The Best and the Brightest Led America Off a Cliff

Over the last five years or so I have had several opportunities to study the graduates of elite educational institutions including the crème de la crème of institutions abroad at close quarters. What I have observed has left me completely disillusioned. I have concluded that most of them are just plain bean counters with no moral fibre in their souls; colouring within the lines and mindlessly climbing up the career ladder with little to no trace of creativity. The lack of an ethical basis (even after making concessions for stupid and corrupt government, etc) to their actions has been most appalling of all. But the elite don't unravel so quickly, it takes a while to discover and understand the phoney virtual reality world that they have created and live in. Once a school classmate of mine who went to IIM described his job as ஈட்டிக்காரன் வேலை. After all this financial mess started in the US in September, I was idly wondering how much the graduates from elite schools who typically end up in investment banks and such were responsible. Suddenly jail sentences for pickpockets seem to be such a raw deal. Since most of our institutions are modeled after ones in the US or UK, it might be worth listening to what a discerning observer has to say about the role of graduates of elite schools in screwing America:

The multiple failures that beset the country, from our mismanaged economy to our shredded constitutional rights to our lack of universal health care to our imperial debacles in the Middle East, can be laid at the feet of our elite universities. Harvard, Yale, Princeton and Stanford, along with most other elite schools, do a poor job educating students to think. They focus instead, through the filter of standardized tests, enrichment activities, advanced placement classes, high-priced tutors, swanky private schools and blind deference to all authority, on creating hordes of competent systems managers. The collapse of the country runs in a direct line from the manicured quadrangles and halls in places like Cambridge, Princeton and New Haven to the financial and political centers of power.

The nation’s elite universities disdain honest intellectual inquiry, which is by its nature distrustful of authority, fiercely independent and often subversive. They organize learning around minutely specialized disciplines, narrow answers and rigid structures that are designed to produce certain answers. The established corporate hierarchies these institutions service—economic, political and social—come with clear parameters, such as the primacy of an unfettered free market, and with a highly specialized vocabulary. This vocabulary, a sign of the “specialist” and of course the elitist, thwarts universal understanding. It keeps the uninitiated from asking unpleasant questions. It destroys the search for the common good. It dices disciplines, faculty, students and finally experts into tiny, specialized fragments. It allows students and faculty to retreat into these self-imposed fiefdoms and neglect the most pressing moral, political and cultural questions. Those who defy the system—people like Ralph Nader—are branded as irrational and irrelevant. These elite universities have banished self-criticism. They refuse to question a self-justifying system. Organization, technology, self-advancement and information systems are the only things that matter.

...

Intelligence is morally neutral. It is no more virtuous than athletic prowess. It can be used to further the rape of the working class by corporations and the mechanisms of repression and war, or it can be used to fight these forces. But if you determine worth by wealth, as these institutions invariably do, then fighting the system is inherently devalued. The unstated ethic of these elite institutions is to make as much money as you can to sustain the elitist system. College presidents are not voices for the common good and the protection of intellectual integrity, but obsequious fundraisers. They shower honorary degrees and trusteeships on hedge fund managers and Wall Street titans whose lives are usually examples of moral squalor and unchecked greed. The message to the students is clear. But grabbing what you can, as John Ruskin said, isn’t any less wicked when you grab it with the power of your brains than with the power of your fists.
- via TruthDig

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