Gail Collins (in response to David Brooks)
But do you think you could assure the graduates that there’s good education to be had in a multitude of places, many far from the Ivy League? I’m really disturbed by having a Supreme Court made up entirely of people who went to Harvard, Yale, Princeton or Columbia. (O.K., John Paul Stevens went to Northwestern. This was so long ago that it’s possible he did it on the advice of Abraham Lincoln.)
Judging people by the college they went to is almost as bad as judging them by their family tree. It’s the dictatorship of the U.S. News & World Report ranking list.
It is true that the fancier your alma mater, the more famous people you will know when you’re 45. You, however, will not necessarily be one of those famous people yourself. You could very easily wind up being the deputy assistant to a person who graduated 40th in her class at Wichita Tech.
This obsession with picking the right college is the way people who could have gotten a scholarship to a state school find themselves graduating from Nifty University with $100,000 in student loans. Tell the students that the only two things certain as they move out into the world are that the future is unknowable and the loan payments unavoidable.
And don’t forget that reminder about sunscreen. More important than ever in this age of global warming.
5 months ago • 0 notes