Excellent Sheep Source Notes
Material from emails and conversations has been used on condition of anonymity unless otherwise noted. A few details have been changed to protect identities. Typographical errors have been silently corrected and material redacted without ellipses, but in no case have meanings been altered.
Chapter 1. The Students
Page 7: James Atlas: http://www.nytimes.com/2011/10/02/opinion/sunday/meet-the-new-super-people.html?pagewanted=all.
Page 7: David Brooks: http://www.weeklystandard.com/Content/Public/Articles/000/000/002/017ickdp.asp?nopager=1.
Page 7: Jonathan Franzen: Freedom (New York: Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 2010),183.
Page 7: the race we have made of childhood: “race” was suggested by the title of the documentary Race to Nowhere.
Page 8: A large-scale survey: http://www.nytimes.com/2011/01/27/education/27colleges.html.
Page 8: another recent survey: http://www.apa.org/monitor/2011/09/crisis-campus.aspx.
Page 8: Utilization rates: Ibid.; see also http://www.apa.org/monitor/2010/04/campus-counseling.aspx.
Page 8: Convening a task force: http://www.paloaltoonline.com/media/reports/1321647076.pdf, 42–43.
Page 9: “If the wheels are going to come off”: http://www.paloaltoonline.com/media/reports/1321647076.pdf, 42.
Page 9: A recent article: http://harvardmagazine.com/2010/03/nonstop?page=all.
Page 9: Ross Douthat: Privilege (New York: Hyperion, 2005), 148, 160.
Page 9: “I positioned myself”: http://www.nytimes.com/2013/07/14/fashion/sex-on-campus-she-can-play-that-game-too.html?pagewanted=all.
Page 10: “Stanford Duck Syndrome”: http://www.stanforddaily.com/2012/09/26/the-new-duck-metaphor.
Page 10: “Meltdown”: http://mitadmissions.org/blogs/entry/meltdown.
Page 11: Harry R. Lewis: Excellence Without a Soul (New York: PublicAffairs, 2006), 13.
Page 11: Rabbi Patricia Karlin-Neumann: http://www.paloaltoonline.com/media/reports/1321647076.pdf, 43.
Page 14: David Brooks: http://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2001/04/the-organization-kid/302164 and http://harvardmagazine.com/2010/03/nonstop?page=all.
Page 15: Allan Bloom, The Closing of the American Mind (New York: Simon & Schuster 1987), 26.
Page 16: Ross Douthat: Privilege, 123.
Page 16-17: All information on majors from U.S. News & World Report, back matter. Data for 1995 from 1996 edition (published fall 1995). Data for 2013 from 2014 edition. Top ten/twenty defined in reference to 2013, but exclude MIT, Caltech, Harvey Mudd, USMA, and USNA, which are specialized institutions. “Economics” includes finance and business.
Page 17: determinations are sometimes difficult: A number of schools have started to lump their social science majors (but not their science or humanities majors) into a single group for reporting purposes (though they don’t include psychology or history under that rubric, leaving essentially only economics and political science). Among those included here, the percentage for “social sciences” is far larger than for any other major, suggesting that economics is the single most popular field of study.
Page 17: “In 2007”: Andrew Delbanco, College (Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University Press, 2012), 143, also http://www.boston.com/bostonglobe/editorial_opinion/oped/articles/2009/02/20/wall_street_bust_a_hidden_blessing_for_grads.
Page 17: Penn, Cornell, Stanford, MIT: http://www.npr.org/2012/02/05/146434854/stopping-the-brain-drain-of-the-u-s-economy, http://www.stanforddaily.com/2011/10/11/op-ed-stop-the-wall-street-recruitment, http://www.universityparent.com/2009/08/20/mit-students-after-graduation.
Page 17: Princeton: http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2012-02-16/harvard-liberal-arts-failure-is-wall-street-gain-commentary-by-ezra-klein.html.
Page 17: Marina Keegan: http://yaledailynews.com/weekend/2011/09/30/even-artichokes-have-doubts.
Page 19-20: “What Wall Street figured out”: This is erroneously cited in the book. The source is www.washingtonpost.com/business/economy/wall-street-steps-in-when-ivy-league-fails/2012/02/16/gIQAX2weIR_story.html. The mistake occurred because a student quoted from the article in an email to me.
Page 21: Michael Lewis: Liar’s Poker (New York: W. W. Norton, 1989), 28.
Page 22: Harry R. Lewis: Excellence Without a Soul, 132.
Page 24: About a tenth: U.S. News. At Harvard and Princeton, the numbers as of 2013 are 11 percent; at Columbia, 12 percent; at Yale, 10 percent; at Stanford, 7 percent. “Overseas” here means “other countries.”
Page 24-25: William R. Fitzsimmons: http://thechoice.blogs.nytimes.com/2009/09/16/harvarddean-part5.
Chapter 2. The History
Page 27: we need to go back to the start: I am following three main sources in the first half of this chapter: Jerome Karabel, The Chosen: The Hidden History of Admission and Exclusion at Harvard, Yale, and Princeton (Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 2005); Nicholas Lemann, The Big Test: The Secret History of the American Meritocracy, rev. ed. (New York: Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 2000); and E. Digby Baltzell, The Protestant Establishment (New York: Random House, 1964).
Page 27: we need to go back before the start: Unless otherwise noted, information in the next four paragraphs comes from Baltzell, The Protestant Establishment, 109–35, especially 109–113 and 129–33.
Page 29: began to play a central role in campus life: Mitchell L. Stevens, Creating a Class (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 2007), 102.
Page 29: “iconic institutions”: Karabel, The Chosen, 17–18.
Page 29: as Karabel explains: The Chosen, 21–22, 50–57, 86–87.
Page 29: Of the 405 Grotonians: Ibid., 564n60.
Page 30: were not going to let that happen to them: Ibid., 96–135.
Page 30: “greasy grinds”: Ibid., 21.
Page 30: “Character”: Ibid., 131, 135.
Page 30: “Yale man”: Ibid., 116.
Page 30: As late as 1950: Robert Zemsky, Making Reform Work (New Brunswick, N.J.: Rutgers University Press, 2009), 109.
