Elite Colleges Are Promoting a Culture of Selfish, Cutthroat Behavior

Elite Colleges Are Promoting a Culture of Selfish, Cutthroat Behavior and We Are All Paying the Price
By Peter Schmidt, AlterNet. Posted May 23, 2009.

Like many of us, the nation's elite colleges and universities have taken a financial beating over the past year. Among them, Harvard, Yale, Princeton and Stanford all watched their endowments shrink by about 20 percent as a result of investment losses.

Despite all their brainpower, such institutions appear to have failed to learn what every simple farmer knows: you reap what you sow. Elite colleges and professional schools bear a share of the blame for the economic crisis that now plagues them, because it is they who educated and bestowed academic credentials upon many of those who got us into this mess.

It should come as no surprise to them that many on Wall Street and in Washington have proven ethically bankrupt and without regard for people of lesser means, because their admissions policies have done much to ensure such a result.

In determining which applicants they will admit and put on the fast track, most elite higher-education institutions systematically favor people from privileged backgrounds who display selfish, cutthroat behavior. The results are campus environments where disregard for society is socially accepted, where bad people are encouraged to become worse.



http://www.alternet.org/story/140202/elite_colleges_are_promoting_a_culture_of_selfish%2C_cutthroat_behavior_and_we_are_all_paying_the_price/

Kids from very diverse backgrounds. And, UVA is very much considered a "new" Ivy League.

I don't necessarily think this is true at all. Very broad brush.

I was in a management training program for a fortune 500 company 6 years ago. The kids from the Ivy's with one or two exceptions were absolute assholes.

Perhaps the honor code forces UVA students to grow up real fast.

Though I disapprove of the single sanction (screw up and you are out) and having the disciplinary board be all students.

No offense, but UVA isn't Harvard or Yale and a "new" Ivy League isn't at all the same thing as an "old" Ivy League.

I went to Rutgers (a "public" Ivy League school) which was just down the road from Princeton. I took some classes at Princeton and had kids from Princeton in some of my classes. The first thing I saw on the Princeton campus was some graffiti spray painted on one of the walls that said "New Money Out". So not only is it not enough to be rich at Princeton, you had to be "old money" too. How American.

Every kid I met at Princeton was insufferable. Most of the kids I met at Rutgers who really wanted to go to Princeton but didn't have the grades were insufferable. I got into UPenn and chose Rutgers because I *hated* the atmosphere at UPenn. I talked to kids who went there who said other kids in their class would find out what they were writing their papers on and would *check out and hide* the books that they needed for their research. It's insane.

So yes, it's a slightly broad brush to say every who went to an Ivy League school is an over-competitive asshole, but I don't think it's unfair at all to say that many of them are and that those schools foster and reward that kind of behavior.

And, it's older and more traditionally "Ivy League" than many of the Ivy Leagues.

Of course they are asses there -- there are asses at Rutgers, Carolina, UCLA, etc. I worked at both UVA and UNCG, and the bulk of the kids were the same. At both schools I worked very closely with students.

For the record: I went to a very old, small liberal arts school, paid for by student loans and workstudy.

My major was in the Humanities, and I ran into very few kids indeed that matched
the snob description. I took one or two required courses at Wharton, and was pretty
much disgusted by the company. Ironically, the one professor I had from Wharton was
considered a black sheep of Wharton. He had long hair, no suit, and said "my name
is Bill. Please do not call me Professor. My name is not Professor, but Bill." He
was tough, but a hell of a nice guy.

The people in Psych were awful, and the modern history dept. was pretty snotty,
but the ancient history people were 100% cool, as were all the foreign language
departments. I knew little about the medical school or the law school, but was
told that they were pretty much hit or miss. The only course I took in Anthropology
was from a professor so amazing that I almost changed my major solely due to the
one course I took with him. His name was Alan Mann, and I heard he went on to
great things.

