In an article in New Republic, William Deresiewicz, author of Excellent Sheep: The Miseducation of the American Elite and the Way to Meaningful Life says that the prestigious private colleges dotting the US, particularly in the Northeast, are creating a class of entitled "zombies".
"Our system of elite education manufactures young people who are smart and talented and driven, yes, but also anxious, timid and lost, with little intellectual curiosity and a stunted sense of purpose: trapped in a bubble of privilege, heading meekly in the same direction, great at what they're doing but with no idea why they're doing it."
Ivy League colleges and their ilk, says Deresiewicz, have created an education-industrial complex that processes the children of privilege from cradle to diploma and beyond. "The prospect of not being successful terrifies them, disorients them," he writes. "The cost of falling short, even temporarily, becomes not merely practical, but existential. The result is a violent aversion to risk."
College shouldn't be this way, Deresiewicz writes. Instead of four years of career training, it should be preparation for a thoughtful, well-examined life.
His solution is to democratise higher education, freeing it from the stranglehold of elite colleges and the crushing debt that such degrees often bring. "High-quality public education, financed with public money, for the benefit of all: the exact commitment that drove the growth of public higher education in the postwar years,".
Do you agree with this vision of the Ivy Leagues? If you do, even if only to some extent, what is the solution? One possible solution may be to cutting all US tuition dramatically, especially at the Ivy League schools,
What do you think?
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