The annual New Yorker Festival just featured a debate on whether the designation of some campuses as Ivy League should be abolished. The League was called – sensibly – “overrated” and “a poor investment of time and money.”
But what piqued my interest were opinions by and about students, as cited by The New York Sun.
One said: “I’m not going to pretend the degree isn’t nice, but I still hate the idea that I might get hired for a job over someone from a state school because of that rather than on my merits.”
Another noted that eliminating the designation would be an unpopular move among Ivy League students: “Ivy Leaguers generally like being in the Ivy League at the very least for the artifice of it, even if they don’t go around saying it.”
And the writer Gay Talese weighed in, opining that “the Ivy League doesn’t mean anything because these kids don’t mean very much. Campuses are almost irrelevant right now. The Ivy League and the non-Ivy League are connected in a lethargy of self-centeredness of their students.”
What else to expect, Mr. Talese? So many of these students have been steeped in self-esteem education, easy grading, and postmodern relativism. In short, they’ve been spoon-fed self-centeredness by many of their teachers and other elders.