Yes, a LOT of the kids at Penn were stuck up, but plenty of them weren't, and
I had my share of good times and good friends there. My brother and sister both
went to Harvard, so I can't say that ALL Harvard students were stuck up, but
certainly a majority of the ones I met were. Generalizations may be OK for
a broad picture, but they definitely fall apart when you run across the
occasional good egg, so I'd be wary of that broad brush.

I took out what at that time was a large amount of student loan debt, and financial aid from the university. I'm proud to have earned my admission slot without legacy admissions or "connections". There were plenty of other students like me there too, and we had friends from various economic backgrounds.

Plenty of rich spoiled brats there, to be sure. I watched a few of them drink and party their way right out of college. But plenty of those rich kids also held progressive views too (though more of the limousine liberal sort; but a limousine liberal is always better than a limousine conservative)

For graduate study. And like you, I got there by working my butt off in undergrad and having an impressive work history and resume which I'm still building on today. No legacy crap for Number23.

I met kids there with so much money it was scary. One boy from Bolivia just casually mentioned one day how his dad had run for Vice President there and had come verrrry close to winning. I was like "say what??" Another girl from Venezuela also casually mentioned how her family owned the largest broadcast network there and boy I knew from Puerto Rico mentioned how the airport there was named after his grandfather. These folks had money on top of money.

And FYI folks - the Ivy League has been very well defined in this country. We all know what's Ivy League in America - even though some folks from the top tier ivies (Princeton, Yale and Harvard) like to pretend that they are the only REAL ivies. But that's a discussion for another day. ;)

like the ones you note (and we had some, too, for sure) often missed out on a very important aspect of their education - responsibility. (Again, not all by any means. I met some very hard-working and nice people who happened to have lots of money. Money itself isn't an indicator, positive or negative, of a person's character).

But there were the handful who truly still expected everything to be handed to them. I feel sorry for them, because should they ever find themselves unmoored from the family connections and money, they'll likely be very, very lost.

I didn't take loans. My parents had made our college a priority and saved and mortgaged the house, probably more than once, to put four of us through school. (Of course, tuition at my college was all of 7k a year - including R&B. Same place, today - 50k.) But I consider and considered myself very fortunate, and took it as a responsibility to give it my best. I owed it to them, and to myself.

I may have felt alot of things towards the super-rich kids at my school, but pity wasn't one of them. :) But I take your point.

They were terrific parents - still are!

Rutgers is Ivy, yet it's also a state school. And the Seven Sisters are Ivy - aren't they? That stuff just slips right past me.

University of Chicago, University of Michigan, UC at Berkeley - just to name three - wouldn't they be considered Ivy if the definition were expanded?

So much of it is who you meet there, in addition to the education you get. That's how the network is constructed, how careers get built. I've had occasion to use my undergraduate pals to help out friends any number of times, and it's been lovely.

Like any school anywhere ....................

Brown University
Columbia University
Cornell University
Dartmouth College
Harvard University
Princeton University
University of Pennsylvania
Yale Univ

(This is not for your benefit because I saw downthread where you said that you attended an ivy)

Each of these are great schools, don't get me wrong. But I don't know anyone that wouldn't be more impressed with someone with a degree from MIT than someone with a degree from Brown. Same thing goes with Duke/Stanford/Georgetown/Berkeley/CalTech over University of Pennsylvania or Dartmouth. But one of the reasons people flock to these schools is that yes, they are very good schools but they also fall under the elusive "ivy" banner.

I don't think that even people who went to Univ of Michigan would consider that an Ivy League caliber school, though U of Michigan is a damn good school (esp its law school). The whole "Ivy" thing is sort of overrated. But one of the things that keeps the "Ivy mystique" going is that everyone likes to consider themselves "Ivy League calibre" using fancy terms like "2nd tier ivy" or "new (nouveau) ivy league" when those terms really mean nothing. Some schools are even calling themselves the "Ivies of the Midwest/South/21st century/cooking/dancing" etc.

