Back in the antediluvian age, I got into the Ivy League based on excellent qualifications, PLUS coming from a State that was under-represented in the Ivy League. With continuing hard work and by making an actual contribution to science, I ultimately was awarded a Ph.D. from Harvard.
That was the way a student from a middle-class family made it into the Ivies. There were different rules for the elite, as there still are.
Nowadays, “geographic preference” is NOT based on coming from an under-represented State, but from the “right” country or “minority”. China is in NO WAY “under-represented’, but LOTS and LOTS of students are admitted from China—to Harvard and all the other Ivies and near-Ivies.
When I went to college and graduate school, they did NOT teach the bogus thing now called “diversity”, or require students and faculty to follow its dictates. Even by the time that I was doing research and teaching as a faculty member in a near-Ivy university, one had to “watch what one said” about “gays”, feminazis, and minorities.
In 2016, transsexuals and muslims have been added to the mix. And one can get a degree—even from Harvard—in “diversity” studies, and learn absolutely NOTHING!!!! As for contributing to knowledge or culture—forget about it!!!!
Nevertheless, the children of the elite are socialized by their peers and professors to be leaders of the elite classes. It’s too bad that these mis-leaders will know next to nothing and will be ill-prepared emotionally and spiritually for real leadership.
A Trump presidency may help to turn this all around—by the help of God!!!!
Well said.
Sound like political indoctrination has poisoned even the hard sciences.
The Ivies strike me as largely a status thing for people not studying a real science or useful occupation.
If we could roll back rewarding people for political correctness, and let the free market reward people for delivering real goods and services, we’d be way ahead.
Trump’s a step in the right direction.
A friend of mine is a grad of “Haavaad” med, an anesthesiologist who cannot perform regional (nerve blocks), pediatric, or Cardiac surgery anesthesia. When I questioned him on getting half of an education, his response was “I was at Mass Gen. (Massachusetts General Hospital). To him that was Mass General Anesthesia. He was a is a very outspoken individual, but I called him on accepting half of an education.