All the privileged must have prizes

I appreciate the issues raised in this piece, but why pinpoint Harvard? Grade inflation is everywhere, if not in most US institutions, then in all the Ivy leagues. <p>I don't deny there are rich students at Harvard who are offsprings of the rich and powerful, but the author has stayed at Harvard long enough and should have noted the many Harvard students working in libraries, etc., to pay off part of their tuition. Let's not forget them.

Agreed with Gomez. That much resentment is unhealthy in a teacher. Why did you stay if you felt exploited? There are many other opportunities out there and to act like a victim at/of Harvard is absurd. Pity the students!

(Full disclosure: I am a Harvard College alumnus; I worked to pay my tuition. I am a Harvard Ph.D. student as well, meaning I carry out many of the same duties as described by Mr. Summers.) <p>This piece would have been a much more effective critique of Harvard had the author not shown his true colors in the first paragraph: the guy has an axe to grind! <p>"The fractured nature of my appointment, renewed annually for six successive years while never amounting to more than 65 per cent of a full-time position in any one year, kept me on the margins of prestige and promotion even as it kept me there long enough to serve three chairmen of social studies, two directors of study and three presidents of Harvard." <p>Apparently, it was "the system" that prevented his meteoric rise in academia? Yes, indeed, someone smacks of entitlement and bitterness. To say so in your first paragraph? Come on, man, you clearly should rethink your career choice. <p>As it stands, your piece basically falls under the old, tired "Harvard is an elitist institution; those bastards!" trope. If I had a nickel...

I graduated from Harvard with a degree in Social Studies back in 2000, so I missed John's term in the department by a few months. <p>First I'll say that most of the Social Studies tutors and professors I encountered were excellent. I am proud of the education I received in that department (or "concentration," as they called it then for reasons I still don't fully understand). Each of them probably should have been paid more (and presumably earned better benefits) than they were offered. <p>Having said that, John's characterization of the students in the department is totally at odds with my experience. I have worked in the non-profit sector since I graduated, as have many of my social studies classmates. Certainly there is a problem at elite schools in general, and Harvard in particular, that the career path of least resistance has led to management consulting and i-banking. However, back in 2000 it felt like Social Studies was a bubble for those of us who thought differently, and preferred to model our thinking on patterns set by Karl Marx, Michel Foucault, and Jurgen Habermas (in fact, there was an intense, bizarre peer pressure to do so). <p>Of course there were a few obnoxious kids in every batch, but its simply inaccurate to describe that as the norm for either the students or the University. <p>The great thing about that environment, which I miss terribly, is that each student went about his or her daily life sincerely believing that, for better or for worse, he or she can and would change the world. I don't think of that as a sense of entitlement, but rather as a sense of possibility which should be evangelized, as many of us bratty kids from the Social Studies department are now doing.

Yes, all true -- but mainly at the top elite universities. For example, someone I know at Columbia was told when she arrived there to teach that the modal grade (what students would regard as average -- not good, not bad) was A-. <p>However, state universities and lesser known private universities have more flexibility because the students are less rich and less self-assured. The "modal grade" here at Rutgers-Newark (a highly diverse state university campus dominated by upwardly mobile immigrants and first generation students) is somewhere between B and B+. My colleagues and I -- my having talked about this with several of them -- have no problems marking lower, and I have maybe only once or twice in four years had a student come to me and try to persuade me to change his or her grade. (I refused, of course.) <p>Actually, I think the situation is just as bad or worse in British universities, where I taught for 33 years (York, Leeds and Manchester). What is done through elite pressure in the US is done in the UK by league tables. Pretty much everyone gets 2:1s these days (the equivalent of an A- in the US), 3rds are almost unheard of, and the number of firsts is increasingly inflated in order to make the university and the department look better to the bureaucratic targetmasters who hold the purse strings.

Gomez: I don't think the intent of the article was to call out Harvard as an exception of grade inflation. <p>Instead it was for the writer to speak about personal experiences which took place at Harvard. It would have been out of scope for the writer to apply the experience to all Ivy league schools.

I too taught at Harvard in a similar position to the one John describes, during the same period. While there were certainly wonderful students there, what he describes is spot on, and I applaud him for it. I am sure similar truths hold at other elite institutions, but you will never know the amazing sense of entitlement these Harvard undergrads have until you have taught them.

I was a graduate student at Harvard until very recently. I left because my students--generally depraved in all of the ways mentioned in this article--were driving me crazy, among other reasons. (Another was that the capital-U University doesn't pay its graduate students--i.e. its main teaching force--enough to live in Cambridge in any condition much more comfortable than constant financial panic.) <p>I commend John Summers and his article, most of all for making so forcefully clear what is worst about Harvard's students: their moral imagination is fundamentally limited, and they cannot conceive of any form of value that is not, just as Summers says, regulated by the market. Consequently they cannot imagine what an education is for, unless it is for making money, for somebody, somewhere. They may disagree about for whom, and where, their advantages should be capitalized ("For me, on Park Avenue!" "No, for the poor, in Uganda!"), but "on the ideological features of market capitalism"--now understood as a theory that arrogates to itself the question of moral value--"they [are] unanimous." <p>Ari Lipman's nostalgic evocation of a dormful of 19-year-old kids in sweat pants, fully assured that they will "change the world"--most of us, unlike Lipman, have to choke down a powerful surge of revulsion to call up such an image--doesn't put the lie to Summers' point; it underscores it. This education is the first stop on a career path pointed straight at making money; this teacher is just another potential professional reference. <p>It seems to occur only to the rarest few of them that it might be good, good in itself, just to know something, or to think now and then. That's a regrettably more radical thought than it used to be.

I Graduated from Harvard in 2008. For all four years I played a varsity sport, worked, and volunteered. Now, I am working at Trader Joe's before my career as an officer in the Marine Corps begins in January. Summers et al., can you compare the paycheck of a Marine to a Wall Streeter, and get back to me please? Not the same? Well, I'm glad I chose the Marines because my career is pointed at making money. <p>The point is, only 40% of Harvard students (in a good year, I think it's only in the low 30% for my graduating class) go straight to Wall Street. Yes, many others will matriculate there after years of Teach For America, a year off, law school, etc. However, this man Summers would like you to think that 100% of Harvard's student body is fixated on making money. What about the 4 students who did ROTC and are now officers in the U.S. military (yes, quite low given past data, however, their choice and presence is not to be overlooked). What about others like Ari Lipman working in public service? What about others with science degrees working to cure diseases and those others becoming opera singers and others following Summers own path and entering academia? <p>Summers clearly, as spameggs says, has an axe to grind. Sadly, he stereotyped the Harvard Student body he so obviously failed to get to know during his 7 years at the school and wants to take us students down with him. Shame on you, Summers, for not caring enough about your students to get to know more than half of an amazing group of people. I know that getting tenure at a University is tough, and especially so at Harvard. The bureaucracy is intimidating and timing is crucial. However, Summers, just because you don't still teach at Harvard doesn't mean you should take the student body down with you. Summers, before attacking Harvard's students again, should remember that a good majority of us value our degrees for what they are: titles given to recognize the student for achieving knowledge. What authority does Summers have to denigrate that title and process besides being an ex-low-level participant with an obvious beef and a pen? Yes he is controversial and opinionated, but he is also out of line and off the mark. <p>We must thank this hubristic author for stereotyping Harvard students as money-hungry brats who waste the time of Harvard's teachers. Don't let Summers or any of his supporters sway you: the flipside of his coin is that teachers of his mindset (ie students should learn for learning's sake, a VERY antiquated notion in America today) are only teaching at Harvard so that the name appears on their resume. As mentioned above, Summers must have taken little interest in the students he was teaching, and thus he must not care as much about the students as he would like you all to believe. I would be interested to see Summer's evaluations from his students (CUE evals). I know some of his students personally, and they don't have favorable things to say. <p>Not all teachers at Harvard care as little about their students as Summers obviously did. But it is the case that there is a good percentage of them out there like Summers (just as is the case there is a good percentage of money-hungry brats out there too.) In neither case is it a majority, though Summers as a chump ex-part-time teacher with an overblown sense of authority says otherwise about me and my peers. Take it from me: Harvard students are not all that bad.

Let me begin by admitting that I am currently a Harvard undergraduate. <p>This article is a bitter, all-out attack on an enormous body of students who every day defy the narrow ambitions and categories that the author so quickly imposes on them. His haste to categorize all of us as philistines, grubbing for grades and money before we complete our degrees, is hugely unfair to the population of students on campus (the large population) who do not come from monied backgrounds, who do not view money as the axis about which all our dreams, actions, and papers rotate, and who do not think ourselves more entitled to success and an easy life than the rest of the world. <p>Certainly, there is a percentage of students here who have had life easy, and always will, and backchannels do exist at Ivy League Institutions for those who know how to operate in them. But many of us come from middle-class backgrounds and communities, and have had to work hard to get here. We value what we have achieved, but don't expect it to come without more hard work, and a little but of luck, not handed to us by a cadre of cooing advisors and grade-happy teaching assistants. <p>Certainly there is grade inflation - but what am I to do about that? Demand that my teacher give me a lower grade? My father, who's about to serve a tour of duty in the Middle East, is certainly not going to run to my advisor if I get a low grade; he's going to tell me to work harder, and to pay more attention to my studies. <p>While some of the criticisms he levels are accurate - the grade inflation, the pressure put on teaching fellows and assistants to grade easily, and how little they are cared for and remunerated - this is all true. None of this is disputed. But characterizing a huge population of students as a monolith of callous prigs driven only by the Almighty Dollar is irresponsible, unfair, and a disservice to this publication.

At universities like harvard there is a pervasive belief that the time spent there is merely a stopgap between high school and real life, a chore needing to be accomplished in order to claim one's position in life. What is missing is any form of drive other then that instilled in them by A. the marketplace, or B. their parent's expectations. It seems that knowledge for knowledge's sake loses out to the stepping stones to a career. The mindset being, why invest in thought when I can invest in a future? <p>What is perhaps most depressing is how this line of thinking has become imbued in every pursuit. Art, the most rebellious and anarchical of paths, has been successfully dumbed down into an aesthetically baseless pursuit, with success measured in work sold to prominent iBankers, instead of creativity and innovation. <p>In the end, the ugliness rears its head as the nihilistic forces inherent in the market come crashing down. Questions unasked in the formative years of intellectualism will eventually be answered in maturity regardless of wealth accumulated, and the shallow pleasures found in blondes with prosthetic breasts and 5th avenue lofts will quickly transform into a deep seated despair. <p>Perhaps the most appalling feature of this current trend, is the extent to which this wealth corrupts those who have been lifted from poverty because of their exceptional intelligence. Even those who know what it means to live below the means, lose sight of their inheritance wishing only to become adopted into a new family of privilege.

This is just silly. There are only two reasons that rich kids do sociology: 1) They are actually passionate about it, in which case they're the exceptions that you talk about, or 2) they're just lazy and entitled (not the feeling, but most of them are yeah, actually entitled) and want to do something easy. Don't make a sweeping assumption about rich kids just because you've had an experience with a certain group of them. There are lots of us that are actually passionate and interested.

This guy is out for revenge. <p>Who cares if students go straight to career professions? It's their education, which they are paying for. Maybe they want high-paying jobs because they saw what happened to their parents AFTER the summer of love-- they all got jobs and voted for Nixon, then Reagan. Why not skip a few chapters, have career success and change the world by changing the culture from within? Does the National Guard have to be on campus to prove the kids care? <p>This guy really needs to change professions. If helping young minds makes him so bitter, maybe he should be stuck in some bookstore sneering at customers and trying to finish his novel.

On the other hand... it is at least delightful to see how exuberantly today's brightest American students are laughing off the tired leftist nostrums preached at them so determinedly by their college instructors! The kids will often go on to learn a lot about life and their own country after they leave academia. The faculty, well, not so much.

I wonder though..why he never gave a grade below a B-? If it's such a horrible system why is no teacher or group of teachers fighting this? (Assuming all his students weren't good to great students) There's something about it that gives an advantage to all those involved..students AND teachers..by supporting them all in a sort of agreed upon fraud bubble that despite whistle-blowers and an almost proud public acceptance is completely intact and in no position to be toppled. And the result is that in the real world, the advantage is amplified and more likely to stomp out the 'others'..when students apply for further education or for jobs and when teachers move around the academic world. It's as if they have accepted that the institution and the students are far better than everything and everyone else and base their scale on this idea that the world is beneath them..C, D, and F work by their students (any student) is the equivalent to A, B and C work elsewhere by other students. Which is absurd. <p>I went to a non-Ivy university considered one of those unofficial Ivies and the grading system depended entirely on the department you're in and the current chairs. I believe this is common among other schools. I hope one day the Ivies' public value finally declines to the standards they have embraced.

This article seems to be generating a lot of heat vis a vis the "Harvard" label. A larger theme in Summers' essay may be that being an adjunct is an incredible job in terms of responsibility, yet often not very financially rewarding or particularly secure. For anyone wishing to teach in a college, becoming an adjunct, at least for a while, is basically inescapable....

"But characterizing a huge population of students as a monolith of callous prigs driven only by the Almighty Dollar is irresponsible, unfair, and a disservice to this publication." <p>This young man's letter, I think, more or less typifies the kind of self-love that greases the wheels at the highly ranked Ivies. He admits that there are children of privilege at Harvard, but denies that he personally is part of that world (claiming that his father is going on a 'tour' in the Middle East -- certainly, we can assume, not to shoot a gun or drive a truck in Iraq) and that rampant grade inflation exists, but "what am I to do about that?" and then loudly complains that the article injures 'a huge population of students' just like him, who are /at/ Harvard, but have created life histories for themselves that convince them that they are unique and special, and not /of/ Harvard. <p>I call BS! Forty percent of 22-year olds are not naturally interested in Wall Street careers. Your summer job at Trader Joe's does not make you middle-class. Trying to gain moral high ground by citing your father's military service is the act of a callous prig. You live in a society which contains hierarchies of wealth and power, and your group of peers is at the top of those hierarchies. Your status is only partially linked to your individual talent and spirit, and you have forgotten than you are not better than anyone else. Worse, for the institution, you have forgotten that the first step in learning is humility, the act of accepting one's own ignorance. <p>(But you're not talking about me /personally/, they say!)