If you ever meet someone who tells you they went to a "10th tier ivy league school" you could probably laugh at them openly 'cause it probably means he went to the same community college that Sarah Palin did. :)

They played against each other (still do).

It's now used as shorthand for a top-tier school - but there are many, many (as you point out) equally rigorous and of equal quality.

There's no doubt that Brown or Harvard on your resume opens some doors. But there would absolutely be nothing less impressive in having Michigan or Stanford there, either! Or, for that matter, Amherst or Williams.

There are a variety of excellent schools out there - which is a great thing, because there are a variety of excellent students, too! My own school was fairly small - and that's just what I needed. Turns out it was just what my son needed, too - so now we're a second generation family there. My niece and nephew will be at larger universities, which ought to be a good fit for them. And of course, different schools tend to excel at different things.

I worked at a college fair recently for my school, and one very sweet young man came over to talk. He was interested in engineering... not something that we'd necessarily be the right fit for. The arts, medicine, law? LOTS of that, though!

sounds like a whole lot of suppositions piled one on top of the other in an attempt to "prove" the point the author is determined to "prove".

Where is the back-up on any of these assertions?

I'm not sure how one would go about compiling statistical data on the subject matter but I'd say that the general thesis of the article is spot on.

Here is a comment that comes after the article which is quite accurate in my lengthy experience in the "higher education system":



The comment is about halfway down the comments section.

My undergrad degree is from Queens College and my grad degree from Columbia. With one exception, of those I knew, I will put the Queens professors head and shoulders above the Columbia ones, particularly the celebs who could barely be bothered to show up for class. Not to mention the shortest semesters I've ever known, just to squeeze in two summer terms.

My mom used to feel awe when the media would interview Columbia professors. Not anymore, ducks.

Using this reasoning, kids who go to third-rate schools are wonderful, selfless, giving, dynamic individuals.

Generalizations usually fuck up, and this one is no exception ...........

How could one come to that conclusion?

That's an illogical extension you've created there.

whatever you say, since what you said here doesn't make sense.

My comment was very simple. Plain old logic applied to a specious assumption.

But, if you see it as illogical, well, we differ, and the world keeps turning ...............

If I say I think New Yorkers are rude and pushy, you can't extrapolate from that statement that Californians are pleasant and friendly.

i.e., Ivy League students, that opens the door to a perfectly valid comparison to another group, i.e., third-tier school students, within the primary group - college students.............

I think this is a reasonable critique of the current mindset which has been plaguing ivy league schools for the past few decades. If you want to identify systemic flaws inherent to state schools or lesser private universities, you are free to do so. Concluding that "third-tier" students must be wonderful and generous, etc. because the ivies tend to promote cut-throat competitiveness is a non sequitur.

that was the point I was trying to make. Subtlety doesn't translate well here, alas.

Also, this is a purely anecdotal article, and since traits such as "cutthroat" are inherently subjective, and this article contains no research, no attributions, nothing that would indicate anything except the author's personal bias, it's essentially worthless.

Articles this careless need to be read very carefully.

Check out the author. Try to find out where he went to school. You might be surprised, or you might not be ................

The OP talks about how ivy-league colleges are actually looking for and encouraging these traits in their student body. It's not saying "rich people are assholes, and the poor are saints" it's saying that if you're an asshole you're more likely to get into one of these schools, becuase these svchools are LOOKING FOR THAT.

Sure. That's a known fact. They screen for those traits, knowing that assholes are the most desirable.

You know, assholeness is a very subjective thing, and sometimes other traits can be mistaken for it simply because the person doing the looking has a working prejudice that just might blind him or her to what is actually being seen.

And no, I'm pretty good at reading, actually, but your writing and thinking abilities clearly aren't up to par, since you take for gospel what is written without giving it any critical thought.

