Avoid the Ivy League

William Deresiewicz consiglia di evitare le Ivy League e sull'argomento ha scritto un libro che uscirà ad agosto, Excellent Sheep: The Miseducation of the American Elite and The Way to a Meaningful Life (Free Press). "I taught many wonderful young people during my years in the Ivy League—bright, thoughtful, creative kids whom it was a pleasure to talk with and learn from. But most of them seemed content to color within the lines that their education had marked out for them. Very few were passionate about ideas. Very few saw college as part of a larger project of intellectual discovery and development. Everyone dressed as if they were ready to be interviewed at a moment’s notice.

Look beneath the façade of seamless well-adjustment, and what you often find are toxic levels of fear, anxiety, and depression, of emptiness and aimlessness and isolation. A large-scale survey of college freshmen recently found that self-reports of emotional well-being have fallen to their lowest level in the study’s 25-year history". newrepublic.