Regarding the first post, gomez. Do your homework. Princeton has a grade deflation policy. All departments are required to give no more than 35% A/A- grades, and there are further restrictions on other grades. So, yes, this used to be a problem at Princeton, but not during my four years.

I suppose it's a catch 22 for those current and former Harvard students commenting critically on this piece. If they agree with the article, it lends it credibility. If they disagree with it, it lends it credibility. <p>As a non-American tasked with grading at a semi-elite university, I was initially stunned with the requirement that all assessment of student work had to fall between 85 and 100%. That situation was so ubiquitously accepted as routine that I came to assume that grade inflation was the norm across all American universities. The students being graded were grad students from many former campuses, and all seemed to have similar expectations. <p>@Parker, the reasons I never gave out lower grades: <p>1. There is no space on a student's transcript for the comment "this lower than average grade was assigned as a protest against grade inflation, not because this student is lower than average". <p>and <p>2. I didn't want to make trouble for my supervising instructor, and hence for myself. Not courageous, but true. <p>In the students' defence, I didn't see much raw entitlement. Surprise if I gave out a lower grade, and occasionally desperation to get it higher for the sake of future opportunities, but rarely did anybody assume it was owed them just for showing up. And I frequently had positive responses from students who felt challenged.

The real problem with service-class teaching isn't that the students have gotten entitled and self-centered in the last decades, it's that the universities have taken the autonomy away from teachers that held the students in check. Summers' job would have been much easier if he had the authority and the security of a professor. Instead, he was in a precarious adjunct situation with no job security, where any appeal over his head threatened his livelihood. Of _course_ he felt some resentment towards silver-spoon students who didn't respect his knowledge: the people above who should have been empowering him were taking advantage of him. <p>Summers can deride the Ph.D. octopus, but it's not there to help judges keep lecturers in their place. It's the closest thing academics have to a labor union, providing them some solidarity against forces in the outside world impinging on their authority. Yeah, a full insistence on tenure-track teaching would have left Summers entirely unable to teach: but it doesn't sound like the university left him in a position to be an authority figure over the students. What's puzzling is that Summers blames the student-consumers, instead of the administration-owners, for his difficulties. That's not the Social Studies mindset I remember. <p>(Full disclosure: I do remember all the other types of Social Studies students that Ari describes above from my time as an undergrad in the program (I didn't know Summers, though we overlapped). And I'm spinning my wheels towards a Ph.D. now, so I have a major investment in the system. But I never met an adjunct who thought that was the best way to run a university. It makes it possible for teachers to hate their students as rivals (like Eastman above), a terrifying thought, instead of being able to regard them as occasionally misguided kids who still have a lot to learn.)

I graduated from Harvard with a B.A. in Social Studies in 2002. Summers is half right and half wrong. Did he not cross the Yard in April 2001, when Harvard capitulated to a student-led movement to secure a living wage for Harvard workers after a three-week sit-in in University Hall? Those young activists were my heroes and peers. To claim that there are only three types of equally ineffectual and self-absorbed students at Harvard is to do injustice to all of those kind, thoughtful, caring people who apparently flew under Summers' radar.

Mr. Summers' class bigotry is fashionable, but that doesn't make it any less odious. Let us hope his self-absorption doesn't do too much damage at Boston College.

Quite fairly put, Ben. Let me suggest, though, in the words of an affordable marriage counselor, that what you offer beside Summers' article is an "and," not a "but." The students are fools enslaved by self-regard, and the administration are a crew of travel agents in black gowns. Where, exactly, are we in disagreement? We're both right. (Do you see now the significance of my "among other reasons," above?) <p>The charge at issue is that Harvard College students are guilty of a gross lack of vision. Some of them are bright, kind, generous, funny, and wise. Some of them are "occasionally misguided kids who still have a lot to learn." Most of them are fools. <p>Will anyone deny this, that most Harvard College students are fools? Historical probability alone demands it: most of the human race are fools. Really, it shouldn't be a very alarming thought. The evident power it has to scandalize us serves as further proof, I think, of the tyrannical pervasiveness of the "market mentality" Summers decries. It's the best education money can buy. The people buying it must know something we don't. Right?

I can understand why Summers' feels that his students, and their parents, are driven by a paradigm of success that stresses little more than financial success. <p>The US is a service-based economy--some of the most productive and lucrative service sectors are financial services and management consulting, both requiring strong analytical skills. These service sectors have fundamentally changed over the past forty years, from mom&pop/brick&mortar corporate mentalities to ones requiring considerable quantitative and creative skills. Should it be shocking that 40% of Harvard students, with the benefit of a degree that indicates (despite Summers' lament) the product of intelligence and effort, join firms that represent the very high end of these sectors--and are thus compensated far more handsomely than their counterparts at less selective universities? We live in a world of nearly seamless capital flows, of constant economic creation and destruction, and of eroding welfare states. Why would you fault mostly middle-class students for wanting to secure themselves and their future families? <p>I'm no psych major, but I think that negative experiences are far more searing than positive experiences are memorable, even though the former may occur fewer times than the latter. I know some of my classmates take drugs for ADD when they don't need it. I know some of them send over their papers to be reviewed by mommy or daddy. I know what's behind that "don't worry, be happy" smile--the knowledge of a secure, high-paying job upon graduation because dad's a VP at Goldman. <p>But, there are a lot more faces and experiences that don't fit that mold. I don't know what Summers' philosophy on education is, but I agree with Mark Twain: "I have never let my schooling interfere with my education." I would rather spend two hours debating the day's Supreme Court opinion with my seven roommates--from all parts of the country, all backgrounds--in our common room than reading the assignments for Summers' class. Reading period is for reading. Agree with my sentiment or not, but real learning takes place outside the classroom. And certainly outside Summers'.

This essay suggests an academic paradox: feeling contempt for an institution while seeking its approval. Would the author take a tenure-track position at Harvard if it were to be offered?

This is one of the best-written and most insightful pieces I've read this year. I am a Social Studies graduate--the ironist third-type he astutely mentions--and think the whole essay is spot on.

@Hugh: <p>The transcript argument doesn't make sense to me. It seems the protest is solely in the act of giving the deserved grade..which you then said wasn't done because you didn't want trouble. I know not one teacher can make a difference but I get the sense that in the article and in the comments people aren't really ashamed or worse, think anything is wrong with it..as if they deserve to be judged on a different standard. It's not the same anywhere else I've been. <p>If the system works for the students, their parents and the teachers and the system is highly prejudiced against admitting 'others' compared to admitting legacy, name or class..then it seriously needs to be reevaluated. It would be different if it had no impact on the gaps in our society but it does..incredibly. And every comment here from a current student or graduate or teacher just shows how amazingly insular and privileged it is. No one is arguing for the fall of the grading system (not even the author) but justifying it and even feeling offended anything negative was ever said about their school or lives in such a coddling atmosphere.

It's truly amazing how someone can spend so much time at Harvard and learn so little about this place. Hopefully, the author will have a better experience at Boston College. I look forward to his account of BC students.

I was Social Studies, class of 2004, so my time directly overlaps with yours. To charge that the concentration manufactures cost-cutting, mini-Kushners is absolutely ridiculous and runs counter to my three-year experience at the program. Perhaps this is the fault of an lazy dek-writing editor, but conflating the students who you taught (in perhaps the most liberal course of study at at very liberal school) with well-reasoned critique of the adjunct system is sadly specious. <p>Of all the people I know who've entered the financial services industry, I can't think of a single one who graduated in that program. I do know dozens of future professors, civil servants, and non-profit workers. I work in journalism, a wonderful industry on the brink of collapse. <p>If you're having a hard time with Social Studies kids as entitled, best of luck to you and your absurd expectations.

What a race to the bottom! <p>First a forner long-suffering part-timer complains of Harvard students' attitudes and the institutional structure that made him serve them. His column injects just a hint of reality into the never-never land that occupies large areas of Cambridge and Brighton. It is fascinating to learn that Harvard has joined the great majority of American universities that fatten their students AND their full-time faculty on adjunct labor and feed the laborers next to nothing. <p>THEN, not to be outcomplained, a chorus of Harvard undergrads and graduates decry the injustice done them by this disclosure. "We are not all callous, careerist prigs-in-clover!" they cry. "Or if we are, we paid for our degrees and we can do as we please with them!" This instructor, "out for revenge," has tarred the sheep and the goats with the same, resentment-laden brush! Mr. Summers must be, well, a loser. <p>What's astounding is how such a monument to class privilege as Harvard can generate SO MUCH victimage (some real, some imagined) among its servants, customers, and beneficiaries. Is there no economy of suffering? Will no one admit to having profited, fairly or unfairly, from the travails of Mr. Summers and his colleagues? Is no one aware of the systemic factors that make American higher education what it is -- a massively oversold industry promising to exchange real monetary investments for symbolic rewards and standing for the market where those symbols can be turned back into material wealth? <p>What role does Harvard play in all this? A very funny one. It's the industry's flagship brand, so talk about Harvard vaguely stands in for talk about American higher ed. Unless, of course, it's scandalous, featuring a misogynous president (also, interestingly, named Summers) or rampant grade inflation. Then it's a tabloid's dream. In both cases, we stop talking and thinking about what happens at Tulane, Michigan State, or our local community college. <p>And what goes on there -- in the use of labor, in the expenditure of public and private money, in the teaching of undergrads and the conduct of research -- calls for a lot more critical thought than what goes on at Harvard.

I am grateful to Summers for articulating everything I have felt as a PhD Candidate who has taught undergraduates at prestigious institutions in the USA and UK. <p>However, I believe that Summers places the blame for undergraduates' behavior in the wrong places. Undergraduates are not to be faulted for their pocketbooks or sense of entitlement; rather, they are to be repremanded for their reluctance to truly engage in learning - where learning means failure and then trying again. I fault this vocal minority of my students, not for demanding an A-, but for refusing to really engage with the material and actively push themselves academically... for treating higher education like a hoop to jump through, rather than a stepping stone to a better person.

As a currently enrolled HarvardCollege student, I was amazed and deeply offended at what I read in the above article Aside from being greatly insulting toward people he has not yet, nor will likely ever meet, the article is likewise laden with fallacy. <p>I guess when one is consumed with as much residual resentment as Summers seems to be, one forgets key facts: <p>1) The actions of 3 people cannot be a valid basis for a general assumption. Furthermore, I am hesitant to believe that taking a seat directly before the teacher is a weapon of intimidation (if so, I have a few past teachers to whom I must apologize), or that one would acquire a newspaper for $10,000,000 and limit the funding of one of its departments with a sole motive of degrading a former tutor (especially if, as Summers asserts, the same effect could be achieved by "send gifts to high-placed academic directors"). <p>2) If he was expected to give grades he did not feel were due and felt keenly the unethical nature of doing so, why then, did he do so (and continue doing so for several years)? And if it is general knowledge that lecturers must award either and A or B to a student, then how is it possible that we students spend hours upon hours studying in Widener, Lamont and Hilles Libraries, only to receive Cs, Ds, sometimes Fs (unless, of course, the brackets for A and B have--without my knowledge--expanded to encompass much larger portions of the grading scale)? <p>3) The majority of Harvard Students are on NEED-based financial aid, a significant portion on full aid (family income<$60,000/year). I am part of this significant portion. Because of articles like the one above, I was worried that I would be a minority among my classmates. I could not have placed faith in a more incorrect assumption. <p>4) The Undergraduate Minority Recruiting Program and Harvard Financial Aid Initiative tour the nation, recruiting students of low socio-economic status. Additionally, HFAI sponsors a program to send students (who volunteer) to speak schools in their area with the intent of recruiting students, promoting a diverse demographic of students with greatly varied backgrounds. A friend of mine grew up on a farm in the Midwest. Another grew up in a mansion with his own personal staff members. We all take the T and consume more Berryline frozen yogurt than can be healthy. <p>5) Most students at Harvard hold jobs (no, not of the "investing Daddy's income" variety Summers assumes, but of the shelving books in the library/dorm crew variety). <p>6) There exist hundreds of non-business related student groups on campus, and anyone who has attempted to walk into the Science Center in the middle of the day can attest that there is never a shortage of students advertising, fund-raising for a cause, or demonstrating at the front entrance (some apathy). <p>Then again, perhaps in my offense, I have forgotten a few things, as well. For instance, while I've been under the impression that I come from a working class family in SC and hope to pursue a career in international human rights law, this is truly just a facade. At heart, I'm really an heiress from Dubai who will now set down my champagne glass and caviar in order to make a phone call to end Summers career.

The comments in this thread by young Harvard students and alumni serve to reinforce the author's point, of which I was originally skeptical. It's telling to watch them take such offense to anyone who question their privileged mentality. "Those young activists were my heroes and peers," indeed.

