Excellent Sheep: The Miseducation of the American Elite and the Way to a Meaningful Life

Deresiewicz introduces the problem by looking at the students. On the surface, they seem amazing: accomplished and capable. In fact, however, these students are in crisis, as self-reports of their own well-being are at a 25-year low and almost half reported feeling hopeless. Part of the problem is that students feel they are the only ones having these feelings and don’t want to appear vulnerable. Deresiewicz writes, “Students at Stanford talk about ‘Stanford Duck Syndrome’: serene on the surface, paddling madly underneath” (10).

Students feel lost because education is being abandoned in the process of schooling. Universities are focused on their rankings and students are focused on credentials. Deresiewicz wonders what happened to all-night rap sessions or spending a weekend lounging around reading poetry. It isn’t that students aren’t intellectually curious; many arrive at college ready to learn, but subsequently lose this drive during their college career. The system is geared toward racking up credentials, which focuses on study and activities of utilitarian value, which can be found in the rise of economics as a major and the popularity of finance and consulting as careers. The author argues this is because it’s an easy transition from what students are accustomed to—jumping through hoops—and the path to such careers seems clear.

Consulting firms come to campus knowing they can find smart young people willing to work hard, and the job of researching and compiling information is similar enough to college work that students often find it appealing. It’s well defined and less risky than less worn paths. It’s also a job leaving the future wide open. Top students are told they can do anything they want, but once they choose, they feel locked in. They also don’t want to do anything that’s not worthy of their elite education, that is too unknown, or that their parents and peers wouldn’t approve of. Thus, they put off that decision by taking a job like consulting right after graduation even though they may have no interest in it. The money’s good, they get used to the lifestyle, and they stay—never finding their true calling.

Chapter 2 examines the origins of the current system by outlining the history of admissions policies and the make-up of the student body at Ivy League schools. Before the Civil War, these were small institutions, not yet associated with the upper-class white Anglo-Saxon Protestant WASP culture of later years. Industrialization after the war brought new fortunes and a class of nouveau riche who challenged the older patrician families. The latter wanted a way to distinguish themselves, the former needed socializing appropriate to their new status, and both groups wanted to differentiate themselves from the masses. Thus, institutions like colleges and elite clubs served this purpose.

Colleges also became more like clubs, as standards fell and an emphasis on socializing and athletics came to the fore. In addition, they dropped some of the rigorous academic standards, such as classical languages. When the colleges opened to more enrollment from public high schools, however, other groups—like Jews—began to compete academically and gain a higher rate of admission. From sheer prejudice, the powers that be worked to change this, ensuring that more Protestant students got in. Slowly, starting with President James Conant at Harvard in the 1930s, admissions standards rose again in order to attract the nation’s top talent. The 1960s—especially at Yale under Kingman Brewster—brought greater change, including an active effort to make the student body more diverse.

Deresiewicz argues that this only ratcheted up the requirements: Colleges didn’t remove older prerequisites, but simply added more. Student are still expected to be athletic and “clubbable,” for example, but now they must also ace the SAT test (32). In 1983, U.S. News & World Report put out its first edition of college rankings, which put further pressure on both colleges and students to up their game. This is the system of 2020 America and, having already endured it, the parents of current students know no other option; the system becomes self-perpetuating.

Deresiewicz turns to the entire current system that supports (or propels) students in their race toward college, including parents, high schools, and private tutoring. He believes that what is happening today is really an extension of a kind of middle-class mania in which those in the middle class feel their position is precarious and go to ever greater lengths to keep it. This was only made worse by the Great Recession in 2008, which deeply affected the labor and housing markets.

First, parents work hard to protect their children from any harm or disappointment. This is a form of “infantilization” and leads students to a fear of failure (43). What’s more, parents in the upper middle class push their kids to accept nothing but the absolute best. This is part of the problem as a comfortable life with a decent living in an average place is no longer considered good enough. Deresiewicz writes, “It doesn’t matter that a bright young person can still go to Ohio State, become a doctor, settle in Bloomington or Dayton, and make a very good living. Such an outcome is simply too horrible to contemplate” (42).

Teachers see what’s happening and often would like to do better for their students but in the end, the system is too overpowering to make a difference. Parents put undue pressure on teachers and school systems have largely adopted a customer-service mentality so parents ultimately get what they want. “We are not teaching to the test,” Deresiewicz notes, “we’re living to it” (50).

This system, Deresiewicz says, leads to pain and depression for kids. Their self-worth is caught up in how their parents view them, and parents too often allow their children’s accomplishments to stand in for the children themselves. Children only feel love and approval when they meet their parents’ expectations; conversely, when the children fall short, they feel unloved. They never have a chance to develop an identity—their true self. This is only made worse by the support they get to package themselves to present to the colleges to which they apply.

All the above is made worse by the colleges themselves, which is the subject of Chapter 4. Harvard University and other Ivy League schools no longer even know what a good education is. American universities are modeled on both English and German universities. The former reigned before the Civil War, with well-rounded curriculum that worked to fashion a “whole person,” while the latter came post–Civil War with universities like Johns Hopkins and Stanford, which emphasized professions and the utilitarian nature of education. The pendulum swung back and forth since then, but the result is that universities don’t provide a unified, coherent curriculum.

Today, liberal arts colleges are part of research universities. This bifurcated mission skews toward the latter because professors are rewarded for their research and allowed to teach their narrow specialty. Students thus receive a fragmented education with little guidance on finding their own calling. Deresiewicz calls this vocational education: The setting is technocratic and students develop their “expertise” in each subject rather than a deep engagement with it (63).

Beginning in the 1980s, student enrollment decreased as the baby boomer generation passed college age. At the same time, government spending in higher education plummeted, and universities were more frequently run like businesses. As noted earlier, the U.S. News rankings also became paramount. All these added up to universities offering students things to woo them, rather than demanding things of the students. To the detriment of real education, consumer mentality took hold of the entire process. Students can still attain a degree, but only by working hard to demand it—which Deresiewicz finds ludicrous. Some even claim that elite schools are working more to groom a stable of wealthy alumni donors than they are in educating citizens and critical, inspired human beings.