This is 100% right. The high school I attended has deemphasized getting into these super-elite schools because they have decided to educate everyone as an individual and not a resume, and as a rule the students go somewhere more prestigious than SUNY-Purchase. (I am not sure how many of the commentariat know what, not to mention where, Truman State is, but a few students have gone there.) Also when I was mistakenly interested in law school in the 1990s the schools on the level of Georgetown would print a list of all the schools that their students had gone to, and they were not all elite schools by a long shot.
I think everything you say is true here but someone needs to do something about the effect that Harvard, Stanford, Yale etc. really does have on power in America. Scalia gave an interview years ago where he just kind of mocks someone from American University law school for wanting to get a clerkship.
While state schools aren't a death sentence they are pretty thoroughly removed from having access to power. Harvard and Yale really are the nobility, and like there are other things we could do about this but it seems like we're just going to try to transform affirmative action into something just like it but hidden and opaque for the time being. Most schools are for middle class success and are just fine for that but the cabinet secretary or federal judge who regulates your success, the venture capitalist who finances it etc. will all have gone to a few dozen schools everyone in the world knows by name.
No cognitive dissonance. As an individual with an individual voice, I see myself being effective in a limited number of places. I am aware of the police patrols in Brazil.
We should not be attacking each other. We should support whatever effort is being done.
I completely understand edu-industrials as Glenn and John are being in this episode and overall, heavily inoculated, ingrained, steeped in this issue professionally and also immensely scarred professionally. I find them dear; I hear them. But they are too close and uninteresting to listen to that they have survived and thrived despite it. On this and more and more topics recently.
The financial bias (manhattan institute?) is too much to take given the content. They seem incapable of stepping back, to observe and calculate the objective truths involved, or at least question their own certaintudes, which is anguish to listen to given my respect.
And to judge so harshly, it seems impossible to share my own, personal and heavily steeped bias. I am an outsider to the edu-industrial paradigm (hs dropout). I have been trod upon by Glen and John -alikes for decades. And it stings. The stinging has been softened by doing “alright” nonetheless. However it is clear, they lack profound understanding of my truth. Not their duty to do so, just what is.
Bottom line: no one should pay, borrow or beg for a 4 year degree - ANY INSTITUTION - that incurs more than a couple years of average middle-aged today’s earners salaries’ Once it exceeds that it all goes out of whack. And if your path to happiness requires 10x that amount (for any degree) to be successful or if my tax burden is involved to make that happen, I am between unsympathetic to hostile.
Who is intended audience? Black parents realize the value of institutions like HBCUs and state institutions. HBCU applications are surging. Sherilyn. Ifill, Ta-Nehisi Coates, Phylicia Rashad, and Nikole Hannah Jones are at Howard. Howard has a middle school of science and mathematics. Perhaps Fryer should visit Howard, rather than attempting to reinvent the wheel.
Went to a state school and rose to the top of my organization. Elite schools may think they offer a better education, and maybe they do in specific fields but not in most. Getting through any college is what you make of it. Graduating simply proves your matured, have an ability to think and a work ethic. Post graduation is 80% work ethic or more. And , who wants to be part of the “elite” anyway? The real problem is in the pipeline of kids coming out of high school with a decent education. Until this gets fixed or more states allow charter schools and school choice, many kids will be I’ll prepared for college and will drop out as they do now. That helps no one.
I think there is a chicken and egg problem with this argument. The top universities were elitist before they were practitioners of affirmative action and now that the era of affirmative action is past, the top universities will continue to be elitist. Harvard is buying up huge chunks of Cambridge and Boston, which it can do in part because of favorable tax treatment, and it has a massive and growing endowment. But Harvard's incoming class sizes have remained flat as the US population has grown, making it even more selective and less productive (in graduates as a percentage of the population) than ever before. I doubt Harvard would even want to try to educate more people because that would puts its elite status at risk.
The relative importance of an Ivy League education for a successful professional life is WILDLY overstated. The most recent Fortune 500 Report showed this - of Fortune 100 CEOs, only 11.8% have an Ivy League undergraduate degree, and 9.8% have an Ivy League MBA. An IL degree might help with landing the first post-college job, but after that, so many other factors become more important.
One of the most important things in life is to properly define success. Success is not about being admitted to Harvard, Boston University, Brandeis or anyplace else. Success is about gaining wisdom - knowledge, experience and understanding - from wherever the learning comes from. Then translating that wisdom into a life well led.
Another great way this could play out is that, if elite institutions lose their totemic status, the students who otherwise might have gotten into Ivies under racial preferences instead go (in addition to places like SUNYs or Cal States) to colleges that actually emphasize *teaching*, which is so often secondary or tertiary compared to research and publishing output. There are lots of fantastic colleges that don’t have the brand of an Amherst or Williams or Reed. It might even then put pressure back on those elite institutions, or research or large state universities in general, to really prioritize teaching, although perhaps that’s too naïve a hope.
