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The Disadvantages of an Elite Education (2008)

238 points by jmarbach 10y ago

pascalxus 10y ago
Making small talk is a skill, just like any other. You don't need to skip college to figure out how to small talk. but the rest of the article is pretty interesting: the sense of entitlement, the one dimensional view of intelligence, and the SAT and prep track required to get to it all. Somehow, this article reminded me of Catch in the Rye - especially the main character and his experiences in a prep school for college.
- kuschku 10y ago
  It’s not just a skill. If you’ve been mostly around people of the upper class, and in such schools as well – as the article says – you might be able to hold small talk with people from other countries, but not with people from your own country’s lower class. There’s an entirely different way of life there, entirely different life experiences, which lead to entirely different priorities, things you think about, and so on. I’ve been in both circles due to family, people from the very bottom, and people from the very top, and you can’t just say "making small talk is just a skill". And the other things you mention are also artifacts of this education: You only see this one perspective of life, which is so very different from what many other people experience, that you never even consider what their life might look like. Smalltalk, like any communication, requires that you have a mental model of the person you talk with, but if you share none of their experiences, you can’t build such a mental model. Although I wouldn’t recommend skipping college, I definitely recommend people to at least try to find a way with which they can experience the life through the eyes of a person of another social class at least once.
BipolarElsa 10y ago
This article is utter rubbish. Anyone who possesses an elite education will never suffer in their life. They're in the upper-echelon of society. I have no pity for them and they are not at a disadvantage. Go ahead an ask anyone accepted into Yale if they'd trade it off for the same major at po-dunk State U. What do you think their response will be? Don't be daft. This is trash.
- munchbunny 10y ago
  I think you're confusing "these are the cons of going to an elite university" with "there are more cons than pros of going to an elite university." It's quite possible to be mostly satisfied with something and still have good reasons to be dissatisfied, and it's perfectly reasonable to write about those reasons. I doubt Deresiewicz would say that "po-dunk State U" is better.
- deleted 10y ago
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- Spooky23 10y ago
  When I was on the Harvard tour, the guide was an Ivy League groupie -- she had applied and failed to get into Harvard, went to a good "backup school", (I think Case Western) and finally transferred into Harvard in her sophomore year -- without transferring any credits. It made an impression on me. I checked out the 2nd tier of school and found a bunch of white bread people from Jersey looking forward to a career in ibanking or medicine. I ended up in a good state school with real people and no debt. I lost the opportunity to work at McKinsey or whatever, but I consider that a plus.
  - munchbunny 10y ago
    I hope you don't mind if I challenge you on your very last sentence. Why do you consider losing the opportunity a plus?
    - Spooky23 10y ago
      Not at all. At that time in my life, I would have been attracted to that kind of gig, and having been a customer working with those kinds of firms, I wouldn't have liked it. Fundamentally, the best thing hat I learned about in college was myself. Surrounding myself with type-As on some track would have stifled that. Honestly, I'm really happy with how life has turned out this far!
- PavlovsCat 10y ago
  Anyone who never suffers in their life and is not aware of the total randomness of their own birth, is damaged in a way I would NOT want to swap with. One would have to have none to not realize how much infinitely more worth the personality one can become potentially is than even full control of all of the Earth's resources and command over all people could be. It's like the difference between making someone orgasm, and screaming at them, why can't they see how sexy one is and why aren't they aroused, especially since it was so expensive to get a room at this hotel. Mind you, I think personal greatness is completely unrelated to social class. I'm not saying "elite education means you have issues", I don't think it's a zero-sum game at all. But having grown up in a town teeming with millionaires, I have to laugh at the idea that many rich aren't positively hunted by their own defects. Yes, they can buy an island, but they can't sit still on it, they cannot be with themselves, they cannot reflect on themselves. They are captured, driven, mad, and get hysterical when they are recognized and pitied. So they have to keep company that has the same fears, like an unspoken pact. It's like drug addicts hanging out with drug addicts instead of the people who would ask them wtf they are doing with their life. They can't read many great minds and even get half of what they say; sure, neither do many poor people, but that's more because they don't have the time or the language is too bloated for them, not because there is some inherent vampire/garlic type incompatibility. If you discuss the exact same subjects with a "normal" person in normal words, they in my experience are less likely to throw up all sorts of deflections, while other people realize this stuff is fit to dissolve the lies their lives are and get scared. Fear is not strength, and powerful people have many options, but when those options don't include letting go of power they are basically slaves as well. The highest echelons of power are impersonal and systematic, only entropy and madness gain from them, no human person; and it takes personal strength to sail in such an environment and not end up as a bundle of sticks held together by delusions. It takes fierce motherfuckers, which is the opposite of people who can't answer a straight question, as many people in the "upper echelons" demonstrate. Pester me not with their pocket calculator stuff :P
rublev 10y ago
edited
- munchbunny 10y ago
  > I love when the elite romanticize the lives of the prole. It's super easy to think "Yeah, $750 apartment, a bit for food, go out for a beer once in awhile, work 9-5, great!" Until you realize that unless you play a perfect hand with every dime, the slightest expense can cripple you at a moments notice. "Not to be rich" doesn't necessarily mean "precariously afloat." I choose to interpret that line charitably, and take it to mean that many high impact roles in society (especially various roles in education) do not pay richly, so having the luxury to deprioritize income should mean that today's young Americans might be better equipped to focus on social impact first. Edit: I saw that you edited your post and removed what you originally said. That's too bad. I would much prefer that we try to have a productive discussion than to just drop a curtain on the conversation.
- alistairSH 10y ago
  This bit elicited a chuckle... > How will I face my classmates at our 20th reunion, when they’re all rich lawyers or important people in New York? You face them with your head held high. You chose a career that you find fulfilling. You're improving the lives of children, passing your hard-earned knowledge on to another generation.
- akiselev 10y ago
  >> Until you realize that unless you play a perfect hand with every dime, the slightest expense can cripple you at a moments notice. From orientation to graduation, the message is implicit in every tone of voice and tilt of the head, every old-school tradition, every article in the student paper, every speech from the dean. The message is: You have arrived. Welcome to the club. And the corollary is equally clear: You deserve everything your presence here is going to enable you to get. You're literally just reiterating the arguments the article makes except with a clearly visible chip on your shoulder. Edit: Perhaps you should make your statement in one post instead of editing over and over again. You seem far too emotional to make a rational argument here.
- 10y ago
petegrif 10y ago
What BS. This guy can't talk to a plumber and it's the fault of elite colleges? Pleeese!
Mz 10y ago
The remarks here on HN dissing this article piqued my curiosity, so I began to read the article. It's been a long ..year...and I am super tired, so I am not going to manage to actually read the whole thing. But, I was one of the top three students of my graduating high school class and I turned down a National Merit Scholarship to one of the top two universities of my home state. I think I made the right call and I think I understand the impetus behind the writing of this article. In a nutshell, if education is empowering, but pursuing that education actually narrows your life choices, then perhaps there is some flaw somewhere. For people who go to Ivy League schools, most of them can only imagine rabidly pursuing the next rung on the career ladder and this may come at great personal cost. I was in my late 40s before I really understood how incredibly upper class my mother's values are. We didn't have much money when I was a kid -- or so I thought, though it turns out that is not as accurate as I believed at the time -- and I never thought of myself as upper class. It took me a lot of years of intentionally walking away from this deeply rooted expectation in order to really reclaim my life for myself in a way that allows me to get what I want, not for me to become what society expects me to be. So while I get that most people are not going to understand that there is a genuine cost involved and will simply sneer at the idea that there is any down side, as someone who recognized that downside at a young age and walked away, I will say that the ability "to not be rich" is, in fact, a choice not psychologically available to many upper class people and it does harm them and it does definitely harm their ability to be good leaders for the common man.
- feedjoelpie 10y ago
  This is a stupid reply that has nothing to do with the topic: I had the NMS myself, and I'm assuming some college was going to give you an extra kicker since it's portable. Do you mind sharing which colleges? I'm weirdly curious because while I didn't go to an known elite school, I turned down a full ride to an out-of-state state school (for NMS winners) to go to a private school. So like, kind of the opposite of you. But I also probably didn't fully understand the options.
  - Mz 10y ago
    As far as I know, my scholarship was not portable. It was specifically for one university and when I failed to attend, no, I did not get to keep my scholarship. No one gave me an extra kicker. I turned my scholarship down for personal reasons, not because I was bought out by some competing school.
dbg31415 10y ago
> Man is not a farmer, or a professor, or an engineer, but he is all. Man is priest, and scholar, and statesman, and producer, and soldier. The speech that the blog was paying homage to when it picked a name. * The American Scholar || http://www.emersoncentral.com/amscholar.htm http://www.emersoncentral.com/amscholar.htm
dibstern 10y ago
These aren't the disadvantages of an elite education, it's the disadvantages of not having sufficient breadth of experiences with people from a sufficient breadth of social-economic backgrounds. Get your kids to do extracurriculars where they'll meet kids from lower-income households. It'll make them able to relate to them and understand them better.
- peteretep 10y ago
  You are missing: in order to gain access to these institutions, many people apparently have to forgoe those extracurriculars and focus only on their studies.
  - akiselev 10y ago
    No, to gain access to these institutions you are basically required to have half a dozen extracurriculars on your resume. They receive applications from so many white straight-A/4.0 students that extracurriculars are the only differentiating factor. Few high schools (in California, at least) would even let you graduate without 50-100 hours of community service. Whether these extracurriculars would expose you to different ethnicities and world views is dependant on demographics.
    - Hydraulix989 10y ago
      It's also based on access, I remember feeling initially impressed when a fellow applicant on College Confidential that applied to the same top school as myself did community service abroad in South America, when I then realized that it was very costly to do so, and that I couldn't have done anything so "impressive" only because my parents couldn't have covered the cost.
    - aarohmankad 10y ago
