Golden Fleeces

• Published in: PsycCritiques Vol. 60; no. 7; p. No Pagination Specified
• Main Author: Cox, Geoffrey M.
• Format: Journal Article
• Language: English
• Published: American Psychological Association 16.02.2015
• Subjects: College Students; Human; Screening; Student Admission Criteria; Undergraduate Education
• ISSN: 1554-0138; 1554-0138
• DOI: 10.1037/a0038704

Reviews the book, Excellent Sheep: The Miseducation of the American Elite and the Way to a Meaningful Life by William Deresiewicz (see record 2014-34683-000). This book is based on an essay that Deresiewicz published in the American Scholar in 2008 that “went viral.” He draws on his experience as a professor and sometime member of the admissions committee at Yale University. The latter role seems to have unsettled him. He reveals that the selection process is about as reflective as sorting the mail at the central post office, with screening heuristics used to quickly eliminate the vast majority of hopefuls on the basis of split-second assessments and crude classifications. Deresiewicz’s disillusionment began on the Yale admissions committee; in his book he develops a much larger critique of the social conventions that shape and are shaped by elite universities. For all of its stridency, Deresiewicz’s book belongs to a genre of nostalgic educational romantics. He is one of a number of authors who urge us to protect the college years as a precious retreat from life, a time to quite literally invent a self by encountering and engaging with new ideas. Deresiewicz has looked at elite education from the inside out, and doesn’t like what he sees. But he is short on prescriptions for improvement. To the extent that he advocates for change, it is to increase support for public institutions that are presumably less prone to becoming the property of the elite. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2016 APA, all rights reserved)