1. You are the future leaders of America: I heard this frequently, and never understood the import, really. I get uncomfortable when too many people agree with me, let alone do what I say. Why would we all aspire to leadership? And where does that leave me, stranger to my own cohort?

2. The gap years between high school and college were great. I met a Stanford-cum-Oxford philosophy grad who had dropped out and was traveling the world. I had just had a few philosophy classes in senior year. So while he rolled the joints, I asked about Hume, and Popper, and Watts. Yes, I forgot most of the details.

3. Any decent university will have a few excellent professors somewhere, starving for good students. Be one! On account of my time off, I tested out of all the lower-level requirements and went directly into upper-level seminars with at most 10 other students but usually 2-3. I attended and presented at conferences as a sophomore. It was awesome. I already had a decent education from high school, but damn did it get better.

4. Many of my friends and family were quite concerned about my choice of colleges. A middling state school? I often felt the need to explain or justify myself, though in retrospect it would have been better just to talk about all the exciting things I'd been doing, rather than apologize for poor appearances.

[edited for style]

What made you stop going to the elite school?

Did you have any tricks to help you find those excellent professors?

What other exciting things?

But once I got there and compared notes with my prep school friends who were already in their junior year at various big name schools, I realized I had a good thing going and that transferring out wasn't so attractive after all. If I really needed a pedigree later on, I could acquire one in graduate school.

The long answer (?) is that while one half of my family is highly educated, the other half is comprised of tradesmen and small business owners with little formal education. I had a choice--I could have gone to Harvard, had that been my goal. I had all the prerequisites and could have traded on family connections if need be. I had the option, and I opted out. That's a lot easier than standing outside the gates and saying "I don't need this," even though they never would have let me in anyway. I am not that strong.

re: professors

It's much easier to find and get the attention of good professors when you are a big fish in a little pond. They will find you. Obscure departments are better than big name ones, but even a comp-sci department will have plenty to offer once you get past the hazing. At a no-name school, you trade duller classmates for better access to the faculty. There were a few good students at my university to be sure, but outside the upper level and graduate classes, the mediocrity was astounding. At least I didn't go in expecting big things! Elite schools can be really disappointing that way.

re: exciting things

This wasn't my route, but two years at a Jesuit monastery somewhere in Europe could be pretty exciting. You could learn Latin and the local language, work alongside the monks (?), and quiz them on their studies. Philology, the precursor to modern linguistics, is very interesting but has high barriers to entry (multiple classical languages). Fields like that are self-selective.

Italy has lots of small scale yet sophisticated manufacturing, so that would be an obvious direction were you so inclined. Lots of legal hurdles but it can be done. Take that back to college and you'd be in a class by yourself.

>It's much easier to find and get the attention of good professors when you are a big fish in a little pond. They will find you.

I spent what was ostensibly my senior year of high school attending a mediocre 20K student state university near my hometown. Then, after high school graduation, I went to a slightly better private university.

At the state school, it wasn't hard to be noticed by professors in even large lecture classes. I was known as one of the people who showed up to class regularly. And, with little study, I was able to regularly get one of the highest grades in my classes. This is not a testament to my abilities in any sense -- it is evidence of the abysmal level of intellect and interest displayed by the student body as a whole.

Professors in several departments asked me if I would consider their field for a major because _I was obviously so interested and talented_. What made them think this? I showed up to class, filled out multiple-choice tests well, and occasionally stopped by for office hours with a interesting question. My level of competence would make me average at a better school, and this was indeed proven out when I went to engineering school.

What I did find was that the honors program at this school was actually quite good. The best professors taught honors classes, and much attention was paid to those students. So, there are niches of goodness, even in places like this school. Furthermore, some of the faculty were indeed quite good in their fields, so there was opportunity to learn from competent folk.

Leadership might not necessarily entail leading a group of people. Leadership as the way they use it seems to be more synonymous with excellence. There are so many areas of life and all of them are important. Even the cleaner down the street is a future leader for she can vote, she can chose our prime minister, she can grow children and educate them properly, etc. What they mean is that soon we will have their occupations and do with the world what we like and that thought is quite exciting.

I wish I knew of their existence, but nothing in my environment prepared me for being one of their students.

So of course these institutions are for an elite. Not everyone gets the same opportunities, because not everyone is even aware of those opportunities.

A sense of sadness suddenly shocks you when you realize it's too late for entering in the circle.

The article and the comments here are mostly American-biased. In fact, HN is many times very American-biased. There's nothing wrong about it, but please realise it.