      "Few high schools (in California, at least) would even let you graduate without 50-100 hours of community service." I have never heard of community service as a requirement to graduate high school. (No school in my district had this requirement.) Granted, I understand your overall point. It is becoming increasingly difficult to be accepted by "elite" colleges. In fact, I had applied to nearly 12 colleges that were highly respected in Computer Science and was rejected from all of them.
peteretep 10y ago
Brits figured this shit out a long time ago: you talk about the weather.
- Mz 10y ago
  Brits also are much more okay with embracing the idea that there are separate classes. Americans like to think we are better than that and (like to imagine that we) treat all people in some idealized egalitarian fashion. In practice, it is a lot, lot harder to treat everyone equally well and try to ignore class divides than to have protocols in place for bridging the gap between people explicitly of different classes.
  - deleted 10y ago
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  - yummyfajitas 10y ago
    It's entertaining how far we in the states go in denying we have classes. Some years back a blogger tried to cook up a taxonomy of our class system. Since we don't have words to describe them he adopted archaic Indian terms instead. Brahmins are the NY/CA elite, Vaisyas are the Trump voting worker caste, etc. https://unqualified-reservations.blogspot.com/2007/05/castes-of-united-states.html https://unqualified-reservations.blogspot.com/2007/05/castes... Other writers have recognized and described it too: http://siderea.livejournal.com/1260265.html http://siderea.livejournal.com/1260265.html Even our very own Michael O. Church: https://www.meetup.com/Philadelphia-Political-Agnostics/messages/boards/thread/49570124 https://www.meetup.com/Philadelphia-Political-Agnostics/mess... I'm with Mz on this - we should start explicitly recognizing our caste system. It's been helpful to me; once I figured out our castes and where I live in it, suddenly a lot of things clicked into place. For example, why do so many people not recognize me as white? It's because I don't give off the cultural signals of being upper caste (Brahmin in Moldbug's taxonomy) but I'm solidly within Brahim professional and social circles. Given these mismatched signals, Kashmiri or Argentinian seems like the most plausible hypothesis.
    - smallnamespace 10y ago
paulsutter 10y ago
The solution is near. The "elite" will be a lot less smug when their jobs also get replaced by technology. No need for melodramatic navel-gazing. Anyone notice that some the most "elite" schools are total no-shows in AI research?
- dangmurderparty 10y ago
  The elite own the machines, stupid. The new plutocracy will be balanced by iron fisted CEOs, algorithmically advised and steered boards, and a chosen few human elites that bear each other due to a wealth standoff. The rest of us die hungry, cold, and broke as shit, while the elites mine galaxies and excavate the stars by the trillions. The end
- wenc 10y ago
  Unfortunately, this is the wrong conclusion -- the jobs of the elite are precisely those that don't get replaced by technology. Automation only affects those jobs are systematic and repeatable. The elite typically hold jobs in consulting, finance, management, government, etc. that require a lot of word-smithing and people skills. The big blind spot for technologists is thinking that technology is central to everything. It is not. If you look at how society is organized, it's the folks with the people skills who are on top. People who are good with technology work for them.
  - paulsutter 10y ago
    Would you care to place a bet on which jobs will be replaced by technology? Banks haves acres of class A office space filled with people preparing powerpoints to show each other. Those jobs will go away. And those are the people who hire management consultants.
DoodleBuggy 10y ago
Existence in a bubble is almost always a disadvantage.
partycoder 10y ago
I would say that the upper class of each country has a distinct subculture. And now those subcultures have somehow converged into a global subculture of the rich. A golf club membership for example can cost $100,000. Some people will probably never save up that much, and if they did, they would never spend it in a golf club membership. But for some it's completely normal and part of their everyday lives. Same with schools, same with restaurants, etc... by being strictly exclusive you set yourself apart from the rest and miss out on a lot of things.
tokenadult 10y ago
Summer 2008, and widely criticized from then to now. I wonder if a professor of English can ever have the same perspective as a professor of biology or a professor of mathematics. I don't think he has made the case that higher education that can properly be called "elite" is actually disadvantageous. https://psmag.com/the-problems-with-william-deresiewicz-s-new-manifesto-aa3bd2fa7cdf https://psmag.com/the-problems-with-william-deresiewicz-s-ne...
- egocodedinsol 10y ago
  I don't think he made that case, either. But it doesn't stop some of his observations from being thought provoking. I do agree that a science professor would likely have an entirely different perspective.
jeffmcmahan 10y ago
I have a bachelor's degree in philosophy and linguistics from an elite university. My parents owned and auto parts store in a small town, which was next door to my grandparents' bakery. Based on my experience, it seems this guys' problem is a boring backstory; no university can or should make up for the fact that you don't regularly mix with non-university types.
adjkant 10y ago
I think the key mistake this piece made is assuming that having an elite education stops you from being culturally and socially aware beyond your class. Sure, many top colleges don't teach this, but as someone who grew up in a family with under $20K income who goes to a pretty good private school, I've seen a very distinct difference in some of my classmates. The education isn't the problem, the bubble is. I read this article some time ago, so pardon if my memory failed me.
protomyth 10y ago
Since the education talked about is quite far out of my experience[1], I am a bit concerned that any education could so influence a person that they cannot make small talk with someone else. This actually sounds like an isolation problem or a total need not to be embarrassed. I know some folks are shy and suffer real problems, but this isn't it. It just sounds like someone who has lived with a sect of some sort for a long time. I just have a tough time believing the education did it. 1) sent in the applications with the fees that I couldn't really afford and never even got a letter back. I figured it was a sign.
egocodedinsol 10y ago
Before this gets flagged to oblivion, I have one criticism and two defenses of the article. As a criticism, this article doesn't address the sciences. The availability of research money is a major reason to go to an elite science institution. If you want to do science, the best thing is to do it, and that usually means email a lab and asking to work there. More labs with more money probably means better opportunities.[0] In the first defense, consider whether there's anything in this article that might also apply outside of elite colleges. For instance: 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. This resonates so much with what Daniel Ellsberg wrote to a young Henry Kissinger regarding levels of top-secret access: Then, after you've started reading all this daily intelligence input ... you'll be aware only of the fact that you have it now and most others don't....and that all those other people are fools. ... it will have become very hard for you to learn from anybody who doesn't have these clearances. [1] Finally, this article absolutely nails many of the patterns I have observed while at elite universities. For instance: (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.) reminds me of when an acquaintence mentioned he was going to law school 'In Palo Alto'. Or, one night at a party when I overheard a friend (future Rhodes scholar) say 'You know you're at <institution> when you use the term statistical variance at a theatre party!' Never mind that they'd used it incorrectly, it was emblematic to say the least. [0](Please don't take this comment the wrong way - there are best-in-field professors at less-than-elite universities, but not as consistently). [1]http://www.motherjones.com/kevin-drum/2010/02/daniel-ellsberg-limitations-knowledge http://www.motherjones.com/kevin-drum/2010/02/daniel-ellsber...
- rayiner 10y ago
  My brother went to Yale and this does not seem consistent at all. Maybe the author had shitty friends.
fatso784 10y ago
Poor sap. Really, I think you can do both, but you have to supplement the education with actual experience (like travel, volunteering, and normal jobs) and not buy into the hocus-pocus businesstalk mumbo-jumbo. At least, if you want to be normal. If you want to be in business, by all means, concede yourself to the Ivy monolith.
cm2012 10y ago
Understanding of others is probably more correlated with an elite education than not. It's just that understanding of others is relatively rare in the first place among all humans. It's just way more annoying from elites because they tend to think they're very open minded, even when they are not.
- protomyth 10y ago
  > Understanding of others is probably more correlated with an elite education than not. In my experience, it is independent of education. I've dealt with the social service people early in my career and encountered people with true empathy (along with folks who had no business giving directions much less life advice). You find these folks in many careers and at many educational levels. If anything the focus required for intensive education might push people away from the understanding of others.
intrasight 10y ago
> We were “the best and the brightest” I always have to laugh when I see that phrase used by people who clearly don't know the derogatory connotations that it has carried since Halberstam's book of the same title.
lgessler 10y ago
TL;DR: Going to an elite school 1. denies you the opportunity to empathize with anyone beyond a narrow spectrum of socioeconomics and culture 2. anoints you with a sense of self-worth and entitlement that is, if earned at all, only founded on a narrow set of skills: analytic ability and hard work 3. admits you into the class of seductive "entitled mediocrity", which allows you to fail spectacularly with essentially no real repercussions 4. constraints you, via social pressure, to a narrow set of "prestigious" career paths, among which you might not find the one that is truly right for you 5. shelters you from failure and encourages the idea that it is unacceptable, leaving you less likely to take on risk which might be necessary for growth and fulfillment 6. "is profoundly anti-intellectual", because students are encouraged more to acquire power and all that is necessary for it than cultivation of one's intellect, which requires such slothful indulgences as sitting in solitude, journaling, or even making time to have a relationship with a close friend TL;DR for the TL;DR: elite schools' "real purpose is to reproduce the class system", instead of to grow their students' minds. I'll add that when I read Deresiewicz's article in the New Republic and then went to his talk on my undergrad institution's campus, his tone was markedly more bitter than it is here in 2008. I suppose the situation has not improved in his eyes.
- JoeAltmaier 10y ago
  Hm. I went to Stanford. Famous for diverse, risk-taking non-mediocre graduates. I guess its the exception that proves the rule?
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  - dlo 10y ago
    I went to Stanford, and I disagree. Sure, there are exceptions, but most fellow alumni I know are very boring. For example, many live in San Francisco, work for Facebook or Google, and do little of note besides the following: - have an "interesting" hobby - work out at the gym - hang out with friends at the bar or club - work on their career - start a "start-up" - travel - ... other very self-serving pursuits Most recently, I am very disappointed in my fellow alumni for not standing up for this professor: https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2016/dec/19/ex-stanford-professor-i-was-pushed-out-after-reporting-sexual-harassment https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2016/dec/19/ex-stanford-... And actually, I am seeing to it that alumni and current students do something about this. Enough is enough.
SmooL 10y ago
