The Disadvantages of an Elite Education (2008)
theamericanscholar.org> When parents explain why they work so hard to give their children the best possible education, they invariably say it is because of the opportunities it opens up. But what of the opportunities it shuts down? 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.
> 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?
What a line!
OP doesn't know what it's like to be "smart" but not attend one of these schools.
Attending a low-tier school doesn't teach someone to be comfortable with mediocrity. The feeling of despair at not reaching one's potential occurs regardless of how one got there.
The difference is whether one can escape.
I like this comment because it speaks to how we humans tend to not look (compare ourselves) down, but rather up. I don't strictly mean status, but...status. And the idea that one isn't reaching one's potential is clearly a source of ambition, for better or worse. The luck of you being you is a major part of this tension–how to play the "you" hand you have been dealt by the Divine Dealer of your particular Table.
Good luck, friends.
> There he was, a short, beefy guy with a goatee and a Red Sox cap and a thick Boston accent, and I suddenly learned that I didn’t have the slightest idea what to say to someone like him. So alien was his experience to me, so unguessable his values, so mysterious his very language, that I couldn’t succeed in engaging him in a few minutes of small talk before he got down to work.
I'm a self-taught software developer with no university education and I too am socially awkward in front of tradespeople in my house. I don't think this is about Ivy League degrees, just being a nerdy intellectual who's bad at small talk and doesn't have any topics in common with a blue collar worker.
100%. The conversation opener is right there - baseball.
Doesn't matter whether you follow baseball or not. If you do, have a back-and-forth and talk about your respective teams. If you don't, ask questions; fans love talking about their team.
Ironically the ability to make small talk with anyone is considered a sign of good breeding. So this person's education may have failed them?
"Did you see that ludicrous display last night?"
See, the thing about Arsenal is they always try to walk it in.
>just being a nerdy intellectual who's bad at small talk and doesn't have any topics in common with a blue collar worker
I'm an autistic tech nerd and even I never run out of things to talk to with blue collar people. Blue collar people aren't aliens, they're like you and me, they also watch Netflix, browse the internet, go outside, travel, go shopping, have relationships, raise their kids, there's a lot we have in common to talk about: the economy, politics issues, tax issues, news, cars, power-tools, CoL issues, what their kids are doing, etc.
In fact, often, their lives were more interesting than mine, with a lot of travelling the world on random jobs, since they don't give a f about "a gap in the resume" or being labeled a "job hopper", they just do what they want.
So if you can't find absolutely anything in common with blue collar people to talk about, might be an issue on your end you might want to adress.
> 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.
That's not an elite education, that's a bad education.
Yeah... I went to an ivy league school and I've never felt remotely that way, nor did any of my friends.
Sure, some of my classmates were snobs, and there was probably a higher concentration of them (snobs are drawn to prestige-granting institutions, after all), but I wouldn't blame the education for that.
You find the same kind of attitude with any exclusive groups, from employees of fancy tech companies to country clubs to religious & political organizations.
They went full XKCD 927 (https://xkcd.com/927/) and what started as an attempt to introduce students to the diversity of all cultures ended up forcing them into a new culture antithetical to all other cultures.
Even though this is a now 18 year old article, you still see the same type of elitism in the various metropolitan areas, where these people gather to work in finance/consulting/tech/law.
I've heard people be completely open about only wanting to mingle and network with "peers", where they'll immediately ditch people at networking events / parties / etc. if they're not up to the snuff. They'll ask what school you went to, or where you work(ed), and bow out if its not a target school or top-tier firm.
But people like that are a minority in my experience. I went to a good business school, and many people there had the same background stories - especially the type of undergrad schools they went to.
(With that said, I'm pushing 40, and every now and then I do meet new people that within 2 mins will ask or probe what school I went to. Always feels a bit weird to me to bring up alma mater when it's almost half a lifetime ago...especially if those asking are even older than me.)
There is also that idea of surrounding yourself with "good people" or like minded, people you want to be.
I was friendly to everyone and one guy he just drank all the time, reeked of alcohol, no prospects in life, no ambition. Am I supposed to force myself to be around this person just to be nice/equal terms. I want to be around ambitious people.
No one wants to be around an alcoholic. But it's not to be nice, but to understand them, their struggles, and their perspectives.