The word MIT, Stanford and Ivy League are simply in your words Oxford and Cambridge. That's your issue.

That's nonsense. There are fantastic universities the world over: http://www.timeshighereducation.co.uk/hybrid.asp?typeCode=24...

2) The Ivy League (along with the university system as a whole) is an important part of it.

If you accept these two things, and you're anything like me, this makes you angry. Ironically, if you asked someone who attends an Ivy, they'd probably tell you they're in favor of a classless society.

I'm not sure that most people you ask at Harvard would favor a "classless society". A distressingly large percentage of them want to go join a financial consulting firm or hedge fund and make as much money as they can right out of school.

Why is this distressing?

Few people really want a true "classless society". I'd assume that few of the founders on HN plan on donating 100% of all income they earn above the median level.

There's a difference between believing that a classless society is a worthy goal and, noticing that one is not currently in a classless society and that being in an above average class has certain benefits, seeking to achieve an elevated class for the time being.

I would like to think I am a fairly strong believer in a classless post-scarcity utopia, but giving away most of what I own is not going to bring that any closer - all I'd be doing is reducing my own power to act. Better to retain it for now and use it to work towards the long term goal.

Sounds self-serving, maybe, but what can you do?

It's important to note that I refer mainly to material classlessness here; obviously classes of intellect and culture will still exist and you wouldn't want to eradicate them anyway. I would imagine political classes would also exist but hopefully determined by will to participate, not material means.

And why? Well, egalitarianism, basically, and the belief that material means of one's parents should be neither benefit nor hindrance in life.

This is the stuff of essays, not little comments like this, but I hope you get the idea : D

I'm personally interested in Participatory Economics (Parecon for short), which is a model for a decentralized classless economy, which offers properties that I think many people want from their economic system. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Participatory_economics

Oh, I absolutely agree. But ask them directly and quite a few of them will still tell you, with a straight face, that they want a classless society.

Sure, you get more private school kids and people from rich backgrounds, but it's not nearly as unbalanced as the scenario you paint.

On top of that, even if there was low economic mobility, that doesn't necessarily mean we aren't living in a meritocracy. A huge part of intellect is determined by genetics, and a huge part of wealth is determined by intellect. Simply put, it makes sense that, on average, richer people would have smarter babies than poor people. There's also the fact that well educated parents tend to instill values in their children that extol education, hard work, etc.

> huge part of wealth is determined by intellect.

Ignoring the huge problems inherent in this idea of "intellect" as some quantifiable quality, this isn't close to true. Parent education and income is by far the biggest predictor of future success.

> richer people would have smarter babies than poor people.

Let's see your evidence, please.

Actually, 42% of children in the US born in the bottom quintile are most likely to stay there, and another 42% move up to the second and middle quintile. This means that 16% end up in the 4th and 5th quintile. Hardly a "tiny, tiny percentage".

Source: http://www.economicmobility.org/assets/pdfs/EMP_Across_Gener...

Only 6% of the bottom 20% make it to the top 20%, so I’d guess a very small percentage become “self-made millionaires”.

That report you link is great, thanks.

The barriers between the lower class and the middle class (including its upper reaches, the professional class) are cultural, not economic. Even people who seem to be held back by economic barriers are held back because of cultural barriers -- they don't know how to play the game and inspire the trust (both personal trust and the kind of impersonal trust embodied in a good academic, criminal, and credit record) that allows them to overcome the economic barriers.

The barriers are easiest to see in extreme cases. For example, inner city adults who can't keep the jobs they're placed in because being ordered around fills them with rage, or because they don't realize they can't disappear for a week without telling anyone, even if they were dealing with their father's death and funeral in another state. Or poor kids who don't know there are lots of federal student loan programs with favorable terms. I know savvy kids who took loans they didn't need because the terms were ludicrously favorable, but some kids drop out of school and take menial jobs because they don't know that debt is a normal, accepted way of paying for college.