I would think that it goes without saying that higher education is not the 'be all end all' in overall 'life' education. While I don't believe the author is directly incorrect in his claims of of university behavior/culture, I feel like most of the 'disadvantages' he lists are of his own decisions, whereas for a lot of people they are forced. 'Yet it is precisely that opportunity that an elite education takes away. How can I be a schoolteacher—wouldn’t that be a waste of my expensive education? Wouldn’t I be squandering the opportunities my parents worked so hard to provide? What will my friends think? How will I face my classmates at our 20th reunion, when they’re all rich lawyers or important people in New York? And the question that lies behind all these: Isn’t it beneath me?' There's nothing preventing the author from being a teach aside from his own mental barriers that he can overcome himself - I'm sure if he applied, most school boards would leap at the chance of having him. For others though, that simply isn't the case, and they have real, hard, economic/environmental barriers.
- ovibos 10y ago
  Sure, but I think that the self imposed barriers the author talks about may be more common in ivy league graduates.
thesimpsons1022 10y ago
wonder how many potential uber/facebook founders there could have been which instead decided to graduate and work at a big company for the prestige.
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intrasight 10y ago
If it weren't for the 1% (smartest not wealthiest) we'd still be living in caves, we'd have no cure for disease, we'd have no internet (or Hacker News!). I, for one, am extremely thankful for elite/ivy educations and for what these institutions and their graduates have made possible for the rest of humanity. If the only price we pay is that they don't know how to talk to dumb people, that's a price I feel is worth paying.
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chiaro 10y ago
It's funny. When I first read this article it must have left a strong impression for me to have recalled it now, in the wake of the election. I see someone else felt similarly. I also remember a HN comment on it saying the blame for writer's inability to communicate across the class divide was more likely a profound lack of social skills. A point of view I'm still not entirely sure I agree or disagree with.
- gragas 10y ago
  > in the wake of the election. I see someone else felt similarly. I think that's exactly why everyone is on about "liberal hubris." It's because people like you who are so self-absorbed that you write articles about how you're too educated to talk to plumbers and how you sympathize with others who feel the same way. When you discount everyone who disagrees with you for being "uneducated" and gullible, it doesn't seem at all unreasonable to me that many would accuse you overwhelming hubris.
  - chiaro 10y ago
    I didn't write the article (nor as far as I know, anything like it) so you're reading rather a lot into my comment. I wasn't even commenting on the article's own view point necessarily, but rather the degree of alienation between the two Americas it exhibited back in 2008. I'll have to track down the original HN thread, it'd make some interesting reading.
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bradknowles 10y ago
Note that this article is from 2008.
kalid 10y ago
Much of this resonated with me. One of the biggest lessons of my Ivy-league education was, paradoxically, that it wasn't sufficient (or even necessary). At least not for the goals I wanted. If you want access to the elite Wall St. or consulting jobs, then yes, you need it. Once you're in, it's almost impossible to be kicked out. Finish, interview, and you're on the path. But I had longstanding doubts about the state of my actual education. Despite numerous engineering classes, I couldn't, for example, work out i^i in my head instantly. Imagine someone asked you "Roughly, what do you think 2^512 to be?" "I don't know exactly, but it's an enormous positive number, probably more than the atoms in the universe." Ok. You should spit that out instantly. Now imagine someone asks "Roughly, what do you think i^i is?" Is it positive? Negative? Real? Imaginary? Close to 1.0? Microscopic? Even if you eventually work it out after a minute, does your long delay mean you understood exponents or imaginary numbers? Is this something that should be solidified before, say, studying the Fourier Transform? Despite scoring well in classes taught by famous professors, I couldn't answer such basic questions. This was literally middle school operations (exponents) used with high-school parameters (imaginary numbers). I was stuck -- and it didn't seem like anyone thought this a reasonable thing to understand. It led me on a journey of self-education, but I needed to see firsthand that even in an Ivy-league environment, the basics could still be missed. It ended the fantasy that things were transformatively different in some other place -- it was up to me to fill the gaps. ps. If you want to work out i^i in your head: https://betterexplained.com/articles/intuitive-understanding-of-eulers-formula/ https://betterexplained.com/articles/intuitive-understanding...
- phamilton 10y ago
  > "Roughly, what do you think 2^512 to be?" Instantly I spit out "a 4 followed by 153 zeros" Now... looking it up it's actually more like a 13 followed by 153 zeros.
- danharaj 10y ago
  The link you provided seems to omit the fact that i^i is multi-valued, which is a consequence of a fundamental property of the logarithm.
  - 10y ago
known 10y ago
AKA https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dominant_minority https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dominant_minority
douche 10y ago
I feel like I am in a weird, interesting situation. I grew up as a complete redneck, rural, appalachian hillbilly, despite all efforts of my jumped-up grandmother to try to instill some European class. I proudly wore my Haines' T-shirts and Carharts pants, with steel-toed, kevlar-lined chainsaw boots for years... I graduated high school in such a Beverly Hillbullies environment, then got accepted, against my expectations, at Dartmouth (they must have been low on the rural white boy quota that year...) I showed up in Hanover, NH, my first day with my pickup, my chainsaw, my rifle & shotgun, and a full set or mechanic's tools. It was a pretty impressive example of culture shock. I'm better for having escaped the Franklin County, Maine, bubble and experiencing it, but it took some adjusting.
gtani 10y ago
One thing about some of those elite institutions, Columbia, Penn, Chicago, Yale, teh area south of UC-Berkeley, are that they find themselves in the middle of not well doing urban centers. You could call them ghettos. You have a lot of privileged kids who have their first contact with unprivileged or people who have fallen out of the middle class. Most of them choose to ignore it, but a few take notable action to improve the situation.
adpoe 10y ago
I think the issue at stake here is the nature of higher education in the US: specifically, what are its putative goals? Is it a place for intellectual growth and experience gaining for its own sake, or is it primarily for grooming & career preparation? With tuition costs as they are, I'd argue that college is necessarily a career investment, almost entirely. And to view it any other way is either naively Romantic or somewhat deluded. If I could really guarantee career success, social status, and great wealth, just by attending a school--I would. If these schools really do grant entry to coveted and lucrative positions, and that's what they're selling to potential applicants, I don't see a problem. That's the product, and as products go, that's pretty darn good. Personally, I think if elite education as entry-way to the upperclass--of and for itself--is an issue, then you're attending one of these schools for the wrong reasons. Right now, it is often pretended that the goal of college is to learn, to grow, and to 'get an education'. This may have been true in the past, but today it is not. The goal of college is to prepare yourself for the work force, and any other view is somewhat financially irresponsible, whether your family has the money to blow, or not. Moreover: much of the most important learning in life (intellectual and otherwise) happens outside of academia. It always has and always will. Schools can't do it all. If you aren't already intellectually curious, 4 years at Stanford--just by itself--won't change that. But if I can find a school that will be worth the investment of time and money for my career, one that will help me build a comfortable life for myself and support my family--then I think that investment is worthwhile, and I'll be happy to make it any day.
holri 10y ago
The Disadvantage of a an Elite Education is the possibility of a Trump election.
ken47 10y ago
As someone who went to an "elite" institution, I wonder why all education can't be elite. In the past, there were physical limitations -- only so many students could fit in a lecture hall, on a campus etc. So the optimal arrangement at the time was to try to match the highest-potential students with the most qualified educators -- a system that could be gamed, requires imperfect approximations, but the best that was available at the time. Now, with today's technology, the best educators in the world can become accessible, on a read-only basis, to anyone. This is what we're starting to see, with the biggest brand-name universities exploring how to monetize such a system via MOOC's. When MOOC's mature, a lot of today's university admissions rituals will no longer make sense. Take SATs for example -- a high school-agnostic measure of a student's capabilities. If instead, there were a standardized set of MOOC's, whose grading systems were trustworthy, then instead of approximating a student's ability to learn new material via a general standardized test, the course material itself is standardized, so SATs become redundant. I can't wait to see where MOOC's go in the coming years, and "elite" education earn its name through means other than its exclusivity.
- scarmig 10y ago
  Elite isn't about the quality of the instruction. Elite is about who is instructed. By definition, you can't have a broad-based, democratic elite.
  - ken47 10y ago
    > Elite isn't about the quality of the instruction. If you read the article, I think the author would disagree, as he refers to Yale and Columbia, not himself, as an elite education. Here's a thought experiment. If Harvard's professors were swapped out for high school teachers, "elite" students would be less inclined to attend, and over several years, the quality of students at Harvard would almost certainly drop. Conversely, if someone created a university with all the world's most renowned lecturers, in several years, "elite" students would likely be yearning to attend. And I'm not clear on what you mean by "democratic elite." There would still be elite students. Two things would be different: 1) Their designation could be determined by cleaner data than was possible in a pre-MOOC world. In the current world, there are few clean baselines on which to evaluate students from different high schools, for example, which is one of the main reasons standardized tests like the SAT exist. 2) If we assume that a better lecturer will help increase a student's knowledge, regardless of the student's quality, then every student's knowledge could be maximized in the post-MOOC world, not just the small fraction that are able to gain entry to elite institutions.
jondubois 10y ago
I graduated from one of the top universities in my country (top 50 in the world) and we learned pretty much exactly the same material as they did at MIT. In reality I don't think there is any significant difference in terms of education quality between the top #1 university and #100 for any given field. But the difference in terms of opportunities after finishing MIT vs finishing some other good university is massive. It seems that if an investor or prospective employer hears the word 'MIT', 'Harvard', 'Stanford' or 'Yale' when you make a pitch, somehow you're considered to be much smarter than the rest. I think it's partially due to this elitist mindset. 'Elites' seem to think that people who went to an elite college are many times smarter than everyone else - But the real difference is actually social connectivity. People who went to an elite institution are closer to capital - This gives them more influence. They are more likely to become investors and employers themselves. Their elitist world view (rooted in the false perception that they make up an intellectually distinct group) means that they are more likely to hire/fund people who also studied at elite universities. Elites think that people like them congregate around knowledge, but in reality, they congregate around financial capital disguised as knowledge.
- argonaut 10y ago
