The notion of education as a meritocracy is laughable at best. The correlation between standardized test scores, GPA, high school graduation rate and six-year college graduation rate are bound intimately to income and class. Poor people simply aren't afforded the resources to succeed, nor are they exposed to the social situations that promote ambition. Couple this the fact that the SAT, even when adjusted for economic disparity, is still skewed towards white men, and the notion that education (especially college admissions) is anything even remotely resemblant to a meritocracy is ridiculous.<p>Granted, there is probably a modicum more of equity than there was at the time of the story, given that colleges have de-emphasized standardized tests (to an extent), and score-inflation combined with increased tendency for curriculum to converge on tested material has made scores far less meaningful. (For instance, I got a 35 on the ACT, and I'm not inordinately intelligent by any stretch of the imagination. Moreover, I know not a single person who received below a 30 [save for a friend from Peru, for whom english is not a first language]. And this is just an average suburban pubic high school. I imagine that average scores at competitive private schools might be in the 33/2270 area. My hunch is that, as testing becomes more pervasive, underperforming education systems that begin using the test will shift the apex of the curve to the left, bringing even average students up the curve, but I digress.) However, this trivialization of testing has merely exacerbated inequality in admissions because it places on emphasis on things like internships (accessible only to the wealthy), hobbies/productive extracurriculars (which favors those who start young, and starting young often necessitates money and or involved parents), etc. Education has never been a meritocracy and it never will be.
This is the best article I've read these last few weeks - about education, signalling and redemption.<p>Many people play the education game just like this guy did, but find their salvation on the way. There are many opportunities, like when working on his summerjob he was reminded that selfbetterment was the goal, and offered to come to a meeting.<p>Along the read, I was worried he might miss it - yet he did find the purpose on the way.<p>If you play education for the signalling, you will get the piece of paper, but what else? Existential emptiness? Feeling of class envy? He is really envious of the pompous folk with the castle and the european car? Can't he strive for anything more???<p>Learn stuff you love, learn it because you think it is worth your limited time on this earth, and because you will be able to make a good use of it.<p>Whether there is a meritocracy or not does not really matter, if you can learn and make one around yourself.
I read pieces like this and wonder if the authors went to the same kind of high-end university as me. The answer seems to be that they didn't - even if it was the same name on the door, it was always for an arts degree. I guess I shouldn't be so surprised that a magazine writer studied English, but I'd be really interested to hear similar criticism from a graduate of a hard science, which really did feel like a meritocracy when I went through it.
I couldn't help but worry as I was reading that that it may have been posted here in praise of the way that these "hustlers", "doers" and "advancement hackers" had found a way to out compete those who were stuck in their stody old ways of actually learning things and successfully disrupted the ecosystem.<p>Then I realized that it was more likely jumping on the "higher education is broken" bandwagon and missing the delicious irony that every personality attribute, except knowing aristocratic privilege, being held up for contempt in this piece is openly admired in this culture when practised in the tech business world.<p>Maybe there is some alternate universe where this article was posted as a scathing critique of the whole "hustler/growth hacker" meme and a warning about how the same attitudes in elite higher education have completely destroyed their ability to create any value.<p>I'd like to move there.
Okay, I was trying to stay sympathetic to this article as I read it, but it bears almost no resemblance to reality as I've known it (not a stranger to these institutions).<p>This is less an indictment of "the system" than further evidence that systems can be gamed. Is this a shock to anyone?<p>Our narrator seems to have coasted through a variety of moderately prestigious (an adjective meaning that other people <i>think</i> whatever it is must be very discerning) opportunities. He chose to squander them out of a seemingly nihilistic/angsty/meta-hipstery and <i>extremely</i> adolescent rage against the machine.<p>What a pity. For him.
Great article -- I really identify a lot with the culture the author describes, particularly the way liberal arts students often scorn the sciences and tear down the Western canon without bothering to read it. It's a shame.<p>As to the drug abuse and alcoholism, Bob Dylan put it really well in "Like A Rolling Stone":<p>"You've gone to the finest school all right, Miss Lonely,
But you know you only used to get juiced in it."<p>People who go through college the like the author realize, deep down, that they are not getting an education. And some of them also realize that eventually, being a fraud catches up with everyone -- even if it's only in the form of a personal revelation.
Author doesn't seem to understand what a meritocracy is.<p>You can't get lost in a meritocracy. Your merit determines your rank.<p>What can happen is that you don't understand how the merit is computed. Or you can misjudge your own merit.
Calvin: "People always make the mistake of thinking art is created for them. But really, art is a private language for sophisticates to congratulate themselves on their superiority to the rest of the world. As my artist's statement explains, my work is utterly incomprehensible and is therefore full of deep significance."<p>Hobbes:"You misspelled Weltanschauung."
Ugh. Not at the article itself - it's very well-written - but at the mentality it describes, which I get was his point.<p>I suppose you could see it as "hacking Princeton" but also seems diametrically opposed to a hacker ethos, where you're into autodidacting for the love of the knowledge itself, without putting up with any of the pomp and bullshit that others like to layer on top of it.<p>I've been aggressively opposite of the mentality in the article which means that I basically learn stuff while my friends talk about tv shows and watch sports - I can't really talk to any of them about stuff I learn other than wait for them to laugh when I'm done. But it seems the alternative is to leave them behind for other sets of friends and a lifestyle where I have to wear suits and learn buzz phrases - and my friends don't tease me about the stuff I learn and seem to respect it.
Humans: it's status hierarchies all the way up.<p>The main dishonesty with the piece is his portrayal of himself as the only bullshitter in the game. I bet the girl that hugged him after he lost the Rhodes thing plagiarized her personal statement (or something).<p>In many ways his essay, rather than a deep critique of human obsession with status signalling, was just a big status signal itself, since essentially the take home point was "look how fucking good at status signalling I am".
>>novels I'd ever cracked were Moby-Dick and Frankenstein—both sold to me by a crafty high school teacher as gripping tales of adventure, which they weren't.<p>Oh, I wish you hadn't said that, you unclean cad! Other than that, this article was a work of art. Thanks for the link, mitmads.
Having attended college during the years the author did, I'm wondering if this is more of a timepiece than a reflection of today's reality.<p>BTW these are the exact same years Obama went to Columbia, and was apparently a bit "drifty" (read: high and bad grades)