College Talk

So, I realize that UVA's not Harvard. And neither of those schools are typical of the majority of schools in America. But Slate's review of a new book written by a Harvard graduate has some pretty interesting points that ring true to my experiences in higher education, as well as the American college system on the whole. Just some food for thought on a Monday morning when I woke up really early and had time to drink a few cups of coffee and read more news than normal.

In reviewing the book, the article speaks to the state of our higher education system as a self-propelling stabilizer for the upper and upper-middle classes. They ways we get to college and what we do there and after all play into it. The interesting point here is that it's not just the polo-wearing country club sect that's self-fulfilling this prophecy:

Douthat has drawn one conclusion: The culture of privilege is built on bad faith and is therefore inevitably rotten. "Privilege, I have termed the sum of these poses and prejudices, though I don't mean privilege of old," writes Douthat. "No, ours is the privilege that comes with belonging to an upper class grown large enough to fancy itself diverse; fluid and competitive enough to believe itself meritocratic; smart enough for intellectual snobbery but not for intellectual curiosity."

The overachiever's syndrome described below is all too familiar and sums up about 85% of my friends at UVA:

In the end, Privilege is more a symptom than a diagnosis. The wound-up, overachieving children of the wound-up, overachieving professional elites find themselves ensnared in a paradox: the more intense the competition for social rewards, the more advantages their parents feel compelled to confer on them, and at earlier and earlier ages. Even as these children compete harder to achieve more, they may suspect they are less and less deserving. This is a recipe for neurosis, in which a style of condescension appropriate to the old Protestant upper crust mingles nonsensically with the gaping insecurity of the striving middle classes.

And the viscious cycle takes hold:

We still pay lip service to equal opportunity, even though, absent an ever-expanding white-collar universe, some children of the middle class will need to fail in order to make room at the top of the occupational ladder for the talented children of the working class. And well-to-do middle-class parents do not like it when their children fail...To prevent failure, middle-class parents pass along to their children every possible advantage, in the form of "social capital," or those habits of speech and self-discipline that allow a child to thrive in the classroom. Middle-class parents who can afford the property taxes move to the best school districts, or send their children to private schools.

And effectively undermines its moralistic goals:

Held to the impossible standard of the Golden Age, universities are now easily portrayed—even public universities, and even the old land-grant colleges—as finishing schools for a stable professional elite. The less they are viewed as purveyors of a public good, the easier they are to underfund. The more underfunded they become, the more expensive they are, the fewer scholarships they provide; the fewer scholarships they provide, the more exclusive they become … and on and on and on.

Not gospel, but pretty interesting nonetheless.