  I went to Berkeley for CS and knew people that went to MIT and Stanford, and I don't agree. You're right the curriculum is the same. Everything else is different. Just one example: lots of undergrads do research. They get to work (albeit basically as trainees) in some of the top CS labs in the world.
  - jghn 10y ago
    I've long espoused what jondubois says above and many people have told me what you say here in response. That might be true but now that I'm in a position to see lots of new hires it doesn't seem to make a difference, at least not for CS grads. We hire a bunch of MIT grads and they seem to have roughly the same distribution of success as all of the other new hires. I'll grant you that this is anecdata but it is the one situation where I have a lot of experience where the connection angle does not exist.
bb101 10y ago
"As John Ruskin told an older elite, grabbing what you can get isn’t any less wicked when you grab it with the power of your brains than with the power of your fists." Now there is a useful quote to carry around in your head.
peter303 10y ago
In The Devil Wears Prada, Emily is told "a million would kill for a position like yours" when demurrs about her troubles. The author should be thankful they were able to get a nice education, even though it may come short in common sense. You can pick that up later if you want to.
BigJeffeRonaldo 10y ago
And this is why Trump's win was so confusing for many citizens if the US--too stuck in their bubble to understand the rest of the world and its happenings. See also Nassim Taleb's essay on the Intellectual Yet Idiot class: https://medium.com/@nntaleb/the-intellectual-yet-idiot-13211e2d0577 https://medium.com/@nntaleb/the-intellectual-yet-idiot-13211...
- akhilcacharya 10y ago
  I go to a school elites think is crappy, and the most confusing part of this cycle was the endless string of articles about whatYoung Republicans and Young Democrats at Ivies and top schools thought about Hillary, Bernie, Trump etc - nothing about the type of school I go to. Does the MSM not think we matter? With that said, my schools county still went for Hillary by about 20 points, so that's good.
- yedava 10y ago
  The alleged confusion presumes that only elites voted for Democrats. But if you look at the voting trends, urban areas tend to vote Democrat and it is a far stretch to presume that there is no working class living in urban areas. In fact I'd wager there are far more working class people living in urban areas than in rural areas.
jstewartmobile 10y ago
This was a well-written article. A lot of people are hating on it as a "poor little rich kid" argument, but I didn't see that at all. He put his point at the end, and man is it a good one: > The disadvantage of an elite education is that it’s given us the elite we have, and the elite we’re going to have. I mean, just look at the crap Peter Thiel does in broad daylight, like funding lawsuits for vendetta-by-proxy and researching the blood of young people as a youth treatment. It's like Old Testament, incur the wrath-of-God type stuff (the blood, not the lawsuit), and the only thing that happens is Sam Biddle writes a screed and we go about our business.
- cletus 10y ago
  I assume you mean Thiel funding the downing of Gawker after their scurrilous behavior and attempts to justify anything under the First Amemdment, then that one actually has my full support. As for the rest, to quote Dennis Hopper (IIRC) "I'm not crazy. I'm rich. Rich people are eccentric".
  - jstewartmobile 10y ago
    I'm criticizing his means more than his ends in that particular example. If I were on my game, I would have brought up Palantir and how they're helping roll out the infrastructure of our present and future police state.
    - josepi_ 10y ago
      Fosh. Dude is a scumbag. You know that meeting he just put together for/with Trump, with all the tech. leaders, centered around tech. employment? You know, the one with people like Jeff Bezos, Larry Page, Sheryl Sandberg, Tim Cook, Elon Musk, Ginni Rometty, Brian Krzanich...and Alex Karp. Hmm, let's see. Amazon employs 250k+ people; Alphabet employs 60k+; Facebook employs 15k+; Musk's companies employ 30k+; IBM employs 350k+; Intel employs 100k+; ... Palantir employs around 2000, but Alex Karp got to go to that meeting. I wonder who Palantir's biggest shareholder is...hmm? P.S. The meeting also had Satya Nadella (Microsoft), Chuck Robbins (Cisco), and Safra Catz (Oracle)..and all three of Trump's children - who took seats from companies like HP, Dell, all telecomms, Xerox, and more. Seriously: fuck Peter Thiel.
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killersmalls 10y ago
"Yet the opportunity not to be rich is one of the greatest opportunities with which young Americans have been blessed." Might just be one of the most entitled statements I've ever read.
- AnimalMuppet 10y ago
  I used to dream of being a rich man Yeah, I swore I'd have it all some day Once you taste it you will find That it isn't worth a dime 'Till you're free enough to give it away - Randy Stonehill He who cannot cast away a treasure at need is in fetters. - J. R. R. Tolkein You have a valid point that, for the less well off, hearing rich people whine about how hard it is to be rich is really grating. But there is also the flip side - wealth really can make you a slave to your money.
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VLM 10y ago
Cult-like dedication toward conformity and disengagement from the real world. If they were selling daisies at the airport they'd be "rescued" and medicated.
akhilcacharya 10y ago
My question to people that disagree with the article - I don't go to an elite school, ranked about 55 in CS - what can I do to make myself elite? Or do I not have upward class mobility at all?
potatoman2 10y ago
Looks like all those years of education didn't help this author learn how to write short, concise paragraphs.
kutkloon7 10y ago
The intentions behind the first paragraph of the article are undoubtedly good, but it reads a lot like "Boo hoo, I can't engage in small talk with this pleb because I'm too educated for him.".
AnimalMuppet 10y ago
That first paragraph is a perfect expression of the last election - the Ivy League guy can't figure out how to talk to the plumber, even when they're in the same room.
mcguire 10y ago
"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." Wasn't Bush II a Yale graduate?
- TheCoelacanth 10y ago
  Yale and Harvard Business School.
usmeteora 10y ago
as someone whose parents never went to college, and I went halfway through highschool from the nations top 50 worst highschools (time magazine did an article on that) to a boarding school on scholarship and then got scholarship to a private top ranked institution (not ivy so "second tier" because top 20 universities instead of just ivy), and while I wouldnt redo the past for a second, to be catapulted into a completely different world like this literally overnight while driving home from boarding school to my poor parents fighting and my mom dealing with alcholism and stressing about how to pay the $50 application fee just to apply to college, and pivot between that everyday really does make you see how disparate the world is. I loved my boarding school because above all the normalcy led to emotional stability so kids could focus on themselves instead of drama. very little drama, very little dating. But everyone was actually very nice and happy. At the same time I felt like an alien even if noone intended it, because it was very obvious 98% of the students there had no clue what an elite system they were in. It also made it difficult to deal with conversations outside of school, like say going to my parents friends house for dinner. "oh you go to THAT school, good for your for being on scholarship. I bet the kids there are spoiled brats. how do you DEAL WITH THEM!?" and i would awkwardly have to explain that they were the nicest people I had ever met, and people went out of their way to make me feel included. It was like switching between two alternate realities everyday, when the entire population of each world you pivoted between had no idea the other existed, and if it was mentioned, each world mentioned the other in immediate disdain, while perhaps the boarding school world had the more appropriate and politically polished "oh" to anyone who was not at our school. It was not even disdain just kind of like, a blankness in being able to relate to the outside world, but it was not because they were horrible or mean, just that we were all very busy, and to be clear, i much preferred the elite world I lived in, because everyone was so nice and I did feel more at home there than anywhere else in the world. The gates and doors I had at my own elite beautiful campus of a boarding school were by far the nicest buildings i had ever been in, and it made me feel safe and loved and protected, a world that took care of me and cared about me more than anyone else ever had in the world. This has been an advantage for me going forward. I got a degree in Electrical Engineering and ComputerScience, I also happen to be female, so being an alien/minority in almost every aspect has become normal for me. But I can say ive adjusted so much better in the "real world" where competition is high in engineering and software dev, and noone is coddling you. Alot of my friends who took the same majors as me and went to get a job after their Beachelors like I did, had severe adaptation problems and it almost seemed childish to me but I realized I had lived my whole life in lower middle class life, I could carry on a conversation with anyone, and I was not afraid of venturing outside of my comfort zone. That may be a little bit gratiuitous, obviously I dont speak every language and things do scare me and I deal with the imposter syndrome almost daily but in general my ability and willingness to talk to anyone I meet while I'm out, and be creative in the jobs I want and understand complex economic and social impacts of the industries I work is much more developed. Ultimately the key to evolution is adaptation and I would say I have more emotional adaptability to people and have a more intuitive understanding of economic impacts that have caused so much strife between upper and lower class, the dissapearing middle class, in a more human way. Because while each of these worlds seem to be (in my opinion) more curious and therefore scared or clueless about the other world which they don't understand, inherently more judgmental without meaning to be, how i see each one is with personal memories of friends, real people, christmas dinners with the poor neighbors and also the incredibly rich girl I knew in boarding school who now interns at Louis Vuitton, and when other people assume the worst about her, I remember how her family let me live at their house when my parents were going through rough times, and her parents treated me as one of their own, and never made me feel inadequate, took my mind of horrible situations at home by bringing me along with their families to fundraisers and elaborate parties where I had a neverending choice of designer gowns to choose from "my closet is your closet" so in no way I feel left out. I remember her genorosity more than her evasive richness, I remember her heart to give and inclusiveness more than I remember her designer clothes, I remember her sense of humour more than I remember her aloofness to the daily grind of the outside world. And to the real world I grew up in, I remember the extreme struggles of my parents as children and have grace for their inadequacies emotional and financial raising me, I remember the frustration of the neighbor who had been laid off due to a series of globalizing optimizations in his industry that were beyond his time and energy and education to understand, and how it culminated in judgement and frustration in an assumption at dinner about the kids at my school. I try to remember the humanity in these people and it is much easier to do when you have personal experiences to associate on both ends of the spectrum. I definitely think everyone could stand more to put themselves outside of their comfort zone, and habitat for humanity on a Saturday for a resume booster is not exactly going to provide the intimate and emotional experiences needed to understand how complex and divided we are as a nation, and just how deep cultural influences play into our prejudices against the unknown.
cafard 10y ago
There is something maddening about the sort of discourse in which the expensively educated try to impress one another by doing penance for their educations and advantages. Also, does the plumber really care whether he has a conversation with the professor?
bootload 10y ago
"I also never learned that there are smart people who aren’t “smart.”" Rule of thumb for me, "^Street smarts^, will kick ^smart, smarts^ arse, most times." Important to remember this if you live by "'wit', not name".