Page 31: 46 percent Karabel, The Chosen, 215.
Page 31: James B. Conant: Karabel, The Chosen, 139f.
Page 31: “psychometric”: Ibid., 140.
Page 31: it had risen to about 625: Baltzell, The Protestant Establishment, 341.
Page 31: Kingman Brewster: Karabel, The Chosen, 349f and Lemann, The Big Test, 147f.
Page 31: “brilliant specialist”: Karabel, The Chosen, 367.
Page 31: resulting in a drop of nearly half an inch: Ibid., 368.
Page 33: Already by 1968: Ibid., 317.
Page 33: “a whole culture of obsession: Lemann, The Big Test, 222.
Page 33: The expansion of the college-age cohort: Ibid., 220.
Page 33: as did the number of students actually finishing their degrees: Stevens, Creating a Class, 13–14.
Page 33: By the end of the decade: Lemann, The Big Test, 228–29.
Page 34: Colleges were letting it be known: Jacques Steinberg, The Gatekeepers (New York: Viking, 2002), xvi.
Page 34: As the baby boom passed out of the system: Stevens, Creating a Class, 57.
Page 34: The deregulation of the airline and telecommunications industries: Ibid., 57.
Page 34: Early admissions programs: https://facultystaff.richmond.edu/~bmayes/pdf/The_Early_Decision_Racket.pdf.
Page 34: debuted its college rankings in 1983: Stevens, Creating a Class, 44.
Page 34: Admissions statistics had long been regarded: Ibid., 38.
Page 34: now there was a single set of figures” Ibid., 44.
Page 34: Already in 1987: Ben Wildavsky, The Great Brain Race (Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University Press, 2010), 104–105.
Page 34: The decade saw the explosion: Steinberg, The Gatekeepers, xv.
Page 34: Caitlin Flanagan: http://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2001/09/confessions-of-a-prep-school-college-counselor/302281.
Page 34: Tom Wolfe: Richard H. Hersh and John Merrow, eds., Declining by Degrees (New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2005), x.
Page 34: The decline in the college-age population: http://www.nsf.gov/statistics/seind02/c2/c2s1.htm. See appendix table 2-1.
Page 35: “attract to reject”: Hersh and Merrow, eds., Declining by Degrees, 41.
Page 35: the numbers are expected to get better: http://www.nytimes.com/2010/11/07/education/edlife/07HOOVER-t.html?pagewanted=all.
Page 35: U.S. News & World Report. Figures are from 2013. For 2014, Vanderbilt: 12 percent; University of Chicago: 8 percent; Columbia: 7 percent.
Page 35: Duke: http://www.dukechronicle.com/article/early-decision-applications-see-23-percent-increase.
Page 35: Harvard, Stanford, and Columbia: U.S. News & World Report. Figures are from 2013. For 2014, all received more than 32,000 applications and admitted fewer than 2,300 students.
Page 36: “hamsters” was suggested by http://chronicle.com/article/The-Case-for-Breaking-Up-With/131760.
Page 36: “a typically jam-packed Harvard résumé”: Douthat, Privilege, 92.
Page 39: HYPSters: I heard the term from Lloyd Thacker, founder of The Education Conservancy, who says he didn’t make it up.
Page 39: Andrew Hacker and Claudia Dreifus: Higher Education? (New York: Times Books, 2010), 64.
Page 40: acceptance rates of 33 percent or less: U.S. News & World Report. The number, which did not change significantly in 2013, includes only those schools that can plausibly be considered part of the elite. There are some obscure colleges that also have low acceptance rates.
Page 40: James Fallows: Hersh and Merrow, eds., Declining by Degrees, 39.
Page 40: something like four hundred thousand kids a year: http://www.census.gov/newsroom/releases/archives/facts_for_features_special_editions/cb11-ff15.html puts the number of high school graduates in 2012 at 3.2 million.
Chapter 3. The Training
Page 42: the top 15 percent of household incomes: http://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2012/01/15/business/one-percent-map.html.
Page 43: Peggy Orenstein: http://www.nytimes.com/2009/02/08/magazine/08wwln-lede-t.html.
Page 43: Anna Quindlen: http://www.npr.org/2012/04/24/150738848/anna-quindlen-over-50-and-having-plenty-of-cake.
Page 43: Harry R. Lewis: Excellence Without a Soul, 149.
Page 44: Madeline Levine: The Price of Privilege (New York: HarperCollins, 2006), 144.
Page 44: “it was a little bit like a for-profit company”: David Foster Wallace, The Pale King (New York: Little, Brown, 2011), 257.
Page 44: “valued”/“valuable”: David Foster Wallace, Infinite Jest (New York: Little, Brown, 2006), 1051. His italics.
Page 44: Michael G. Thompson: http://www.parentsassociation.com/college/failed_rite.html.
Page 44: “My office”: Levine, The Price of Privilege, 185.
Page 45: Denise Clark Pope: “Doing School” (New Haven, Conn.: Yale University Press, 2001), 35.
Page 45: “I understand the contempt”: Levine, The Price of Privilege, 179.
Page 45: Preteens and teens from affluent, well-educated families: Ibid., 17.
Page 45-46: As many as 22 percent: Ibid., 18.
Page 46: two to five times more prevalent: Ibid., 20.
Page 46: When problems occur: Ibid., 26.
Page 46: a sign of maturity and emotional health: Ibid., 20.
Page 46: affluent teenagers feel less connected: Ibid., 30.
Page 46: Praise…is not warmth: Ibid., 144–45.
Page 46: not the same as self-efficacy: Ibid., 71.
Page 46: William Damon, The Path to Purpose (New York: Free Press, 2008), 50.
Page 46: “everywhere and nowhere at the same time”: Levine, The Price of Privilege, 30.
Page 46-47: Chua champions filial obedience…: Amy Chua, Battle Hymn of the Tiger Mother (New York: Penguin Press, 2011), 16–18.
Page 47: By her own admission: Ibid., 30–32.
Page 47: Princeton, then Juilliard, then Harvard Law: Ibid., 131–32.
