The value of an Ivy League education is self evident. You get to put the Univeristy name on your resume, maybe have a ring, maybe legacy for your kids. This gives can give you an advantage in getting a job, an advantage getting a job that pays, I have even known people who would only be in serious relationships with someone who graduated from and Ivy school. I know two couples who met after college but graduated for the same school.
But my question is deeper. Does an Ivy league school teach the average student, not the scholarship student, not the student who got in because because her application rose to the top because of 4.3 GPA full of AP classes and social work. Those students will learn anywhere.
No, I am talking about the kid whose parent pay full price to get the kid into the school, maybe even make a sizable donation. These are the equivalent of the reluctant kids at public school, kids who are always late, whose parent just want them there for free babysitting, or are there because the courts say they have to be. Teaching these kids is what separates a school with real value to society from one who is just leeching off the country.
What makes me think of this is the Republican’s leadership assertion that Trump does not know how the government works and is still learning how to be president. Now, I am be naive, but one thing I learned in my inner city tier infinity college education what how the US government works as well as the history of why it is structured in this way. In addition, I had to learn how to learn quickly, because my professors did not give my extra time, or play around, or listen to my parents make excuses. I did the unreasonable amount of work in the time required or I did not get the credit.
So it is really confusing that Trump, with an Ivy League education for them number on business school in the US, does not how the government works and after a year of running for office and months of knowing he was going to be president, did not have the skill set to learn what the job entails. Now, it would be easy to say he went to a business school, and business schools cannot be expected to offer a broad education, or the ethics education that you might get in engineering school, or anything other than how to use bankruptcy to accumulate money, but then what is the purpose of such an institution? How does such an institution help to American a better place? If all they are diploma mills for rich kids like state schools are diploma mills for NCAA athletes, then why do we need them? Why do we give out federal grants and student loans.
This may seem like a joke, or a just and attack on Trump, but it is not. I think it is a serious question. If our best institutions are not actually educated or most powerful people, the children of our wealthy, the Bush’s and Trump’s that are going to be in control of our world not because of merit but of ancestry, then what is the future of our country going to look like. Yes, such schools take in merit kids on full scholarship, and those kids hob knob with the actual leaders, and hopefully the leaders will have enough sense to know that merit is better than legacy, but Trump is an example of when that system fails.
Is this why we need immigration to keep the US alive and kicking? Is our aristocracy so lazy and apathetic that even when given the best opportunities, they squander them. Are our best educational outlets so bloated with wealth that they simply coast, offering excellent education to those who choose to take it, but otherwise selling credentials?
Immigrants, as my parent and sibling, come to this country with a plan. They work hard, often expect their children to work just as hard. They succeed under extremely adverse conditions because they are either really smart or really determined or both. They are not the US aristocracy even if they are not peasants in their home country. In this light, the current attack on immigrants is just like the aristocracy of England murdering the merchant class to keep them from competing on an equal basis. It is just like the attack of religious freedom by the artistocracy of England that threatened the myth that the aristocracy, like our aristocracy, was chosen by the almighty.
The problem is that the hard working immigrants are not the one in control our the future of the country. It is the aristocracy, an aristocracy that appears to be increasing ill educated in anything beyond how to flip houses.
In no way am I saying an Ivy League education is not superior and worth the money. What I am saying is that such institutions can’t just say people like Trump get a pass because they fund the education of lesser people who can actually benefit. Clearly that philosophy is a danger to our country. Our current POtuS illustrates this beyond any doubt.