Losing Oneself and Manufacturing Bureaucracy in Contemporary Elite American Higher Education [A Review of Excellent Sheep: The Miseducation of the American Elite & the Way to a Meaningful Life, by William Deresiewicz]

Abstract

Commentary about higher education can seem confused and wrongheaded. There are many reasons for this, but a common problem is that the general topic is usually poorly specified. One of the great virtues of William Deresiewicz’s description of the defilement of American higher education and of his proposals for its purification is that Deresiewicz’s description and proposals are concentrated on his cogently specified topic: the effect of elite education, specifically traced to the admissions process of the most exclusive American universities, on the people subjected to it. Much flows from Deresiewicz’s humane consideration of the topic, including a discussion of the degrading effects that the adulteration of elite education has had on American society at large through, among other things, the effects such adulteration has had on American leadership, but all is always cogent, because of the masterful literary grounding of the topic