Anecdote - I was at a concert with my brother, outside in the smoking area. A homeless woman came by, didn't say anything but was kinda just looking around. My brother is the only one who spoke to her, he offered his cigarette butt. Which is exactly what she was looking for.
Never would have occured to me- but I would guess it made her feel more seen and human.
I like being around people who talk about interesting things other than sports. I remain baffled at how people find sports interesting.
I love sports, and until a few years severely disliked theater and had no idea why people liked it. Didn't make sense, boring, long, generally stupid.
Then I decided to get over myself and see what the fuss was about. Now I get it.
I imagine you could do that if you wanted to. Up to you.
I've tried to like sports, in order to fit in.
I just gave up on it.
You should try to understand sports for yourself. That’s your mistake.
LOL. My dad told me I was bored by baseball because I didn't understand it.
I played little league baseball as a kid. I was sure bored, as most of the time was spent standing or sitting around. The only reason "Bad News Bears" was a good movie is they cut about 98% of the baseball game play.
Car racing is a bit better. But still, you just watch as the cars go around a circle until they crash, run out of fuel, or win.
But I don't mind if you find baseh ball been berry berry good. Just don't tax me for your stadium!
>theater and had no idea why people liked it. Didn't make sense, boring, long, generally stupid. Then I decided to get over myself and see what the fuss was about. Now I get it
I'm a techie by choice but I was raised lit'rary. I love the idea of theater, but the actuality, no thanks, attention seeking narcissists strut and fret their hour upon the stage: I only wish they were heard no more.
I am a fan of coffee shops, though, but coffee shops in theater districts: bring name-dropping cancelling headphones.
Oh, I very carefully didn't say I _liked_ it, I said I get it.
I'm not a sports guy either, sucks since a lot of women are into it too, I'll see it on their dating profile like ooh man... I'm not gonna be at a stadium watching people run back and forward on a field.
Once upon a time I worked at a famous BB bank in an electronic trading shop. I had joined from a 10 year military career as technology specialist. I had a chummy colleague introduce me in the elevator to a peer in a different but related functional. Upon the introduction, I made eye contact, stated 'Hello it is great to meet you and I am excited to collaborate with you' and extended my hand for a handshake.
He gave me a look, scanned me down-and-up, and then looked forwarded at the elevator door. That concluded the social interaction. He had attended Dartmouth. I had attended a nonIvy.
Reading OPs first paragraph with that experience in my mind, it conjures the question 'has this Ivy grad (multiple times over) possessed the curiosity to know about other lifestyles? If not, why? Did he think himself above? Is it possible to navigate one's entire life without knowing how to empathize with a man who is a tradey? Was he not a Red Sox fan? Did he not celebrate the same rapid fire successive championships that Boston had acquired in the 2010s across football, baseball, and hockey?' And then I posed myself the question 'Why am I reading this random elite author? Why am I not reading about the Plumber? What is the motivation of the author to portray his privilege as a detriment and disadvantage?'
Ultimately, this kind of writing, at least for me, is a reminder to keep grounded and be blind to class to see people for who they are.
> He gave me a look, scanned me down-and-up, and then looked forwarded at the elevator door.
I would have burst out laughing at the absurdity of that experience. And then I might have apologized, because man how awful it must feel to be inside the head of someone like that.
> He gave me a look, scanned me down-and-up, and then looked forwarded at the elevator door. That concluded the social interaction.
Jesus, I think you have to smoke a bit more than ivory to be that condescending.
This is a failure of curiosity.
I can talk to plumbers. I can talk to electricians, hvac, construction guys, anyone in the trades. Because what they work on are essentially systems and systems are interesting to me.
Trust me, these guys don't really mind talking shop. And they appreciate someone acknowledging that they do have knowledge and skill not everyone has.
bingo!
> You learn to think, at least in certain ways, and you make the contacts needed to launch yourself into a life rich in all of society’s most cherished rewards. To consider that while some opportunities are being created, others are being cancelled and that while some abilities are being developed, others are being crippled is, within this context, not only outrageous, but inconceivable.
He's really overselling the "learning how to think" aspect here.
People select these schools with the pure intent of getting into a social network that gives them more resources than they would otherwise have.
