The Disadvantages of an Elite Education

Despite the disadvantages, the author "taught English at Yale University from 1998 to 2008." Additionally, right now, his homepage states he is on a break. So, at the end of the day, where would the author rather be? Would he rather send his kids somewhere else? I doubt it, but internally he may have a streak of contempt while living and working in this environment.

I visited Stanford for a few hours while travelling through California and even the bookshop clerk pretended I was some sort of king. Maybe she took acting classes, or denies the fact were she not employed by Stanford, many of the students wouldn't give her much more than the time of day.

I have nothing against Standford or the people that attend, and the article rang true with my experience passing through the school and my experience with people in that 'sphere' of influence. I don't associate myself with any sphere, and I aim to look at everyone's humanity. Furthermore, I went to a top univeristy (in Australia), but was one of the 'searchers,' so perhaps you can go to an Ivy league school but obtain the benefits on your own terms. When I got to university, I realized that not only had I not 'arrived,' but that I had barely even started. It really depends how deep you want your journey to go.

Says the article: "There’s no point in excluding people unless they know they’ve been excluded."

Social exclusion as practiced by the 'elites' (or anyone with any modicum of power) has its usefulness - it's a way to get ahead and stay ahead with that power. As such, people that are excluded shouldn't take it personally when they realize that the person or people who are excluding them overtly or covertly have designated them as their worst enemy, biggest rival, and their greatest fear. Ironically, for those not truly confronting their fears, the greatest power is deflected.

MIT probably counts as one of the "elites," Ivy or not. But I would say my experience there runs counter to a lot of the points in this article.

The diversity at MIT is not only geographical and racial, but also cultural, socioeconomic, sexual, and anything else you'd care to measure. The culture is not at all self-affirming; most students come in wondering how they got in and leave glad to have made it to a degree. Engineering's obviously well-respected, but it's clearly not a glamorous profession, so that chase for social status and immeasurable wealth is really downplayed since most good engineers won't get there. And MIT students say they went to school in Boston (rather than Cambridge) not out of noblesse oblige, but because lots of people think it's in Michigan.

I guess the "mind and hands" ethic grounds you a little.

I enjoyed the article as well, very insightful. However, I wish the writer had commented a bit more on the sharp divide between top publics and ivy-type institutions. The differences between a UCLA student and a Yale student are also very stark, but in a way that is different from the distinctions drawn in this article.

As a product of UC's (UC San Diego Math/English major followed by MS in Engineering at Berkeley), I know my experience was utterly different from an Ivy, mainly because I attended Columbia Law school for one semester before dropping out to get the MS in Engineering. I learned that you can absolutely sit on your thumb and get through an elite law school at an Ivy. Berkeley engineering was as brutal and uncaring as Math at UCSD: one mistake, and your ass is out.

I'd say that students at top public universities aren't coddled like Ivy Leaguers, and they're more acutely are aware of the possibility of failure, but still have the opportunity to succeed on the highest level and work with the top researchers in their fields (this isn't just true of Berkeley, it's true of many large, research oriented publics, like Texas, Washington, Michigan, Illinois, as well as UCLA, UCSD, etc...) Check out rankings for PhD programs and you'll see a heavy representation of these schools, especially in Engineering and the Sciences.

Overall, I'd say that the danger isn't an elite education, its a culture of entitlement. Nobody leaves Berkeley feeling entitled to a damn thing, and almost everyone feels like they got knocked around a bit. Part of the reason is the sheer number of undergrads at these publics. Berkeley may have a great faculty, but you have to compete with four-five times the number of undergrads to get there. No wonder Berkeley is a little more willing to grade hard and kick people to the gutter. You just can't coddle 24,000 undergrads. You have to start shedding them.

And there's the problem - Berkeley may be, uh, character building, but does that sound like a fun way to spend years 18-22? You have a better chance of making your Venture Capital connections at Stanford or Harvard. Kinda sucks, but membership does have its privileges, and honestly, doesn't it sound better to go to a school that won't give you a C in physics and deny you entry to the CS major?

that's a very good point. I posted earlier that I think the experience of going to Berkeley was very different from Harvard because it's a public, but some of the difference may be attributed to the culture of Engineering. I've met MIT and Stanford engineering grads, and I definitely don't get the same vibe I get from the Ivy-Lawyer types.