a couple of speeches telling them to ask the big questions, and when they graduate, they hear a couple more speeches telling them to ask the big questions. And in between, they spend four years taking courses that train them to ask the little questions—specialized courses, taught by specialized professors, aimed at specialized students.”
You have tried to turn his big question into a little question that you have been trained to solve – can I boil worth down into a number (income), then use descriptive statistics to disprove his thesis.
Truly, you have provided us with an anecdote that supports the veracity of the article.
I agree that a dollar value based on future salaries and earnings is a poor way to measure the value of an education–but it is one way, and a measure that supports the thesis that “elite institutions” provide extra value to their students.
The point I would like to make is that “elite institutions” provide a better education, both in breadth and depth, and that those lucky students who attend an elite school will come away more enriched and better educated. But, this point strikes at the question “What is the value of education?” a fuzzy and indeterminable question, one more qualitative than quantitative, that I am not qualified to answer.
Perhaps if you can explain the value of education in the abstract, I can offer some examples of how elite institutions do an excellent job of educating.
I’m just going to tear on through all of this from top to bottom:
(1) Deresiewicz does not support the classical notion of an adequate and valuable education.
You might think that in his article Deresiewicz is “determined to shatter your preconceptions” that your elite educations at Cornell will benefit each of you in your studying of and seeking “truth, beauty, and goodness,” but the fact is that Deresiewicz never touches “truth beauty, and goodness.” Deresiewicz’ claim is instead that: “Elite institutions are supposed to provide a HUMANISTIC education” and that they fail in adequately (that is, by the way, a QUALITATIVE assessment) doing so.
Deresiewicz cites Terence’s definition of humanism, that “nothing human is alien to me.”
(2) Even if you hadn’t missed the point here, your first block quote does in no way support your first paragraph; it sits there like a slump dead fish. What has the pursuit of the ideals of truth, beauty, and goodness to do with socializing with a plumber?
I sure as hell don’t know, and you sure as hell fail to make the connection.
(3) You say mutual location familiarity helps we humans to better shoot the **** with one another. Maybe this is true, and it would be an encouraging point, if only you had been able to support it with an actual anecdote. Instead you give us an hypothetical guarantee. Why should any reader just take your word for it?
That’s hardly an argument made; that’s an opinion, and a weak one, at that.
Deresiewicz isn’t dry for topics, for god’s sake he’s a professor and he talks all damn day. Deresiewicz couldn’t talk to the man because he couldn’t bring it home. If you can’t bring it home, there’s no discussion going to be had. Ever been in a room in which someone lets go a bad joke? He’s talked alright, but he sure as hell ain’t getting any responses– at least not any responses headed anywheres in the neighborhood of a conversation!
Deresiewicz was incapable of bringing it home because the two men, Deresiewicz had successfully learned from his elite education, do not share a home to bring it home to; the two men are not equals, as an elite education will inevitably lead its students to understand.
For, his education has, as he says “taught me to believe that people who didn’t go to an Ivy League or equivalent school weren’t worth talking to, regardless of their class. I was given the unmistakable message that such people were beneath me.”
How deadening would that be to any attempt at conversation, in America, at least?
Noblesse oblige doesn’t go over very well between the classes here. Need proof? Go to the American University– no, not the one in D.C., I mean the one you buy tickets at– the movie theatre. Our movies make it clear that you get your *** beat in or you get called out as the Class A Jerk when you get close to using noblesse oblige.
(4) “Self-worth” and “worth” have completely different definitions. Remember, even though 50% of the word “self-worth” IS the word “worth,” there’s still 50% more word left to consider for a full definition!
It makes for a convenient transition RIGHT OVER EVERY SINGLE ARGUMENT Deresiewicz makes about inflated and distorted senses of self-worth in the elite institutions, and how elite institutions foster, encourage, inculcate, and develop inflated and distorted senses of self-worth in their students, when you use those two terms interchangeably there.
But now, that’s not a very intellectually honest manner of dealing with an argument with which one disagrees.
Ignorance is not intellectual triumph.
Here, dear elite school graduate, you are an illustration yourself of the author’s description of the “entitled mediocrity.” “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.”
Certainly your method of argumentation on “self-worth” is– not that good, yet you felt confident enough in the value of anything you have to say to write it, and publish it, as such.
It’s okay, we all reading this realize that equating the term “self-worth” with the marketplace considering you a “more valuable asset,” doesn’t sound all that good.