The extreme cases are easier to see, but there are milder cultural challenges that are much more pervasive. Having worked for bosses from other cultures, I know that the consequences for being late with work depend greatly on how the situation is framed, and the "right" way to say "I worked my butt off on this, but it's harder than I thought" or "I've barely worked on this because you've had me putting out fires for the last two weeks" is dependent on culture. Even something as simple as acknowledging criticism is culturally sensitive. If your boss thinks you are blowing off criticism or being disrespectful, it can be a huge disaster. Understanding the differences isn't always enough. I quit working for one guy because I just couldn't adjust to him. (It may have been cultural, or just personal.) He was very emotional and assumed a close personal relationship with me. I like to play things cool and assumed that our friendship outside of work and our working relationship were separate. If I played it cool and didn't get emotional when he did, he thought I was blowing him off or showing indifference to him and our work. I was extremely stressed out by his displays of emotion at work. I found it extremely draining to try to respond with the appropriate emotions when all I really felt was distress and resentment that he was polluting (as I saw it) our working relationship with his unfiltered emotions. My only idea of how to display unpleasant emotions in the workplace was to mute them and deal with them by dispassionately discussing the concrete issues from which they stemmed. I was utterly miserable until I quit -- probably he was, too. And this was between two people with similar liberal political and moral convictions who were both educated in American universities.

I think one of the biggest cultural questions that causes problems between people is what it means to have authority to give someone else orders. To me, the power to give orders is inherent in roles. If someone is my boss, they can tell me what to do. They might give me latitude, and I might try to persuade them to give me different orders, but if they give me orders, that's fine, I do what I'm told. It doesn't mean they're higher or better than me. It doesn't mean they're smarter or stronger. It's just a matter of the roles we play in the business (or sports team or what-not.) In some cultures, authority means personal superiority. Naturally, these different interpretations create anger, insult, and resentment when they come together.

The Republicans played on this expertly when they described Sonia Sotomayor as "bossy." It won't sink her nomination, but it evoked a stereotype that has very intense emotional connections. It worked perfectly on me. I grew up in a place with a sizable Hispanic population. In Hispanic culture, authority tends to mean superiority. (One book I read said that in Europe, cultures believe in authority in rough proportion to how strongly they were influenced by the Roman Empire.) Of course, teachers have authority over students. When my Hispanic teachers talked to me, they talked down -- down from their superior intelligence, wisdom, education... all assumed to be superior because they had authority over me. My non-Hispanic teachers largely did not talk to me that way -- their default assumption was that we were equals who happened to be playing roles (teacher and student) in which they had the authority to boss me around and grade my performance. (Of course, there were exceptions on both sides.) The anger I felt at the way my Hispanic teachers treated me... well, I can still feel it today. To my mind, they had no good reason to assume they were better than me, and their assumption interfered with my education because they maintained their pretense of superiority at the expense of their academic objectivity. To their minds, they had to maintain a pretense of personal superiority, because otherwise they would lose their authority to give orders and maintain order in the classroom. So they talked down to me, patronized me, and made a point of responding to any show of knowledge or intelligence on my part by bossing me around even more. Now I'm probably rambling because the anger is running away with me.... But you can imagine that a Hispanic kid dealing with non-Hispanic authority figures might misread their attitude and think they are weak and should be disregarded.

Anyway, I'm sure many white Americans have the same kind of painful culture-clash memories of Hispanic authority figures as I do, so describing Sonia Sotomayor as "bossy" and "overbearing" is a clever way of turning her, in my and other people's heads, into an authoritarian, patronizing Hispanic stereotype. Which, if true, would be a great reason for excluding her from the court, since the political ideals of the United States are (all my liberal tolerance aside) incompatible with belief in the natural superiority of those in power. But there's no reason to believe she is anything like that stereotype, and there are excellent reasons to believe otherwise. She was successful at Princeton and successful in the U.S. legal system. Along the way, she worked productively with, and earned the respect of, lots of people to whom authoritarianism is anathema. I'm sure that given what she has accomplished, she must be conscious of the issue, must understand it thoroughly, and probably comes down on the same side of it as most other Americans. But the stereotype retains its emotional power. Even after thinking through the issue and rationally reassuring myself, the stereotype still holds sway over my emotions. (Damn those culturally savvy Republican attack dogs! They've taken over a little part of my brain :-( )

Kids of professors have a whole host of social and material advantages that can't just be boiled down to “better culture.” I really don’t think that the ability of professors’ kids growing up to be lawyers or doctors really says all that much about overall “social mobility.”

The advantages I had were basically four:

1. My parents taught me to read before I went to school. It is a cultural difference. Some people take it for granted that the schools will teach their children to read. Some people regard it as borderline child abuse if you don't teach your kids to read before they start preschool. My parents were pretty chill, but I could read before I entered preschool at age four -- they took that for granted as one of their parental responsibilities.

2. My father was an academic, I had early academic success, and I took it for granted that I was smarter than other kids. That probably had two causes. First, reading. I was taught to read early, and everyone in my family read. It was just something that one did. Second, I was probably exposed to a more analytical style of discourse at home than other kids were. So I was effectively "smarter" when it came to academic stuff, though stupider at other stuff.