I taught in Social Studies as a teaching assistant for three of the six years (2004-7) in which John Summers taught. I knew John, though not very well. But regardless of our relation, his article and responses readers have so far posted inspire three thoughts (the third is, to me, most important). <p>First, on grade inflation, I think John is largely right, though grade inflation seems alive and well in most schools these days, even if teachers have some degrees more freedom to give B, B- and C grades at lesser schools, as some respondents above have noted. Sadly, in my experience, teachers do often pay the price on student evals if we grade at a level that dissatisfies the student. In my case, the two most critical evals I received were from students who performed most “poorly” (B- or B). Unfortunately, despite student reprisals, administrators rely heavily on student evals to determine reappointments of TAs and even tenure-track professors, despite the existence of other useful criteria (e.g., paper comments, course handouts, in-class observation). <p>Second, I agree with what appears to be the majority of respondents who say that John is being unfair in his characterization of Harvard students. In Social Studies, I found few students who were hoping to parlay their concentration into lucrative careers. And as one of the 46 students who took over the first floor of Mass Hall in 2001 (a few of us were not Harvard students) as part of the living wage sit-in, I concur with that Harvard alum who suggested that one can find plenty of Harvard students and alum engaged part-time to full-time in ‘public good’ endeavors of all kinds, small to large, reformist to radical. <p>Third, and most importantly, it seems John and his respondents miss something more deeply problematic about Harvard and other elite schools. In my three years teaching at Harvard, what struck me was not cold, calculating ambition, and still less a widespread sense of entitlement, but rather the stark contrast between the exciting, wide open, promising work lives of the chosen (Harvard students) vs. the lives of the larger population of people at Harvard and beyond who do the more or less dull work that nonetheless must be done: making copies, cleaning floors, serving food, stocking shelves, etc. <p>The problem is not that Harvard students are comfortable and entitled. On the contrary, Harvard students are generally well aware and more or less uncomfortable with their privilege as the chosen. The real issue is what they do with that discomfort. The real problem is the yawning inequality in the lives of the chosen vs. those passed over, the served and the servers. My three humble suggestions to those Harvard students and alum who may read this: <p>First, if and when you make money, don’t give a cent to Harvard. Instead, donate whatever you would have given to Harvard to an under-funded public school, a need-based scholarship, or best yet, a citizens’ group fighting educational, work-based, or other inequities. <p>Second, if you are ever in a position to hire (as many Harvard grads will), don’t hire a fellow Harvard alum. As comfortable and stimulated as you may feel in the presence of someone who also went to Harvard, those feelings are the softest side of hardening inequalities. <p>Third, pass on this advice to other students and alum you know at Harvard, as well as Yale, Columbia, Stanford, and other elite schools. <p>These simple yet concrete actions will do far more to address social problems than all the discomfort elites inflict on themselves for being elites.

Dear John, <p>I thank you, although I am sure you don't need my thanking, for this very refreshing piece. <p>It gives me a kind of hope which I cannot put into words, and which I would rather keep as is; real. <p>Kind Regards, <p>Eleni

I am also a currently-enrolled student. As someone who earned--and received--both good grades and bad in my first year, who took classes too hard for me because I wanted to diversify my education; who took five of them; who sought out my professor when I received a B- on my first paper, yes, but for his help, not for a new grade; who asked that professor to tell me what I had done wrong, and wrote a new draft, and another, neither expecting nor receiving credit; who eventually earned an A from my own sweat and tears and sleeplessness--I take great offense to this article and the other articles like it that crop up like crabgrass every year. <p>Dr. Summers, I am sorry that you had an unfortunate experience as a lecturer. I am sorry that there are rich, spoiled kids at Harvard--I am sorry that you have, or had, no money. A previous commenter noted that half of us are on financial aid; I don't have any money, either. I am sure you are slightly richer for writing this incredibly irresponsible piece, and I suppose you sleep at night thinking that your former students deserve this kind of critique. <p>And that's just a bit heartbreaking, because most of us worship the ground our professors walk on--and I am not speaking only of tenured professors. We respect you. We fight for the tenures of our favorite professors, even--and especially--the ones who give us mountains of reading and make our lives miserable. We celebrate when the Faculty recognizes their merit as we, the students, always have. <p>It is a shame that you left Social Studies and are now speaking ill of a concentration that attracts some of the most intellectual--and least superficcial--of Harvard's student body. It's a shame that you didn't mention that we commit to a brutal sophomore tutorial, epic junior seminars, and fearsome senior theses for the dubious honor of a line on our diploma that looks like an elementary school subject. <p>No, not all Harvard students are great, or moral, or hardworking. But that's not because we're Harvard students--it's because we're students, and we like to have fun, too. We're not all responsible yet, but we will be. And your blaming us for capitalism, for greed, for the anti-intellectualism of the world beyond Harvard--those are the sins of the father, so to speak. You accuse us of self-importance, but we have no delusions that we, at 18 and 21, created that that world. <p>It's a shame that you forgot what many of us do with our shiny, "prestigious" degrees, especially in Social Studies: face jobs that pay as little as yours, in NGOs or think tanks or government or academia or journalism or a hundred other things. No, Dr. Summers, you are the sellout, because you are peddling anecdotes and generalizations on the jealousy market. <p>You mentioned a "few shining exceptions"--we are not the exceptions. We are the majority: honored to be here, excited for the many opportunities around us, and aware that we have potential to do great things. That's not arrogance: that's hope. And it's not because we go to Harvard. It's because we're young; it's because we're idealistic. Harvard is not a perfect university, but we never claimed it was; it has a long way to go. But you have set up a straw man of vast overgeneralization and willful ignorance. And I think you know in your heart that what you say is simply not true.

I would hate to think that professors and teaching assistants enter Harvard prepared with such a cynical outlook. I know I certainly didn't enter Harvard expecting large class sizes, distant teachers, and a deluge of cynicism from peers and, apparently, professors. The shocking news that high and mighty Harvard is far from perfect is getting very old, especially for those of us (I am a student) who have had to endure all these false stereotypes and classifications waged against us. Freshman year as I struggled under the loads of literature on Harvard's student elitism and student wicked ambition to find my own home and form my own education, I came to realize that instead of losing myself among the sort of students that Summers describes, I found numerous classmates who defied the same fictional idea of who we were. All of my friends, and nearly all of the people I knew, did not fall into any of the three groups that Summers named. This doesn't make us the exceptions to the rule-- this "rule" is the fabrication of a cynical outsider looking in with a narrow eyeglass. <p>If you've a bone to pick with American higher education, targeting the students will get you nowhere. <p>Kelsey G, your comment only reinforces the idea that there are some people who refuse to listen to reasoning and continue to believe that Harvard students are nothing but querulous, argumentative hotheads. I do take offense at being falsely stereotyped and find it even more disturbing that you do not permit us to rationally defend ourselves.

Just a few points: <p>--I mentioned Jared Kushner only because one wants to make arguments of this kind as particular as possible without violating the right to privacy. Mr. Kushner is a public figure. More to the point of my essay, his Harvard career is the subject of a chapter in Daniel Golden’s book, “The Price of Admission.” Mr. Kushner was an exceptionally courteous young man against whom I harbor no antipathy. I urge everyone to read Mr. Golden’s book. <p>--The spirit of the essay is against intellectual laziness, so it is disappointing to read respondents who charge me with failing to understand other dimensions of the Harvard experience. In the first place, the postscript says that this essay is part of a longer one, set to appear next month. In the second place, I have acknowledged the “many fine exceptions” I taught. This essay is not about them. Nor is it about the many other exceptional, earnest young men and women at Harvard. It tries to establish the governing ethos, the tacit expectations everyone on campus is forced to confront. The “fine exceptions” know who they are, and I have heard from them privately. <p>--The imputation of a low motive (resentment, for example) is a cheap method of slapping down dissent, a psychologism practiced by irresponsible gossips who know nothing about me, yet find it more convenient to imagine my personal faults than to grapple with my argument. I might be very pleased indeed to disclose my scores and teaching awards if I wished to play this stupid game. <p>--I deliberated for a long while before publishing this essay. It is not the whole truth—not even the whole truth of my experience—and the students are still young. In the end, I decided to publish because honest, public testimony from college teachers seems to be curtailed by the pitiless market-mechanism (see how many supporters write anonymously). Plus, to speak critically of the students is to treat them as independent moral agents, capable of corruption and redemption, rather than as passive individuals of a larger system from which they benefit but over which they are presumed to have no control. <p>John Summers

It is amazing how many Harvard students write in and proclaim how outraged and offended they are.... Sure, there are some nice, fine people at Harvard, but it is an unforgiveable thought crime to express that creepy elements are proliferating and riding high in the saddle. I love the people who give personal testimony of the 'I am such a good person and am not rich' variety. It is laughable what a tiny percentage of Harvard students come from low-income families (Sociologist Joseph A. Soares in his book for Stanford University Press has shown that Oxford University has a far higher percentage of working-class students [nearly one-fifth of the student body in some postwar surveys] than good old Harvard, as blue-collar Harvard students dropped from 8 percent of the student body in 1935 down to 5 percent by 1986.) <p>But Harvard true-believers love to yell that the majority get some form of financial aid. When I visit some students on financial aid, lo and behold there is a new Mercedes or turbocharged Porsche in the driveway driven by poor dad. I am not so impressed by Harvard's widespread aid as a sign of democracy and egalitarian triumph, as many upper middle class elements secure some form of financial assistance.

"Even anti-Harvardism is just Harvardism in disguise, isn't it?" <p>You are a talented student. Where else can you go? <p>Forget privilege, forget entitlement, forget money and promises thereof. If you believe in learning for learning's sake, where else can you go but the place that will attract those as demanding of themselves as you have become of yourself? <p>I have friends from farms in Alabama, I have friends who grew up in the glitter of NYC and CT, I have friends who grew up in Columbia or Vietnam who all have found their way to this small corner of Cambridge, this university. They are all amazing. I do not have to defend them, or "us" in any way -- they simply are. <p>A few minutes with any would astound you at the depth of conviction, the sense of nuance and understanding and self-retrospection, the sheer creativity that each possesses. <p>Is there grade inflation? Grade inflation presupposes a distribution of grades that should be given. At Harvard, what should this be? Does a 3.9 from a community college compare with a 3.7 from Harvard? Perhaps. Perhaps not. But it is the community of those who use such grades -- employers, PhD programs, fellowships, scholarships -- who most want an absolute scale, a way to be lazy, a way to compare apples-to-oranges academic situations in the manner of apples-to-apples. And so Harvard and other Ivy league universities play the game, and give grades that reflect the quality of work at an absolute level rather than just within the school itself. <p>If anyone seems entitled, it is the author of this article. Is the intellectual value of your pursuits not enough, Mr. Summers? Feel free to write your books on C. Wright Mills and your reviews for the Observer, but do not expect myself or society to compensate you for them. Do not be bitter when we do not. Harvard owes you as much a place in its classrooms as it does me -- not at all. As in selecting tenure candidates, the difference between the 1,650th hungriest 18 year-old and 1,651st is not that large; the university does the best it can, with what it has. <p>Just like you. Just like me. Just like any of us. <p>At the end of the day, will I know how I want my life to be lived because I went to Harvard? No, but I will know better.

After a few year of teaching at a public university in an underdeveloped country, I got accepted to a US Ph.D. program. I was excited to be a TA at Ivy X. I expected my students to be quite remarkable. They are all remarkable, of course. However, as a general rule, they act very much as the students the author of this piece describes. <p>My excitement became disappointment: I used to be a college instructor and now I was faced with the prospect of becoming a kindergarten teacher or a "service-provider". <p>So, I decided to change my expectations, and I used reverse-Fulbright-psychology. These students were probably going to be the members of the future power elite of this country. I would probably be doing a disservice to the world if I did not try my best. I believe it is my obligation to contribute to turning them into responsible and knowledgeable persons. <p>Fortunately when my judgment has been challenged the authorities have always backed me up. I also refuse, under any circumstances, to talk to the parents, because even if no one treats the students as adults, they are adults. I am sorry but, if they are old enough to go to war, they are old enough to deal with their problems at school. <p>I like most of my students and former students. I consider them very intelligent and charming people. However, in many instances their ignorance about the world around them is appalling. But is it not my job to try to change that? <p>(Bleh, Columbia after all, is not a country).

John Summers' experience teaching privileged students at elite universities is by no means unique: the behaviors he describes are exactly those I experienced as a professor at another Ivy League University. <p>I went to Harvard and when I became a professor myself, won the "great teacher of the year" award, which was, at my employer, given on the basis of student evaluations. I'm honored that many of my former students, now long out of college, chose to stay in touch with me, and not for job reference letters. <p>I was motivated to enter the profession by inherent enjoyment of teaching and learning. And it was sort of the family "business:" My great-grandmother was a primary school teacher, my grandmother taught at the college level, and my mother taught at the graduate level. And I *loved* teaching bright, interesting undergraduate and graduate students. I used to go to work literally saying to myself "I am so lucky to have such a wonderful job; I can't believe I get paid to do this." To be able to share my enthusiasm for inquiry and learning was (and is) a privilege. <p>Having, I hope, established that a) I do not hate students/young people, and b) I don't have an anti-Harvard chip on my shoulder, it is *also* true in my experience that a small number of students can bully a professor into misery. I believe that is what happened to John Summers--at least, that's how I read his account. <p>I don't know John Summers, and had never heard of him until I ran across a link to his article today, but what he wrote is accurate to my experience. I taught different people in a different school, but I came in for the same kind of grade-related bullying by students that Summers describes. <p>Ultimately, I came to fear my students because *some* of them treated me so badly, and were so aggressive (see below) about demanding higher grades--to the point where one small group (including heirs to a notable hotel fortune) were lobbying at all levels of the university to get me fired, and one young man (unhappy with the failing grade I gave him) tracked down one of my social friends (i.e., someone unconnected to the university or to academia), asking my friend to lobby me on the student's behalf. <p>When students feel entitled to enter my private life, and entitled to lobby for my dismissal *on grounds that I grade too hard,* I think it's fair to say they were out of line. The upshot was that I felt intimidated as an educator. Lest you think for a moment that these two incidents I've mentioned were exceptions, they were not; it would take a very lengthy posting to document every piece of really bad behavior by students--from the threats and anonymous hate mail I received (always about grading), to sexual slurs or come-ons (really bizarre and unsettling). Most incredibly of all (to me) some students even saw fit to post slurs about my mother (!!!) on one of those anonymous evaluate-your-professor websites. It was kind of stretch to bring my mother into a rant about what a tough teacher I was, but these students strode boldly across the cause-effect chasm. <p>Something that many of the comments on this thread don't seem to appreciate: it is not necessary for all, or most, university students to use these tactics against their professors in order for serious damage to be done, both to the morale of the professor and to the educational process. In fact, let me underscore that I *agree* with the current students who have written to say that most don't engage in these destructive behaviors. <p>Rather, what I think John Summers is saying--and what I experienced myself--was that iit only takes a handful of incidents like this to disturb, upset, frighten and embitter a teacher. <p>To restate where I stand on teaching and students for those who might see what I've written in the same light as John Summers' piece has been interpreted:: I taught a subject that could have been boring to the point of inducing deep sleep within seconds. But the passion of the great teachers I had made *me* passionate and excited about the subject, and I wanted to pass that on to students enrolled in my classes. I actually cared--a LOT--about developing students' capacities as people: I thought of my courses as places where they could learn to think critically, teach themselves, and find tools that might help them as they set out to achieve their own dreams. I told each and every class that my measure of success as a teacher was not just how students evaluated me at the end of the semester, but whether I heard from them in the coming years that what I taught had been valuable for them. Because I remember all my great teachers with enormous gratitude. And as for the less-gifted, less passionate-and-inspiring teachers I had, at least I treated them with basic courtesy and respect--not haranguing them and threatening them to get the grade I felt I deserved, or intruding upon their private lives to gain more leverage on them. <p>Given all the postings blaming John Summers for the ill-treatment he experienced, I suppose it's inevitable that some readers of this post will continue to believe that I, too, somehow "asked for it:" that in a just world, no one who was a good, dedicated teacher could possibly come in for the kind of student behaviors I've described. Since most students are good people, I must either have deserved what I got, or been "too sensitive." These are pretty much the standard responses (denial, minimization) when bad things happen to seemingly ordinary men and women. <p>I can't think of anything to say to convince people who take this position, nor can I think of a stinging preemptory remark that will head off someone who wants to blame me for being badly treated by a small group of students. To those of you so inclined, including the current and recent Harvard students who expressed outrage and offense at Summers' article, all I can say is that you're missing out on an important message. What he's saying is not a personal attack upon you, but the conditions he describes most certainly affect you and the quality of the education you can get. If dedicated, caring teachers are going to get bullied out of their jobs, *you* lose. It's not likely that you'll be able to measure the loss unless you've been lucky enough to have great teachers who demanded your best effort, but the loss is nonetheless real. <p>If students are going to lobby for decent and respectful treatment of university custodial staff, or for the laborers who make their insignia sweatshirts, then some ethical and behavioral consistency would be in order. Treating your professors, TAs and your fellow students with respect and civility isn't a sideshow to your commitment to social justice: your daily life is where it begins.