Back to the pencil, honey ..................

because you completely missed the point of what was being said. You then demonstrate your lack of ability to grasp the point, or the context, or even the very words used, in your initial post. I'm not sure where you found that particular bit of "logic" you were talking about, but it's not in this article, nor is it all that logical.

as gospel truth.

You lack the ability to read critically, and if you're still believing what was written there - if you're even giving his anecdotes-posing-as-facts credibility - you missed all of it.

Pencil, kid. It's a good place to start........................

For had they not given a free pass to a dim-bulb who had no business at a university, much of this mess would not be.

... is a piece.

It's nothing but a long stream of unsupported assertions with a few, minor factoids thrown into the mix to make it seem like a legitimately argued position. Things like this are the reason I stopped reading Alternet.

Then there's this bit:



That survey involved MBA candidates nationwide, not just in Ivy League schools. While a point certainly could be made about this, the one the author is attempting to make is not it.

That said, there are some severe systemic problems at all levels of higher education, from the community college on up. I've witnessed a lot of them in the past year from the inside, reinforcing earlier opinions I developed about the poor state of our higher education system as a whole. I could go on endlessly about it, but I won't. Singling out Ivy League schools in this way, especially without anything other than anecdotal evidence and raw assertion to support the argument, is ridiculous.

There are assholes in every school and every walk of life.

There are also hard-working people who have been accepted to some of the most prestigious schools in the country not because of their money or connections, but because they're very bright and willing to work very hard.

I didn't attend an Ivy, myself, but a small, highly-ranked liberal arts college. Were there people there who were extremely focused on their own achievement? Probably, but they didn't really stand out. (I do know a friend had a friend visit for a week - the friend was from Harvard, and attended classes at our school during his visit. His response was that our classes were a whole lot tougher than his!)

I think it's unfair and counter-productive even to assume that driven students or hard-workers are motivated by a desire to push other students down or for some nefarious reasons. It may just be that they find themselves at an Ivy because they're ambitious and motivated people to begin with.

And oy! Blaming their schools for the behavior of individuals 10, 15, 25 years down the line? Very big stretch. Education is a tool - what one does with it is another thing entirely.

There are also hard-working people who have been accepted to some of the most prestigious schools in the country not because of their money or connections, but because they're very bright and willing to work very hard.

I'm one of them. Damn sure didn't get in because of my "rich family." :)

not being a "legacy," just a hardworking kid who wanted an education.

That's why articles like this - some jerk's unquestioned assertions without any verifiable evidence - are so annoying.

Daft, specious generalizations like this are always wastes of time, screaming "SOUR GRAPES!" as they do.

If you want to see something very interesting, check out the author's blog, and, in particular, his biography - no mention of any education, no college degree, no graduate degree, nothing.

http://www.blogger.com/profile/12611030828431980515

He's a blogger who works for an online newsletter that looks to carry all kinds of higher education information, but mostly about job openings.

A blogger, who, if he went to college, is ashamed of where he went or else just pissed that he couldn't get into an Ivy school.

Always, always, consider the source. The OP is nonsense, indefensible nonsense.............

Yes, of course.

So you who went to the elite schools being discussed are defending the elite schools being discussed.

There's a shocker.

And then trying to use your uh, creds to dismiss the author who in your view must be either a lowbrow with no degree (not even from an elite school as fine as one you attended and thus equally credible?) or just an envious slob who was too lowbrow so as to be accepted into such an elite school as you attended.

Hmmm. What did the author say again?

But then you could look across the spectrum of business and political arenas which dictate policy in this country, examine the policies and examine where it is most of these well-heeled hooligans spent their college days and how they spent it.

Hell just take a walk through the halls of any Ivy League campus and you'll find the author is exactly right.





So this guys' bio is problematic in what way? I'd say you simply want to avoid the ideas and the obvious so as to protect your personal interest.

in advancing anything. My education is mine, and I worked good and hard to get it, coming from a family that could not afford to send me to college. I was the first in my family to go to college, an accomplishment that still makes me smile.

