This article was discussed in the Private School forum (if you venture there, put on a helmet). Somebody posted a hilarious cartoon but I'm no good at copying images, so here's a link: http://i.imgur.com/jxlDs.jpg

I've read that article and also some previous articles by the same author.

This author has a shtick: he went to Columbia for undergrad and his PhD, then he taught at Yale for 10 years, and now he thinks he wasted his time because he can't talk to his plumber. I'm not sure why exactly that is, or whether he has some other problem, but anyway he blames his lack of ability to talk to plumbers on his Ivy education and Ivy career.

He concludes, without any personal experience that I can tell, that other colleges (SLACs, public universities) are more intellectually stimulating because they are more diverse. I don't think the numbers bear that out - SLACs are full of full-pay, upper income, similarly privileged kids. And public schools have their share of sports-obsessed and frat-obsessed kids. Every Ivy is a scrum of pre-law robots? And every SLAC is an ivory tower paradise? Really?

The author also tends to exaggerate, which is a time-honored academic tradition of course, but he takes the hyperbole a little too far IMO. For example, I agree that lots of kids today are afraid to take risks. But the way he says it, it sounds like every kid in every Ivy (and all Ivies are the same, of course) is afraid to take risks. Also, I'm pretty sure that fear of failing exists in similar measure among the kids scrambling to get into the SLACs he glorifies.

Also, he doesn't always make sense. Take the quote that OP copied about waiting tables. I was a waitress, and it's tough. But they way he puts it, it sounds like he's saying that people should choose waitressing which is a more noble profession than going to college, and God forbid you ruin your life by spending it in academia. Meh. Different strokes for different folks, different careers for different people.

Anonymous wrote:It's difficult for me to take seriously anyone who speaks of "The Ivy League" as a group in an academic context. The Ivy League is a collegiate athletic conference comprising sports teams from eight schools, but academically speaking there is a chasm between the top half (PHYC) and the "rest" - Penn, Dartmouth, Brown and Cornell. PHYC are with Stanford and possibly Chicago the "best of the best." The others are all good, strong Top 20 type schools, but they don't deserve to be grouped with the top half.

Wharton is up with HYPS in recruiting to sectors that are the most competitive for UG jobs.

It's difficult for me to take seriously anyone who speaks of "The Ivy League" as a group in an academic context. The Ivy League is a collegiate athletic conference comprising sports teams from eight schools, but academically speaking there is a chasm between the top half (PHYC) and the "rest" - Penn, Dartmouth, Brown and Cornell. PHYC are with Stanford and possibly Chicago the "best of the best." The others are all good, strong Top 20 type schools, but they don't deserve to be grouped with the top half.

I always tip food service extremely well precisely because of this. I marvel at the skills of waitstaff and restraurant workers.

I could never do that job. I would fail miserably.

I even drop decent tips at starbucks because that's a tough job. How do you remember how to make all those crazy drink combos?

If i worked at starbucks I would only give black coffee to everyone no matter what they ordered

Not sure if this has been mentioned on here or not yet. Some interesting food for thought in the article. There's also a link to a rebuttal halfway down, but I haven't read it yet.

http://www.newrepublic.com/article/118747/ivy-league-schools-are-overrated-send-your-kids-elsewhere

"Instead of service, how about service work? That’ll really give you insight into other people. How about waiting tables so that you can see how hard it is, physically and mentally? You really aren’t as smart as everyone has been telling you; you’re only smarter in a certain way. There are smart people who do not go to a prestigious college, or to any college—often precisely for reasons of class. There are smart people who are not “smart.”"

"Professors are rewarded for research, so they want to spend as little time on their classes as they can. The profession’s whole incentive structure is biased against teaching, and the more prestigious the school, the stronger the bias is likely to be. The result is higher marks for shoddier work."

"So extreme are the admission standards now that kids who manage to get into elite colleges have, by definition, never experienced anything but success. The prospect of not being successful terrifies them, disorients them. The cost of falling short, even temporarily, becomes not merely practical, but existential. The result is a violent aversion to risk. You have no margin for error, so you avoid the possibility that you will ever make an error. Once, a student at Pomona told me that she’d love to have a chance to think about the things she’s studying, only she doesn’t have the time. I asked her if she had ever considered not trying to get an A in every class. She looked at me as if I had made an indecent suggestion."