yes, i am yet another who graduated from Harvard. Harvard, while not the largest school by far, is still a very large community. even among the same concentration or core of friends, it is easy to have an entirely different experience at Harvard than the person sitting next to you. I am usually skeptical of generalizations, and the above for the following reasons: <p>1) he only knew a certain group of students - likely mostly social studies students and other humanities majors. that doesn't seem like a random sampling of Harvard students to make such broad claims on all of us. --> How well did Summers know the general student body to be able to state such theories? <p>2) At least for a lot of my science classes (I graduated in engineering), like Princeton there were caps for the number of students who can get A's or B's. Grade inflation may have been more widespread before the 'expose' when Summers taught, but.... it's been more than half a decade and grade inflation today is not exactly the same. Also, Harvard has been actively recruiting for a more diverse student body, in all aspects of diversity. --> Is this article outdated? <p>3) Not to be rude, but it doesn't sound like Summers was a well-loved teacher. --> Do all Harvard students treat/interact with all teachers the same way? <p>4) must take the article in context of the author: --> what is Summer's general attitude towards life? Is it not uncommon for him to have a pessimistic attitude towards any environment (in which case BC can expect a similar review in a few years)?

Many who commented on the article missed the premise of Summers' article, sadly mistaking his criticism of the American Academic system (a subset of a culture obsessed with measurable assets, statistics, and "success") for a personal attack on Harvard and its students/alumni. While Summers may hold some resentment towards the institution of Harvard, it is not based in self-pity or anger towards his lack of success as a professor at Harvard, but instead is founded in the surprise and disillusionment he experienced once the reality of the current Academic System hit him. When he became a teacher at the revered and respected Harvard, a champion of social equality and fairness, and a bastion of enlightened and progressive thought, he found that many of his students were more concerned with the grades they received (a concrete and sterile evaluation of their work, their worth) than learning and progress, his paradigm of Harvard as the light of truth and virtue, in a society obsessed with petty and temporal values (beauty, wealth, consuming products) was shattered. <p>Clinging to idealistic notions that were perpetuated by the radical truth seekers of the 60's, Summers expected to find in Harvard, one of the most prestigious universities in the world, an elite group of student-philosophers that aimed to fix the injustices of our society (a government that exploits its citizens for personal gain: Halliburton; a pop culture that idolizes and perpetuates drug dealing, exploitation of women, and murder; News Channels that care more about making money in advertising than telling truths; a society where, nine times out of ten, race and prosperity of ones parents can determine future earnings and likelihood of becoming a felon). While many at Harvard have and continue to campaign against such ills, it is ironic to assume that those who attend Harvard, those who have the potential or already have reached the pinnacle of society, are innately tuned to a) even be aware/care about these inequalities or failures of the same system that has promoted them to its heights or b) be motivated to change their society, for the good of those who have not/will not/cannot reach equal prosperity. <p>Those who have been accepted into elite universities already have had to learn how to succeed within the regulations of American Society. They know that in a highly bureaucratized, highly competitive, and underfunded academic system; one where each year over 20,000 students apply for around 1000 spots in Harvard's undergraduate class, the individual is little more than a transcript; complete with GPA, Class Rank, and Teacher Recommendations. In order to even be accepted into Harvard they struggled since childhood to earn the best grades possible (except maybe the heirs and heiresses for whom money was no object) to be noticed by top colleges, to achieve "success" and "prosperity." And that hard work will not be for naught, and they will struggle, campaign, and petition to guarantee that their immaculate straight A transcript, the sum of their life's work, will not be tainted by an imperfect, less worthy B. For one's transcript, for the most obsessed, driven students (I have known many), for whom Harvard represents the ultimate challenge, and the greatest prize, is a representation of one's self. <p>Summers chief premise attacks the Capitalist System of America, which the Academic System has so readily adopted, which favors concrete data (grades, earnings reports) over nuanced, hard to generically analyze, notions such as knowledge, thought, cognition, and enlightenment. And I feel great pity for those Harvard students and alumni, who, after having become so well versed in the corporeal and pragmatic strategy of achieving success that is perpetuated by society and schools, failed to understand Summers chief quarrel with grade-obsessed students, and the system that perpetuates their obsession. May God Bless their Souls.

At Lewis Black's recent appearance in Harvard Square, he was asked <br>'What would you do if you were appointed president of Harvard?' <p>"Offer a course called "Fuck Your Entitlement Mentality." <p>Riotous laughter ensued, but some conspicuously didn't join in. That made many, me included, laugh even harder.

Three thoughts. <p>First, Mr. Summers flavors this essay with a great deal of acid but misleading matter. Yes, his annual reappointment must have been difficult, but he could hardly have expected a tenure-track appointment at Harvard on the basis of his limited accomplishments. Yes, students tend to reject the labor theory of value, but that is because it is an obsolete theory. If, as Summers suggests, all critique should wait for the authoritative version of the essay, I suggest he aside these petty asides from the final product. <p>Second, Summers' characterization of Social Studies students is ridiculous. Perhaps those who meet Summers' personal standard for academic excellence were "exceptions", but to imply that the majority fit his caricature - financially oriented, uninterested in radical social theory, willing to use their parents to plead for a higher grade - is ridiculous. These are the least avaricious, most "socially conscious", most intellectually curious students in the social sciences at Harvard. What can I say? The word "lie" seems dirty and audacious, these days, but this is a deep, deep characterization of a large number of earnest and intelligent students. <p>Third, the impression from graduate teaching instructors that they are being harassed if they give low grades stems mainly from their laziness and _inability to teach_. It's in the nature of things that when a Harvard student gets a B grade, or even an A-, she will go to the grader for advice and further criticism. When bad teachers find themselves unable to give a cogent account of what they would improve about a student's paper, they feel persecuted, as though the student were "never so aggressive and articulate" as when he is, well, asking to be taught. How many teaching fellows have hopefully reminded me that they won't change a grade, in the hope that I would leave their office hours without asking any more questions...

Summers reminds me of that crazy Dartmouth professor

(Note: This is a response not only to the article, but also to the many responses that have been posted thus far.) <p>If you believe that every student who walks through Johnston Gate at Harvard (never having been there yourself) is by definition an ignorant member of the elite who will use the school only to generate vast stores of personal wealth, is there anything anyone could say to convince you otherwise? If not, is your argument really worthy of discussion, or of serious responses? <p>Would I be accused of lying if I wrote here that my mother was a full-time career flight attendant with no extra rabbits to pull out of her hat in times of need (she is, and no rabbits), that my father was an unemployed drug addict (he is – he has worked a total of 2 years throughout my life, as a taxi driver and then as a clerk at Home Depot), that my parents are drowning in thousands of dollars of credit card debt with no home equity, assets, or items of financial worth (they are, and nada), that they are now taking on thousands more in debt so that their other two daughters can go to college (they are), that Harvard therefore waived all tuition fees for my four years (it did), that I am not heir to any family inheritance (I’m not), and that I worked my way through college and still ended up in the red (it’s true)? Would I be criticized for misinterpreting the article and missing the point? (As an aside, I love the comment about the composition of the student body in 1986 – very up-to-date.) <p>Though tempting and easy, it’s totally incorrect to interpret the comments of the Harvard students/grads here (of whom I am one, full disclosure – Social Studies ’07) as indignant and ignorant self-defenses. These (we) are people who love to think and are expected to think, who have been trained to craft the most airtight of analyses – missing, glossing over, and misrepresenting nothing. If they fail to detect logical fallacies, opportunities for thoughtful comment, insidious assumptions and mischaracterizations, facts or ideas that might expand the scope of the discussion, thereby strengthening it, etc., then they have failed as students and as thinkers, and would likely be labeled by Summers and the other instructors who have posted here as “low performers,” as unimaginative and intellectually lazy human beings. Yet when they, as they are inclined and encouraged to do as part of the education that they supposedly do not treasure, appreciate, or even participate actively in, venture to offer some insight or information to the readers who have no experience with Harvard, they are accused of lying or of shortsighted, self-entitled brattiness. <p>Therefore, for what it’s worth, I offer my own personal reason for seeking out, (luckily) gaining access to, and (thankfully) completing a Harvard education. I won’t beat around the bush – my life was (educationally speaking) incredibly easy before I entered challenging (public school) programs as a young student in Normalsville, USA, and still fairly easy thereafter. Expectations were not terribly high, and I met them, for the most part, with ease. It would do no one any good to deny or hide this fact. However, my life became much harder once I entered Harvard and had to scramble, not to compete with my fellow students, but to even communicate. These were people whose brilliance and articulateness significantly eclipsed my own, and not in the superficial, pompous, and bombastic ways that the general public (including my pre-Harvard self) imagines – they were thinking, and they were thinking hard. They challenged me, and they made me work intellectually – as a thinker, student, and hopeful future scholar. I am speaking in broad strokes here, as I have gone on too long to bore you with the details of the countless stimulating and passionate intellectual experiences I was fortunate enough to have. I went to Harvard because I knew that I would be challenged by my peers and instructors, that it would be more difficult to shine than at one of my local schools, and that I would be both forced and inspired to exercise and expand my mind. I wanted to become a thinker and a doer, and I in no way believe that that transformative, even painful, process ended when I stepped outside the gates of Harvard with my diploma in hand. <p>Did I worry about grades? Of course! How is a student with nothing to show a cold, competitive world but her academic record supposed to react when faced with the thought that, despite her intellectual curiosity and passion, she will get nowhere and fast if she doesn’t have a way to prove that she is dedicated and competent? Wouldn’t it be martyrdom with no audience to refuse to recognize the impact of grades on one’s early career and, consequently, later life, as well as the fact that it’s much easier to get people to listen to you, to engage with you, if it doesn’t look on paper like you couldn’t be bothered to try in college? I worried about grades, just like students at insert-name-here University worry about their grades, just like employees worry about their bosses’ opinions of them, and just like those who are out to “change the world” or “do good” worry about whether or not their messages are getting across. Practical details – necessary and unfortunate realities of educational life, and life in general – just, as some believe, as sleeping is an unfortunate interruption of what could be an incredibly rich and productive 24-hour day. <p>Wouldn’t it be fair to assume that a person in a position of power over the students, someone burdened by the institution with the task of assigning grades, would be witness to a disproportionately high number of grade-related discussions, concerns, and incidents? If said person were to sit in one of the dining halls at dinnertime or common rooms at midnight, would the sense of intellectual curiosity, of learning and thinking for their own sakes (or, even better, for the sake of actual, practical, real-world good!), not be apparent in the numerous group discussions on the relative merits of different social-theoretical doctrines, or on the best possible way to live a meaningful and productive life? And to those who think that wanting to do just that, if being incredibly energized and motivated to make the most out of one’s life, to expand one’s knowledge and humanity to the brink of possibility, is something to be denigrated, to be cynically rejected as money-grubbing or a sense of entitlement, I pose this question: What are these students to do? What could earn them respect, or at least the right to live their lives as peacefully and criticism free as your average world citizen? It’s a little bit disingenuous to level such harsh criticisms of anyone/thing – students, teachers, institutions, systems, or even ideologies – without offering a more positive vision, without explaining how your expectations could have been better fulfilled.