Look, it's a blog, not a scholarly article, nothing worthwhile citing research or any hard evidence. It's a blog about something the author very clearly takes to heart. He states "facts" but offers no attribution; I didn't see any footnotes, any references. It's all anecdotal. So, it's sort of like reading someone's diary and cannot really be taken seriously.

It makes all sorts of claims with nothing to back them up. The traits it purports to deplore are so subjective as to be impossible to categorize, and yet he goes on and on.

Yes, I do want to know the credentials of someone who advances a set of theses, and when I saw the biography of this blogger, I had to laugh. He's a blogger with some writing credits, but I find it more than a little interesting that he's writing about institutions of higher learning, and trying to put a good hit on Ivy League schools, yet there's no indication that he has any experience as a member of any of those institutions, either as a student or a teacher.

And, just so you can be very clear about this, I am very proud of my undergraduate Ivy League degree. So is my family. My law school wasn't Ivy League, but it was top-tier, and I'm very proud of that, too. Scholarships all the way, and lots of jobs the whole time.

The guy's bio is problematic because of what it lacks. And your notion of my "personal interest" is funny, because you're treating some blog as if it were valid, when, in fact, it's nothing but a bunch of assertions backed up by nothing.

This might be the funniest sentence in this whole thread, or in all of DU ever:

Hell just take a walk through the halls of any Ivy League campus and you'll find the author is exactly right.
Someone, perhaps the author, would have done well to spend some time in those "halls," whatever they are - the dorms, the labs, the libraries, the maintenance buildings? - and perhaps some learning might have rubbed off.

Perhaps not.

A good warning is always to read a blog critically and be aware of who's writing it. That will keep you from getting rattled and defensive when the faults of the piece are pointed out, and you won't, I hope, take it so personally........................

Whatever that really means these days ...

Some journalists are very good at this sort of thing. Others aren't. Most, in my experience, tackle subjects like this primarily through the use of anecdotal evidence with a few statistics and other information that has not been critically evaluated. It's not just for giggles that one of the main things a historian has to learn to do while training is the critical evaluation of work of journalists because it is so often skewed and lacking essential detail.

I don't mean to criticize the entire profession. Some journalists do what they do very well, but many of those often fail when they seek to argue a position rather than report a story, the former of which is what Mr. Schmidt is doing here. I see this all the time with journalists thinking they are historians. They come into it completely blind as to what it takes to write an effective history. They think it's just a story about the past. Some history is that, but most professional history is not, and they completely miss that while also typically being largely unaware of various schools of thought, the essential historiography of a subject, or the potential fact that a source they run across and run with has been found to be completely inaccurate. (George Will does that all the time, in fact, which is one reason his persistent forays into comparing history to modern events is so monumentally flawed.)

Ironically, I'd actually be unconcerned as to where he received his education or what level of education he achieved if not for the manner in which he has written this article. I don't necessarily believe formal education past a certain point is a requirement for professionalism on some levels. I am an acknowledged authority on some individual historical subjects by other experts in those subjects, but I don't have a PhD, for example. However, outside those subjects I do not have the training, particularly in the historiography, to claim expertise. (Indeed, many professional historians religiously avoid commenting on certain subjects due to their lack of knowledge in these areas.) Journalists typically don't consider this a problem and believe their researching skills make up for any lacking knowledge in these areas, which it rarely does.

No one is using their "creds" to dismiss the author. I didn't go to an Ivy League school. I went to regional state university and now work at a community college.

What we're using to dismiss the author is the fact the author provided not one single bit evidence to support a stream of assertions. The piece doesn't even rise to the level of anecdote. That is being combined with our own personal experience and knowledge of the environments present in many colleges and universities across the entire nation.

those atitudes were rampant in my state school too, oh back in the 1980s.. particularly in the bidness department

This is how we teach bidness theory and practice in the US... so no... not just Yale, also my alma matter, humble San Diego State University.