I love it when the people "of color" (or non-"color") in my classes (or life) would have the confidence to say "I don't speak for all <X> people. This is what I think." The confidence that his/her individual perspective is important in itself. ;-)
This is 100% right. The high school I attended has deemphasized getting into these super-elite schools because they have decided to educate everyone as an individual and not a resume, and as a rule the students go somewhere more prestigious than SUNY-Purchase. (I am not sure how many of the commentariat know what, not to mention where, Truman State is, but a few students have gone there.) Also when I was mistakenly interested in law school in the 1990s the schools on the level of Georgetown would print a list of all the schools that their students had gone to, and they were not all elite schools by a long shot.
I think everything you say is true here but someone needs to do something about the effect that Harvard, Stanford, Yale etc. really does have on power in America. Scalia gave an interview years ago where he just kind of mocks someone from American University law school for wanting to get a clerkship.
While state schools aren't a death sentence they are pretty thoroughly removed from having access to power. Harvard and Yale really are the nobility, and like there are other things we could do about this but it seems like we're just going to try to transform affirmative action into something just like it but hidden and opaque for the time being. Most schools are for middle class success and are just fine for that but the cabinet secretary or federal judge who regulates your success, the venture capitalist who finances it etc. will all have gone to a few dozen schools everyone in the world knows by name.
White women have been the number one benefactor of affirmative action. Why has it taken so long to gut it? 🤣🤣🤣
No cognitive dissonance. As an individual with an individual voice, I see myself being effective in a limited number of places. I am aware of the police patrols in Brazil.
We should not be attacking each other. We should support whatever effort is being done.
I completely understand edu-industrials as Glenn and John are being in this episode and overall, heavily inoculated, ingrained, steeped in this issue professionally and also immensely scarred professionally. I find them dear; I hear them. But they are too close and uninteresting to listen to that they have survived and thrived despite it. On this and more and more topics recently.
The financial bias (manhattan institute?) is too much to take given the content. They seem incapable of stepping back, to observe and calculate the objective truths involved, or at least question their own certaintudes, which is anguish to listen to given my respect.
And to judge so harshly, it seems impossible to share my own, personal and heavily steeped bias. I am an outsider to the edu-industrial paradigm (hs dropout). I have been trod upon by Glen and John -alikes for decades. And it stings. The stinging has been softened by doing “alright” nonetheless. However it is clear, they lack profound understanding of my truth. Not their duty to do so, just what is.
Bottom line: no one should pay, borrow or beg for a 4 year degree - ANY INSTITUTION - that incurs more than a couple years of average middle-aged today’s earners salaries’ Once it exceeds that it all goes out of whack. And if your path to happiness requires 10x that amount (for any degree) to be successful or if my tax burden is involved to make that happen, I am between unsympathetic to hostile.
Who is intended audience? Black parents realize the value of institutions like HBCUs and state institutions. HBCU applications are surging. Sherilyn. Ifill, Ta-Nehisi Coates, Phylicia Rashad, and Nikole Hannah Jones are at Howard. Howard has a middle school of science and mathematics. Perhaps Fryer should visit Howard, rather than attempting to reinvent the wheel.
Went to a state school and rose to the top of my organization. Elite schools may think they offer a better education, and maybe they do in specific fields but not in most. Getting through any college is what you make of it. Graduating simply proves your matured, have an ability to think and a work ethic. Post graduation is 80% work ethic or more. And , who wants to be part of the “elite” anyway? The real problem is in the pipeline of kids coming out of high school with a decent education. Until this gets fixed or more states allow charter schools and school choice, many kids will be I’ll prepared for college and will drop out as they do now. That helps no one.
I think there is a chicken and egg problem with this argument. The top universities were elitist before they were practitioners of affirmative action and now that the era of affirmative action is past, the top universities will continue to be elitist. Harvard is buying up huge chunks of Cambridge and Boston, which it can do in part because of favorable tax treatment, and it has a massive and growing endowment. But Harvard's incoming class sizes have remained flat as the US population has grown, making it even more selective and less productive (in graduates as a percentage of the population) than ever before. I doubt Harvard would even want to try to educate more people because that would puts its elite status at risk.
The relative importance of an Ivy League education for a successful professional life is WILDLY overstated. The most recent Fortune 500 Report showed this - of Fortune 100 CEOs, only 11.8% have an Ivy League undergraduate degree, and 9.8% have an Ivy League MBA. An IL degree might help with landing the first post-college job, but after that, so many other factors become more important.
I have an idea. We send all current Harvard professors to teach at UMass springfield and vice versa. Equality for professors !
One of the most important things in life is to properly define success. Success is not about being admitted to Harvard, Boston University, Brandeis or anyplace else. Success is about gaining wisdom - knowledge, experience and understanding - from wherever the learning comes from. Then translating that wisdom into a life well led.
Another great way this could play out is that, if elite institutions lose their totemic status, the students who otherwise might have gotten into Ivies under racial preferences instead go (in addition to places like SUNYs or Cal States) to colleges that actually emphasize *teaching*, which is so often secondary or tertiary compared to research and publishing output. There are lots of fantastic colleges that don’t have the brand of an Amherst or Williams or Reed. It might even then put pressure back on those elite institutions, or research or large state universities in general, to really prioritize teaching, although perhaps that’s too naïve a hope.
I love it when the people "of color" (or non-"color") in my classes (or life) would have the confidence to say "I don't speak for all <X> people. This is what I think." The confidence that his/her individual perspective is important in itself. ;-)