Page 47: a bestselling author to boot: Ibid., 89.
Page 47: “greatest,” “famous,” “said to be surpassed . . . only by”: Ibid., 216–17, 145.
Page 47: “loser.” Ibid., 61. The word is plural in context.
Page 47: “mediocre restaurant”/“stale focaccia”: Ibid., 102–103.
Page 48: Neither one of them has friends: Ibid., 38, 173.
Page 48: “The truth is I’m not good at enjoying life”: Ibid., 97.
Page 48: “In Chinese thinking”: Ibid., 148.
Page 48-49: Ridgewood, New Jersey: http://theridgewoodblog.wordpress.com/2008/04/06/kids-being-rushed-past-childhood.
Page 49: “hostile to learning”: http://www.paloaltoonline.com/media/reports/1321647076.pdf, 34.
Page 50: Mitchell L. Stevens: Creating a Class, 15.
Page 50: “pressured, misunderstood, anxious, angry, sad, and empty”: Levine, The Price of Privilege, 5.
Page 50: “dreadfully unhappy”: Ibid., 35.
Page 50: “I sometimes have two or three days”: Pope, “Doing School,” 187, 41–43.
Page 51: “surviv[es] on cereal,” “too stressed and tired to feel hungry,” “Some people see health and happiness…”: Ibid., 34–37.
Page 51: Levine writes of young people: The Price of Privilege, 7.
Page 51: Perfectionism: Ibid., 148.
Page 52: “He seeks insatiably for admiration”: Alice Miller, The Drama of the Gifted Child, rev. ed. (New York: BasicBooks, 1994), 59.
Page 53: “What was it with these Jewish parents”: Philip Roth, Portnoy’s Complaint (New York: Random House, 1967), 118. His italics.
Page 55: Auden: “ September 1, 1939,” ln. 66.
Page 55: “the more I see”: John Milton, Paradise Lost, IX.119–23.
Page 55: “myself am Hell”: Ibid., IV.75.
Page 55: “sad, needy, angry, furious”: Miller, The Drama of the Gifted Child, 39.
Page 56: “I can run fast…”: Levine, The Price of Privilege, 63–65.
Page 57: New York Times: http://www.nytimes.com/2011/08/06/nyregion/planning-summer-breaks-with-eye-on-college-essays.html?pagewanted=all.
Page 57: Stevens: Creating a Class, 215.
Page 57: “people don’t go to school to learn”: Pope, “Doing School,” 4.
Page 57-58: cheating has become endemic: Pope, “Doing School,” 188 and passim; http://www.nytimes.com/2012/09/26/education/stuyvesant-high-school-students-describe-rationale-for-cheating.html?pagewanted=all; Dir. Vicki Abeles and Jessica Congdon, Race to Nowhere (Reel Link Films, 2009), around 41:00 mentions a study of 5,000 students that found that 3 percent do not cheat.
Page 58: cheating scandals routine: Harvard: http://www.thecrimson.com/article/2012/8/30/academic-dishonesty-ad-board; Stuyvesant High School: http://www.nytimes.com/2012/09/08/education/12-students-suspended-in-cheating-plot-at-stuyvesant-high-school.html; Long Island: http://www.nytimes.com/2011/12/02/education/on-long-island-sat-cheating-was-hardly-a-secret.html?pagewanted=all.
Chapter 4. The Institutions
Page 60: “have forgotten their larger educational role”: Lewis, Excellence Without a Soul, xiv.
Page 60: “are having a hard time” and “Harvard no longer”: Ibid., 24, 212.
Page 60: “There is no vision”: Bloom, The Closing of the American Mind, 337.
Page 62: “poking around for courses to take”: Ibid., 340.
Page 63: “The courses offered”: Lewis, Excellence Without a Soul, 212.
Page 63: “We are just not accustomed”: http://www.thecrimson.harvard.edu/article/2009/9/3/admins-discuss-gen-ed-program-a/?print=1.
Page 64: “almost no one seemed to be pushing back”: Douthat, Privilege, 125.
Page 64: “mutual nonaggression pact”: Murray Sperber, “How Undergraduate Education Became College Lite—and a Personal Apology” in Hersh and Merrow, Declining by Degrees, 138.
Page 64: To the extent that teaching matters at all: Richard Arum and Josipa Roksa, Academically Adrift: Limited Learning on College Campuses (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2011), 7.
Page 65: as old as grades themselves: Lewis, Excellence Without a Soul, 107f.
Page 65: Data on grade inflation from http://gradeinflation.com.
Page 65: “1992” means the academic year 1991–92; “2007” means 2006–07.
Page 66-67: James Franco: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/James_Franco#Education.
Page 67: From 1949 to 1979: Jack H. Schuster and Martin J. Finkelstein, The American Faculty (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 2006), 39.
Page 67: schools were forced to scramble for students: Nancy Folbre, Saving State U (New York: New Press, 2010), 46; Christopher Newfield, Unmaking the Public University (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 2008), 265.
Page 67: policy makers had initiated an effort: Arum and Roksa, Academically Adrift, 15.
Page 68: So greedy have schools become: Jennifer Washburn, University Inc. (New York: Basic Books, 2005), 192.
Page 68: sometimes lowball rivals: http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2012-02-01/claremont-mckenna-not-alone-in-rankings-mischief-commentary-by-jane-shaw.html.
Page 68: shifting their financial aid awards from need to merit: Folbre, Saving State U, 88.
Page 68: SAT scores correlate closely with family wealth: Walter Benn Michaels, The Trouble with Diversity (New York: Metropolitan Books, 2006), 98.
Page 69: Emory, Bucknell, Claremont McKenna, and other schools: http://hereandnow.wbur.org/2013/04/08/colleges-misreport-data.
Page 69: Grade inflation: http://gradeinflation.com.
Page 69: a building boom: http://www.nytimes.com/2012/12/14/business/colleges-debt-falls-on-students-after-construction-binges.html?pagewanted=all and Mark C. Taylor, Crisis on Campus (New York: Knopf, 2010), 97–101.
Page 69: “With no larger educational ideals”: Lewis, Excellence Without a Soul, xi.