Let's look at three facts here:
1) Access to the limited slots for students at these institutions is controlled by how "intelligent" you seem to be as measured by their entrance exams
2) To a large degree, you can feign "intelligence" as defined by these tests given a large amount of resources
3) Under most conditions, humans who have social networks for accessing resources will keep those social networks active over time and even generations of humans
These three things combined mean that there's a good chance that any "elite" institution will eventually rot from those who use it to climb or maintain their social rank.
Sure, there are some great programs at these institutions, but that's starting to be overshadowed by the damage caused by the above.
Um, my college education clearly rewired my brain. I learned how to study, and how to solve problems.
> To a large degree, you can feign "intelligence" as defined by these tests given a large amount of resources
That doesn't work for science & engineering.
> Um, my college education clearly rewired my brain. I learned how to study, and how to solve problems.
It does do that, but you can do that at a state school for a significant discount over "elite" schools. Arguably, they'll even do it better, because you're not insulated from how the world works outside of those institutions.
> That doesn't work for science & engineering.
Ooooooh yes it does.
Hell, it even works in medicine.
You can get an excellent science and engineering class from some state schools, like UW. But, you have to be careful to select the right classes. For example, you'll want to avoid all the "weeder" class, and all classes with an "easy A" reputation.
I think we're in a different world from twenty years ago. The upper-middle class kids I know understand that you can get your hands dirty and that a degree isn't a meal ticket to class security anymore. If you want to be a manager you have to understand the jobs of people you manage.
> I think we're in a different world from twenty years ago. The upper-middle class kids I know understand that you can get your hands dirty and that a degree isn't a meal ticket to class security anymore.
This has always been the case throughout my life. I've heard the same thing year after year as long as I can remember. One of the episodes of the Cosby Show had Princeton grads working as plumbers because of the bad job market. What might be different now is comparisons with the job market in the aftermath of the pandemic. New college grads will never see a job market like that again.
> If you want to be a manager you have to understand the jobs of people you manage.
What? No you don’t. You have to know how to identify people you can trust, how to establish and grow that trust with them, and how to maintain that trust.
If you have bidirectional trust, then you can successfully manage people who do things you don’t understand.
Edit: read my reply to surgical_fire below
During my career the only managers I could trust were the managers who could have some understanding of the work I was meant to do.
It was alright if they didn't knew as much as I did. They just needed to know enough that I could have a meaningful conversation about what was going on in the projects they were trying to manage.
Good leaders always lead from the front. There's nothing special about this "knowledge work". It's the same as any other industrial job in this respect. A good foreman can do everyone's job better than them and knows how to keep the higher ups off your back. They're someone you look up to professionally. There's no way you can look up to someone who can't do the job well.
Maybe I’m being too specific in my interpretation of GP’s use of the word “understanding”
I interpreted it to be an understanding derived from experience from having done the job, but now after your message I could see it meaning an understanding of what the output should be, not necessarily how that output was produced.
The military gives leadership classes to officers. In one class, the lieutenants were asked how would they raise a flagpole?
The lieutenants wrote out detailed plans for it. The instructor marked them all wrong. The correct answer was "Sergeant, get that flag pole up!"
you dont need to have a conversation with your plumber. be polite, say something inane about the weather, listen to their advice on plumbing, that's it. no tradesperson is aching to have a conversation with the resident nuclear physicist or whatever. leave them alone to their work, pay promptly, thank them for their time.
this is just neuroticism, and isn't really related to the ivys. it's a very common human dynamic, just follow etiquette when crossing class boundaries. the fact that the author makes it into the particular plight of the ivy grad (oh if only they had kept us humble, woe me!) speaks more to his own insecurities than to anything relating to the nature of elite education.
We live in a time where skilled and honest tradespeople have significantly more demand for work than they can actually take on. Having anything resembling a friendly and trusting relationship with them gives you a huge advantage over the other people stuck on months long wait lists who give up and go with the local PE-maxxed companies (which will take shortcuts and screw you over).
If you actually did talk to your plumber, or electrician, or mechanic, or anyone else you view as "lower" than you, you might have actually learned something. Interesting paradox, that.
I usually ask them if I could watch them work. They always say yes. Then I watch what tools they use and how they use them and ask about them. They're always happy to tell me.
