"And then, also, just to personalize things, I don’t have quite the same feelings that you talked about, Carlos, towards Notre Dame towards Harvard itself because I sort of feel like the institution corrupted me a little bit, right? That I went there as an ambitious kid, obviously, but mostly, it nurtured my ambitious side at the expense of my intellectual and moral side, and that that’s sort of what these schools do. It’s not just that you go there because you’re ambitious. It’s also that they exist to teach you that you should want to be more ambitious than you already are in ways that is not — like, I don’t think Harvard was good for my soul, for instance."
Ross Douthat, "I Don't Think Harvard was Good for My Soul"
When I read the transcript of this podcast episode from New York Times editorialists my pulse quickened and my heartstrings twanged in resonance. The article - inspired by the Biden administration's pursuit of a lawsuit against Harvard for its policy of legacy admissions - described my feelings about the institution better than I have ever been able to do.
In our society, upper-middle-class families and their children compete for grades and varsity spots and good high schools, but can go to any college and do well long-term vis-a-vis job, marriage, household income. I recognize that this unfair advantage comes due to decades of racist housing, lending, and hiring policies. Opportunities are already skewed way out of proportion to merit.
What the Ivies and other so-called "elite" institutions of higher learning do is bait the upper-upper levels of society into competing for the thinnest margins of high ambition, the promise that the applicants and their families will be guaranteed a place in the nation's stratosphere if they finish school at one of these places.
Which seems ridiculous on the face of it because there are no guarantees in life - ever - and going into a mountain of debt for your undergraduate education seems more likely to topple you from the pyramid than to put you on top (only students who exhibit financial need receive it, and many of these quality individuals do not choose to apply). But people like the idea of guarantees and they buy into it at their own expense and to the benefit of institutions like Harvard, which has the biggest endowment in the world outside of the Catholic Church.
A Sackler was in my freshman dorm (which is revolting now), a Roosevelt in my upperclassman House. I knew would-be governors, Secretaries in the US government, successful people of all persuasions. My closest friends (who did not pursue the above careers) value community, working for the benefit of others, and relationships. They seek to protect their families and put good energy into the world.
I learned from my missteps. It was a mistake for me to choose a college that prioritized status and wealth and power when I did not really want those things for myself. My ambition at the time didn't meet the standards of the institution, which I soon learned.
Which doesn't mean that I gave up all my worldly possessions and went to live and work among the people who need it most. No, I'm being hypocritical. We're lucky enough that we could choose a good neighborhood and a great school district in which to raise our kids. The small difference being that I urged my children to attend state schools and stay away from elite institutions. One ignored me and applied anyway, but my record of zero involvement with the school, zero donations, and low employment status gave him no legacy advantage. He's far more qualified than I was, but that didn't count for much - and I was grateful.
When we already have so much, why scrape, bend and bow to the god of having the most?
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