All of a sudden, I feel as if I'm back in Cambridge, sitting around the table with John, talking--except the table is much bigger this time around. <p>John is a good friend of mine. Like him, I was a Lecturer on Social Studies. When we both lived by the green pastures of Harvard University, we regularly sat and talked together, in coffee shops, seminar rooms and bars. I cherish our discussions and our arguments: we actively disagreed on various points for weeks, even years; and we kept talking. <p>First off, I want to say: more than anybody I've ever met, John lives up to the ideals that Emerson expressed in The American Scholar. He takes the life of the mind seriously. He cultivates "self-trust." He thinks for himself and constantly questions the categories. He lives self-consciously, awake, with purpose, and with the constant effort to combine thought and practice, to make something worth making. <p>To those of you who reacted negatively to John's essay--especially if you felt his words as a personal attack--I ask you to slow down. <p>Isn't it good to follow such threads of discussion and argument. Each of you could be doing a thousand different things. <p>At this very moment, in the room next to me (at the Seeds of Peace Camp in Otisfield, Maine) they are playing some kind of new video game where the players are actually moving around. They are boxing in place, in a fighting stance, staring at the television screen. The sound system is projecting out blows back and forth. On the screen are two cartoon boxers, beating one another to bits. <p>And yet I'm following these threads of discussion. . .and so are you. To me, that's something. <p>If you reacted negatively to John's essay because you feel you have or had a different Social Studies experience, a different Harvard experience, a different experience at another elite university, etc., I ask you to put aside your overall reaction for a moment. Did any of John's points resonate? Which ones? How? <p>I really loved my students in Social Studies. I truly loved teaching Social Studies 10. I feel deeply lucky to have had the experience. I miss sitting around the table, taking with young people so alive with possibility. But. . . . . .John's points resonate for me. <p>I'm next in line for this boxing video game, so I have to run (actually I have to work). Here's my last point for the time being. <p>Think of the great minds we read in Social Studies 10--Rousseau, for example. Rousseau wrote a stinging attack on civilization. He wrote against progress. Seneca, the great Stoic, said that people were as happy in animal skins as in silk. Was Rousseau telling us to do away with civilization? Was Seneca asking his fellow Romans to put on animal skins, to live in caves? <p>No. They were engaging in dialogue; they were making serious points. They did this through rhetoric in the very best sense. <p>You can disagree with John's tone. You might think he didn't dwell enough on his good memories of Harvard. Okay. <p>What about his main points? Isn't he on to something? And if so, what? <p> <p> <p> <p> <p> <p> <p> <p> <p>Considering

A note from the underground in the class war. Thanks to the author, both for the piece and the riotous commentary it inspired. When it hurts too much, laugh.

Shannon Kelly (see above, 31 July 2008) testifies to her background of growing up in near dire economic straits (a flight attendant mother and a largely unemployed, drug-addicted father). Harvard helped rescue her with a generous financial aid package. She then sneers at the claim that Harvard has an awful record at bringing working-class students to the Crimson university, as she laughs at data from 1986 showing that only 5 percent of the student body came from a working-class background (compared to data showing that Oxford University had 2-5 times as many working class students for most of the postwar period). She chuckles contemptuously: “As an aside, I love the comment about the composition of the student body in 1986 – very up-to-date.” <p>OK, Shannon, as you suggest that John Summers and others are largely full of crap because you and other economically disadvantaged students received big support from Harvard …. For the 2001-2002 academic year, Donald Heller of Penn State studied the percentage of students with Pell grants, which goes to students approximately in the bottom 40 percent of income. According to Richard Kahlenberg’s summary for The Century Foundation, “Pell recipients constituted 32 percent of students at UC Berkeley and 24 percent at Smith – levels many times higher than…. Harvard (7 percent).” <p>Former Harvard president Derek Bok and former Princeton president William Bowen in The Shape of the River (1998) reveal that at the most selective universities, 86 percent of Blacks came from the middle and upper classes. This is a remarkable outcome, given that the median African American family possessed 12 percent of the wealth of the median white U.S. family. <p>Harvard during the Lawrence Summers regime finally agreed to do more for lower-income students, but it remains to be seen how much progress will be made in the overall composition of the student body. The latest decision to give a significant boost in financial aid to families making up to $180,000 may have the unintended consequence of increasing applications from well-off professionals and squeezing out those in the bottom 40 percent of income. The jury is still out. <p>Your retort is an example of why John Summers at times seems so pessimistic: those who aggressively challenge the class-skewed system at Harvard can expect to find themselves pounced on by the relatively few winners among the poor and the lower-middle classes.

John, I would like to thank you for your commentary. <p>I was a Social Studies concentrator, '08, and your essay drew upon some very accurate observations of the ethos of careerism. This is perhaps my biggest regret regarding university -- that I did not find -- or perhaps, adequately seek -- a purer life of the mind. An uncolonized lifeword, if you will permit me. <p>I am not sure if I am more or less the student you have described. To be sure, I come from no privileged connections; I am the child of immigrants, and there is no trust fund or inheritance in store. I've had the good luck to have parents who scrimped on every personal luxury to finance my education. But I have, of course, worried about jobs, about recruiting, about careerism. I think that this has been to the detriment of the intellectual life. <p>For this reason, I beilieve that college could have been more rewarding than it was. At present, I am signed on for a banking job, I am not sure for how long. I do regret that this generation was not of the summer of love, of revolution and Blake-light tragedy. Ultimately there are some difficult questions we must all ask, that can only be resolved in the interior life. <p>I'd like to apologize -- for myself and for any peers who will be spoken for -- for the ethos that so many of us perpetuate.

Those who have chimed in with their own personal experiences, as Daniel Moses suggests, don't necessarily help us understand the underlying crisis at elite American universities these days. Although my own experience as an '08 grad in Government (which, as an undergraduate concentration, is probably best described as Social Studies' bastard brother) colors my perspective, I think we need to look at the searing indictments of American higher education in the context of larger trends. <p>First of all, I sincerely doubt that what's going on at Harvard is unique. Though amplified by Harvard's prestige, these patterns are likely occurring at comparable institutions across the country. Ad hominem attacks on Mr. Summers, founded or unfounded, miss the opportunity to address more pressing concerns. <p>Second, to vilify the degenerate students or extol the virtuous exceptions betrays a complete misunderstanding of our historical moment. If Summers' characterization of the average elite undergraduate captures something close to reality (and I believe it does), what has spawned this attitude, and what systemic changes might reform it? A pervasive sense of entitlement, anti-intellectualism, market fundamentalism, acquisitive materialism, and other defining traits stem from a variety of factors outside the university as well as within it. We would do best to focus on the causes rather than the all-too-apparent effects: careerist students and placid campuses. <p>I suggest that the only real solution lies in the hands of courageous university administrators and department heads, who for too long have kowtowed to the demands of growing their endowments and have ignored the responsibility to mold young minds into responsible global citizens. Asking students or their parents to "shape up" won't cut it, nor will asking our society or its government to change its value system or overcome the structural impediments to progress. University presidents have shown in recent history that unilateral reforms (or gaffes) can have windfall effects on the entire system. At some point, the number of pieces like Mr. Summers' will reach critical mass, and administrators will react. I admire Mr. Summers for contributing to the rising pressure, and I hope that he and other dissatisfied parties--whatever your diagnosis of higher education's current ills--continue to speak out. <p>And now, a trivial point on grade inflation. The fact that elite universities have inflated their grades, insofar as it reflects subservience to the ethos Mr. Summers has described, should trouble anyone. Universities should be consistently raising the bar, rather than lowering it. Mathematically, however, I want to suggest that grade inflation doesn't really do anything beyond compressing the scale. <p>If the range of grades compresses from 0.0-4.0 to 2.5-4.0, all anyone needs to do is adjust their expectations of what value corresponds to a given score. Since colleges compute GPAs to the thousandth's decimal place, a prospective employer or graduate school can compare applicants at a high degree of specificity. GPAs are intramural comparisons, and all one has to do is look at some summary statistics for a given class year to see where a particular graduate stands. For the most part, a conscientious employer or graduate admissions officer won't privilege an Ivy League slacker over someone who has worked hard and overcome more from a less prestigious school. <p>Here's a biting example: my own GPA, which would be considered very high by national standards, was not high at all compared to my peers in my graduating class. As a result, I am sitting here writing this comment in between job applications, instead of preparing for any of the competitive fellowships and graduate programs to which I unsuccessfully applied.

The John Summers piece rings true. <p>And the number of angry respondents who so obviously miss the point of his article tend to support the points he was making. <p>If we assume they are quite intelligent people it seems that we can't dispense with the concept of ideology just yet.

Talking about grades, the following may amuse you. I was present at my daughter's graduation at Leiden, The Netherlands, back in 2000. About 200 parents and friends of the graduands were present. As each student was called up to receive his or her scroll from the dean, the official text describing their attainment or grade, you might say, was read out. Pretty unexciting most of them, perhaps, until one was read out for a young man: "Not entirely undeserved" was the comment or grade inscribed on his degree!

My husband left an Ivy League university because he found the snobbishness stifling. I was accepted at the same school and am just as glad I didn't have the financial means to attend!

A comment and a question: The New Left did not occupy universities to "protest against the bureaucratic hollowness of examination rituals and grading rationales." The reasons included protest against the Vietnam War, against university participation in military research, and (at Columbia) predatory real estate ventures in the surrounding black community. <p>Question: Would Mr. Summers be able to make similar comments about students of science?

Alan Dershowitz is the Felix Frankfurter Professor of Law at Harvard Law School. Does any school have lower standards?

Someone upthread said, "The great thing about that environment, which I miss terribly, is that each student went about his or her daily life sincerely believing that, for better or for worse, he or she can and would change the world. I don't think of that as a sense of entitlement." <p>Worse than entitlement, it's a supreme form of deluded self-absorption. Having spent 20-odd year being told by everyone around him how wonderful he is, the student now believes that he will be the person who will make a change the world will recognize -- *I* will change the world. Me. Wonderful, unimitable me. <p>As for the loud protests that the author's comments don't apply to them, this is a common phenomenon that, despite their Social Studies, they don't recognize when it applies to them. Accuse a police department of corruption, and inevitably two or three honest and self-righteous cops will defend the entire Brotherhood in Blue with solemn claims that not ALL of them are corrupt. Say that Muslims have a terrorism problem, and again you'll get the angry voices of a few, arguing that not ALL Muslims are terrorists, as if that ever was the claim in the first place. <p>The idea that you can't say anything about something unless it applies absolutely 100% is a natural extension of the post-modern softheadedness that insists we can't know anything, and of which we see far too much in today's college campuses.

All the whining claims that the author's opinion is wrong or misguided seem to lend more credence to his point: the student's sense of entitlement. <p>Even the critiques drawing from personal experience where the student worked in the library and is now pursuing some common, public sector job, sacrificing glorious wealth for 'doing good' miss their own claim inherent in that statement! They COULD be making millions, but they have given that up for the more righteous path. Is that not an enormous sense of entitlement?

I found most interesting the author's claim that the pressure on him to give no grade lower than a B limited his "academic freedom". Seems like nonsense. Academic freedom has to do with teaching. Grading has nothing to do with teaching and is a purely bureaucratic business. If the college administration instructed him to give no grades at all, would this limit his "academic freedom" ? <p>A whiney, unpleasant piece.

Just wanted to add my two cents--I was a TF at Harvard for 3 years, and I saw a lot of what the author saw. Yes, great kids, too, but I was there when the grade inflation scandal broke, and it is ridiculous. Even in the 80's, when I was a prep-school/Ivy kid, we knew that if you horsed around and did the minumum, you got a C (a "gentleman's C," we called it). By the time I was teaching there, anything less than a B+ was an insult. <p>I was also struck by how many students told me that in their 4 years at Harvard they'd never had a prof or a TF ask them for their opinion--they had learned to just regurgitate what their teacher wanted. So the endless loop of mutual A+'s. <p>I also thought the reaction of some of the Harvard kids on here was typical (and hilarious)--that Summers must have been jealous to write such a thing, that he really was just mad he wasn't made a professor. Very typical snottyness--"I run the world and if you question me you're just jealous." <p>Oh, and by the way, my family's been going to Harvard since the late 17th century; one of my ancestors helped found the place. I have no jealousy of people who went there or teach there.

As a College alumnus about to complete my PhD at the GSAS, I want to point out two things: <p>1) The author was an adjunct lecturer, by definition the academic dregs <p>2) Social Studies attracts the smarmiest and most self congratulatory students -- maybe less crass than Ec or a shade smarter than Gov, but no one Harvard would be proud of. <p>I did enjoy some great turns of phrase and find the diagnosis of the Social Studies set spot on.

I teach at one of Harvard's peer institutions, and a lot of this discussion rings very true for me. Summers's complaint, I must say, is almost certainly justified; anyone who teaches this class (yes, class!) of students has similar experiences, and the apathy of the truly privileged can be very hard to deal with for teachers who are neither wealthy nor blase. And the comments here are familiar as well, offering many of the familiar defensive rationalizations and presenting the polished self-image of the accomplished thinker that these institutions cultivate in their students -- far more than they cultivate the reality. <p>One commenter asked: <p>"Forget privilege, forget entitlement, forget money and promises thereof. If you believe in learning for learning's sake, where else can you go but the place that will attract those as demanding of themselves as you have become of yourself?" <p>This was meant to suggest that Harvard is the last bastion, and if not there, we have nowhere to turn. But there is a real, non-rhetorical answer to this rhetorical question: ***the liberal-arts college***. In my experience as a student and a teacher there is a vast difference between the cultivated passivity of the undergrads at even the elite large universities and the culture of intellectual engagement of students at even pretty ordinary small colleges. There's a big gap between the campus cultures of the two kinds of institutions, and I have no trouble believing that Harvard students are much less engaged and active students than those at the good SLACs -- in fact, as an undergrad I had peers who'd transferred away from Harvard to my unprestigious SLAC for exactly this reason.

Very interesting. But these comments are very self-revelatory too. There is almost no humor in them. Is that sacrificed at a place such as Harvard? If so, do you think they even realize how hilarious some of these comments are---oh so precious! Maybe they all need a few years at a really bad state, or private, university. They have it pretty good there. Why don't they wake up and smell the....Are they allowed to say they are having a good time, learning a lot or a little, and wouldn't trade it for any other experience at this time in their lives? I am not sorry for any of them. This is the time when you can experiment with everything. It will not happen again. Enjoy it! You might have really wasted your time, such as someone I know did at Michigan, working on The Michigan Daily. All he learned was how to write a 30A headline, and it took FOUR hours. Somehow, he enjoyed it.

People - stop writing responses that are longer than the article in question, nobody has the time or patience for it. This is not an essay final, be pithy or be gone.

