Elite colleges aren’t the only pathway to elite jobs and leadership, plenty of people educated in accessible state schools go on to high level careers. I started a career in book publishing which is both very competitive and low paying and then switched to medicine, which is very competitive and high paying, all starting with a degree from a state school that accepts most applicants. Elite schooling is overemphasized and not as important as people believe. There were people from my state school who went into those supposed Ivy League holy grails of investment banking and consulting. So, yes the Left should be far more worried about those other 900/1000 ish people. And emphasizing college for everyone is not the answer. Elevating social status and wages for other types of work IS important, that’s what will make our society more healthy.
The obsession with access to an elite education and a subsequent position of leadership testifies to the obsessors' belief in top-down change, or else their contentment with the look of representation.
I got a 2 year degree at a community college and before retirement was making 6 figures. One can be successful and build a comfortable life without attending an elite university.
It did not used to be this way. Often the graduate of the elite college worked in academia. Sure economic success was tied to elite college credentials, but more from the connections of the elite families and friends that made up the elite college society.
The connection to economic outcomes and elite college credentials has exploded for a couple of reasons that can be fixed to some degree with changes to education and economic policies… directing more resources at the working class population. Examples include trade schools and help with financing a work truck instead of paying off student loans from Yale for a gender studies degree.
Frankly, the shine of an elite degree is fading. I for example will give more points to the student from the state university that worked while attending that I will the Ivy League graduate that ran up student loans and/or got funded by mommy and daddy.
The bottom line here is that elite university attendance, or university attendance at all, should not be such a big economic difference boost in a nation like the US where a C4 certified pipe welder can make $75 per hour or more depending on location.
I am inclined to agree with the author. The core identity of the modern Democratic party is ‘sex is a spectrum’ and ‘2+2 = white supremacy’. Everything else is just minor league stuff. I vividly remember reading a bitter lament by a liberal/leftist online. He stated ‘we are going to here a lot more about trans than the minimum wage over the next year’. Of course, he was right. Perhaps all of this is wrong (for the Democrats). But it is what the faction that controls the Democratic party really believes.
The Democratic party of FDR (and JFK) was a blue-collar party and proud of it. That party is dead. For a detailed statistical analysis of this topic, see the work of Piketty (a French Marxist). For better or worse, the takeover of the left by Brahmins (his term) is a global (or at least Western) phenomena. You can find the same trends in the US, UK, France, Germany, etc. Let me use the UK as an example. The coal-mining districts of the UK voted for the Tories.
An insidious factor in all this is that it emphasizes the worth and merit of those who attend elite colleges. One's value as a human being is determined by which college you went to or by not completing college. The majority of the US population, lacking in a college degree, is without merit according to this approach.
Yes, agree with the point that there is an oversized focus on a tiny percentage of the US young adult population, however, it says a lot about the author's own myopia to only highlight the 'left' when the hysteria around getting rid of race-based (not legacy or other types) of affirmative action is over keeping those 3 to 4/1000 students out of the current pathways to leadership.
Progressive politics is also about acknowledging the reality of the pathways to equality....Yes all of us - conservatives and progressives - should not forget the 80% of the population.
But as Toro demonstrates, blaming progressives for worrying about stopping even this little pipeline to prestige and opportunity while completely ignoring why this debate happened in the first place is at best unintentional bias, and at worst, supporting the same logic that conservative justices, media, and politicians have used to put in place myriad strategies to stomp on the bottom 20%, and continue to undermine the middle 3 quintiles of the American population.
Yes, the GINI coefficient of the United States has risen since 1970 (actually 1980). See FRED series SIPOVGINIUSA. However, the left doesn't really care. The left has made identity-politics its core fixation. Disney provides a good example. Disney is far more praised/condemned for being 'woke' that for executive pay. The big increase in the GINI index was between 1980 and the early 1990s. The GINI index has (slightly) fallen since.
The primary flaw of this piece is the assumption that admission to and attendance at the most highly selective schools for undergraduate is the holy grail. It is most certainly not. Anybody with experience in professions requiring graduate or professional school knows the deck is reshuffled in graduate admissions, and even graduation from top programs is a guarantee of absolutely nothing other than a good first job. Even the legal profession is obscenely meritocratic. Many of the best and top lawyers went nowhere near top ten or even top 20 programs, and many did not have top jobs right out of law school. You make your way in business and law on the basis of demonstrable ability and results.
A question is whether graduates of elite colleges and universities develop or provide needed goods and services better than their peers? If not then we should question the long-term viability of our society in a competitive world unless, of course, we start placing more emphasis on what one does rather than who one is.