Page 70: “Harvard remains one of the best places on earth”: Douthat, Privilege, 138.
Page 70: “To get an education”: http://www.oxfordamerican.org/articles/2011/aug/22/who-are-you-and-what-are-you-doing-here.
Page 71: Stanford offers companies: http://www.tnr.com/article/economy/magazine/97254/elite-colleges-income-inequality.
Page 72: “The college itself”: Wallace, The Pale King, 75. The school is not named, but the passage is pseudo-autobiographical and the intention is clear.
Page 72: James B. Conant: Karabel, The Chosen, 169–70.
Page 73: administrative salaries: http://www.nytimes.com/2011/12/05/education/increase-in-pay-for-presidents-at-private-colleges.html.
Page 73: “having an adventure with yourself”: Bloom, The Closing of the American Mind, 339.
Chapter 5. What Is College For?
Page 78: Statistics majors from http://nces.ed.gov/programs/digest/d11/tables/dt11_286.asp. Data are from 2010.
Page 78-79: In 1971: http://www.nytimes.com/2010/01/03/education/edlife/03careerism-t.html?pagewanted=all.
Page 79: By 2011: http://heri.ucla.edu/PDFs/pubs/TFS/Norms/Monographs/TheAmericanFreshman2011.pdf, 39.
Page 80: “a mirror of what is around you”: Bloom, The Closing of the American Mind, 61.
Page 81: “the precious chance”: Delbanco, College, 35.
Page 81: Karl Kroeber: http://karlsfriends.wordpress.com/2010/09/06/address-to-columbia-college-students-elected-to-the-phi-beta-kappa-society-18-may-2009.
Page 82: “Most of what I learned at Yale”: http://archives.yalealumnimagazine.com/issues/01_03/lapham.html.
Page 83: “You’re here for very selfish reasons”: David Denby, Great Books (New York: Simon & Schuster, 1996), 31.
Page 83: “We’ve taught them”: David Foster Wallace, Consider the Lobster (New York: Little, Brown, 2006), 64.
Page 83-84: Keats: http://www.mrbauld.com/keatsva.html.
Page 84: “True liberal education”: Bloom, The Closing of the American Mind, 370.
Page 84: “self-inflicted wound”: http://archives.yalealumnimagazine.com/issues/01_03/lapham.html.
Page 85: “just what it is that’s worth wanting”: Delbanco, College, 14.
Page 86: people go to monasteries: http://www.nybooks.com/articles/archives/2012/feb/09/what-future-occupy-wall-street/?pagination=false.
Page 86: “go on, keep on, and rush on”: D. H. Lawrence, Studies in Classic American Literature (Harmondsworth: Penguin, 1977), 171.
Page 86: “because ‘I want’ must lead to the question”: E. M. Forster, Howards End (New York: Vintage, 1989), 245.
Page 86: Hacker and Dreifus: Higher Education?, 7.
Page 87: “obscenity” was suggested by http://nymag.com/news/features/asian-americans-2011-5.
Page 87: “I might as well get an education”: Margaret Atwood, The Year of the Flood, (New York: Nan A. Talese, 2009), 257.
Page 87: the person who first formulated that idea: Lewis, Excellence Without a Soul, xvi.
Chapter 6. Inventing Your Life
Page 89: “points of inflection”: personal communication.
Page 89: ultimately self-defeating: Damon, The Path to Purpose, 109.
Page 92: “one of the few English novels”: Virginia Woolf, The Common Reader (New York: Harcourt Brace Jovanovich, 1984), 168.
Page 93: “How will you live?”: George Eliot, Middlemarch (London: Penguin, 1985), 879.
Page 94: “shapen after the average”: Ibid., 174.
Page 94: “Tangled circumstance”: Ibid., 25
Page 94-95: “When the soul of a man”: James Joyce, A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man (New York: Penguin, 1993), 220.
Page 95-96: “We think it odd”: Dwight Macdonald, Masscult and Midcult (New York: New York Review Books, 2011), 234.
Page 97: “We insignificant people”: Eliot, Middlemarch, 896.
Page 98: Aristotle: http://www.american.com/archive/2008/september-october-magazine/are-too-many-people-going-to-college.
Page 98: “From a very early age”: “Why I Write”; see http://orwell.ru/library/essays/wiw/english/e_wiw.
Page 98: “I wish I’d had the courage http://www.guardian.co.uk/lifeandstyle/2012/feb/01/top-five-regrets-of-the-dying?fb_action_ids=890574354694&fb_action_types=news.reads&fb_source=other_multiline.
Page 99: warns against placing too much emphasis: personal communication.
Page 99: uniting the inner with the outer: http://www.paloaltoonline.com/media/reports/1321647076.pdf, 36.
Page 99: “Bus drivers, nurses, clerks, and waitresses”: Damon, The Path to Purpose, 41.
Page 100: David Brooks: http://www.nytimes.com/2011/05/31/opinion/31brooks.html.
Page 102: “Ideals are psychological goals”: Alfred Kazin’s Journals, ed. Richard M. Cook (New Haven: Yale University Press, 2011), 84.
Page 102: Franklin Delano Roosevelt: Baltzell, The Protestant Establishment, 155.
Page 102: Here are a couple of their stories: names and other details have been changed.
Page 108: Damon repeatedly stresses the importance: e.g. Damon, The Path to Purpose, 38.
Page 108: Drew Gilpin Faust: http://www.nytimes.com/2012/05/27/books/review/drew-gilpin-faust-by-the-book.html.
Page 108: “Fail better”: Worstward Ho; see http://www.samuel-beckett.net/w_ho.htm.
Page 109: “I am not afraid to make a mistake”: Joyce, A Portrait of the Artist, 269.
Page 109: “willful naïveté”: personal communication.
Page 110: Galinsky quotes her mother”: http://blogs.hbr.org/cs/2013/02/fear_means_go.html.
Page 110-11: “A man never rises so high: “Circles”; see http://www.alcott.net/alcott/archive/editions/Emerson/essays/Circles.html?display=0.