Great article--and of course it's not just Harvard that exploits the hell out of non-tenure track staff. Would that the students might march for fair wages on campus someday. <P>Professor Faust at Harvard could show real leadership by waging a real campaign against grade inflation, especiallyin the humanities. Think of it as a social justice issue, rather than an academic freedom issue. Those of us who teach at public universities feel pressed to give higher grades because our students, or some of them, want to go to the same law/med/grad schools as Harvard grads and their private school peers (yes I know that grade inflation first hand and am ashamed). It seems unfair to hold our public students to appropriately high standards when they must compete against a grade-inflated elite.

From afar Harvard appears as a colossus beset by the temptations of a colossus including the possession of a huge endowment compounding tax free in perpetuity. <P>To Harvard's credit is their invitation to have Aleksandr Sollzhentzin speak at their 327th commencement. In so far as Harvard and our institutions of higher learning are capable of understanding his message on that day, they remain great institutions.

"Let me begin by admitting that I am (a Harvard grad/a Harvard undergraduate/the sister of a Harvard man/etc.)..." <p>Almost to a person, you defend Harvard as if it were a church under siege. How incredibly boring you all sound. Was this article forwarded rapidly to your harvard.post email accounts with subjects like "idiot" and "peon"? <p>Dweebs.

On that day in the late '80s when I decided to decline my admission to Harvard, I had to wonder if I'd made a big mistake. Everything I've heard from Cambridge in the intervening two decades tells me I did not. <p>Instead, I went for a top-notch midwestern school (Carleton) where -- for $5000/year less -- all my classes were taught by professors. We had grade inflation, too, but nothing like the "my sh*t smells like roses" phenomenon you have there in the self-described Ivy League. One of our profs famously shredded a sub-par paper and returned it to its author in a plastic baggie. Self-impressed 18-year-olds need a little more of that, these days (and by "these days," I include the days during which I myself was a self-impressed 18-year-old). <p>Harvard is a luxury brand, like Hermes. If you think a silk scarf is worth thousands of dollars because the ads tell you it is, then by all means, write that check. <p>(PS: Whenever someone drops the "H-Bomb" when applying for a job with my company -- a major MSM outlet -- it tends to blow up in his face. I prefer to hire a kid who has something to prove.)

A friend's mother directed me to this article just as I was about to take a chemistry placement exam for the upcoming batch of Harvard freshmen. Admittedly, not having yet attended Harvard myself, I cannot comment on any apparent "ethos" of the student body. Yet I can say that the rising freshmen, current students, and alumni that I have met are a diverse group of people, interested in art, natural sciences, engineering, anthropology, music, medieval history, architecture, mathematics; few have the Wall Street mentality that Summers seems to describe. Will that change, courtesy of Harvard's supposed emphasis on careerism and putative lack of attention to learning for learning's sake? Perhaps, for some, but I am sure that there will be just as many research scientists, teachers, public service figures, artists -- if not many more -- that emerge from the Class of 2012 than money-grubbing, heartless investors and hedge fund managers. <p>It seems to me that Summers arrived at Harvard with an apparent disregard for the historical make-up of the United States' oldest colleges. Some, like Harvard, Yale, and Princeton had for more than two centuries remained ivy-cloaked bastions of privilege, to which only the very rich or very well connected held the keys. Had Summers taught a seminar at Harvard in the 1920s, there is no doubt he would have found an abundance of people single-mindedly focused on scaling the ladders of success, all infused with a quixotic confidence in market capitalism, or at least the fruits of success that their families' backgrounds would guarantee them. With relatives of Carnegie, Rockefeller, and the Roosevelts sitting across from him at the seminar table, no doubt Summers would have felt even more disgusted than he appears in the present article. <p>With the Ivy League's traditionally old money heritage in mind, then, it speaks wonders that nearly 50% of the Class of 2012 consists of minorities, and 51% require financial aid, many of whom come from families that earn less than $40,000 a year, thus exempting them from having to pay for tuition and room and board. The residuals of the privileged character of American higher education are still present, and perhaps Summers managed to catch the worst of it, but there is no doubt that the top schools in America are attracting student bodies that are more diverse than ever, multifarious in their interests and eventual career pathways and backgrounds. This, after a quota on Jews that existed throughout the first half of the twentieth century, and the supposed quota on Asians of the 1980s and 90s. <p>Higher education in America, at Harvard or elsewhere, is not perfect. Careerism may be more pronounced now than ever (and who can blame students for wanting lives of material success and luxury, considering the explosion of opportunities they have compared to what existed in their parents' days?), but intellectual inquiry and true academic advancement is as strong as it has ever been. <p>It seems strange to bring attention to a supposed symptom of a small fraction of America's college students (Harvard's student body makes up 0.4% of the total number of American college students) when much grander problems on the American higher education scene exist, including, but certainly not limited to, the competition students face from their counterparts in China, India, and the former Soviet bloc, as well as the ever-more slippery grasp the United States seems to have on its monopoly on innovation and industry. This article, by making a hackneyed gripe at an often-assaulted minority (the privileged and the rich) diverts attention from the greater problems of the day.

John D: <p>WHICH "crazy professor at Dartmouth"? <p>The problem extends far beyond Summers's observations. (By the way, when did the Britishism "spot on" displace the American "on target"?) <p>I was part of an alumni movement that wanted to mend some fundamental problems at Dartmouth--such as administrative bloat, the unholy deal that produces grade inflation (and penalizes learning), and the development of a curriculum that increasingly tends to be be shaped by the career-building of faculty more than by the real educational needs of students. We enjoyed some initial success (due to an 1891 contract between alumni and the board of trustees that made half the board subject to elections by alumni). This frightened the alliance of plutocrats and the administration that pandered to them in exchange for power. The alumni insurgency was smeared as archly right wing, seeking to enact a "hidden agenda." Eventually, this year, the propaganda succeeded. We, the insurgents, were blasted as anti-gay, anti-black, anti-Native American, anti-female, anti-Hispanic, and anti-Asian. There was absolutely no basis for any of these calumnies, but Dr. Goebbels did know something about how to manipulate the mass mind, so we lost election, and the contract was voided.

I confess to not reading the latter half of comments, but here goes anyhow: <p>1) Some students from Harvard, etc., seem to think that having 30% of the class go straight to Wall Street is low. This is madness. How many graduates of my school, a state university in the west, do you think go to Wall Street? Similarly (and more broadly), some respondents imply that having 30-40% of the student body be entitled scum is acceptable. It is not! Summers is not saying that all at Harvard are as he writes, but that too many of them are. 30% is far, far too many -- much more than the critical mass needed for their privileged attitude to distort teaching and learning at a school. <p>2) Another defense of Harvard and other elite schools is that grade inflation happens everywhere. This is almost certainly true. I bet you not less than 30% of grades at artificially deflationary Princeton are A's. And inflation is certainly a problem at my school. But in the department I've TA'd in, it isn't. We flunk students right and left. One teacher's distribution curve is a downward slope. Most approach normal. The kids do just as much screaming and scheming and threatening to get their grades overturned, but to no avail. As one poster said, it is the administration that is to blame if instructors grades are overruled by students.

John writes well. The phrases are melodic, the diction impressive, the attitude distinctive. His style reminds me of Leon Wieseltier's or Christopher Hitchens's, and many other accomplished and widely read public intellectuals who write about culture, religion, war, etc., and the ways and reasons most people around them fail to see things clearly, usually by being formed by large social forces that perpetuate illusions about society. It's fun to read these writers; they are mental impressionists who feature strong conviction and phrase-making. They give us all a thing to respond to right away with our own mental impressions. Summers's piece is, in other words, entertaining; good writing is like a good action movie -- a pleasure to behold (and perhaps to analyze for its own ideological structure). But why in the world would anyone take it seriously as anything more than an entertainment intended to advance the literary career of its author? I am amazed that so many people have taken the thing at face value on ANY level, e.g., about John's personality, Harvard's legitimacy, the connection between education and capitalism, and so on. Everyone keeps insisting that the piece is about one of those things, rather than about Summers's legitimate desire to write well and be read, in this case by stirring controversy in an obvious way, with an old charge, to a baitable audience. The form is the content: a writer writes lovely phrases that refer to their own loveliness, nothing else. Similarly an artist may paint a pretty picture that directs us to its prettiness. Why/how would anyone defend or attack that? The piece obviously doesn't say anything worth arguing about EITHER way. There is no evidence, there is no methodology, there are no explicit premises tied to discrete conclusions -- in short, the piece lacks the bare essentials required to mean or say anything that could be evaluated or adjudicated. So why not conclude that meaning or saying something worthy or capable of analytical response is not its purpose in the first place? It is a stream of lovely sentences that say, taken togehter: look at me, I write really well. And it is true, John's essay is the best written thing in the stream. Does it really claim to say anything more than, "I am entertaining, read my book"? Manifestly not. And in response, has anyone really said anything more than, "I am outraged/happy/poor/important/eloquent, look at me"? Hilariously, all this immedaite reactivity is in response to a complaint about "lazy" thinking. Nearly everyone in the stream seems to write well and have strong feelings, which is great. Summers and his respondents have this in common; the rest is a means to the end of expression. Many people want to write and be read, and that seems a perfectly fine thing. But surely nothing else of subtance has emerged in this whole debate by any standards taught at Harvard or anywhere else. As far as I can tell, everyone is just telling a truth, nothing that is said is "wrong" or falsifiable; yet they keep using these ideas in writing. How could so many people agree to speak intelligently about a thing and mistake what is really going on in the agreement? <p>[It's funny to anticipate someone replying to this by saying, "You are doing the same thing, your letter about how we just want attention is nothing more than your attempt to get attention." Well of course it is! But at the same time, it is more honest about its intentions and scope, and might, we can only hope, change the subject from this dreary stuff about Harvard and Summers to something more fun or interesting.]

I am struck by how many of those who attack the article do so by saying "Harvard isn't like that because I am not like that, and, therefore, Harvard is not like that. Furthermore, this proves that Harvard is the opposite of Summers claims. Indeed we don't have a sense of entitlement or a sense of superiority and the only reason he thinks we do is because he wasn't good enough (unlike us) to be a true Harvardian." I particular love the wonderfully revealing line that only 40% of Harvardians go to Wall Street!! Already you can see the successful interpellation and incorporation of "outsiders" as they become Harvardians. As Deresiewicz said in the article someone linked to, the function of Yale/Harvard/Princeton etc. is to produce alumni of said insititutions.

I think Summers is only stating his employment situation to signify the degree to which Harvard's reputation encourages people to accept insecure circumstances in exchange for being able to list Harvard on a c.v. <p>That said, the gall of the students current and former who defend the place is really remarkable. 4 Marines! Wow!!! Such dedication to service. And only 40% go *straight* to Wall Street... others stop at Teach for America while they draw from trust funds before they head to a law school, remember. <p>The notion of "service" has been so watered down by these entitled brats that they really have no idea what it means to sacrifice. Except for the Marine, they've never operated without a safety net below them. They can't fail, yet they're desperate to sound heroic. <p>At least on a resume.

This has been worryingly addictive to read—partly due to the outraged tone and rich color of many of the comments, but also because I’m an American academic who’s spent his whole career outside the States. My background, thus, may furnish a useful perspective on this debate. I went to an Ivy-like boarding school in New England (which was terrific—no grade inflation there, and lots of enthusiasm) and then went to a very good state university in the 80s (also an excellent intellectual and social experience—state universities are, in my opinion, a great corrective to some of the problems mentioned above, since you have very broad socio-economic diversity, and healthy numbers of people mixed in who really couldn’t care less about the perfect GPA--quite refreshing). I then did my PhD at a Harvard-equivalent elite university in the UK, and have taught at top universities in the UK, East Asia, and France. Now I’m back in the UK. I have nothing at all against Harvard, but having had friends who taught there, I also don’t hold an overly idealized image of the place. <p>For a long time, I thought of the system of continuous assessment chosen by US universities as an excellent way to make students do work. By contrast, it’s possible, though very difficult, to coast through some of the work in universities like Cambridge and Oxford with their system that prioritizes grades on exams taken at the end of each year. That is to say, students can sometimes get away with not reading a few things very carefully, or at all, and then write around these lacunae in their knowledge during the long essay-type exams (which are common for most disciplines). Nevertheless, students get great educations, and this system has an important flip-side: you don’t have students clawing for grades on their papers and other assignments all the time, since there are no marks, just comments. Students are, therefore, liberated to an extent, able to go out on a limb when they feel like it, to take risks on an argument or incorporate novel material or perspective, for example, in a way that I think some GPA-conscious US students might shy away from, depending on the person. Moreover, the UK system as expressed at Cambridge and Oxford is such that teachers don’t necessarily mark the exams of the students in their tutorials in the same way that professors grade their students in US universities). Universities all over the UK, furthermore, use “external examiners” to guard against institutions rigging the system in their favor. That is, an academic from another university comes to your university and looks over some or all of the exams, encouraging lower or higher marks depending on what they find. <p>The system is by no means perfect, and there are problems with assessment and with reproduction of the elite class, if you will, in UK universities that can be troubling. But there might be a lesson there for US universities that are (apparently) plagued with difficulties in releasing students from the treadmill of grade-obsession and a narrow view of what a college education should be for. Hey, look at it this way: if US universities used some form of “external examination” system to provide a form of audit in higher education, there’d be more work for struggling young academics like Summers, too! <p>But I am also struck by the extent to which this appears to be an American problem. Shades of this entitlement, and this elitism—even (perhaps especially) regarding those who miss the point and insist that *they’re* not elites, since their parents are working class or they labor their way through college at Taco Bell or wherever—exist in other top universities in the three non-American societies where I’ve worked. But there are elements of a contemporary American malaise that we can discern in these anecdotal university tell-alls and scandals and confessions, and perhaps that dimension of critique would be a fruitful way forward. This could enhance solutions inspired somewhat by other great universities around the world. <p>I don’t think I’d ever get a job at Harvard, and after reading this thread, maybe that’s a good thing. . . ;) But I must say I agree with an earlier commenter who suggested that courageous university presidents could change the system in a way that the other participants and onlookers probably can’t. Harvard, a shining beacon of American higher education, would be a great place to start.