Elite colleges aren’t the only pathway to elite jobs and leadership, plenty of people educated in accessible state schools go on to high level careers. I started a career in book publishing which is both very competitive and low paying and then switched to medicine, which is very competitive and high paying, all starting with a degree from a state school that accepts most applicants. Elite schooling is overemphasized and not as important as people believe. There were people from my state school who went into those supposed Ivy League holy grails of investment banking and consulting. So, yes the Left should be far more worried about those other 900/1000 ish people. And emphasizing college for everyone is not the answer. Elevating social status and wages for other types of work IS important, that’s what will make our society more healthy.
The obsession with access to an elite education and a subsequent position of leadership testifies to the obsessors' belief in top-down change, or else their contentment with the look of representation.
I got a 2 year degree at a community college and before retirement was making 6 figures. One can be successful and build a comfortable life without attending an elite university.
It did not used to be this way. Often the graduate of the elite college worked in academia. Sure economic success was tied to elite college credentials, but more from the connections of the elite families and friends that made up the elite college society.
The connection to economic outcomes and elite college credentials has exploded for a couple of reasons that can be fixed to some degree with changes to education and economic policies… directing more resources at the working class population. Examples include trade schools and help with financing a work truck instead of paying off student loans from Yale for a gender studies degree.
Frankly, the shine of an elite degree is fading. I for example will give more points to the student from the state university that worked while attending that I will the Ivy League graduate that ran up student loans and/or got funded by mommy and daddy.
The bottom line here is that elite university attendance, or university attendance at all, should not be such a big economic difference boost in a nation like the US where a C4 certified pipe welder can make $75 per hour or more depending on location.
I am inclined to agree with the author. The core identity of the modern Democratic party is ‘sex is a spectrum’ and ‘2+2 = white supremacy’. Everything else is just minor league stuff. I vividly remember reading a bitter lament by a liberal/leftist online. He stated ‘we are going to here a lot more about trans than the minimum wage over the next year’. Of course, he was right. Perhaps all of this is wrong (for the Democrats). But it is what the faction that controls the Democratic party really believes.
The Democratic party of FDR (and JFK) was a blue-collar party and proud of it. That party is dead. For a detailed statistical analysis of this topic, see the work of Piketty (a French Marxist). For better or worse, the takeover of the left by Brahmins (his term) is a global (or at least Western) phenomena. You can find the same trends in the US, UK, France, Germany, etc. Let me use the UK as an example. The coal-mining districts of the UK voted for the Tories.
An insidious factor in all this is that it emphasizes the worth and merit of those who attend elite colleges. One's value as a human being is determined by which college you went to or by not completing college. The majority of the US population, lacking in a college degree, is without merit according to this approach.
Yes, agree with the point that there is an oversized focus on a tiny percentage of the US young adult population, however, it says a lot about the author's own myopia to only highlight the 'left' when the hysteria around getting rid of race-based (not legacy or other types) of affirmative action is over keeping those 3 to 4/1000 students out of the current pathways to leadership.
Progressive politics is also about acknowledging the reality of the pathways to equality....Yes all of us - conservatives and progressives - should not forget the 80% of the population.
But as Toro demonstrates, blaming progressives for worrying about stopping even this little pipeline to prestige and opportunity while completely ignoring why this debate happened in the first place is at best unintentional bias, and at worst, supporting the same logic that conservative justices, media, and politicians have used to put in place myriad strategies to stomp on the bottom 20%, and continue to undermine the middle 3 quintiles of the American population.
Yes, the GINI coefficient of the United States has risen since 1970 (actually 1980). See FRED series SIPOVGINIUSA. However, the left doesn't really care. The left has made identity-politics its core fixation. Disney provides a good example. Disney is far more praised/condemned for being 'woke' that for executive pay. The big increase in the GINI index was between 1980 and the early 1990s. The GINI index has (slightly) fallen since.
The primary flaw of this piece is the assumption that admission to and attendance at the most highly selective schools for undergraduate is the holy grail. It is most certainly not. Anybody with experience in professions requiring graduate or professional school knows the deck is reshuffled in graduate admissions, and even graduation from top programs is a guarantee of absolutely nothing other than a good first job. Even the legal profession is obscenely meritocratic. Many of the best and top lawyers went nowhere near top ten or even top 20 programs, and many did not have top jobs right out of law school. You make your way in business and law on the basis of demonstrable ability and results.
well said
A question is whether graduates of elite colleges and universities develop or provide needed goods and services better than their peers? If not then we should question the long-term viability of our society in a competitive world unless, of course, we start placing more emphasis on what one does rather than who one is.