I read this article earlier this morning. The good doctor hits a freakin bullseye as usual.

Columbia is an Ivy.

I've met a lot of intelligent people, and I've met a lot of educated people who push the concept of an "intellectual elite". You can guess which one's are most often called "dumb asses". The scary part is that they think themselves so superior to 'the common man'. Yet, were a major catastrophe to occur, you can bet the bank, it will be the common man who would survive.

In one of my past lives I was the guy who shepherded the independent auditors through my company and explained all the operations, material transfers and departmental interactions. We used one of the big four/five/seven?? The dumbest auditor I ever met had an MBA from a top ten school. He also had an ego big as all outdoors and a legacy admission.

The truth is Obama suc's!

"But wait! If, in contrast, networks, influence-accumulation, and contacts are the objectives to ensure a child remains, or enters into, the elite class, then the investment in such undergraduate schools is very much worth it-"-VDH

That is EXACTLY the reason certain schools, including non-Ivy League schools with renowned departments, attract applicants. It denotes also, forward-thinking, positive opportunism, and a reliable prospective junior associate/employee who needs the maximum opportunity to pay off loan debt.

As for Hanson's apparent fixation on educational quality in the liberal arts-- the hard sciences ultimately requiring post graduate studies or independent licensing for the most lucrative lines of work, and thus beyond the ken of Hansen's...rant----the liberal arts have been the playpen for theorists, psychologists, and alumni going back to the 1920s in the USA.

Hanson admitting he, too, is a former debutante and a pilgrim on the Grand Tour with an entry in the Social Register, tells me VD is slumming. This column is his round of gin for the house. Now, won't you lend me your ear?

BTW, VD is the egghead who advanced the bizarre maxim that democracies never war on one another; an ideologically-inspired and bathetic attempt at buttressing Bush's pre-emptive invasion of Iraq. Jay Tea bit to humorous effect in the comments thread; humorous for the Nay side, that is--- not Jay Tea.

bryanD,

Having reading comprehension issues, I see...

By Ivy League I do not mean just Harvard, Princeton, and Yale, but the entire concept of high-priced elite schools like a Stanford, Duke, or Columbia as well. We know a BA from such institutions does not ipso facto any longer, as it once may well have, guarantee knowledge or competence.

Doctor Hansen is speaking about undergraduate education here... He also continues:

I am fortunate for a wonderful graduate education in the PhD program at Stanford, but I learned more about the way the world works in two months of farming (which saved a wretch like me) than in four years of concentrated study.

Or have you never known someone who holds a graduate degree who had little or no grasp of the real world? Doctor Hanson, unlike most of the current administration's "policy wonks", has worked for a living.

I'd far rather work with, or have working for me, a JayTea as opposed to a David Brooks.

"Or have you never known someone who holds a graduate degree who had little or no grasp of the real world?"-rg

Of course. Everyone does. Its a truism.
Yet you, the reposter, lede with ""...Truths we dare not Utter" which obviously doesn't apply to Hanson or you. Or me. Or the girl behind the tree.

Like I said: VD is slumming at the mirrored bar of the culture war. Raisin water.

oh bryanD with a Y ...

such a poet ...

An educated person understands the working of the world in which he lives. A credentialed person has piece of paper from an institution VDH understands the world. Persons like David Brooks and Barack Obama have credentials.

About ten, fifteen years back we used to joke about "Paper MCSEs" - computer illiterate folks who took rote repetitive training to pass the exams needed to become a Microsoft Certified Systems Engineer. This was supposedly a guarantee of quality and systems knowledge - but the joke was it took about a year for a paper MCSE to become safe with a screwdriver around a server... assuming they lasted that long.

jpe @ 2 states:

Columbia is an Ivy.

aka: "You spent way too much for that BA."