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What the elite expect and receive from an Ivy League education

washingtonpost.com

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Re: What the elite expect and receive from an Ivy League education

#5
Here's a working link: https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/posteverything/wp/2017/0...

The article is short, and only uses an anecdote to support its claim. While I can generally agree that places like Harvard work more in connections, networks, and money than intellectual rigor, the article is too short and missing enough detail to fall flat.

Re: What the elite expect and receive from an Ivy League education

#8
post #5

Here's a working link: https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/posteverything/wp/2017/0... The article is short, and only uses an anecdote to support its claim. While I can generally agree that places like Harvard work more in connections, networks, and money than intellectual rigor, the article is too short and missing enough detail to fall flat.

Yeah it seems like a well timed attack piece considering all the recent Harvard headlines.

Not that I disagree - Harvard is more likely concerned with reputation and possible future donors than intellectual integrity - but it doesn't make a good foundation for an article.

Re: What the elite expect and receive from an Ivy League education

#9
The article ends with:

It’s a system that polishes privilege, its byproduct a contempt for earned authority. Many of the people who started with this attitude had it ratified and encouraged by perhaps the most prestigious university in the world — and now they’re running the whole show.

Emphasis on now added.

Who in their right mind thinks people who attend Harvard and a handful of other elite universities and prep schools haven't been running the whole show since before the American Revolution?

See for example:

https://news.harvard.edu/gazette/story/2008/11/obama-joins-l...

Re: What the elite expect and receive from an Ivy League education

#10
Cultivating this attitude in future leaders does in fact seem to help them gain power. I think it ties in with the need for A) impeccable credentials and B) the ability to cavalierly invite the CEO, world leader, whomever, to play golf.

In some people we call it charisma, in others we call it entitlement. I'm starting to wonder if it's not only the person we describe, but also our own position and personal knowledge of them that influence the decision on which one to call it.

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