Author:
An Observer
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Date Posted: 12:54:57 01/03/25 Fri
I said in a couple of posts above that I believe the Ivy League offers an incredible undergraduate experience (not education) that is very difficult to find elsewhere. That is not because the courses at other colleges are not just as good, but because the students are not.
My college and early-to-mid-20's friends have traveled far and wide over the last few decades, a varied diaspora of adventure and experience. Some are hugely successful in the traditional ways that society defines success, some are decidedly not.
But here we are, a collection of men and women who were virtually identical at age 17, a bunch of ambitious strivers hoping to get somewhere in the world. Most did to a large degree, some became genuine movers and shakers, a few did not move or shake meaningfully.
As has been observed and noted on this board many times, the undergraduate student body at today's eight Ivy League schools is not like the kids with whom I went to college. The vast majority of us were grateful to be there. I said above that, while my best friend turned down Cornell for UVa because his father asked him to save money, I would have crawled on my hands and knees to attend my first choice college.
Today's Ivy students seem so angry. They actively resent school administrations. I mean, sure, we alumni resent our alma maters for not sending our football champion to the FCS playoffs -- strike that -- but most of us still have affection for our schools. These kids do not.
Read the editorials in our eight student newspapers. These kids are p--sed off.
I wonder where they will be at age 40 and age 50. Still hating their alma maters? (Annual giving rates are down significantly at all eight Ivy universities, including Princeton and Dartmouth, the two outliers.)
More to the point, what is the effect upon the average Ivy League student from spending four years surrounded by other high achievers who are not grateful in the least to be on an Ivy campus?
My peers had the incredible good fortune of graduating from college near the beginning of the greatest bull market in the history of capitalism. That has shaped most of our careers and our lives. Today's students -- who knows what awaits them?
But I'll hazard a guess that, coming out of college hating your alma mater and resenting the society around you is not a formula for (traditional) success or lifelong happiness.
These kids are the luckiest 17-year-old's in the world. About half of them are going to one of the best fifteen universities in America absolutely free. ABSOLUTELY FREE.
And they're angry.
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