Page 111: “It was an emergence”: http://www.npr.org/2012/02/06/146362798/meryl-streep-the-fresh-air-interview, around 24:40.
Page 111: Alison Bechdel, Are You My Mother (New York: Houghton Mifflin Harcourt, 2012), 170.
Page 111: “He possessed an irreverent intelligence”: Patti Smith, Just Kids (New York: Ecco, 2010), 23.
Page 111: “the bureaucracy that schedules”: http://www.nytimes.com/marketing/collegeessay/essay.html.
Page 112: “I had the lonely child’s habit”: “Why I Write”; see http://orwell.ru/library/essays/wiw/english/e_wiw
Page 114-15: “Everything undertaken for its own sake”: Geoff Dyer, Otherwise Known as the Human Condition (Minneapolis: Graywolf Press, 2011), 53.
Page 115: Thomas Frank: Thomas Frank and Matt Weiland, Commodify Your Dissent (New York: Norton, 1997).
Page 115: “Change the Script”/“Chart Your Own Course”: “Change the Script” is Pepsi: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pepsi#American_slogans. For “Chart Your Own Course,” see Frank and Weiland, Commodify Your Dissent, 41.
Page 120: “One night after dinner”: http://www.oxfordamerican.org/articles/2011/aug/22/who-are-you-and-what-are-you-doing-here.
Page 121: much the same has been said: http://hereandnow.wbur.org/2012/02/03/college-admissions-asians, around 5:57.
Page 121: “Early on my parents drove it into us”: http://www.nytimes.com/2012/01/29/magazine/marco-rubio-wont-be-vp.html?_r=0.
Page 122: D. W. Winnicott: D. W. Winnicott, Winnicott on the Child (Cambridge, Mass.: Perseus, 2002), 231.
Page 123: Terry Castle: http://chronicle.com/article/The-Case-for-Breaking-Up-With/131760.
Page 124: Harvard, Tufts, and NYU…Princeton: http://www.examiner.com/article/gap-year-fairs-for-students-who-think-outside-the-box?CID=examiner_alerts_article.
Page 126: “Passion finds you”: Professor Rebecca Copenhaver, convocation address, 2013.
Page 126: “question-mark decade”: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YaVwKN8DdkI, 1:19:53.
Page 126: “interesting, successful people”: http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052702304811304577366332400453796.html?mod=googlenews_wsj.
Chapter 7. Leadership
Page 131: “We are preparing”: quoted in Hacker and Dreifus, Higher Education?, 6.
Page 133-34: “He was commonplace”: Joseph Conrad, Heart of Darkness (Harmondsworth: Penguin Classics,1983), 50.
Page 135: “What people usually mean”: Mark Edmundson, Why Teach? (New York: Bloomsbury, 2013), 109–110.
Page 138: “The dissident impulse”: http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=123081489.
Page 138: Allan Bloom: The Closing of the American Mind, 61, 82.
Page 139: “the calm acceptance of established order”: http://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2001/04/the-organization-kid/302164.
Page 141: twelfth-largest economy on the planet: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Comparison_between_U.S._states_and_countries_by_GDP_(nominal).
Page 141: declaring pizza sauce a vegetable: http://www.nydailynews.com/life-style/health/tomato-sauce-pizza-vegetable-congress-gop-healthier-school-lunches-expensive-article-1.978339.
Page 143: “the superficial motions of volunteerism”: http://www.yaledailynews.com/news/2010/may/13/kim-debunking-service.
Page 144: “The Moral Obligation to Be Intelligent”: Lionel Trilling, The Last Decade (New York: Harcourt Brace Jovanovich, 1981), 164.
Chapter 8. Great Books
Page 150: “without regard to any vocational utility”: http://americanradioworks.publicradio.org/features/tomorrows-college/english-major/pressures-liberal-education.html.
Page 151: “Your College Major”: http://blogs.wsj.com/atwork/2013/04/10/your-college-major-is-a-minor-issue-employers-say/?mod=e2tw
Page 151: “There’s been a big disconnect”: Ibid.
Page 152: A recent long-term study: http://www.nytimes.com/roomfordebate/2011/03/20/career-counselor-bill-gates-or-steve-jobs/your-college-major-matter-less-over-time.
Page 152: Another recent survey: http://upstart.bizjournals.com/news/wire/2012/05/14/survey-on-millennial-hiring-highlights-power-of-liberal-arts.html?page=all.
Page 152: “only a quarter of college graduates”: http://www.nytimes.com/2012/04/20/opinion/brooks-testing-the-teachers.html?ref=davidbrooks.
Page 152: Graduates are said to have trouble: http://www.theglobeandmail.com/news/national/time-to-lead/why-university-students-need-a-well-rounded-education/article4610406/?page=all.
Page 152: Larry Summers: Ibid.
Page 153: Writing in the Harvard Business Review: http://blogs.hbr.org/cs/2011/03/want_innovative_thinking_hire.html.
Page 153: Medical schools: http://www.butler.edu/science-technology/why-sts/medical-schools-like-sts.
Page 153: Bhaskar Chakravorti: http://www.ft.com/intl/cms/s/2/c1f32982-562e-11e1-8dfa-00144feabdc0.html#axzz1nbc9Nc7T
Page 153: Josipa Roksa, professor of education at the University of Virginia and coauthor of Academically Adrift, personal communication.
Page 153: MCAT/LSAT/ GMAT: http://www.humanitiesindicators.org/content/hrcoImageFrame.aspx?i=III-5d.jpg&o=hrcoIIIB.aspx__topIII5.
Page 153-54: GRE: http://www.humanitiesindicators.org/content/hrcoImageFrame.aspx?i=II-8a.jpg&o=hrcoIIA.aspx__topII8
Page 154: Thomas Friedman: e.g. http://www.nytimes.com/2013/03/31/opinion/sunday/friedman-need-a-job-invent-it.html.
Page 154: Richard A. Greenwald: http://www.insidehighered.com/views/2010/10/01/greenwald.
Page 154: Tony Wagner: quoted in http://www.nybooks.com/articles/archives/2011/feb/24/where-will-we-find-jobs/?pagination=false.