238 points by jmarbach 10y ago

Making small talk is a skill, just like any other. You don't need to skip college to figure out how to small talk. but the rest of the article is pretty interesting: the sense of entitlement, the one dimensional view of intelligence, and the SAT and prep track required to get to it all. Somehow, this article reminded me of Catch in the Rye - especially the main character and his experiences in a prep school for college.

kuschku 10y ago
It’s not just a skill. If you’ve been mostly around people of the upper class, and in such schools as well – as the article says – you might be able to hold small talk with people from other countries, but not with people from your own country’s lower class. There’s an entirely different way of life there, entirely different life experiences, which lead to entirely different priorities, things you think about, and so on. I’ve been in both circles due to family, people from the very bottom, and people from the very top, and you can’t just say "making small talk is just a skill". And the other things you mention are also artifacts of this education: You only see this one perspective of life, which is so very different from what many other people experience, that you never even consider what their life might look like. Smalltalk, like any communication, requires that you have a mental model of the person you talk with, but if you share none of their experiences, you can’t build such a mental model. Although I wouldn’t recommend skipping college, I definitely recommend people to at least try to find a way with which they can experience the life through the eyes of a person of another social class at least once.

BipolarElsa 10y ago

This article is utter rubbish. Anyone who possesses an elite education will never suffer in their life. They're in the upper-echelon of society. I have no pity for them and they are not at a disadvantage. Go ahead an ask anyone accepted into Yale if they'd trade it off for the same major at po-dunk State U. What do you think their response will be? Don't be daft. This is trash.

munchbunny 10y ago
I think you're confusing "these are the cons of going to an elite university" with "there are more cons than pros of going to an elite university." It's quite possible to be mostly satisfied with something and still have good reasons to be dissatisfied, and it's perfectly reasonable to write about those reasons. I doubt Deresiewicz would say that "po-dunk State U" is better.
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Spooky23 10y ago
When I was on the Harvard tour, the guide was an Ivy League groupie -- she had applied and failed to get into Harvard, went to a good "backup school", (I think Case Western) and finally transferred into Harvard in her sophomore year -- without transferring any credits. It made an impression on me. I checked out the 2nd tier of school and found a bunch of white bread people from Jersey looking forward to a career in ibanking or medicine. I ended up in a good state school with real people and no debt. I lost the opportunity to work at McKinsey or whatever, but I consider that a plus.
- munchbunny 10y ago
  I hope you don't mind if I challenge you on your very last sentence. Why do you consider losing the opportunity a plus?
  - Spooky23 10y ago
    Not at all. At that time in my life, I would have been attracted to that kind of gig, and having been a customer working with those kinds of firms, I wouldn't have liked it. Fundamentally, the best thing hat I learned about in college was myself. Surrounding myself with type-As on some track would have stifled that. Honestly, I'm really happy with how life has turned out this far!
PavlovsCat 10y ago
Anyone who never suffers in their life and is not aware of the total randomness of their own birth, is damaged in a way I would NOT want to swap with. One would have to have none to not realize how much infinitely more worth the personality one can become potentially is than even full control of all of the Earth's resources and command over all people could be. It's like the difference between making someone orgasm, and screaming at them, why can't they see how sexy one is and why aren't they aroused, especially since it was so expensive to get a room at this hotel. Mind you, I think personal greatness is completely unrelated to social class. I'm not saying "elite education means you have issues", I don't think it's a zero-sum game at all. But having grown up in a town teeming with millionaires, I have to laugh at the idea that many rich aren't positively hunted by their own defects. Yes, they can buy an island, but they can't sit still on it, they cannot be with themselves, they cannot reflect on themselves. They are captured, driven, mad, and get hysterical when they are recognized and pitied. So they have to keep company that has the same fears, like an unspoken pact. It's like drug addicts hanging out with drug addicts instead of the people who would ask them wtf they are doing with their life. They can't read many great minds and even get half of what they say; sure, neither do many poor people, but that's more because they don't have the time or the language is too bloated for them, not because there is some inherent vampire/garlic type incompatibility. If you discuss the exact same subjects with a "normal" person in normal words, they in my experience are less likely to throw up all sorts of deflections, while other people realize this stuff is fit to dissolve the lies their lives are and get scared. Fear is not strength, and powerful people have many options, but when those options don't include letting go of power they are basically slaves as well. The highest echelons of power are impersonal and systematic, only entropy and madness gain from them, no human person; and it takes personal strength to sail in such an environment and not end up as a bundle of sticks held together by delusions. It takes fierce motherfuckers, which is the opposite of people who can't answer a straight question, as many people in the "upper echelons" demonstrate. Pester me not with their pocket calculator stuff :P

rublev 10y ago

edited

munchbunny 10y ago
> I love when the elite romanticize the lives of the prole. It's super easy to think "Yeah, $750 apartment, a bit for food, go out for a beer once in awhile, work 9-5, great!" Until you realize that unless you play a perfect hand with every dime, the slightest expense can cripple you at a moments notice. "Not to be rich" doesn't necessarily mean "precariously afloat." I choose to interpret that line charitably, and take it to mean that many high impact roles in society (especially various roles in education) do not pay richly, so having the luxury to deprioritize income should mean that today's young Americans might be better equipped to focus on social impact first. Edit: I saw that you edited your post and removed what you originally said. That's too bad. I would much prefer that we try to have a productive discussion than to just drop a curtain on the conversation.
alistairSH 10y ago
This bit elicited a chuckle... > How will I face my classmates at our 20th reunion, when they’re all rich lawyers or important people in New York? You face them with your head held high. You chose a career that you find fulfilling. You're improving the lives of children, passing your hard-earned knowledge on to another generation.
akiselev 10y ago
>> Until you realize that unless you play a perfect hand with every dime, the slightest expense can cripple you at a moments notice. From orientation to graduation, the message is implicit in every tone of voice and tilt of the head, every old-school tradition, every article in the student paper, every speech from the dean. The message is: You have arrived. Welcome to the club. And the corollary is equally clear: You deserve everything your presence here is going to enable you to get. You're literally just reiterating the arguments the article makes except with a clearly visible chip on your shoulder. Edit: Perhaps you should make your statement in one post instead of editing over and over again. You seem far too emotional to make a rational argument here.
10y ago

petegrif 10y ago

What BS. This guy can't talk to a plumber and it's the fault of elite colleges? Pleeese!

Mz 10y ago

The remarks here on HN dissing this article piqued my curiosity, so I began to read the article. It's been a long ..year...and I am super tired, so I am not going to manage to actually read the whole thing. But, I was one of the top three students of my graduating high school class and I turned down a National Merit Scholarship to one of the top two universities of my home state. I think I made the right call and I think I understand the impetus behind the writing of this article. In a nutshell, if education is empowering, but pursuing that education actually narrows your life choices, then perhaps there is some flaw somewhere. For people who go to Ivy League schools, most of them can only imagine rabidly pursuing the next rung on the career ladder and this may come at great personal cost. I was in my late 40s before I really understood how incredibly upper class my mother's values are. We didn't have much money when I was a kid -- or so I thought, though it turns out that is not as accurate as I believed at the time -- and I never thought of myself as upper class. It took me a lot of years of intentionally walking away from this deeply rooted expectation in order to really reclaim my life for myself in a way that allows me to get what I want, not for me to become what society expects me to be. So while I get that most people are not going to understand that there is a genuine cost involved and will simply sneer at the idea that there is any down side, as someone who recognized that downside at a young age and walked away, I will say that the ability "to not be rich" is, in fact, a choice not psychologically available to many upper class people and it does harm them and it does definitely harm their ability to be good leaders for the common man.

feedjoelpie 10y ago
This is a stupid reply that has nothing to do with the topic: I had the NMS myself, and I'm assuming some college was going to give you an extra kicker since it's portable. Do you mind sharing which colleges? I'm weirdly curious because while I didn't go to an known elite school, I turned down a full ride to an out-of-state state school (for NMS winners) to go to a private school. So like, kind of the opposite of you. But I also probably didn't fully understand the options.
- Mz 10y ago
  As far as I know, my scholarship was not portable. It was specifically for one university and when I failed to attend, no, I did not get to keep my scholarship. No one gave me an extra kicker. I turned my scholarship down for personal reasons, not because I was bought out by some competing school.

dbg31415 10y ago

> Man is not a farmer, or a professor, or an engineer, but he is all. Man is priest, and scholar, and statesman, and producer, and soldier. The speech that the blog was paying homage to when it picked a name. * The American Scholar || http://www.emersoncentral.com/amscholar.htm http://www.emersoncentral.com/amscholar.htm

dibstern 10y ago

These aren't the disadvantages of an elite education, it's the disadvantages of not having sufficient breadth of experiences with people from a sufficient breadth of social-economic backgrounds. Get your kids to do extracurriculars where they'll meet kids from lower-income households. It'll make them able to relate to them and understand them better.

peteretep 10y ago
You are missing: in order to gain access to these institutions, many people apparently have to forgoe those extracurriculars and focus only on their studies.
- akiselev 10y ago
  No, to gain access to these institutions you are basically required to have half a dozen extracurriculars on your resume. They receive applications from so many white straight-A/4.0 students that extracurriculars are the only differentiating factor. Few high schools (in California, at least) would even let you graduate without 50-100 hours of community service. Whether these extracurriculars would expose you to different ethnicities and world views is dependant on demographics.
  - Hydraulix989 10y ago
    It's also based on access, I remember feeling initially impressed when a fellow applicant on College Confidential that applied to the same top school as myself did community service abroad in South America, when I then realized that it was very costly to do so, and that I couldn't have done anything so "impressive" only because my parents couldn't have covered the cost.
  - aarohmankad 10y ago
    "Few high schools (in California, at least) would even let you graduate without 50-100 hours of community service." I have never heard of community service as a requirement to graduate high school. (No school in my district had this requirement.) Granted, I understand your overall point. It is becoming increasingly difficult to be accepted by "elite" colleges. In fact, I had applied to nearly 12 colleges that were highly respected in Computer Science and was rejected from all of them.

peteretep 10y ago

Brits figured this shit out a long time ago: you talk about the weather.

