The Disadvantages of an Elite Education
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The Disadvantages of an Elite Education
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Re: The Disadvantages of an Elite Education
#2"An elite education gives you the chance to be rich—which is, after all, what we’re talking about—but it takes away the chance not to be. Yet the opportunity not to be rich is one of the greatest opportunities with which young Americans have been blessed."
How awful! Those miserable Ivy League kids and all that they miss out on. I never knew they had it so rough. We really should do something for those poor kids going into these schools. A warning or something. Maybe we should start some sort of charity to help them.
Re: The Disadvantages of an Elite Education
#3"An elite education gives you the chance to be rich—which is, after all, what we’re talking about—but it takes away the chance not to be. Yet the opportunity not to be rich is one of the greatest opportunities with which young Americans have been blessed." How awful! Those miserable Ivy League kids and all that they miss out on. I never knew they had it so rough. We really should do something for those poor kids goin…
What a great idea! Chairing a charity will finally put those poor Ivy League children to hard work.
Re: The Disadvantages of an Elite Education
#4[deleted]
Re: The Disadvantages of an Elite Education
#5That was surprisingly good.
Although, I think it paints with too fine a brush sometimes (narrowing its conclusions to the Ivy Leagues).
For example, I've definitely noticed a loss of solitude and way too much over specialization too early. A lot of the people I know in Ivy League schools began competing and winning in contests in their chosen field by middle school. I understand that a University would rather admit a USAMO or Intel Science Fair Winner - but the competition there is so intense it forces students aiming high to begin specializing before they're even teenagers.
Frankly I've taken more math courses than anyone ever should, and there are still some USAMO problems that I couldn't solve given unlimited time. Take a look: http://www.unl.edu/amc/a-activities/a7-problems/USAMO-IMO/q-... And they expect 16 year olds to do that!
Hell, I've personally seen a few high school science fair projects that are essentially graduate level work involving genetic engineering and monte carlo simulations.
Although, to be fair, a lot of these kids also try to see the bigger picture and recognize the role of their formal education (they are usually the ones who end up as quants or traders ;-)).
Re: The Disadvantages of an Elite Education
#6The problem begins when students are encouraged to forget this truth, when academic excellence becomes excellence in some absolute sense, when “better at X” becomes simply “better.”
Interesting... I found the opposite. I went to Oxford University (as elite as it gets), with a head big as a balloon, and clearly thinking myself better than everyone. Four years in the presence of people whose intellect crushed me like an insignificant cockroach taught me humility. Since I still needed to believe that I wasn't... you know... just plainly inferior, that forced me to re-rationalise what it means to be "better", and to come to the conclusion that intellectual prowess has nothing to do with being a better person.
It forgot that the true purpose of education is to make minds, not careers.
I also disagree with this, to an extent. My time in Oxford made me a more rounded person, intellectually, inter-personally, and emotionally. And I think that was the right result - that's certainly what my parents hoped when I went in. I think the purpose of education is to make people - not just minds or careers. A person is a combination of many different things, including mind, network of connections, desires, abilities, and a myriad other things.
Mind you, Oxford might just be different from Yale... perhaps Yale should take a leaf ;-)
Re: The Disadvantages of an Elite Education
#7[deleted]
Re: The Disadvantages of an Elite Education
#8That was surprisingly good. Although, I think it paints with too fine a brush sometimes (narrowing its conclusions to the Ivy Leagues). For example, I've definitely noticed a loss of solitude and way too much over specialization too early. A lot of the people I know in Ivy League schools began competing and winning in contests in their chosen field by middle school. I understand that a University would rather admit a…
USAMO problems... Take a look
Ok, it's wildly unfair for a Putnam fellow to be looking at these, but since you asked... I think I can see how to solve problem 6, but I'd have to take a few minutes to make sure that my solution works. The other 5 problems took me about 30 seconds each.
Hell, I've personally seen a few high school science fair projects that are essentially graduate level work involving genetic engineering and monte carlo simulations.
Funny, I was about to say that I've seen far too many graduate students doing work which is essentially high school science fair material.
Re: The Disadvantages of an Elite Education
#9The problem begins when students are encouraged to forget this truth, when academic excellence becomes excellence in some absolute sense, when “better at X” becomes simply “better.” Interesting... I found the opposite. I went to Oxford University (as elite as it gets), with a head big as a balloon, and clearly thinking myself better than everyone. Four years in the presence of people whose intellect crushed me like a…
Oxford taught me that I'm a better computer scientist than I am a mathematician (or at least, that I'm better at algorithms than at algebraic number theory), but it didn't teach me humility.
I realized that intelligence has nothing to do with being a better person when I came up against the apparent contradiction that all of the fascinating people I enjoyed talking to were far less intelligent than myself. :-)
Re: The Disadvantages of an Elite Education
#10"An elite education gives you the chance to be rich—which is, after all, what we’re talking about—but it takes away the chance not to be. Yet the opportunity not to be rich is one of the greatest opportunities with which young Americans have been blessed." How awful! Those miserable Ivy League kids and all that they miss out on. I never knew they had it so rough. We really should do something for those poor kids goin…
The entire article reads like satire. He can't talk to a plumber, the poor chap. Maybe he should publish a few thousand words in some "venerable but lively quarterly magazine".