(5) Your Question: “By what other valuation can you claim that a reasonable sense of self-worth is false?”
Well, I see that we are here taking for granted that the valuation of self-worth is “if the marketplace considers you a more valuable asset.”
That’s about as close to a QUANTITATIVE valuation of self-worth as any I’ve ever seen; turning a human into a number.
Could get a little closer though, we could say ‘Hey, I value myself because I represent lots more dollar signs in the Marketplace than you do!’ It’s not a FALSE valuation, it’s just such a goddamn sad one.
(6) You say: “Students at elite universities have the opportunity to receive the best education possible in their fields.”
And the question is: Best in what way?
Any answers?
Not from you.
(7) You say: “Whether considering passions of the mind, body, or soul, the human endeavor cannot be reduced and limited to Deresiewicz’s notion of intellectualism.”
And I say, exactly which notion of Deresiewicz’ on intellectualism?
Because, Deresiewicz posits several, and the only one reducing his inclusive notion of intellectualism is you.
You specifically cite Deresiewicz’ first qualification of ‘intellectualism,’that one be “passionate about ideas,” but conveniently leave out of discussion all of the successive qualifications he gives us. You seem to suggest, by highlighting this part of Deresiewicz’ definition, that Deresiewicz is downplaying the value of multiple forms of intelligence, putting down the jock, the dancer, the musician, the poet, etc.
Well, I suppose it was way up there at the beginning of the article where Deresiewicz says that: “the existence of multiple forms of intelligence has become a commonplace, but however much elite universities like to sprinkle their incoming classes with a few actors or violinists, they select for and develop one form of intelligence: the analytic.”
There is no conflict between being a jock, dancer, poet, musician, or any of the other vocations you mention, and being an intellectual. Deresiewicz makes no claim of the sort anywhere in his article.
(8) You say: “Besides academics and jocks on campus, we also boast republicans, anarchists, musicians, dancers, poets, writers, engineers, chemists, etc. All of them passionate about their field of study and self-improvement.”
This is just the type of “sprinkling” of various types of intelligence that Deresiewicz is referring to [see quote above in 7]. Furthermore, these students, the “republicans, anarchists, musicians, dancers, poets, writers, engineers, chemists, etc.” are already thinking of themselves in specialized terms. As you write: “All of them passionate about their field of study and self-improvement,” but what about all the other fields of knowledge?
This supports Deresiewicz’ argument that
“Although the notion of breadth is implicit in the very idea of a liberal arts education, the admissions process increasingly selects for kids who have already begun to think of themselves in specialized terms—the junior journalist, the budding astronomer, the language prodigy. We are slouching, even at elite schools, toward a glorified form of vocational training.”
(9) You say: “In the end, Deresiewicz’s point–that the modern student lacks the passionate imagination and curiosity to innovate or engage complex ideas–could be equitably applied to students from so-called ‘elite (read: ivy league) universities’ or those studying at public institutions.”
This may be an all around societal problem, which could be applied to students at ivy leagues, public institutions, and all other colleges, but as Deresiewicz says, “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.”
Deresiewicz goes on to highlight one of the most interesting distinctions between elite institutions and the other types of institution, that: “Paradoxically, the situation [with "thinking your way outside of your assumptions and the system that enforces them"] may be better at second-tier schools and, in particular, again, at liberal arts colleges than at the most prestigious universities” because some of the students that end up there aren’t there because they are “less gifted or driven,” they “end up there because they have a more independent spirit.”
(10) You say: “The piece, littered with unsubstantiated jabs at prestigious universities, goes down tasting of sour jealousy.”
Why would Deresiewicz be jealous? As you say, he is a “lifelong ivy-league academic (5 degrees in 13 years from Columbia University followed by a professorship at Yale).”
(11) You say that: “by his own admission he [Deresiewicz] must lack the faculties to introspect and condemn the elite education he himself has been a part of.”
Well, Deresiewicz does make the argument that the elite university has gotten PROGRESSIVELY worse at providing an environment that encourages intellectualism, and provides a humanistic education.
Furthermore, Deresiewicz may be a product of elite universities, but he sees the flaws in that education, he realizes in his kitchen that day that his education has left him some gaps; he is intellectually aware, which is the beginning of broadening your perspective, filling in the gaps, addressing the flaws. That is a step past your absent denial that anything is amok in the elite university system.
Sincerely,
Francesca Sphynx