Mz 10y ago
Brits also are much more okay with embracing the idea that there are separate classes. Americans like to think we are better than that and (like to imagine that we) treat all people in some idealized egalitarian fashion. In practice, it is a lot, lot harder to treat everyone equally well and try to ignore class divides than to have protocols in place for bridging the gap between people explicitly of different classes.
- deleted 10y ago
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- yummyfajitas 10y ago
  It's entertaining how far we in the states go in denying we have classes. Some years back a blogger tried to cook up a taxonomy of our class system. Since we don't have words to describe them he adopted archaic Indian terms instead. Brahmins are the NY/CA elite, Vaisyas are the Trump voting worker caste, etc. https://unqualified-reservations.blogspot.com/2007/05/castes-of-united-states.html https://unqualified-reservations.blogspot.com/2007/05/castes... Other writers have recognized and described it too: http://siderea.livejournal.com/1260265.html http://siderea.livejournal.com/1260265.html Even our very own Michael O. Church: https://www.meetup.com/Philadelphia-Political-Agnostics/messages/boards/thread/49570124 https://www.meetup.com/Philadelphia-Political-Agnostics/mess... I'm with Mz on this - we should start explicitly recognizing our caste system. It's been helpful to me; once I figured out our castes and where I live in it, suddenly a lot of things clicked into place. For example, why do so many people not recognize me as white? It's because I don't give off the cultural signals of being upper caste (Brahmin in Moldbug's taxonomy) but I'm solidly within Brahim professional and social circles. Given these mismatched signals, Kashmiri or Argentinian seems like the most plausible hypothesis.
  - smallnamespace 10y ago

paulsutter 10y ago

The solution is near. The "elite" will be a lot less smug when their jobs also get replaced by technology. No need for melodramatic navel-gazing. Anyone notice that some the most "elite" schools are total no-shows in AI research?

dangmurderparty 10y ago
The elite own the machines, stupid. The new plutocracy will be balanced by iron fisted CEOs, algorithmically advised and steered boards, and a chosen few human elites that bear each other due to a wealth standoff. The rest of us die hungry, cold, and broke as shit, while the elites mine galaxies and excavate the stars by the trillions. The end
wenc 10y ago
Unfortunately, this is the wrong conclusion -- the jobs of the elite are precisely those that don't get replaced by technology. Automation only affects those jobs are systematic and repeatable. The elite typically hold jobs in consulting, finance, management, government, etc. that require a lot of word-smithing and people skills. The big blind spot for technologists is thinking that technology is central to everything. It is not. If you look at how society is organized, it's the folks with the people skills who are on top. People who are good with technology work for them.
- paulsutter 10y ago
  Would you care to place a bet on which jobs will be replaced by technology? Banks haves acres of class A office space filled with people preparing powerpoints to show each other. Those jobs will go away. And those are the people who hire management consultants.

DoodleBuggy 10y ago

Existence in a bubble is almost always a disadvantage.

partycoder 10y ago

I would say that the upper class of each country has a distinct subculture. And now those subcultures have somehow converged into a global subculture of the rich. A golf club membership for example can cost $100,000. Some people will probably never save up that much, and if they did, they would never spend it in a golf club membership. But for some it's completely normal and part of their everyday lives. Same with schools, same with restaurants, etc... by being strictly exclusive you set yourself apart from the rest and miss out on a lot of things.

tokenadult 10y ago

Summer 2008, and widely criticized from then to now. I wonder if a professor of English can ever have the same perspective as a professor of biology or a professor of mathematics. I don't think he has made the case that higher education that can properly be called "elite" is actually disadvantageous. https://psmag.com/the-problems-with-william-deresiewicz-s-new-manifesto-aa3bd2fa7cdf https://psmag.com/the-problems-with-william-deresiewicz-s-ne...

egocodedinsol 10y ago
I don't think he made that case, either. But it doesn't stop some of his observations from being thought provoking. I do agree that a science professor would likely have an entirely different perspective.

jeffmcmahan 10y ago

I have a bachelor's degree in philosophy and linguistics from an elite university. My parents owned and auto parts store in a small town, which was next door to my grandparents' bakery. Based on my experience, it seems this guys' problem is a boring backstory; no university can or should make up for the fact that you don't regularly mix with non-university types.

adjkant 10y ago

I think the key mistake this piece made is assuming that having an elite education stops you from being culturally and socially aware beyond your class. Sure, many top colleges don't teach this, but as someone who grew up in a family with under $20K income who goes to a pretty good private school, I've seen a very distinct difference in some of my classmates. The education isn't the problem, the bubble is. I read this article some time ago, so pardon if my memory failed me.

protomyth 10y ago

Since the education talked about is quite far out of my experience[1], I am a bit concerned that any education could so influence a person that they cannot make small talk with someone else. This actually sounds like an isolation problem or a total need not to be embarrassed. I know some folks are shy and suffer real problems, but this isn't it. It just sounds like someone who has lived with a sect of some sort for a long time. I just have a tough time believing the education did it. 1) sent in the applications with the fees that I couldn't really afford and never even got a letter back. I figured it was a sign.

egocodedinsol 10y ago

Before this gets flagged to oblivion, I have one criticism and two defenses of the article. As a criticism, this article doesn't address the sciences. The availability of research money is a major reason to go to an elite science institution. If you want to do science, the best thing is to do it, and that usually means email a lab and asking to work there. More labs with more money probably means better opportunities.[0] In the first defense, consider whether there's anything in this article that might also apply outside of elite colleges. For instance: 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. This resonates so much with what Daniel Ellsberg wrote to a young Henry Kissinger regarding levels of top-secret access: Then, after you've started reading all this daily intelligence input ... you'll be aware only of the fact that you have it now and most others don't....and that all those other people are fools. ... it will have become very hard for you to learn from anybody who doesn't have these clearances. [1] Finally, this article absolutely nails many of the patterns I have observed while at elite universities. For instance: (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.) reminds me of when an acquaintence mentioned he was going to law school 'In Palo Alto'. Or, one night at a party when I overheard a friend (future Rhodes scholar) say 'You know you're at <institution> when you use the term statistical variance at a theatre party!' Never mind that they'd used it incorrectly, it was emblematic to say the least. [0](Please don't take this comment the wrong way - there are best-in-field professors at less-than-elite universities, but not as consistently). [1]http://www.motherjones.com/kevin-drum/2010/02/daniel-ellsberg-limitations-knowledge http://www.motherjones.com/kevin-drum/2010/02/daniel-ellsber...

rayiner 10y ago
My brother went to Yale and this does not seem consistent at all. Maybe the author had shitty friends.

fatso784 10y ago

Poor sap. Really, I think you can do both, but you have to supplement the education with actual experience (like travel, volunteering, and normal jobs) and not buy into the hocus-pocus businesstalk mumbo-jumbo. At least, if you want to be normal. If you want to be in business, by all means, concede yourself to the Ivy monolith.

cm2012 10y ago

Understanding of others is probably more correlated with an elite education than not. It's just that understanding of others is relatively rare in the first place among all humans. It's just way more annoying from elites because they tend to think they're very open minded, even when they are not.

protomyth 10y ago
> Understanding of others is probably more correlated with an elite education than not. In my experience, it is independent of education. I've dealt with the social service people early in my career and encountered people with true empathy (along with folks who had no business giving directions much less life advice). You find these folks in many careers and at many educational levels. If anything the focus required for intensive education might push people away from the understanding of others.

intrasight 10y ago

> We were “the best and the brightest” I always have to laugh when I see that phrase used by people who clearly don't know the derogatory connotations that it has carried since Halberstam's book of the same title.

lgessler 10y ago

TL;DR: Going to an elite school 1. denies you the opportunity to empathize with anyone beyond a narrow spectrum of socioeconomics and culture 2. anoints you with a sense of self-worth and entitlement that is, if earned at all, only founded on a narrow set of skills: analytic ability and hard work 3. admits you into the class of seductive "entitled mediocrity", which allows you to fail spectacularly with essentially no real repercussions 4. constraints you, via social pressure, to a narrow set of "prestigious" career paths, among which you might not find the one that is truly right for you 5. shelters you from failure and encourages the idea that it is unacceptable, leaving you less likely to take on risk which might be necessary for growth and fulfillment 6. "is profoundly anti-intellectual", because students are encouraged more to acquire power and all that is necessary for it than cultivation of one's intellect, which requires such slothful indulgences as sitting in solitude, journaling, or even making time to have a relationship with a close friend TL;DR for the TL;DR: elite schools' "real purpose is to reproduce the class system", instead of to grow their students' minds. I'll add that when I read Deresiewicz's article in the New Republic and then went to his talk on my undergrad institution's campus, his tone was markedly more bitter than it is here in 2008. I suppose the situation has not improved in his eyes.

JoeAltmaier 10y ago
Hm. I went to Stanford. Famous for diverse, risk-taking non-mediocre graduates. I guess its the exception that proves the rule?
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- dlo 10y ago
  I went to Stanford, and I disagree. Sure, there are exceptions, but most fellow alumni I know are very boring. For example, many live in San Francisco, work for Facebook or Google, and do little of note besides the following: - have an "interesting" hobby - work out at the gym - hang out with friends at the bar or club - work on their career - start a "start-up" - travel - ... other very self-serving pursuits Most recently, I am very disappointed in my fellow alumni for not standing up for this professor: https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2016/dec/19/ex-stanford-professor-i-was-pushed-out-after-reporting-sexual-harassment https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2016/dec/19/ex-stanford-... And actually, I am seeing to it that alumni and current students do something about this. Enough is enough.