Now I agree, we are paying the price, but the me centric culture is a result of consumerism and the 1970s and 1980s.. much broader than just a few colleges.

You're channeling my thoughts.

just makes kids go out and get laid? Every time there's a financial crisis, it's time for a new ethics program at Harvard business school. In fact, the people who dragged the economy into its current dismal state did so because they saw an opportunity to make a hell of a lot of easy money and the government was either unable or unwilling to stop them.

Rather than new ethics programs. Our culture as a whole has become way too number/profit obsessed.

But the humanities are a hard sell these days.

:shrug:

a good target for those who perceive them as having everything the others don't. Forget the scholarship students who get through good schools, forget the loans kids are going to be carrying for years in order to get what they consider the best education possible, forget all the other variables, and take aim at the "privileged."

As I've pointed out elsewhere in this thread, the article is unsourced and nothing but a blog. Some guy's opinions, stated without any verifiable research or attribution. And, what I find vastly entertaining, the author's bio contains no information about where he got his education, which leads me to conclude that he's never gotten a degree at any school, never taught in any undergraduate or graduate school, and just might be suffering from a bad case of "sour grapes."

It's a blog, not a scientific article, not a piece of any gravitas whatsoever..............

You forget to make a coherent sentence.

Try again ..............

Money talks, and people who are taller, paler, better looking, wealthier, and (gosh darn we like them) have an advantage in this world. Classes in business ethics teach a wink and a nod. If you can make money, then you can purchase all the ethics you want.

I worked at BAE a couple of years back. (That is the wholly owned American Subsidiary of the British BAE. You see, we made equipment for the Department of Defense, and since a foreign company could not do that type of business they just created an American company to get around the rules.) We were required to take ethics training out the ying yang. We were required to walk, talk, and crap the highest ethical business standards. Of course, BAE's corporate culture went right out, paying bribes in foreign countries and violating every ethical concept they told us they were following. These elite colleges get a lot of money from their graduated students. They won't soil their own pig sty by telling them that ethics are necessary in business.

Let's just be blunt. They have crossed the line. This is not just a question of the tallest, or the prettiest, or the most selfish. It is about those who can be unethical, and get away with it. BECAUSE they're in that category which is "above ordinary," no one questions it when they make decisions which amount to civil torts.

Now, you have them leading the front of professions such as lawyers, judges and politicians, and you can begin to understand why our communities are crumbling. We say ethically challenged, when we really mean, civil crooks.

Having gone to an Ivy league school for my B.A., I was curious to see what the article had to say about how the admissions processes at elite schools are skewed toward rewarding sociopathic behavior. The author's claim may well be correct, but is certainly not substantiated here.

Unfortunately, all the author does is make unfounded assertions and rant about test scores and legacy programs, ignoring the fact that many top-tier schools (including my alma mater) are giving less and less weight to test scores, and providing zero evidence about any of it.

I'm surprised at how many people recommended this piece. Still curious to see any real data about the unintended consequences of admissions process.

If you have $60,000+ of debt incurred in college, you're going to have to gravitate toward the more high-dollar, i.e. cutthroat competitive, careers out of necessity.

I have a bachelor's degree in computer science from Colorado State, Bush has an MBA from Yale.

At the same time, I had to actually work for my degree. Maybe my GPA isn't the best, but if I screwed up a class, I had to do it again until I got it right. I got no free lunches at my university. I had to earn what I got.

Chimpy had his MBA virtually given to him, thanks to Poppy pulling strings for him. He didn't flunk classes, he got "gentleman's C's". He didn't get pushed to perform, he just partied through school and barely managed to show up for classes. Hell, when he was in the Texas Air National Guard, he went AWOL for a year, but the fucking MILITARY, who would throw a peasant like me in Leavenworth for the same shit, let him slide, and he got to brag about his military service in his election campaigns.

He was given his degree. I had to earn mine.