Stop Donating to Your Elite University – The Atlantic

Given the human inclination to justify the system to which we belong, and the stickiness of meritocratic beliefs, colleges would have to work hard to make their students and faculty understand the extent of inequity in American higher education. Instead, elite colleges simultaneously reproduce class inequality and belief in the justness of that inequality.

This process begins with whom they let in. Nothing makes rich people feel more secure in the fairness of the system than spending time around other rich people. People are more apt to overestimate meritocracy and social mobility, and less likely to support redistribution, when they operate within their narrow social context, Son Hing told me. It s hard to imagine a narrower social context than those created on elite-college campuses.

The process continues with the putatively meritocratic way that colleges operate. Everything we do in academia is based on the assumption that merit can be assessed, Son Hing said, citing Michèle Lamont s How Professors Think, a remarkable behind-the-scenes look at the peer-review process. Virtually every evaluative mechanism in the academy peer review of scholarly articles and grant applications, grading, and tenure evaluation purports to be objective and is supremely hierarchical.

The process culminates with the types of careers that elite colleges steer students into. The majority of Harvard graduates take a job in technology, investment banking, or management consulting occupations that make wealthy people wealthier and, research shows, increase their support for social hierarchy. In a survey of Harvard s class of 2020, only 4 percent of seniors entering the workforce said they planned to go into public service or work for a nonprofit organization.

So elite colleges disproportionately let in affluent applicants who are predisposed to denying inequality, surround them with similar people, teach them in a system that confirms their belief in merit, and, finally, steer them into careers that cement this worldview.

Son Hing said these effects could be counteracted if colleges and professors spent more time talking about higher education as a shared public good. But once again, elite colleges do almost precisely the opposite: The

via www.theatlantic.com

This article is a strange take on universities but still worth a quick read. Going to an elite university confirms the justness of the system? I suppose if you get into Harvard you think Harvard must be an astute judge of talent, even if you were admitted because Daddy is so loaded. But how could you continue to think of yourself as a genius given that there is so much real genius around you, at least if you look for it? Granted, there are probably plenty of idiots at Harvard, but surely they’re in the minority. There was plenty of smarts on display at the Yale Law School, disappointing as the faculty sometimes was.