For example, I watched the cable guy install coax. I then bought the same tools he used, and later wired up the coax myself in the next house. I also watched tradesmen cut & sweat pipes, service my furnace, install molding, etc. All very interesting and useful.
IME they're often more than willing to share details about how broken and bad the software systems they use daily are. This is the kind of knowledge that can make you very successful as a technologist if you know how to look for it, but you'll never find it if you can't relate to people of differing backgrounds on a human level.
> You learn to think, at least in certain ways
I remember getting a C on my economics exam. I asked an upperclassman to look at my answers, and what was wrong with them. He laughed, and said my mistake was not regurgitating the prof's leftist ideas. (At one point in class the prof stated that he believed in the equal distribution of all income.)
I never bothered taking any subjective liberal arts classes after that. After all, I was paying the tuition bill.
Oh, that's what happened to you! I wondered where that came from.
My dad, in later life, was a business/economics professor. I received a kitchen table education in economics from him. He & I would talk for hours and hours, sometimes to the annoyance of other family members.
The whole article is a humble brag by someone who has never done anything in his life but sit in a classroom. I know a lot of folks like that and none of them are successful in the real world. I know far more plumbers who understand the world and have built far more wealth than the people who never left the classroom.
> Fourteen years of higher education and a handful of Ivy League degrees, and there I was, stiff and stupid, struck dumb by my own dumbness. “Ivy retardation,” a friend of mine calls this. I could carry on conversations with people from other countries, in other languages, but I couldn’t talk to the man who was standing in my own house.
The ability to make small talk effortlessly with anyone is a hallmark of good breeding, education, and manners. Maybe this guy is just bad at being an elite.
this critique of elite educational institutions was written in 2008.
in 2008 he was denied tenure at Yale. [wikipedia]
casualty causality?
> 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.
This article: William Deresiewicz Complains That Getting Elected (i.e. Being a Good Leader) Is Ridiculously Hard and Not Taught In Schools Nor Achieved By Being Rich.
Social skills (an important part of leadership) are not taught in schools nor achieved by being rich. Except maybe in specific fields like psychology and economics.
I think they should be. Although I’m autistic so I needed to learn them explicitly, it seems nowadays even typical people are struggling and failing to learn proper social skills, probably due to social media.
> 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.
And both running against GW Bush, who attended both Harvard and Yale?
Who put on a fake folksy affect, so he clearly can't have been an elitist.
Ah yes, the disadvantages of being elite. Just as I am similarly disadvantaged for being too intelligent and good looking. When will we realize as a society these things aren't really an advantage at all?
> these things aren't really an advantage at all?
Which things? Intelligence and looks are a well documented advantage, for an individual. A society is made of individuals.
edit: lol, didn't have my coffee yet.
Pretty sure the parent comment is sarcastic.
Your parent commenter must have an ivy league education :)
Man, I didn't know that elites face such struggles. I do not wish on anybody the experience of not being able to strike conversation with lowly peasants such as us.
I'm reminded of the prescient 2005 commentary of George Carlin: "it's a big club and you ain't in it" [1].
Hollywood, in particular, is almost completely nepo baby captured. This is an oft-repeated trend where an industry goes into decline and the children of those who originally succeeded end up dominating it. I think there's a lot of this in politics too, particularly because government jobs (including staffers on campaigns and for representatives) don't pay a lot so you really have to come from an affluent background to afford to live.
It used to be that if you wanted to be a cast member on SNL you had to go to Harvard because of the Harvard Lampoon.
I've seen this issue with the doctor pipeline too. Various analyses show that coming from a high socioeconomic background is a massive advantage, even with med schools trying to provide more opportunities to candidates from a lower socioeconomic background. A few med schools now because of endowments have gone tuition-free but even here it seems (it's early days) like wealthier candidates get more of these opportunities. As a wealthier person you don't need to "waste" time on a job. You can do resume-packing activities (research, volunteering).
So circling back, elite education's role (IMHO) is to be exclusionary. It's to maintain this structure. "Social proof" is extremely important because a lot of opportunities in life aren't about talent or skill but connections and social factors. You go to Stanford and do CS and you get time in front of VCs. You get to know people who will start future unicorns through all their opportunities and connections. You will be one of these people or be an early employee.