3. I had middle-class expectations. Of course I was going to college and going to enter a smart-person profession. I couldn't understand why other kids didn't glom on to that possibility as soon as it was presented to them. Why did other, less enjoyable, more painful prospects seem more probable or more natural to them? I could see an easy path for them to lots of different things: a college education, a good job, maybe a professional degree. They weren't stupid, but they seemed to assume a "stupid person" fate for themselves. It baffled me. This difference is also cultural. It wasn't a physical or systemic barrier that somebody placed in front of them. It was a barrier that was psychologically engrained in them.

4. I understood how school and college worked. Actually, I didn't really. I didn't know that you could ask for extensions and so forth. I didn't know you could ask professors for help; I thought only obnoxious stupid bimbos did that. I could have known these things if I had asked my dad, but I didn't. But I did know that you were supposed to study and read and turn in all your work on time, and you were supposed to read beyond the assigned work if you wanted to do really well. And I knew you couldn't trust other people or do what was "normal" because a lot of people were going to fail and fall by the wayside. That cynicism, I'm convinced, would save a lot of people. A lot of people are good enough, smart enough, disciplined enough, etc. but at some point naively follow the example of someone they shouldn't. I knew better than that. You do the work, you read, you do better than everybody else because half of them are going to fail. That isn't intellectual knowledge or insider information: that is a cultural attitude, a different but equally important form of knowledge.

So yes, culture is a huge deal. My culture was "better" in the sense that it resulted in a more secure, freer existence for me.

I really don’t think that the ability of professors’ kids growing up to be lawyers or doctors really says all that much about overall “social mobility.”

It says social mobility can be achieved with no social connections and only a modest amount of money. It says social mobility is socially and economically within the grasp of a huge number of people who miss out for other reasons, and those other reasons are cultural.

Watch your own sense of entitlement; as a Harvard man yourself, you have all the usual reasons to appeal to genetics, meritocracy of intelligence, instilled values, etc. My suspicion is that you can't see all the obstacles that would be in your way, had you started from somewhere else.

Remember the quote in the article? "Grabbing what you can get isn’t any less wicked when you grab it with the power of your brains than with the power of your fists."

Those that work the system to their unfair advantage through mere cleverness are not necessarily to be admired. Intelligence is a long way short of the most admirable qualities in a man.

However, none of this means we don't live in a plutocracy.

Think about the people who exercise political power. Think of how so many people have made their money not through peaceful, economic activity, but through political activity, whether it takes the form of benefiting from direct subsidies, rent-seeking, central banking, corporatism, tax favoritism, licensing laws, or credentialism.

Hard as it is to accept, the word I chose was warranted.

As to your point about gaining money through political power, that can be legitimate. For instance, while the Clinton's were certainly rich before the presidency, Bill Clinton's speaking fees went up substantially after his presidency. Similarly, Mr. Obama's book sales went up significantly as he climbed the political ladder.

America is far closer to a meritocracy than any other country.

For example, a millionaire can bribe an official or use his campaign/PAC contributions to convince them to do what he wants.

People getting rich because of political power is totally separate and will pretty much always happen because they get more famous and respected due to their power.

In short, plutocracy means money gets you political power, not vice versa.

As for Clinton, that depends on what you mean. The fees did go up because of his earlier political power.

America is far closer to a meritocracy than any other country.

I'm inclined to agree, but being closer to a meritocracy than any other country does not mean America is not a plutocracy.

If we're talking about politics - which is the reason that plutocracy is coming into play - then you're mistaken. As the other commentor points out, plutocracy means that money gives you political clout/power.

Compare the corruption rates in the US elections to a country like, say, Finland (which ranks lowest on corruption—that is, has the least). Go to Finland during an election and you'll see posters everywhere that feature tens of faces of people from every income level who are running for office. I can tell you that, as an American, this experience for me was not only surreal but almost disturbing.

Then look at the US, where the vast majority of politicians are rich to begin with and become only more enriched. Look at PACs, which use money to create voting blocs inside the governing bodies, and how lobbyists tend to write laws and then lawmakers simply sign them.

I remember reading an article in the NYT last fall, quoting a guy who heads up one of the international voting monitoring organizations. He said that the US is so bad, we don't even meet their minimum requirements for monitoring.

Money = power in the US. That hasn't changed much since its beginnings.