SmooL 10y ago

I would think that it goes without saying that higher education is not the 'be all end all' in overall 'life' education. While I don't believe the author is directly incorrect in his claims of of university behavior/culture, I feel like most of the 'disadvantages' he lists are of his own decisions, whereas for a lot of people they are forced. 'Yet it is precisely that opportunity that an elite education takes away. How can I be a schoolteacher—wouldn’t that be a waste of my expensive education? Wouldn’t I be squandering the opportunities my parents worked so hard to provide? What will my friends think? How will I face my classmates at our 20th reunion, when they’re all rich lawyers or important people in New York? And the question that lies behind all these: Isn’t it beneath me?' There's nothing preventing the author from being a teach aside from his own mental barriers that he can overcome himself - I'm sure if he applied, most school boards would leap at the chance of having him. For others though, that simply isn't the case, and they have real, hard, economic/environmental barriers.

ovibos 10y ago
Sure, but I think that the self imposed barriers the author talks about may be more common in ivy league graduates.

thesimpsons1022 10y ago

wonder how many potential uber/facebook founders there could have been which instead decided to graduate and work at a big company for the prestige.

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intrasight 10y ago

If it weren't for the 1% (smartest not wealthiest) we'd still be living in caves, we'd have no cure for disease, we'd have no internet (or Hacker News!). I, for one, am extremely thankful for elite/ivy educations and for what these institutions and their graduates have made possible for the rest of humanity. If the only price we pay is that they don't know how to talk to dumb people, that's a price I feel is worth paying.

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chiaro 10y ago

It's funny. When I first read this article it must have left a strong impression for me to have recalled it now, in the wake of the election. I see someone else felt similarly. I also remember a HN comment on it saying the blame for writer's inability to communicate across the class divide was more likely a profound lack of social skills. A point of view I'm still not entirely sure I agree or disagree with.

gragas 10y ago
> in the wake of the election. I see someone else felt similarly. I think that's exactly why everyone is on about "liberal hubris." It's because people like you who are so self-absorbed that you write articles about how you're too educated to talk to plumbers and how you sympathize with others who feel the same way. When you discount everyone who disagrees with you for being "uneducated" and gullible, it doesn't seem at all unreasonable to me that many would accuse you overwhelming hubris.
- chiaro 10y ago
  I didn't write the article (nor as far as I know, anything like it) so you're reading rather a lot into my comment. I wasn't even commenting on the article's own view point necessarily, but rather the degree of alienation between the two Americas it exhibited back in 2008. I'll have to track down the original HN thread, it'd make some interesting reading.
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bradknowles 10y ago

Note that this article is from 2008.

kalid 10y ago

Much of this resonated with me. One of the biggest lessons of my Ivy-league education was, paradoxically, that it wasn't sufficient (or even necessary). At least not for the goals I wanted. If you want access to the elite Wall St. or consulting jobs, then yes, you need it. Once you're in, it's almost impossible to be kicked out. Finish, interview, and you're on the path. But I had longstanding doubts about the state of my actual education. Despite numerous engineering classes, I couldn't, for example, work out i^i in my head instantly. Imagine someone asked you "Roughly, what do you think 2^512 to be?" "I don't know exactly, but it's an enormous positive number, probably more than the atoms in the universe." Ok. You should spit that out instantly. Now imagine someone asks "Roughly, what do you think i^i is?" Is it positive? Negative? Real? Imaginary? Close to 1.0? Microscopic? Even if you eventually work it out after a minute, does your long delay mean you understood exponents or imaginary numbers? Is this something that should be solidified before, say, studying the Fourier Transform? Despite scoring well in classes taught by famous professors, I couldn't answer such basic questions. This was literally middle school operations (exponents) used with high-school parameters (imaginary numbers). I was stuck -- and it didn't seem like anyone thought this a reasonable thing to understand. It led me on a journey of self-education, but I needed to see firsthand that even in an Ivy-league environment, the basics could still be missed. It ended the fantasy that things were transformatively different in some other place -- it was up to me to fill the gaps. ps. If you want to work out i^i in your head: https://betterexplained.com/articles/intuitive-understanding-of-eulers-formula/ https://betterexplained.com/articles/intuitive-understanding...

phamilton 10y ago
> "Roughly, what do you think 2^512 to be?" Instantly I spit out "a 4 followed by 153 zeros" Now... looking it up it's actually more like a 13 followed by 153 zeros.
danharaj 10y ago
The link you provided seems to omit the fact that i^i is multi-valued, which is a consequence of a fundamental property of the logarithm.
- 10y ago

known 10y ago

AKA https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dominant_minority https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dominant_minority

douche 10y ago

I feel like I am in a weird, interesting situation. I grew up as a complete redneck, rural, appalachian hillbilly, despite all efforts of my jumped-up grandmother to try to instill some European class. I proudly wore my Haines' T-shirts and Carharts pants, with steel-toed, kevlar-lined chainsaw boots for years... I graduated high school in such a Beverly Hillbullies environment, then got accepted, against my expectations, at Dartmouth (they must have been low on the rural white boy quota that year...) I showed up in Hanover, NH, my first day with my pickup, my chainsaw, my rifle & shotgun, and a full set or mechanic's tools. It was a pretty impressive example of culture shock. I'm better for having escaped the Franklin County, Maine, bubble and experiencing it, but it took some adjusting.

gtani 10y ago

One thing about some of those elite institutions, Columbia, Penn, Chicago, Yale, teh area south of UC-Berkeley, are that they find themselves in the middle of not well doing urban centers. You could call them ghettos. You have a lot of privileged kids who have their first contact with unprivileged or people who have fallen out of the middle class. Most of them choose to ignore it, but a few take notable action to improve the situation.

adpoe 10y ago

I think the issue at stake here is the nature of higher education in the US: specifically, what are its putative goals? Is it a place for intellectual growth and experience gaining for its own sake, or is it primarily for grooming & career preparation? With tuition costs as they are, I'd argue that college is necessarily a career investment, almost entirely. And to view it any other way is either naively Romantic or somewhat deluded. If I could really guarantee career success, social status, and great wealth, just by attending a school--I would. If these schools really do grant entry to coveted and lucrative positions, and that's what they're selling to potential applicants, I don't see a problem. That's the product, and as products go, that's pretty darn good. Personally, I think if elite education as entry-way to the upperclass--of and for itself--is an issue, then you're attending one of these schools for the wrong reasons. Right now, it is often pretended that the goal of college is to learn, to grow, and to 'get an education'. This may have been true in the past, but today it is not. The goal of college is to prepare yourself for the work force, and any other view is somewhat financially irresponsible, whether your family has the money to blow, or not. Moreover: much of the most important learning in life (intellectual and otherwise) happens outside of academia. It always has and always will. Schools can't do it all. If you aren't already intellectually curious, 4 years at Stanford--just by itself--won't change that. But if I can find a school that will be worth the investment of time and money for my career, one that will help me build a comfortable life for myself and support my family--then I think that investment is worthwhile, and I'll be happy to make it any day.

holri 10y ago

The Disadvantage of a an Elite Education is the possibility of a Trump election.

ken47 10y ago

As someone who went to an "elite" institution, I wonder why all education can't be elite. In the past, there were physical limitations -- only so many students could fit in a lecture hall, on a campus etc. So the optimal arrangement at the time was to try to match the highest-potential students with the most qualified educators -- a system that could be gamed, requires imperfect approximations, but the best that was available at the time. Now, with today's technology, the best educators in the world can become accessible, on a read-only basis, to anyone. This is what we're starting to see, with the biggest brand-name universities exploring how to monetize such a system via MOOC's. When MOOC's mature, a lot of today's university admissions rituals will no longer make sense. Take SATs for example -- a high school-agnostic measure of a student's capabilities. If instead, there were a standardized set of MOOC's, whose grading systems were trustworthy, then instead of approximating a student's ability to learn new material via a general standardized test, the course material itself is standardized, so SATs become redundant. I can't wait to see where MOOC's go in the coming years, and "elite" education earn its name through means other than its exclusivity.

scarmig 10y ago
Elite isn't about the quality of the instruction. Elite is about who is instructed. By definition, you can't have a broad-based, democratic elite.
- ken47 10y ago
  > Elite isn't about the quality of the instruction. If you read the article, I think the author would disagree, as he refers to Yale and Columbia, not himself, as an elite education. Here's a thought experiment. If Harvard's professors were swapped out for high school teachers, "elite" students would be less inclined to attend, and over several years, the quality of students at Harvard would almost certainly drop. Conversely, if someone created a university with all the world's most renowned lecturers, in several years, "elite" students would likely be yearning to attend. And I'm not clear on what you mean by "democratic elite." There would still be elite students. Two things would be different: 1) Their designation could be determined by cleaner data than was possible in a pre-MOOC world. In the current world, there are few clean baselines on which to evaluate students from different high schools, for example, which is one of the main reasons standardized tests like the SAT exist. 2) If we assume that a better lecturer will help increase a student's knowledge, regardless of the student's quality, then every student's knowledge could be maximized in the post-MOOC world, not just the small fraction that are able to gain entry to elite institutions.

jondubois 10y ago

I graduated from one of the top universities in my country (top 50 in the world) and we learned pretty much exactly the same material as they did at MIT. In reality I don't think there is any significant difference in terms of education quality between the top #1 university and #100 for any given field. But the difference in terms of opportunities after finishing MIT vs finishing some other good university is massive. It seems that if an investor or prospective employer hears the word 'MIT', 'Harvard', 'Stanford' or 'Yale' when you make a pitch, somehow you're considered to be much smarter than the rest. I think it's partially due to this elitist mindset. 'Elites' seem to think that people who went to an elite college are many times smarter than everyone else - But the real difference is actually social connectivity. People who went to an elite institution are closer to capital - This gives them more influence. They are more likely to become investors and employers themselves. Their elitist world view (rooted in the false perception that they make up an intellectually distinct group) means that they are more likely to hire/fund people who also studied at elite universities. Elites think that people like them congregate around knowledge, but in reality, they congregate around financial capital disguised as knowledge.

argonaut 10y ago
I went to Berkeley for CS and knew people that went to MIT and Stanford, and I don't agree. You're right the curriculum is the same. Everything else is different. Just one example: lots of undergrads do research. They get to work (albeit basically as trainees) in some of the top CS labs in the world.
- jghn 10y ago
  I've long espoused what jondubois says above and many people have told me what you say here in response. That might be true but now that I'm in a position to see lots of new hires it doesn't seem to make a difference, at least not for CS grads. We hire a bunch of MIT grads and they seem to have roughly the same distribution of success as all of the other new hires. I'll grant you that this is anecdata but it is the one situation where I have a lot of experience where the connection angle does not exist.

bb101 10y ago

"As John Ruskin told an older elite, grabbing what you can get isn’t any less wicked when you grab it with the power of your brains than with the power of your fists." Now there is a useful quote to carry around in your head.

peter303 10y ago

In The Devil Wears Prada, Emily is told "a million would kill for a position like yours" when demurrs about her troubles. The author should be thankful they were able to get a nice education, even though it may come short in common sense. You can pick that up later if you want to.