If you're an academic, I once heard a friend in academia tell me "you'll never be unemployed in academic with a Harvard undergrad degree". Faculties like to boast about things like this. There's some hyperbole here but again, there's also some truth and it's social proof.
Look at the median age of a US homebuyer, currently 59 [2]. The only young people buying houses are in the upper percentiles of income, come from a wealthy background or their parents are otherwise paying for it because they bought a house in the 1980s and sat on it.
So back to Carlin, a lot of people end up intentionally or unintentionally defending this system through wanting the best for their children but in doing so, society is unravelling. Also, most of the people who prop up the current system just aren't in the club despite what they think.
[1]: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Nyvxt1svxso
[2]: https://www.apolloacademy.com/median-age-of-all-us-homebuyer...
This was gross.
how?
It seems to be a popular subject lately.
Dirty Jobs, leaving software jobs to become a trade. (Update: Electrician, Mechanic, Plumber, etc...)
Lot of articles on this subject, and calls to bring back the old classes like home-econ, shop, etc...
college educated “thoughtleaders” charged $300/hour by the plumbing company, HVAC, car service department and thinks the trade jobs make that much. yeah no they more often start at $30/hour
If software isn't a trade what is it? Holy orders?
> Holy orders?
Haha, but, I'm going to say Holy Orders! Generally male, known for being single? [1] Spends of his time inside a building? Must master large quantities of esoteric knowledge? Not a path most people want to go? The role is to mediate the transcendent Potentiality to something usable by the common person? What he says is intelligible to those who know, but the field has a reputation for unintelligibility?
The tech priesthood, however, makes even no attempt at renunciation of mammon, makes no effort to subordinate its animal nature to its higher nature, and its atheism draws no one higher than their animal natures. Well, except for the Gnostic ones, who seek to free themselves from matter into a digitally spiritual body, and the AI ones who boast that they can create sentient life themselves. We, the tech priesthood, have been building a temple, but it's beginning to look like the blueprint might turn out to be the Tower of Babel instead--pridefully ascending to Heaven [2] itself--instead what we thought we were building.
[1] Priests can be women in some Anglican dioceses, and can be married if they are Anglicans or Orthodox. (Orthodox priests can only be married if they are already married before becoming a priest.)
[2] In the ancient world, "Heaven" was not so much a place (that was "the heavens") as the realm of the Forms / Being / potentiality / Unity, so the Tower of Babel was, symbolically, Man seeking forcibly to take the divine upon himself.
"esoteric knowledge"
" tech priesthood"
Creator of "sentient life"
Even "ghost in the shell"
Yeah. These used to be common terms. The comparison between tech and religious study used to be pretty common analogies.
I get that sentiment. SE can feel like a trade some days.
But we do sit at a desk and type a lot. That isn't crouching in crap.
Maybe better description "smelly, dirty, uncofortable, jobs, that people generally don't want".
>If software isn't a trade what is it?
A profession. Trades are things like electrician/plumbing/carpentry that you can typically become resonably competent in 2 or so years of training.
You can't in software development?
A Software Engineering degree typically takes 3+ years to get and then you have internships and onboarding that means it could take a novice ~5 years to actually start contributing in a meaningful way at a company starting from scratch.
Knowledge work, of course, meaning it pays well but is less honest than real work.
But I agree with you. It’s a trade. Just more recent than plumbing.
I often compare software to plumbing. No one else cares how it was done.
Much of software is a trade. But above a certain level, it is engineering.
For example, in my discussions with electricians, they understand very well how to wire up a house. But they don't actually know very much about electricity. For example, they had no idea what I was talking about when I objected them running the phone lines through the same holes as the high voltage. I said that due to inductive coupling, the phone lines would acquire a 60 Hz hum. The phone lines had to be run at 90 degrees to the high voltage wires.
They had no idea what inductive coupling was, whereas that's freshman electronics material.
I wound up removing all the phone lines and rewiring them myself. No hum!
To further it, nobody cares until it breaks. Then they still don't care, they just want it fixed as quickly as possible, cost be damned once you get to that point.
Great analogy, I'm going to use this.
This shift is supported by the current government. I am personally seeing lots of ads for fed sponsored HVAC training and things like that. Not that it’s an issue, but I’m always wary of what I’m being sold