Page 154: David M. Rubenstein: http://dealbook.nytimes.com/2014/01/23/carlyle-co-founders-formula-for-success-study-the-humanities/?_php=true&_type=blogs&_r=0
Page 154: India’s prestigious IIT’s: D. Parthasarathy, professor of sociology, IIT Bombay, personal communication.
Page 154: educators in China: http://www.npr.org/2010/12/29/132416889/chinese-top-in-tests-but-still-have-lots-to-learn and http://www.nytimes.com/roomfordebate/2013/01/21/the-effects-of-chinas-push-for-education/only-chinas-top-students-rival-the-west.
Page 155: “come in handy on the job”: http://www.npr.org/2012/05/01/151553268/economy-puts-value-of-liberal-arts-under-scrutiny.
Page 155: “After college”: Blake Boles, Better than College (Loon Lake, Calif.: Tells Peak Press, 2012), 51.
Page 156: “The priest departs”: “Democratic Vistas”; see http://xroads.virginia.edu/~hyper/whitman/vistas/vistas.html.
Page 156: “transmuting the daily bread”: Joyce, A Portrait of the Artist, 221.
Page 156: English became an object of university study: http://www.nybooks.com/articles/archives/1999/nov/04/the-decline-and-fall-of-literature/?pagination=false.
Page 158: “A book must be the axe”: quoted from his letters in Ernst Pawel, The Nightmare of Reason (New York: Farrar, Straus & Giroux, 1984), 158.
Page 158: “The more I think of it”: Modern Painters, III.4.16. Anthologized in The Genius of John Ruskin (Boston: Routledge & Kegan Paul, 1980), 91. His italics.
Page 158: Shelley: The Revolt of Islam, Dedication, lines 21–22.
Page 159: “nonoverlapping magisteria”: http://www.stephenjaygould.org/library/gould_noma.html.
Page 160: “Is it true for me?”: I have taken the phrase from Lionel Trilling, The Moral Obligation to be Intelligent (Evanston, Ill.: Northwestern University Press, 2008), 382.
Page 160: “to see if they may know you better”: http://chronicle.com/article/Dwelling-in-Possibilities/7083.
Page 162: “life’s grand second chance”: http://www.nytimes.com/2004/08/01/magazine/01WWLN.html?adxnnl=1&adxnnlx=1091748595-xQvM03HL0VDuDL8lJ2k0iQ.
Page 162: “engines of reflection”: Andrei Cordescu, The Dog with the Chip in His Neck (New York: St. Martin’s Press, 1996), 112.
Page 162-63: “the incessant labor”: Mark Edmundson Teacher (New York: Vintage, 2002), 256.
Page 163: “as in itself it really is”: “The Function of Criticism at the Present Time”; see http://fortnightlyreview.co.uk/the-function-of-criticism-at-the-present-time.
Page 163: “I place my faith in fiction”: http://www.amazon.com/36-Arguments-Existence-God-Contemporaries/dp/0307456714.
Page 163: “the empirical kids”: http://www.nytimes.com/2013/03/29/opinion/brooks-the-empirical-kids.html?smid=tw-nytdavidbrooks&seid=auto&_r=2&;.
Page 164: “methodologically unbounded”: http://visionsofempire.wordpress.com/tag/strategy.
Page 164: Northrop Frye: Anatomy of Criticism (Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University Press, 1957), 346.
Page 165: “The most successful tyranny”: Bloom, The Closing of the American Mind, 249.
Page 165: “cultural knowledge”: http://www.nytimes.com/2012/08/26/books/review/norton-anthology-of-english-literature-turns-50.html.
Page 165: The development of Great Books courses: Lewis, Excellence Without a Soul, 50, and Louis Menand, The Marketplace of Ideas (New York: Norton, 2010), 35–37.
Page 166: “We want one class of persons”: quoted in Robert W. McChesney, The Problem of the Media (New York: Monthly Review Press, 2004), 67.
Page 167: “On the Uses of a Liberal Education”: http://harpers.org/archive/1997/09/on-the-uses-of-a-liberal-education/?single=1.
Page 168: “in becoming a person”: Edmundson, Why Teach?, 118.
Page 169: Alan Greenspan: http://www.nytimes.com/2008/10/23/business/worldbusiness/23iht-gspan.4.17206624.html.
Page 169: Chris Hedges: http://kboo.fm/audio/by/title/chris_hedges_discusses_the_death_of_the_liberal_class.
Page 170: “Even from America’s great liberal arts colleges”: http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2011/01/21/AR2011012104554.html.
Page 171-72: “While he wrote”: Jeffrey Eugenides, The Marriage Plot (New York: Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 2011), 95–96.
Chapter 9. Spirit Guides
Page 174: “pregnant in soul”: Plato, Symposium, trans. Alexander Nehamas and Paul Woodruff (Indianapolis: Hackett, 1989), 56.
Page 176: “Richter asked the students”: Eugenides, The Marriage Plot, 95.
Page 176: Karl Kroeber: Joe Viscomi, foreword to Karl Kroeber, Blake in a Post-Secular Era (College Park: University of Maryland, 2012), xiv.
Page 176-77: “Mitchell observed Richter’s thoroughness”: Eugenides, The Marriage Plot, 95.
Page 177: William Damon: The Path to Purpose, 101.
Page 177: “it almost seems the natural order”: Edmundson, Teacher, 271.
Page 178: “The most important job of the advisor”: Lewis, Excellence Without a Soul, 99–100.
Page 179: “The teacher, that professional amateur”: quoted in Mark Royden Winchell, “Too Good to Be True”: The Life and Work of Leslie Fiedler (Columbia: University of Missouri Press, 2002), 185.
Page 179: “Mortimer Adler had much to tell us”: James Atlas, Bellow: A Biography (New York: Random House, 2000), 72.
Page 180: Hacker and Dreifus: Higher Education?, 80.
Page 181: “ambitious academics”: Delbanco, College, 81.
Page 181: In 1923: Steven Shapin, The Scientific Life (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2008), 161.
Page 181: “The research professor”: Menand, The Marketplace of Ideas, 76. Information in the next sentence from the same page.
