The disadvantages of an elite education

My parents (and their parents) are (were) educators.  It probably comes as no surprise that I was raised to value education as a means to an end, yes, but also as something intrinsically valuable in and of itself.  I also ended up at what Princeton Review called the university "where those smart enough to go Ivy, but don't want to work that hard" end up.  I might not have gone to an Ivy league school, but there was a time in my life where I was pretty insufferable about "being smart."  Until I had my peers who actually did go Ivy talk down to me.  Then I realized how freaking annoying and idiotic such attitudes are.  Some of the smartest people I know don't have a lot of formal education.  And I know some pretty common sense dumb people who have a lot of formal education.

One of the great errors of an elite education, then, is that it teaches
you to think that measures of intelligence and academic achievement are
measures of value in some moral or metaphysical sense. But they’re not.
Graduates of elite schools are not more valuable than stupid people, or
talentless people, or even lazy people. Their pain does not hurt more.
Their souls do not weigh more. If I were religious, I would say, God
does not love them more. The political implications should be clear. 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. “Work must always be,” Ruskin says, “and
captains of work must always be....[But] there is a wide difference
between being captains...of work, and taking the profits of it.”

Training people to feel so entitled is setting them up for failure.  The one Scarlett O'Hara moment I've had in my life (you know, "As God as my witness I will never xxx again?"  The kind when you not only say it, but really mean it, and stick to it?) came as a result of hitting bottom and not having anyone pick me up.  If we continually enable our students, what are we teaching them?  Fuck up and it will be fine, no matter what?  Training the next group of Enron execs?

A very well-written article.  Please read.