May 6, 2026
Straight As, zero street smarts
The Disadvantages of an Elite Education (2008)
Ivy angst explodes as readers mock a very privileged identity crisis
TLDR: Deresiewicz says elite colleges stopped building minds and started building résumés, leaving graduates smart on paper but disconnected from ordinary life. Commenters were split between agreeing that prestige schools can warp people and mocking the essay as a painfully privileged complaint.
A 2008 essay by William Deresiewicz argues that top universities have drifted away from shaping thoughtful people and become factories for status, careers, and self-congratulation. His most memorable confession is painfully awkward: after years of Ivy League schooling, he realized he could discuss lofty ideas but could barely make small talk with a plumber in his own kitchen. That was supposed to be the warning shot. In the comments, though, readers treated it like the opening scene of an elite meltdown.
The strongest reaction was pure eye-roll. One commenter bluntly declared, "This was gross," while another went full sarcasm, joking that being elite must be as tragic as being "too intelligent and good looking." Ouch. The big fight was over whether the essay exposed a real failure of fancy schools or just sounded like a rich person discovering ordinary people exist. One critic basically translated the piece as, wow, being a good leader is hard and apparently money and prestige don’t magically teach it. Another pushed back on the essay’s harshest line—that elite schools teach students to look down on everyone else—arguing that’s not an elite education, just a bad one.
And yes, there was humor. The phrase "Ivy retardation" landed like a dark little meme, and the whole thread had the vibe of readers dunking on a prestige panic attack. The article wanted a moral reckoning about education; the crowd delivered a comment-section roast.
Key Points
- •The essay was written by William Deresiewicz and published in *The American Scholar* on June 1, 2008.
- •Deresiewicz uses a personal encounter with a plumber to argue that his elite education left him poorly prepared to relate to people outside elite academic circles.
- •The article says elite universities encourage students to flatter themselves for being admitted and for the status those institutions confer.
- •Deresiewicz identifies Yale and Columbia as the institutions informing his critique of elite education.
- •The article cites Al Gore and John Kerry as examples in arguing that elite academic backgrounds do not necessarily produce effective communication with the broader public.