The sentiment that "The US is bad, sure, but it's better than all the alternatives!" is common here on HN (and among educated Americans in general). I really wish people would question it more and look at facts, and travel outside, to see that it's not true.

Maybe it feels like betrayal to say "Actually, the US is just really bad," but how can you heal a major wound if you won't even admit that you're bleeding out long enough to apply some pressure?

I enjoy what I am doing with my own life. I am satisfied with me challenges and proud of my accomplishments.

Why should I begrudge the good fortune of others? The universe has blessed me abundantly.

I simply wasn't born with the personality needed for enjoying class-warfare rhetoric. I find it a big turn-off.

1) One group of people becomes enormously rich through some peaceful, economic means, while another group remains relatively poor.

2) One group of people uses oppressive political power to become rich, at the expense of another group, which remains poor.

My problem is with #2. If we were talking about #1, I'd be right there with you complaining about class warfare rhetoric.

Has there ever been a clear separation? No, not recently.

With regard to the school system in particular, I would suggest completely cutting off all government benefits - direct funding, indirect funding, accreditation approval, credentialist laws, licensing laws, everything. If only that were all it took. ;)

Before you downvote to disagree, he did ask!

What kind of person (at 35 no less) still identifies so strongly with the school they attended as an 18 year old?

And to be wracked with guilt about it?

And to blame his schooling for his inability to speak to the plumber?

This is nothing short of neurotic.

Now, I didn't attend an elite prep school (quite the converse), nor did I remain in the academy after graduating (no loss for the academy, given my GPA...). So perhaps I received a subtherapeutic dose of whatever has saddled him with such despair. But I have no problem communicating with my fellow rural firefighters, a merry mix of garbagemen, carpenters, surveyors, innkeepers, pastors, snowplow repairmen, and the occasional stray programmer. I can take commands from an irrigation pipe salesman or a backhoe operator. They can do things I can't do, while I can do things they can't do; there is mutual respect. Occasionally they tease me for employing a sixty-four dollar word when a ninety-eight cent word would do, but we maintain communication, and we value our differences.

Certainly, my experience as as member of the pampered elite must have been very different from his. Am I the outlier, or is he?

That explains a lot. That is the land where pedigree is everything, especially so in the humanities.

No wonder the poor guy is so confused, enough time in the ivory tower and he actually started to believe the company line.

Not to bash on academia exclusively, I've seen the same thing from friends in the legal industry.

I think it applies to any industry where reputation and prestige is paramount.

People don't unlearn to relate to people in good Colleges, they just never knew in the first place.

Edited to add: LOTS (if not most) of people at 'elite' Colleges know how to relate to 'average' people.

At the end of sophomore year, the tutors at the college decide whether you belong there. Hubris is probably a strong reason for kicking out a student, though over two years humility is strengthened in most.

It tends to be at university when one meets honest-to-goodness exceptionally intelligent people that we first learn our own limitations.

It's really not that difficult: watch sports. For men, it's the easiest icebreaker. A plumber in Boston? Chances are good he knows that the Red Sox swept the Tigers this week. There ya go - instant conversation.

Like I said, this tends to work for men. As for talking to women... I'll let somebody else handle that one.

"the average employed reader probably makes double the median US household income"

I'd clarify this to be relative to local conditions, taking into account the fairly large foreign readership (of which I am a part!) but it's probably about right. Do I smell a salary survey poll coming on ..

College degrees today are titles of nobility, thanks to state support. Yeah, I thought we abolished those, too.

Very few people from other backgrounds go to oxford, therefore it is quite a good analogy i'd suggest.

Around half of UK-national Oxford students come from state schools (http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/news/uk/article4027010.ece), and as that article says, that's at least in part because teachers scare their kids away from applying because of the very perception you're espousing.

What's more, independent schools are a very varied lot. The vast majority of the independent sector is day schools which are effectively high-end grammar schools with a strict dress code. I'm not going to pretend there isn't an advantage to going to one, but they're not substantially better than the best schools in the state sector: that's borne out by the statistics.

The teaching in Oxford and Cambridge is much more intense, and has a much greater emphasis on one-to-one and one-to-two teaching than any other Britihs university. That's where the real advantage lies; the reason it's not adopted elsewhere is that it's eyewateringly expensive. (The odd legal status of Oxford and Cambridge, historically, was at least in part to support the cost of the tuition system).

The problem with Oxford and Cambridge is one of perception rather than reality. The kids who get the grades (think 1600 SAT for our American friends), and who apply, have a decent chance of getting in.