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I originally posted the following a a reply to Booman’s recent post Elite Universities Shouldn’t Be Just for Elites. It grew.
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“Elite,” eh?
Hmmmmmm…
A definition from Google:
a select part of a group that is superior to the rest in terms of ability or qualities.
synonyms: best, pick, cream, crème de la crème, flower, nonpareil, elect; high society, jet set, beautiful people, beau monde, haut monde, glitterati; aristocracy, nobility, upper class
Yup.
Them Ivory League colledges sho’ am full of the “elite,” awright.
Once upon a time…maybe…they were legit.
Now?
Not.
This goes for most of the entire U.S. academic system. It is a “pay for degree” system. The more you pay for a degree, the more money you will be able to make if that is your main object in life.
End of story.
This goes for everything from scientific studies right on through to the arts.
Read on for more.
Pay particular attention to the last bit of info in the following short statement by Branford Marsalis, by far the most honest and forthright member of the Marsalis musical clan. (Emphasis mine.):
….that is the same mentality that basically forces Harvard to give out Bs to people who don’t deserve them out of the fear that they will go to other schools that will give them Bs, and those schools will make the money.
We live in a country that seems to be in this massive state of delusion, where the idea of what you are is more important than you actually being that. And it actually works just as long as everybody’s winking at the same time. If one person stops winking, you just beat the crap out of that person, and they either start winking or go somewhere else.
There it is. Thank you, Branford.
Deal wid it.
Ain’t no “elite” universities anymore…they have become purely for-profit organizations that use the capital they accrue from grants, donations from alumni, sports monies and tuition payments (usually borrowed at exorbitant interest rates) to buy massive amounts of gentrifiable real estate. Their status in the “educational” hierarchy is simply a matter of branding.
HARVARD!!! LESS FILLING!!!
YALE!!! TASTES BETTER!!!
And so on.
WTFU.
Of course, you can get a fine education in many of them because some number of people who attend them take a good look around and decide to stay as graduate students/professors etc. because…well, because it’s an easier, more comfortable way of life than jumping into the shark tanks of corporate greed that we laughingly call “The American Business World.” That plus it still offers at least the possibility of actually doing something for the sheer joy of expanding human knowledge, although that island of honest effort is also rapidly shrinking under the flood of “publish or perish”/”cooperate or operate elsewhere” bullshit that passes for academic administration in this corporatist system.
So it goes.
Elite universities shouldn’t be just for elites ?
C’mon, Booman.
Get real.
They’re not.
Why?
Because they are no longer “elite” themselves.
That’s why.
Not by the following part of the above definition, for sure.
a select part of a group that is superior to the rest in terms of ability or qualities.
Bet on it.
They are now just another segment of the ongoing hustle that I like to call “The United States of Omertica.”
Don’t ask; don’t tell.
…it actually works just as long as everybody’s winking at the same time. If one person stops winking, you just beat the crap out of that person, and they either starting winking or go somewhere else.
Don’t ask; don’t tell.
Yup.
Thanks again, Branford.
Pinned it.
AG