Chronicle Review Deputy Editor Alex Kafka invited all of us Brainstormers to respond to a thought-provoking essay in The American Scholar by William Deresiewicz, The Disadvantages of an Elite Education. Here are my reactions:

++ Deresiewicz writes, “Graduates of elite schools are not more valuable than stupid people, or talentless people, or even lazy people.” I disagree. The graduates of elite schools, on average, have attributes that make them more likely to cure cancer, develop interventions that reduce poverty, etc. And they’re less likely to commit murder, robbery, or become drug addicts or dealers. That makes them of above-average value to society. Of course, all people have value and should have certain rights simply by virtue of being alive (for example, basic shelter, food, health care, and education), but I find it hard to accept that all people are of equal value.

++ Deresiewicz decries that elite colleges keep reminding the students that they’re elite. I think we should keep reminding them of that. Of course, I don’t mean elite to mean “privileged by virtue of social class or other non-merit-based criterion.” I mean “possessing abilities and skills that give them above-average potential to contribute to society.”

Educators take great pains to build the self-esteem of our lowest achievers hoping that will inspire them to greater achievement. Similarly, there is advantage in reminding our elite students that they are special. What we must do is to better infuse noblesse oblige into their psyches: that their having lucked out to have been born to the right parents, etc., gives them the responsibility to use the fates’ largess to abet society as much as possible.

Interestingly, we say that at orientation and at commencement, but as Deresiewicz says, during the four (or six) years in between, we forgo the noblesse-oblige message as well as the Big Picture questions (the meaning of life, justice, etc.) in favor of professors’ niggling specializations.

Side thought: What misguided professorial narcissism: thinking their arcane if not downright outre research is the wisest vehicle for educating their undergraduates.

++ We say we celebrate diversity yet we insist on one-size-fits-all education. For example, Deresiewicz pointed out that Yale students routinely get extensions on deadlines when Cleveland State students are less likely to. There’s a good reason: Most Yale students have strong self-discipline. If every so often, they need extra time to complete a paper doesn’t suggest they’re at risk of a lifetime of sloth. In contrast, without deadlines with clear consequences, a higher percentage of Cleveland State students will procrastinate unduly, a pattern that often endures through life.

++ Deresiewicz laments that Cleveland State students have few “classes with visiting power brokers, dinners with foreign dignitaries.” If we allowed students at all colleges (3,500 in the U.S. alone) to have dinners with foreign dignitaries, those dignitaries would have to eat every meal in a sports stadium. It is in society’s best interest (as well as cosmically correct, from my perspective) that the best and brightest be the ones given the extra opportunities, so as to maximize their greater potential for improving society.

++ Deresiewicz argues that grade inflation disproportionately benefits elite students by pointing out that “the average GPA at public universities is 3.0 … while at most Ivy League schools, it’s closer to 3.4.”

I’d draw the opposite conclusion from those statistics: They suggest that grade inflation has most benefited weak students. After all, most Ivies have much higher admission standards. For such disparate groups to have such similar GPAs implies that Public U students have been the primary beneficiaries of grade inflation.

A related point: Deresiewicz decries that most Yalies who work hard at a course expect at least A-. I’d imagine that, compared with what is expected of an undergraduate, the work of those Yale students is indeed an A-. Should we — in yet another example of redistributive “justice” — lower Yalies’ grades so they don’t have an “unfair” advantage over Cleveland State students?

++ Using cherry-picked examples of George Bush, John Kerry, and Enron’s Ken Lay, Deresiewicz argues that graduates of elite colleges continue to get extensions and other favoritism. From where I sit as a career counselor to both the elite and just plain folk, the elite, on average, work at least as hard and are not allowed to slack off. Most of my clients who get jobs at nonprofits work 60 to 80 hours a week for low pay. Those that enter corporate jobs work equally long hours for more pay and sometimes (yes, only sometimes) fewer psychic rewards. Those that enter Ivy graduates’ holy grails — management consulting or investment banking — work 80 to 100(!)-hour workweeks, and, despite that, many of them not only don’t receive dispensations, they get dumped — only the strongest of the elite survive there.

My more-average clients, on average, have an easier time of it: There are many more middle-of-the-pack jobs, so they’re easier to obtain. And those jobs usually are less demanding of time and expertise, and less likely to make demands typical in elite jobs such as having to spend half their weeks flying around to meet clients or to take promotions in far-flung places. (Montgomery, Alabama, anyone?)

++ I agree with Deresiewicz’s decrying that so few kids from middle- or upper-class backgrounds contemplate delaying matriculation at least for a few years. He writes, aptly, “Our rigid educational mentality places that outside the universe of possibility — the reason so many kids go sleepwalking off to college with no idea what they’re doing there.”

++ I disagree with his contention that being elite-educated makes you incapable of talking with uneducated people. I believe that, more often, it is that elites are unwilling to make the effort. If you make the effort to keep your speech clear and concise, ask about things the person is likely to care about: e.g., family, friends, the Red Sox, and listen carefully, you’ll do fine.

++ A final point of agreement is with his statement, “The tyranny of the normal must be very heavy in their (the elites’) lives.” Indeed, the elites, in college and out, maybe more than most people, feel pressure to perform within a narrow range of normalcy. In another example of how we say we celebrate diversity but are tolerant only of the “correct” kinds of diversity, if a student expresses perspectives out of sync with our classroom’s or university’s norms, even if they’re thoughtfully derived, we, too often, subtly or not so subtly punish them.

In sum, I believe we should encourage our brightest and most driven to feel elite and to express their gifts in a wider range of ways that we currently do, as long as it is toward pro-social rather than narcissistic ends.

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