I'd just like to note that, as a professional working in Boston, I have contact with Harvard students on a regular basis, as interns and recent graduates working in the office. Taken as a whole, I find that these young people lack a commitment to uncredited work. Typically bright, it often takes arm-twisting to get them to perform the drab duties part and parcel to all serious work. <p>Students coming for internships and work from other area Universities are generally more willing to learn their job and work to a higher overall standard. Harvard students and recent grads tend to focus on the job description, and fulfill requirements rather than seeing the work as an expression of an overall commitment to professionalism. <p>Personal skills are definitely lacking-- while no one expects a young person to acquire poise or charm overnight, as a group they often fail to make a good impression on our clients, and more importantly, fail to understand why that impression is so bad.) <p>My temptation is to blame this trend on self-selection-- competition for entry to Harvard is so fierce, those who succeed are entirely focused on the superficial aspects of educational achievement. Primarily, though, the failure is of the faculty and administration of the school. Harvard is wealthy enough to fully fund every student who attends, but their focus is clearly on educating those who will earn it the most money, and from what I can see, they do nothing to disabuse students of the notion that their lives will be nothing but roses and bubblegum from freshman year on.

There are ordinary, curious, uncurious or partially-curious people everywhere. The "sedulous banality" of wealthy Harvard students is shared by many of the not-quite-as-rich and the not-at-all-rich. We are all sinners. The world gets by. <p>I attended a large, expensive, moderately competitive school in Boston where the only two issues that roused campus activists were why-don't-we-have-cable-in-the-dorm-rooms and can-our-one-night-drunken-stands-sleep-over-in-the-dorm-rooms. This discouraged me, but I didn't activistate for anything. <p>That saw about laws and sausages should include education, too. A lot of it is banal and most of it falls short of any kind of ideal. If there's a "life of the mind" worth pursuing, it sure sounds dippy when Daniel Aaron Moses gives us pats on the back like "Isn't it good to follow such threads of discussion and argument. Each of you could be doing a thousand different things." <p>As a teacher and a learner you can only make marginal changes and trust that they matter. (<p>Some of these testimonials remind me of "The Breakfast Club." On the surface, I may be a mindless athlete/Ivy-Leaguer- but on the inside, I'm a mindless athlete/Ivy-Leaguer with feelings!"

This story is right on the mark. The same thing happened to me at Northwestern - no money, no benefits, teaching a lot of self-satisfied students who came crying if they got a B, whether or not they actually attended class or did any of the work required. And heaven forbid if you gave a C to anybody. To be fair, I don't think the students truly realize what is happening - how the poor pay, the grade inflation, etc. Who doesn't want an A? Thanks for the story - it was a treat to read.

I see what Summers is saying. I'm at one of the 'lesser' Ivies, and I see a lot of the same things. But I think his bile against the rich and the soon-to-be-rich winds up obscuring an important point. A lot of the students I've seen are incredibly entitled, but that doesn't make them lazy or dumb. <p>On the contrary, most of them are bright (and some very, very bright) and nearly all of them accomplished and hardworking. They've spent most of their young lives achieving, and they're good at presenting (or, if you like, marketing) their achievements. At minimum, they got the attention of an Ivy admissions committee. <p>Where the entitlement kicks in is that I've met a lot of students who, in exchange for their hard work, their achievement, and their brilliance, expect to never be allowed to fail. Not only is grade inflation rampant, but we're expected to provide an endless string of second-chances, whether or not the student seems to actually understand the material. I think this is where a lot of Summers' frustration is coming from. <p>I'd like to think that once these kids hit the real world and actually have to eat the consequences of their failures, they'll grow out of this. But given the latest string of high-profile business bailouts, not to mention CEOs and politicos who keep failing up, I'm not really optimistic.

In response to Kelsey G who said, "The comments in this thread by young Harvard students and alumni serve to reinforce the author's point, of which I was originally skeptical. It's telling to watch them take such offense to anyone who question their privileged mentality. "Those young activists were my heroes and peers," indeed." <p>I don't think any of the students who have responded are denying the privilege that comes with a Harvard education. If you ask any Harvard student if he or she is privileged to attend an Ivy institution or have many doors open to them solely on account of the institution they attend, I don't think you would ever hear the answer "no". I think their point is that Summers has unfairly characterized Harvard students as all rich, spoiled, and aspiring to careers that are highly lucrative. Students who don't fit into that mold, regardless of the privilege that they clearly have because they attend(ed) Harvard, certainly do have a right to be offended by this improper characterization. If you are a Harvard student whose parents do in fact make less than $60K a year, who works in the library or cleaning toilets to pay for your education, who managed to get to Harvard despite attending an underfunded public school, or who does pursue a career in the public sector, then it makes sense to be angered by Summers' article. I think what these students are disputing is not that there is privilege associated with attending Harvard, but instead Summers' claim that all Harvard student have always been in possession of privilege (by way of their parents and connections) and that Harvard students are so consumed by their privilege that they cannot lead unselfish lives and careers.

Mr. Summers dreads the crass commercialism of higher education in our capitalist society (as embodied in certain aspects of Harvard). This seems a rather tangential attack. Perhaps he should use Marxist theory? <p>Regarding academia, it ain't all Socrates & friends sitting by the fire, discussing words of wisdom. Humanity's search for wisdom has always taken place in atmospheres hostile to learning for its own sake. Confucius and Machiavelli had to pander to princes; even Socrates swam among sophists -- this in Athens! <p>I go to a good university with a strict core curriculum (not H). I am proud, not that my school turns out many i-bankers and other careerist professionals, but that it has, by forcing every student to grapple with Plato, Rousseau, Kant and Marx, turned out a (worldwide) cadre of professionals who have wrestled with the tough questions confronting humanity.

@Ivan N. Kaye Indeed, seriousism is a bias that needs to be fought against! Yet at the same time John H. Summers clearly hits some serious nerves that need serious discussion. <p>@Lost in the midwest <p>@Harvard Alum <p>Great supplements to Summers' article! Wish I could read more of your views.. <p>It's not the grades, it's the knowledge, stupid! Grading needs to be reformed dramatically: more interaction & qualitative feedback. <p>Sad to see how many students selectively forget their acquired general knowledge to purse an unethical (asocial and unsustainable) career + not dare to change the organisation from within, fearing to be fired.. <p>THINK about this and DO something, for a CHANGE

There's a lot of truth, actually, behind the apathy and lazy self-regard of the students Summers describes, and that cannot be denied. After all, for people headed into management/ownership careers in which failure, excepting the objective kind, is not possible, what is the point of grading hard? A hard, honest grade only calls attention to the predominant role of social position in the lives and accomplishments of those thus insulted. It is, to use the term employed in the tradition-bound East (and which is eminently applicable in this context), a loss of face for the student. <p>Personally, I am shocked at the importunate manner in which Summers derides the civic values of these elite students -- "the meaning of liberty lies in the personal choice of consumers; free competition in goods and morals regulates value; technological progress is an unmixed good; war is unfortunate." If we have to have an elite, aren't these the values we would want them to have? Certainly I, for one, would prefer to pay out my villeinage at a manor where my right to spend the remainder as I see fit goes unquestioned. <p>So, quit your b&*%hing Summers, put together a nice little syllabus on "Friedrich Hayek and His Extraordinary Relevance to Life and the Pursuit of Happiness," and get your butt back in the game! <p>Note to "Jon" above: You just used 31 words to say "shut up." Rather prolix, don't you think?

Better defunct than adjunct.

Thank you Mr Summers for opening confronting one more big lie.

Hey Mr Summers, if you think adjuncting at elite schools is demoralising, try doing at 'run of the mill' schools. Having taught at both (in the UK and Canada) I can tell you, entitlement is not limited to those 'to the manor born'. 'Poor' people seem to 'deserve' a degree too, even if they are unable to attend lectures, write essays, or pass exams due the hardships of their circumstances. <p>At one 'non-elite' institution where I was an adjunct, I was required to work beyond my contracted time frame so that I could develop new exams and grade them 'until all my students passed'. Clearly, from a market perspective, the message was clear: in order to maximise my own return on investment, it would best if I only had to write one exam and mark only one set of answers. <p>Let's be frank: teaching is not what contemporary universities are about anyway. Tenured staff avoid it like the plague: research is the key to promotion, so they spend their time looking for the grail of 'buyout' grants, 'outsourcing' the teaching load (undergraduate, and increasingly, postgraduate) to 'tutorial fellows' and adjuncts. Paradoxically, this is more the case at elite schools, where the big names are used on the marketing material to attract fee-payers, but most of the instruction is done by eager grad students or postdocs looking for experience (there is no money, so experience is all that can be gained). <p>Where is the joy in teaching to be found? In the 'one or two' students per class who care, who are excited, who are interested. They ask questions, stick around after class to debate and discuss material, they visit during office hours to discuss essays, etc. They come from all walks of life and often do not get A++ grades. Those rare students who seek an education, and not a CV entry, make it worthwhile. <p>It is my experience that more of these were to be found at the elite institutions, at least the ones where I taught. Perhaps this is because they didn't have to run off to take care of a MacJob or a child in daycare, or whatever.

Are there good and active questions coming from any large campuses? <p>@Anonymous academic - I agree that SLAC's constitute a return to the important specificity that we need. I studied at a very particular institution that instilled the wants I didn't know I wanted, ordering my desire in ways that helped me skirt particular elements of savage capitalism. <p>@Paul Lachelier - Important points, take it a step further, sponsor schools outside the U.S. <p>@cheerfulchap - Not a fair move, do not relegate words to the useless art of self-flattery, that may be your motive but don't project please. I think real debate can happen - there are links from this thread to further engagement. <p>Education for wisdom will return, perhaps not in ivy league institutions, but it might be found in schools where profs make less than six figures and the administration isn't bought.

This is all pretty funny. As a TA working on my M.S. in a physical science at a state school, and RI however, I tried not to laugh when students dropped by my office (always after tests or papers were returned) hoping to talk their grade up. Once I heard the "but I'm paying for this degree" and quickly interrupted (admittedly, as all mathematicians fall prey to at one time or another, I was probably overcaffeinated) with, "NO you are NOT paying for a degree, you're paying for the possibility of EARNING a degree if you apply lots of hard work and make, ocassionally, some sacrifices out of your busy social life, dear sir." <p>Ironically, it seems I'm about to lose my TA position precisely for getting bad evals. from students caught plagiarizing. The market mentality exists and I dare say it seems to be worse at state schools than the Ivies from the range of interesting characters I've met and corresponded with over the last few years. <p>However, what inspired me to be so militant about fighting the "market mentality" of higher education? A philosophy prof. who taught at Harvard for years. He had a habit, you see, of only giving out ONE A per semester, no matter how many classes he taught! It was wild. People tried everything, when they weren't THE A getter, to get more points here...there...everywhere. The man never did. I was the A getter 3 semesters in a row and am currently working on getting 7 papers published, a couple that I wrote for him. He said "You need to be at a school with students on your level, like Harvard. Get these papers published pronto!" Still working on that bit... Anyhow, fight the career mentality. Why have a career when you can live a life of the mind and enjoy it?

One reason this criticism sounds hollow is that the author decries grade inflation and careerism, but does not have much to say about the quality of the students or their later contributions to the world around them. Sure there is something unappealing about "the rich" and young people who are constantly conscious of investments, but I don't quite see how this is necessarily mutually exclusive with intellectual curiosity, integrity, and so on. Indeed, 'aggressive exercise of ones talents' seems like a quality all universities should cultivate. <p>Also, I don't really catch the point of this statement: "I was drawing an annual salary of $15,500 (£7,700) and borrowing the remainder for survival in Cambridge, in order that he might be given the best possible education."

milhouse .. yo ..

Real grades can be earned in real courses like math, chem., physics, and dancing! If it's learned the grades are earned. You live the life!

The criticisms of Summers as bitter and having an axe to grind are certainly apt; but Summers' indictment of the true function of Ivy League institutions--namely to provide an 'elite' degree for the children of the wealthy--is no less apt. The entire situation is ugly, and it is an ugliness born of the social and economic roles these kinds of institutions play (and have played for centuries). There are plenty of hard-working middle-class students at Harvard who are just seeking a high quality education and who want to make a difference in the world, but that is all peripheral to the role Harvard continues to play in the American--or, these days, global--class system. The institution is well enough endowed to admit only the best and brightest and charge no tuition whatsoever. It does not do so because it's purpose is not, and never has been, to educate the best and the brightest. I do not believe Summers could have been ignorant of what he was getting into when he took that teaching position, and that is part of what I find so appalling about Summers' diatribe--the fellow sought out a teaching position at Harvard for the prestige it would confer on his own CV, and he has the temerity to complain about essentially the same behavior from his students?

Why are faculty salaries so low at Harvard? I heard a Stanford engineering professor chortle drily, "They pay low salaries because they expect you to want to go there for the prestige. So they attract the kind of people who want to go to Harvard for the prestige."

The howls of outrage from those who took exception to Professor Summers' comments on his time at Harvard appear to come from those who simply chose to ignore his argument and the statements he made to support it. As someone who worked in a similar environment, though with different responsibilities, what he has described in his article hit the mark. <p>As a university administrator and as a parent, I have had the opportunity to observe at close quarters the phenomena which Summers encountered at Harvard. For several years, I served as a Tufts' freshmen advisor, which included participation in seminars that were largely carried by the students themselves. For the most part, I liked my advisees personally, which only made my fears more acute about how seamlessly they absorbed the underpinnings of the status quo. As a product of the 60's, I wanted to challenge their self-satisfaction more directly, but realized that in doing so, I would only come across as a time traveler from another galaxy that could only disrupt the proceedings for which they had primary responsibility. <p>The vast majority of my advisees were from highly privileged backgrounds, and those who were not, for the most part, could not wait to join the ranks of those who were. Unlike their more affluent colleagues, however, they had a dawning awareness that a painful apprenticeship was in store for them, as they not only needed the ambition to advance, but the skills already possessed by those who had been born to the cloth. <p>Just how removed from the common folk these individuals were became apparent to me during my first tour of duty as a freshmen advisor. We were all attending the final class of the semester, just before the intersession recess, and during a break, several of the students discussed their holiday plans. I was astonished by what they were anticipating. Skiing trips to New England, Colorado, and Europe, sailing in the Caribbean, family reunions in exotics ports-of-call. No one discussed working over the holiday to accumulate a little spending money for the next semester. <p>My worries about the easy assumptions made by undergraduates who attend our finest higher educational enclaves were reinforced when my own children went to college, both of whom were work-study students. One attended Columbia and the other Johns Hopkins. Their student colleagues were, for the most part, overwhelmingly wealthy, and armed with an uncritical assurance that the world was their oyster. Applying themselves to the academic challenges before them was a metric that served to justify their place in the cosmos. I had the opportunity to meet many of them, speaking with some at length about their studies, career ambitions, and a range of other topics including their political perspectives. In a number of cases, I was able to follow the directions they took through college and beyond. John Summers' observations about the prevailing student winds at Harvard fit the conditions which I found at Hopkins and Columbia like a glove. <p>It is not useful to pillory the "best and the brightest" students for not being more communal, less materialistic, less fixated on their careerist ambitions. They are drawn from those very elements of American society which have so skewered our culture. How could they feel otherwise? <p>An important question which I think Summers' article raises is whether institutions like Harvard can provide a more challenging learning environment as long as its student population is top heavy with those drawn from the families of the rich and powerful.

