The Disadvantages of an Elite Education

The American Scholar ^ | William Deresiewicz

[CondoleezzaProtege]

Here, too, college reflects the way things work in the adult world (unless it’s the other way around). For the elite, there’s always another extension—a bailout, a pardon, a stint in rehab—always plenty of contacts and special stipends—the country club, the conference, the year-end bonus, the dividend. If Al Gore and John Kerry represent one of the characteristic products of an elite education, George W. Bush represents another. 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-. Anyone who remembers the injured sanctimony with which Kenneth Lay greeted the notion that he should be held accountable for his actions will understand the mentality in question—the belief that once you’re in the club, you’ve got a God-given right to stay in the club. But you don’t need to remember Ken Lay, because the whole dynamic played out again last year in the case of Scooter Libby, another Yale man.

[CondoleezzaProtege]

I wonder if the author feels the same way about Obama as he did about Bush and Kerry when he wrote this.

[Vigilanteman]

Generally speaking, our greatest presidents came from no-name colleges (Reagan), were self-taught (Lincoln) or even skipped college altogether (Cleveland).

[CondoleezzaProtege]

and soon Sarah Palin :) -- who actually, according to the standards of this article, is a TRUE intellectual.

Being an intellectual means, first of all, being passionate about ideas—and not just for the duration of a semester, for the sake of pleasing the teacher, or for getting a good grade.

Being an intellectual begins with thinking your way outside of your assumptions and the system that enforces them.

etc...

[ClearCase_guy]

The media says we cannot like Sarah Palin because she "lacks polish". I'd say that is a huge point to her credit. She's a real person. Her husband is a real person. She understands Americans.

It's hard to believe this essay is copyright 2011. The author seems to not be familiar with our current president. He knows Bush and Kerry, but he takes no swipe at the guy who is riding a unicorn through life.

[CondoleezzaProtege]

He doesn't mention Obama because the article was written before 2008, I just don't know exactly when.

And even though Palin is a "real person," I reject the idea that she's anti-intellectual. She is very, very much a deep thinker, a deep person, with life experiences and beliefs that only a thoughtful, reflective person can apply and live out as well as she has. As a mother of 5 including one with Down's Syndrome, as an Alaskan who grew up amidst its wonders, and a CHRISTIAN --> she has had the kind of education and mind-expanding, spirit-fulfilling journey you can't buy your way into.

[CondoleezzaProtege]

and most importantly, Sarah Palin thinks for herself. She’s not some blind, brain-dead conformist interested in just perpetuating the routines already set in motion. Another reason why she is a REAL intellectual, rather than a wannabe.

[wintertime]

Witness the last two Democratic presidential nominees, Al Gore and John Kerry: one each from Harvard and Yale, both earnest, decent, intelligent men, both utterly incapable of communicating with the larger electorate.
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Al Gore and John Kerry are not earnest or decent or intelligent. Their entire lives are proof of it.

[wintertime]

But it isn’t just a matter of class. My education 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. We were “the best and the brightest,” as these places love to say, and everyone else was, well, something else: less good, less bright. I learned to give that little nod of understanding, that slightly sympathetic “Oh,” when people told me they went to a less prestigious college. (If I’d gone to Harvard, I would have learned to say “in Boston” when I was asked where I went to school—the Cambridge version of noblesse oblige.) I never learned that there are smart people who don’t go to elite colleges, often precisely for reasons of class. I never learned that there are smart people who don’t go to college at all.

This smugness is too often found in physicians as well.

[CondoleezzaProtege]

LoL the writer is himself from Yale, I never said he was conservative, but got to hand it to him to being somewhat critical of his own ilk!

[mo]

A full understanding of such limits is most easily perceived in the examination of the structure, functioning, and debt load of the US Federal Gov’mt since the Ivy League started getting involved with it big-time.

[wintertime]

It’s no coincidence that our current president, the apotheosis of entitled mediocrity, went to Yale.
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Our current president attended Harvard Law School. Fox News interviewed 400 people in his class and not even one person remembers Obama attending Columbia ( this includes everyone in his major). Are those in the mainstream or conservative media curious about this? Answer: No!