The Ivy League Is Overrated, Says Ivy-Dominated New Republic

William Deresiewicz has written
an interesting essay titled “Don’t
Send Your Kid to the Ivy League.” As a Michigan grad, I can’t
speak to how accurate his observations are about life at the Ivies
today. But he does have a lot of sharp points to make about elite
schools’ role in the American class system. At places like Yale and
Harvard, Deresiewicz argues, “diversity of sex and race has
become a cover for increasing economic resegregation.” Furthermore,
“The college admissions game is not primarily about the lower and
middle classes seeking to rise, or even about the upper-middle
class attempting to maintain its position. It is about determining
the exact hierarchy of status within the upper-middle class
itself.” The result, he writes, is “an elite that is isolated from
the society that it’s supposed to lead.”

The article appeared in The New Republic, a magazine
whose modern era began when it was purchased in 1974 by Martin
Peretz, who attended graduate school at Harvard. Peretz quickly
took over the editorial reins as well, serving as editor as well as
owner until he hired a Harvard alum named Michael Kinsley in 1979.
With Peretz staying on as editor-in-chief, the post of editor
traded back and forth for a dozen years between Kinsley and fellow
Harvard man Hendrik Hertzberg; in 1991, the job went to Andrew
Sullivan, who upon completing his undergraduate studies in his
native Englandearned both his master’s and his PhD at Harvard.
After Sullivan’s departure, power passed to two acting editors,
Peter Beinart and David Greenberg, both of Yale. The next
full-fledged editor, Michael Kelly, attended the University of New
Hampshire, which is not a part of the Ivy League. He was fired
after about a year, and the job then passed on to Franklin Foer
(Columbia) and Richard Just (Princeton). After Peretz departed the
magazine, ownership fell into the hands of Harvard grad Chris
Hughes, who purchased it in 2012, named himself
editor-in-chief, and brought back Foer as editor.

Deresiewicz’s article is subtitled “The nation’s top colleges
are turning our kids into zombies.” You really should read it.