BigJeffeRonaldo 10y ago

And this is why Trump's win was so confusing for many citizens if the US--too stuck in their bubble to understand the rest of the world and its happenings. See also Nassim Taleb's essay on the Intellectual Yet Idiot class: https://medium.com/@nntaleb/the-intellectual-yet-idiot-13211e2d0577 https://medium.com/@nntaleb/the-intellectual-yet-idiot-13211...

akhilcacharya 10y ago
I go to a school elites think is crappy, and the most confusing part of this cycle was the endless string of articles about whatYoung Republicans and Young Democrats at Ivies and top schools thought about Hillary, Bernie, Trump etc - nothing about the type of school I go to. Does the MSM not think we matter? With that said, my schools county still went for Hillary by about 20 points, so that's good.
yedava 10y ago
The alleged confusion presumes that only elites voted for Democrats. But if you look at the voting trends, urban areas tend to vote Democrat and it is a far stretch to presume that there is no working class living in urban areas. In fact I'd wager there are far more working class people living in urban areas than in rural areas.

jstewartmobile 10y ago

This was a well-written article. A lot of people are hating on it as a "poor little rich kid" argument, but I didn't see that at all. He put his point at the end, and man is it a good one: > The disadvantage of an elite education is that it’s given us the elite we have, and the elite we’re going to have. I mean, just look at the crap Peter Thiel does in broad daylight, like funding lawsuits for vendetta-by-proxy and researching the blood of young people as a youth treatment. It's like Old Testament, incur the wrath-of-God type stuff (the blood, not the lawsuit), and the only thing that happens is Sam Biddle writes a screed and we go about our business.

cletus 10y ago
I assume you mean Thiel funding the downing of Gawker after their scurrilous behavior and attempts to justify anything under the First Amemdment, then that one actually has my full support. As for the rest, to quote Dennis Hopper (IIRC) "I'm not crazy. I'm rich. Rich people are eccentric".
- jstewartmobile 10y ago
  I'm criticizing his means more than his ends in that particular example. If I were on my game, I would have brought up Palantir and how they're helping roll out the infrastructure of our present and future police state.
  - josepi_ 10y ago
    Fosh. Dude is a scumbag. You know that meeting he just put together for/with Trump, with all the tech. leaders, centered around tech. employment? You know, the one with people like Jeff Bezos, Larry Page, Sheryl Sandberg, Tim Cook, Elon Musk, Ginni Rometty, Brian Krzanich...and Alex Karp. Hmm, let's see. Amazon employs 250k+ people; Alphabet employs 60k+; Facebook employs 15k+; Musk's companies employ 30k+; IBM employs 350k+; Intel employs 100k+; ... Palantir employs around 2000, but Alex Karp got to go to that meeting. I wonder who Palantir's biggest shareholder is...hmm? P.S. The meeting also had Satya Nadella (Microsoft), Chuck Robbins (Cisco), and Safra Catz (Oracle)..and all three of Trump's children - who took seats from companies like HP, Dell, all telecomms, Xerox, and more. Seriously: fuck Peter Thiel.

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killersmalls 10y ago

"Yet the opportunity not to be rich is one of the greatest opportunities with which young Americans have been blessed." Might just be one of the most entitled statements I've ever read.

AnimalMuppet 10y ago
I used to dream of being a rich man Yeah, I swore I'd have it all some day Once you taste it you will find That it isn't worth a dime 'Till you're free enough to give it away - Randy Stonehill He who cannot cast away a treasure at need is in fetters. - J. R. R. Tolkein You have a valid point that, for the less well off, hearing rich people whine about how hard it is to be rich is really grating. But there is also the flip side - wealth really can make you a slave to your money.
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VLM 10y ago

Cult-like dedication toward conformity and disengagement from the real world. If they were selling daisies at the airport they'd be "rescued" and medicated.

akhilcacharya 10y ago

My question to people that disagree with the article - I don't go to an elite school, ranked about 55 in CS - what can I do to make myself elite? Or do I not have upward class mobility at all?

potatoman2 10y ago

Looks like all those years of education didn't help this author learn how to write short, concise paragraphs.

kutkloon7 10y ago

The intentions behind the first paragraph of the article are undoubtedly good, but it reads a lot like "Boo hoo, I can't engage in small talk with this pleb because I'm too educated for him.".

AnimalMuppet 10y ago

That first paragraph is a perfect expression of the last election - the Ivy League guy can't figure out how to talk to the plumber, even when they're in the same room.

mcguire 10y ago

"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." Wasn't Bush II a Yale graduate?

TheCoelacanth 10y ago
Yale and Harvard Business School.

usmeteora 10y ago

as someone whose parents never went to college, and I went halfway through highschool from the nations top 50 worst highschools (time magazine did an article on that) to a boarding school on scholarship and then got scholarship to a private top ranked institution (not ivy so "second tier" because top 20 universities instead of just ivy), and while I wouldnt redo the past for a second, to be catapulted into a completely different world like this literally overnight while driving home from boarding school to my poor parents fighting and my mom dealing with alcholism and stressing about how to pay the $50 application fee just to apply to college, and pivot between that everyday really does make you see how disparate the world is. I loved my boarding school because above all the normalcy led to emotional stability so kids could focus on themselves instead of drama. very little drama, very little dating. But everyone was actually very nice and happy. At the same time I felt like an alien even if noone intended it, because it was very obvious 98% of the students there had no clue what an elite system they were in. It also made it difficult to deal with conversations outside of school, like say going to my parents friends house for dinner. "oh you go to THAT school, good for your for being on scholarship. I bet the kids there are spoiled brats. how do you DEAL WITH THEM!?" and i would awkwardly have to explain that they were the nicest people I had ever met, and people went out of their way to make me feel included. It was like switching between two alternate realities everyday, when the entire population of each world you pivoted between had no idea the other existed, and if it was mentioned, each world mentioned the other in immediate disdain, while perhaps the boarding school world had the more appropriate and politically polished "oh" to anyone who was not at our school. It was not even disdain just kind of like, a blankness in being able to relate to the outside world, but it was not because they were horrible or mean, just that we were all very busy, and to be clear, i much preferred the elite world I lived in, because everyone was so nice and I did feel more at home there than anywhere else in the world. The gates and doors I had at my own elite beautiful campus of a boarding school were by far the nicest buildings i had ever been in, and it made me feel safe and loved and protected, a world that took care of me and cared about me more than anyone else ever had in the world. This has been an advantage for me going forward. I got a degree in Electrical Engineering and ComputerScience, I also happen to be female, so being an alien/minority in almost every aspect has become normal for me. But I can say ive adjusted so much better in the "real world" where competition is high in engineering and software dev, and noone is coddling you. Alot of my friends who took the same majors as me and went to get a job after their Beachelors like I did, had severe adaptation problems and it almost seemed childish to me but I realized I had lived my whole life in lower middle class life, I could carry on a conversation with anyone, and I was not afraid of venturing outside of my comfort zone. That may be a little bit gratiuitous, obviously I dont speak every language and things do scare me and I deal with the imposter syndrome almost daily but in general my ability and willingness to talk to anyone I meet while I'm out, and be creative in the jobs I want and understand complex economic and social impacts of the industries I work is much more developed. Ultimately the key to evolution is adaptation and I would say I have more emotional adaptability to people and have a more intuitive understanding of economic impacts that have caused so much strife between upper and lower class, the dissapearing middle class, in a more human way. Because while each of these worlds seem to be (in my opinion) more curious and therefore scared or clueless about the other world which they don't understand, inherently more judgmental without meaning to be, how i see each one is with personal memories of friends, real people, christmas dinners with the poor neighbors and also the incredibly rich girl I knew in boarding school who now interns at Louis Vuitton, and when other people assume the worst about her, I remember how her family let me live at their house when my parents were going through rough times, and her parents treated me as one of their own, and never made me feel inadequate, took my mind of horrible situations at home by bringing me along with their families to fundraisers and elaborate parties where I had a neverending choice of designer gowns to choose from "my closet is your closet" so in no way I feel left out. I remember her genorosity more than her evasive richness, I remember her heart to give and inclusiveness more than I remember her designer clothes, I remember her sense of humour more than I remember her aloofness to the daily grind of the outside world. And to the real world I grew up in, I remember the extreme struggles of my parents as children and have grace for their inadequacies emotional and financial raising me, I remember the frustration of the neighbor who had been laid off due to a series of globalizing optimizations in his industry that were beyond his time and energy and education to understand, and how it culminated in judgement and frustration in an assumption at dinner about the kids at my school. I try to remember the humanity in these people and it is much easier to do when you have personal experiences to associate on both ends of the spectrum. I definitely think everyone could stand more to put themselves outside of their comfort zone, and habitat for humanity on a Saturday for a resume booster is not exactly going to provide the intimate and emotional experiences needed to understand how complex and divided we are as a nation, and just how deep cultural influences play into our prejudices against the unknown.

cafard 10y ago

There is something maddening about the sort of discourse in which the expensively educated try to impress one another by doing penance for their educations and advantages. Also, does the plumber really care whether he has a conversation with the professor?

bootload 10y ago

"I also never learned that there are smart people who aren’t “smart.”" Rule of thumb for me, "^Street smarts^, will kick ^smart, smarts^ arse, most times." Important to remember this if you live by "'wit', not name".