Page 182: Second-level public universities: Hacker and Dreifus, Higher Education?, 79.
Page 182: “To a disturbing extent”: Jennifer Washburn, University Inc. (New York: Basic Books, 2005), 207.
Page 182: “A superior faculty”: Clark Kerr, The Uses of the University (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1963), 49.
Page 183: “Winning the campus teaching award”: quoted in http://www.martynemko.com/articles/americas-most-overrated-product-higher-education_id1539.
Page 184: “author-evacuated”: Peter Elbow, “Reflections on Academic Discourse: How It Relates to Freshmen and Colleagues,” College English 53, no. 2 (2/91).
Page 184: As of 2011: http://www.aaup.org/sites/default/files/files/2013%20Salary%20Survey%20Tables%20and%20Figures/Figure%201.pdf. The figure was obtained by adding full-time tenured faculty and full-time tenure-track faculty, which here means people who haven’t gotten tenure yet.
Page 184: three thousand dollars a course: http://www.aaup.org/sites/default/files/files/2013%20Salary%20Survey%20Tables%20and%20Figures/Table%20B.pdf.
Page 184: Yale has a student-faculty ratio: U.S. News & World Report, Best Colleges 2014.
Page 185: “very satisfied”/“frequently bored”: Both figures from http://www.martynemko.com/articles/americas-most-overrated-product-higher-education_id1539.
Page 187: Now that the state legislature in California: http://thenewinquiry.com/blogs/zunguzungu/the-mooc-moment-and-the-end-of-reform and http://nplusonemag.com/can-venture-capital-deliver-on-the-promise-of-the-public-university.
Page 187: Sebastian Thrun: http://www.nytimes.com/2013/12/11/us/after-setbacks-online-courses-are-rethought.html?hpw&rref=technology&_r=0.
Page 187: Only about 4 percent: Ibid.
Chapter 10. Your Guide to the Rankings
Page 192: Victor Davis Hanson: Reported to me by one of his students at Stanford.
Page 192: Hacker and Dreifus: Higher Education?, 113.
Page 199: Steffi Graf: Boles, Better than College, 38.
Page 199: the best investment you can make: http://www.huffingtonpost.com/rob-asghar/college-loan-crisis_b_1897718.html and http://www.theatlantic.com/business/archive/2012/10/going-to-college-not-just-a-good-investment-but-the-best-investment/263304.
Page 200: Fran Lebowitz: http://www.nytimes.com/1994/08/10/garden/at-lunch-with-fran-lebowitz-words-are-easy-books-are-not.html.
Page 200: as prospective students almost never do: Hacker and Dreifus, Higher Education?, 33
Page 200: “Best Undergraduate Teaching”: http://colleges.usnews.rankingsandreviews.com/best-colleges/rankings/national-universities/undergraduate-teaching.
Page 201: measure market position: Zemsky, Making Reform Work, 77, 81.
Page 201: as students almost always do: Stevens, Creating a Class, 229.
Chapter 11. Welcome to the Club
Page 205: In 1985…By 2000: http://www.nytimes.com/2004/04/22/us/as-wealthy-fill-top-colleges-concerns-grow-over-fairness.html?pagewanted=all&src=pm.
Page 205: By 2006…Only 15 percent: http://www.nytimes.com/2011/05/25/business/economy/25leonhardt.html?pagewanted=all
Page 205: a slightly older study: Karabel, The Chosen, 554.
Page 206: “are still among”: Ibid., 553–54.
Page 206: As of 2004: http://www.nytimes.com/2004/04/22/us/as-wealthy-fill-top-colleges-concerns-grow-over-fairness.html?pagewanted=all&src=pm.
Page 206: “American higher education”: http://muse.jhu.edu/login?auth=0&type=summary&url=/journals/review_of_higher_education/v027/27.3astin.html.
Page 206: what it actually measures is parental income: http://campaignstops.blogs.nytimes.com/2012/03/12/the-reproduction-of-privilege.
Page 206: even more, parental wealth: Michaels, The Trouble with Diversity, 98–99.
Page 206: The gap in academic skills: http://opinionator.blogs.nytimes.com/2013/04/27/no-rich-child-left-behind.
Page 206: The gap in college completion: http://www.nytimes.com/2012/02/10/education/education-gap-grows-between-rich-and-poor-studies-show.html?_r=1&hp.
Page 206: Less than half of high-scoring students: http://www.nytimes.com/2011/05/25/business/economy/25leonhardt.html?pagewanted=all.
Page 206: “smart poor kids”: http://www.nytimes.com/2012/01/09/opinion/krugman-americas-unlevel-field.html.
Page 207: income inequality is higher: http://economix.blogs.nytimes.com/2013/09/10/the-rich-get-richer-through-the-recovery/?hpw.
Page 207: social mobility is now lower: Christopher Hayes, Twilight of the Elites (New York: Crown, 2012), 62.
Page 207: Harvard made tuition free: http://news.harvard.edu/gazette/story/2007/12/harvard-announces-sweeping-middle-income-initiative.
Page 207: The percentage of kids: U.S. News & World Report, back matter.
Page 207: An income of $180,000: http://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2012/01/15/business/one-percent-map.html.
Page 208: a hundred high schools: Douthat, Privilege, 50–51.
Page 208: selective schools give no admissions advantage: http://www.nytimes.com/2011/05/25/business/economy/25leonhardt.html?pagewanted=all.
Page 208: describes these categories in detail: Daniel Golden, The Price of Admission (New York: Crown, 2006), 6.
Page 208: average admissions advantage: Hacker and Dreifus, Higher Education?, 175.
Page 208: Title IX: Golden, The Price of Admission, 163, 160.
Page 208-09: “At least one-third of the students”: Ibid., 6–7.
Page 209: a grand total of one: Karabel, The Chosen, 427, 392.
Page 209: half female and only half white: U.S. News & World Report, back matter.
Page 210: Asians/working-class and rural whites: http://www.mindingthecampus.org/2010/07/how_diversity_punishes_asians.
Page 210: what Americans developed in lieu: http://campaignstops.blogs.nytimes.com/2012/03/12/the-reproduction-of-privilege.
