What a great article. While I certainly don't agree with everything Deresiewicz tries to say, I will echo one bit I found to be true at least in my time at MIT (which is, incidentally, the only experience I have with an 'elite' university): there were far too many students with a myopic view of where they were and what they wanted to accomplish.
Many of the students (and friends) with whom I interacted saw MIT as their "final step" in a long life of achievements and accomplishments. After this, they were "set for life." They just had to get through it. Then came the high-paying consulting jobs, the fun research, the exciting leadership opportunities, etc. It was all right there for them. Until it wasn't, because the economy sank.
Many of those same people now took "less important" jobs just to get through the economic slump. So few people thought about venturing out on their own, it actually kind of disheartened me.
Don't get me wrong, there were still a ton of people trying to start their own projects, think on their own, and whom looked at MIT as but a stepping stone to propel them to be able to affect the world. Unfortunately, a lot of the students also seemed to only care about making their money and living comfortably.
On the other hand, I think this is a problem with our educational system in general; not just the elite schools. I consider myself almost lucky to have come from a fairly non-affluent family, since I grew up around one "class" of people (mostly not-well-off immigrants) and got to experience interacting with another at school.
MIT is probably not the worst offender in terms of not having any sort of socioeconomic diversity, since admissions are all done need-blind and there really are a lot of immigrants and no legacy or sports admissions, but the issue still exists. I can only imagine that at schools where that is not the case, this problem manifests itself in a much worse way.
Many of the students (and friends) with whom I interacted saw MIT as their "final step" in a long life of achievements and accomplishments. After this, they were "set for life." They just had to get through it. Then came the high-paying consulting jobs, the fun research, the exciting leadership opportunities, etc. It was all right there for them. Until it wasn't, because the economy sank.
Many of those same people now took "less important" jobs just to get through the economic slump. So few people thought about venturing out on their own, it actually kind of disheartened me.
Don't get me wrong, there were still a ton of people trying to start their own projects, think on their own, and whom looked at MIT as but a stepping stone to propel them to be able to affect the world. Unfortunately, a lot of the students also seemed to only care about making their money and living comfortably.
On the other hand, I think this is a problem with our educational system in general; not just the elite schools. I consider myself almost lucky to have come from a fairly non-affluent family, since I grew up around one "class" of people (mostly not-well-off immigrants) and got to experience interacting with another at school.
MIT is probably not the worst offender in terms of not having any sort of socioeconomic diversity, since admissions are all done need-blind and there really are a lot of immigrants and no legacy or sports admissions, but the issue still exists. I can only imagine that at schools where that is not the case, this problem manifests itself in a much worse way.