Page 211: Mitchell L. Stevens: Creating a Class, 14, 248, 15.
Page 211: Walter Benn Michaels: The Trouble with Diversity, 100, 17.
Page 212: some version of the standard accolade: Delbanco, College, 134.
Page 212: “I would wager”: unpublished essay.
Page 212: “Even before students uncap their pens”: http://www.thecrimson.com/article/2009/3/5/the-perils-of-praise-congratulations-youve.
Page 215: Bill Bishop: The Big Sort (New York: Houghton Mifflin Harcourt, 2008).
Page 216-17: “As long as we despise”: Miller, The Drama of the Gifted Child, 120.
Page 217: “Social Class and the Hidden Curriculum of Work”: http://www.cuip.net/~cac/nlu/fnd504/anyon.htm.
Page 218: Grade inflation: http://www.gradeinflation.com.
Page 222: “Get to know them” should not be in quotation marks. The original phrase was “ask them about themselves.”
Page 223: “Work must always be”: “Traffic” in The Crown of Wild Olives, reprinted in Rosenberg, ed., The Genius of John Ruskin, 291–92.
Chapter 12. The Self-Overcoming of the Hereditary Meritocracy
Page 226: “cognitive elite”: Charles Murray, The Bell Curve (New York: Free Press, 1994).
Page 226: “In the old days”: Julian Barnes, Staring at the Sun (New York: Knopf, 1987), 189.
Page 227: “the executive and legislative branches”: http://www.foreignaffairs.com/articles/136402/george-packer/the-broken-contract.
Page 227: “fail decade”: Hayes, Twilight of the Elites, 6.
Page 228: “Our current president”: http://www.presidency.ucsb.edu/ws/?pid=25954.
Page 229: Saul Bellow: Mr. Sammler’s Planet (Harmondsworth: Penguin Classics, 2004), 145, 111. “High-IQ morons” is singular in context.
Page 229: “this election isn’t about ideology”: http://www.presidency.ucsb.edu/ws/?pid=25961.
Page 229: “Competence makes the trains run on time”: http://www.presidency.ucsb.edu/ws/index.php?pid=25955.
Page 229: “common-sense” solutions: e. g. http://www.politico.com/story/2013/02/state-of-the-union-2013-obama-calls-for-common-sense-solutions-87552.html.
Page 230: maintains a list of his achievements: http://www.lrb.co.uk/v32/n22/david-bromwich/the-fastidious-president. In general, my observations about Obama are indebted to Bromwich’s essays in the London Review of Books and the New York Review of Books.
Page 231: Eight of nine/six of nine: http://www.supremecourt.gov/about/biographies.aspx.
Page 231: an unprecedented number: http://nplusonemag.com/death-by-degrees.
Page 231: As of 2011: http://www.timeshighereducation.co.uk/415554.article.
Page 231-2: Who’s Running America: Cited in Golden, The Price of Admission, 124.
Page 232: A recent study: http://chronicle.com/blogs/percolator/brown-and-cornell-are-second-tier/27565.
Page 233: “a managerial elite”: http://archives.yalealumnimagazine.com/issues/01_03/lapham.html.
Page 233: Tony Hayward:
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2010/06/01/bp-ceo-tony-hayward-video_n_595906.html
Page 233: “a graveyard of classes”: Baltzell, The Protestant Establishment, 76.
Page 234: “the Anglo-Saxon decade”: Ibid., 197.
Page 234: “The destinies of the world”: Ibid., 241.
Page 235: a plan that was developed: Lemann, The Big Test, 271–75.
Page 236: “cantankerous intellectual bomb-throwers”: http://www.nytimes.com/2010/04/27/opinion/27brooks.html.
Page 236: Helen Vendler: http://harvardmagazine.com/2012/11/writers-and-artists-at-harvard.
Page 236: “brilliant and restless minds”: Karabel, The Chosen, 349.
Page 238: Nelson Rockefeller: Winchell, “Too Good to Be True,” 183.
Page 238: By the time the recession began: Newfield, Unmaking the Public University, 265.
Page 238: Since 2008: http://www.aaup.org/sites/default/files/files/2013%20Salary%20Survey%20Tables%20and%20Figures/Table%20H.pdf.
Page 238: have increased at over 5 percent a year: http://trends.collegeboard.org/college-pricing/figures-tables/average-rates-growth-tuition-and-fees-over-time.
Page 238: have actually been flat: http://www.nytimes.com/2013/10/25/education/despite-rising-sticker-prices-actual-college-costs-stable-over-decade-study-says.html?hpw.
Page 238: Since 1989: http://trends.collegeboard.org/sites/default/files/college-pricing-2012-full-report-121203.pdf.
Page 238-39: During roughly the same period: http://www.nytimes.com/2013/03/06/education/aid-for-higher-education-declines-as-costs-rise.html.
Page 239: Finland, Canada, and Singapore: http://www.nytimes.com/2012/05/26/opinion/the-danger-in-school-spending-cuts.html.
Page 240: what most developed countries do: http://opinionator.blogs.nytimes.com/2013/06/16/schooling-ourselves-in-an-unequal-america.
Page 240: Even on a per capita basis: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_GDP_(PPP)_per_capita.
Page 240: Corporate taxes: http://www.cbpp.org/cms/?fa=view&id=3478.
Page 240: stayed at about 10 percent from 1953 to 1981: http://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2011/10/26/nyregion/the-new-gilded-age.html.
Page 240: has risen to about 23 percent: http://www.nytimes.com/2013/02/16/business/economy/income-gains-after-recession-went-mostly-to-top-1.html.
Page 240: highest level ever: http://economix.blogs.nytimes.com/2013/09/10/the-rich-get-richer-through-the-recovery/?hpw.
Page 241: “find the very idea”: http://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2001/09/confessions-of-a-prep-school-college-counselor/302281.
Page 242: artificial scarcity of educational resources: I believe I got the phrase from another source, but I’ve been unable to track it down.
Page 242: “The beggarly question of parentage”: Thomas Hardy, Jude the Obscure (London: Penguin Classics, 1998), 274.