Summers should start reading pessimism then he wouldnt be so disappointed when his face is shoved into reality. It sounds like Summers was under the delusion that Ivy kids are all governed by the wonder that plato attributes to *philosophers*, or even the more radical Dionysian questioning espoused by herr nietzsche. <p>People who gain admission to Ivy schools are not there because they love wisdom and/or have iconoclastic guts, these are the kids that from elementary school have been following the rules with exceptional prowess and have been overly cognizant of what their college application is going to look like; it should not be a suprise that once they get into a college that will look good on their resume, they want to beef up the resume to procure a great sounding career. If you lack a great sounding career, how are you ever going to get a hot money loving girl, or do really great coke? How will you ever emancipate yourself from the god awful middle class or be able to authentically chant cliched shibboleths? To put this in career-speak, "these erudite children carefully, and with superlative sophistication, navigated the proper channels and operated within extant mores created by a society to achieve remarkable success within that society." Ok well not really I need more badly placed commas, but you get the idea. <p>I think the only fault of Summers is that he went looking for genius in the sheep-pen, and instead of finding the humble, halcyon Socrates breathing duclet athenian wisdom, he found some peevish sheep who managed to convince themselves that they were wolves in gold and tyrian purple fur. <p>ps the Tardvard angst is classic, and Summers should be given some of their loot for trolling them. <p>A++ sire.

John, <p>Given your resentment toward your students, I, as a current Harvard undergraduate, am quite glad that you weren't extended anything beyond a lectureship. You sound like a miserable teacher who should stick to criticism, or some other non-creative job. It's people like you that make the undergraduate educational experience worse. You sound bitter and, frankly, pathetic. <p>And what would you have students at 'elite' universities do? Perhaps taking low-wage, low-prestige jobs would be more to your liking? Funnily, their counterparts shoot for the same jobs, though with less success. Do you hold it against them, too? <p>Your article poses nothing but criticism, while providing no vision for a better reality. Without providing tenable, constructive alternatives, your criticisms are pretty lame. <p>Separately, the fact that you would identify Kushner by name in your article is in incredibly poor taste. I really couldn't believe it. Do you have any integrity, as someone who professes to want to teach? <p>Get a life, man. And stop hating on people because they have happier, probably more fulfilling lives than you.

Since the beginning of Western Civilization there has been the moneyed and their children, and there has been the moneyed children's underpaid tutors. <p>On occassion those tutors produced a Tolstoy, Byron or Nabokov, most of the time they simply produced more grist for the millhouse, children who bought newspapers, bought real estate or started the C.I.A. <p>Unless there is another "revolution" why would the author - so studied in politics, history, and economics - expect it be any other way?

Since the beginning of Western Civilization there has been the moneyed and their children, and there has been the moneyed childrens' underpaid tutors. <p>On occassion those tutors produced a Tolstoy, Byron or Nabokov. Most of the time they simply produced more grist for the millhouse, children who bought newspapers, bought real estate or started the C.I.A. <p>Unless there is another "revolution" why would the author - so studied in politics, history, and economics - expect it be any other way?

Someone above requested a terse comment (presumably, given the "essay final" reference, from one of the many Harvard undergrad respondents). Here. <p>At least some of us did not miss the point of the article, and are concerned not about Summers' reasonable point so much as the unreasonable attitudes it will evoke. <p>Just like everyone else we prefer to be judged as individuals rather than stereotyped as monsters. Summers covered his ass with the last paragraph but his piece was nonetheless emotional incitement to exactly that. <p>I am eager to join the rising chorus of execration that my university so urgently needs to hear. But only when the rest of you are willing to consider exonerating us on a *case-by-case* basis. Don't deprive yourself of allies in the fight against the decline of American higher education by choosing vinegar over honey.

All we need is a national exam--quite tough--for every uni graduate--and we will see who the smart kids really are. <p>In fact, let anyone who wants to take the exams and many will opt out of formal tuition ( $$$$) at "elite" schools and just learn the stuff from books and the net. <p>This would be a TRUE meritocracy!!

grades are relative, so I don't think inflation needs to mean anything, as long as people know the distribution. A-B is inflated relative to A-F. but A-F is inflated relative to 100-0. And High Honors-Honors-Pass-Fail (like the law schools of Yale, Berkeley, and soon Stanford, I believe) is even more "inflated" than any of those. <p>when I was at Harvard College I knew that falling on the lower end of the great, seemingly gaping A-/B+ divide was quite significant. I don't think it really matters whether that divide is A-/B+ or B-/C+. it means something to the teacher and the student. when I got a B+, I knew that those getting A-'s had done much better than me. that's how grades work. <p>it's a separate question whether students at Harvard or elsewhere are focused on grades as a means to the end of securing a job or a tool for self-measurement or something else.

The author's critique of Social Studies rings false. Those people (ok, I admit I was one of them) were some of the most intellectually rigorous, curious, and creative people I met at Harvard. <p>His critique of Harvard students being monied, consistently elite in background, and concerned with consolidating socioeconomic power also seems to fit much more closely to easy stereotype than reality. <p>His critique of Harvard students' gravitation toward the capitalist professions (banking, consulting) in recent years seems true. This is a problem facing American (worldwide?) educational institutions. I'm not sure where it comes from, but it's an important problem to address. Noting that many of us at Harvard were intellectually curious, not motivated by money, or born into working class or poor families doesn't really rebut the author's point. We do need to examine what is happening in our beloved alma maters (those from Harvard and most other institutions) to discern whether there is truly a trend away from intellectual exploration or a drift toward hyperprofessionalism. Are our learning places being transformed into processing plants for the economic engine? How? Is that bad? If so, how can we stop it?

Just from the comments here, I think Harvard undergrads try way too hard to sound smart.

What a great article!! This guy is good, no seriously. He needs a chair on Larry King - or maybe he needs to expand this into a book and publish it. I'll easily make a best-seller. I can totally relate to his cynicism. I'm personally sick of these rich and their inherent sense of entitlement and instant gratification. <p>Most of them are nothing but a bunch of sacastic spoiled brats, whose only real accomplishment was being born rich. But I've got good news for all the ordinary hard-working varsity student around the world : most of these rich kids don't never make it in the real world. Most of them end up working for corporations and companies owned by their parents.

I have a few comments. <p>W.r.t. grade inflation, a friend who went to Columbia said that in an effort to combat grade inflation, transcripts show both the student's grade in a course and the mean grade for that course. I don't know whether Columbia is really doing this or not, but it's a great idea. It can show that your B- was well above average, or that your A- was rather meaningless, and maybe prevent some of the junior faculty and adjunct lecturers from having to fear repercussions of deflating grades they give. <p>W.r.t. the comment, "Where else would a smart kid go but Harvard?" posted by a Harvard student...Gag me with a spoon. You will find brilliant an amazing people both in and out of the academic bubble. If Harvardesque schools (including the ones I've been at myself) fail to teach something, it is that brilliant people can be found anywhere, and in my experience with higher ed, the smart people at the junior college are just as smart. I don't think the Ivies really teach that, but I also don't think junior colleges teach that either, hence the perceived difference in "entitlement" of the student body...(Not that some Harvard kids don't figure it out on their own, etc etc) <p>Anyway, I'll stop there.

As others have pointed out, grade inflation is not limited to elite institutions; neither is the pervasive sense of entitlement among students. I teach at a community college and have regularly clashed with students who felt they were being unfairly targetted when they received a grade of "B." This is the result of decades of gradual grade inflation at both the college and high school levels. Students now see an "A" as the grade they are entitled to for doing the bare minimum.

As a recent Harvard graduate with a degree in Social Studies, I can report that Mr. Summers has latched on to a small minority of students and projected their "careerism" onto the entire student body. Having been intimately involved in campus politics, I know that engaged students are far from the exception. Furthermore, doing good works and leading a reflective life, both in college and beyond, is not mutually exclusive with a corporate career. The only thing worse than the spoiled aspiring investment bankers are the bloviating neo-Marxists who think they are qualified to lecture anyone on anything because they scribbled some notes in the margins of "Discipline and Punish."

All this grade inflation talk makes me feel like I'm going to get screwed when I apply to grad school. I finished Harvard a few years ago with an average gpa that's probably going to be seen as less than average now, with people assuming that Bs may be equivalent to Cs, Ds, and Fs elsewhere. Anyone sat in on a Harvard orgo course lately? I took the first half of that course at a top-tier university near home. I finished with the highest grade in the 300+ person class. Then I came back to Harvard in the fall to take the second half of the course and got a B. Yes there was probably some grade inflation there too since 90% of the class got a B- or better, but I find it hard to believe that my B would have been worth a C, D or F had I continued to take the second half of the course near home. <p>If you've taken courses at different schools or taught at different schools, you'll recognize that Harvard expects a lot from its students. I had a choice. I could have been a 4.0 student somewhere else or a 3.0 student at Harvard. I picked Harvard, but I don't think I should be punished because I went to a school where people are smart and driven. I hate the fact top schools are always beat on for having high numbers of As and Bs. Those are the grades society expects from us "smart kids," and those are the grades we would have made anywhere else, would we not?

I've read far too many comments claiming Harvard and its peers to be something other than institutions that caters almost exclusively to the economic elite (think top decile of wage earners). Sorry, but Harvard is just a school full of rich kids and upper-middle class kids that don't realize that they're upper-middle class. No more than 20%, likely, 15%, are from families earning at or below the 50th percentile of wage earners. And of that 15-20%, the majority are graduates of great public or private schools (on scholarship, perhaps, but how poor can you feel if you're living at Exeter on full financial aid?). In terms of income and opportunity, schools like Harvard are strikingly homogeneous, racially and geographically diverse as they are. <p>So basically we have a few kind of students at Harvard and its peers: celebrity's kids, rich kids, upper-middle class kids oblivious to that fact that they're UPPER-middle class, and middle-class kids and working-class kids that are far more educationally privileged than the average American student. The farm-kid from an average school (and not by the Harvard, non-ranked-public-school-means-"average" definition) that graduates half its students, and send few to anywhere other than the farm; and the inner-city kid from an equally average school are nearly nonexistent and not for lack of talent or ability. <p>They're a rare student at Harvard, because merit, as defined by Harvard and its peers, is actually code for " took advantage supreme opportunity". It doesn't necessitate creating them, or bettering what's in place -- endeavors that are truly noteworthy. Indeed, the typical Harvard admit might have taken a dozen APs, have an IB diploma, did MUN, Mathletes, and Science Bowl, and joined and ran the Entrepreneurs club, but that begs an important question: how many students actually have the opportunity to try -- or even know about -- those activities? Are Harvard students extraordinary or extraordinarily privileged? A quick skim of a few Harvard graduates' high school records would lead one to believe the latter. <p>None of this is to say that Havard students aren't generally amazing people. They are. But it should be noted that they're accomplishments are aided largely by opportunities that don't exist for the majority of people. They are the best of the privileged, the best under near ideal circumstance, not the absolute best. <p>Harvard's and its peers are great schools, but let's not act as though they're something that they're not. They're not largely middle-class university intent on becoming vehicles of social mobility. They're upper-middle-class institutions intent on retaining the status quo, recruiting the rare, talented, academically inclined, working-class Joe destined to eventually join their ranks anyway. <p>At least that's what they appear to the outsider.

Summers’ entire article reeks of puling self-interest. From the first paragraph, bewailing his lack of tenure to his grumbling about having his wages cut at the New York Observer. <p>There are three points to be made: <p>1) Perhaps the lack of interest Summers experienced for his courses came from teaching students bright enough to know that the ‘anarchist’ and anti-capitalist agenda he was pushing them has been discredited for some decades and has led to misery and starvation for every nation that has tried putting such ideas into practice. <br>The children of the wealthy in the world’s wealthiest nation are well-placed to understand that markets work and anarcho-syndicalism does not. <p>2) Would his opinion of Jared Kushner have been less scathing if he had _increased_ wages for book reviewers? <p>3) If Summers does not like teaching the children of the wealthy – what was he ever doing at Harvard? I understand America always needs good teachers to go and work in the projects.

Summers's piece has a *little* of the class warfare undertones of those who like to blame the rich for all that ails. But for the most part, what he argues is not false. I'm only an occasional adjunct lecturer and seminary leader for a university of far more modest reputation than Harvard's. Yet even in those ivy-less halls, what Summers describes rings true. <p>I was taken aback the first time I announced to a class what a Member of Parliament earns in Canada -- ca. $140K -- that they reacted with murmurings such as "That's not very much!" I quickly learned that the households from which most of them came earned over $250K each year. Furthermore, most expected to earn close to if not in excess of $100K/year upon entry into the job market. <p>Grade expectations were very much as described above -- at least an 'A'-minus. I acknowledged that grade inflation was a fact of life, and that I wasn't there to rock the grade-inflation boat. However, I did let students know that I would treat their papers as if I were preparing them for publication, blue pen in hand. I told them my objective was to educate them as to what the real "grade" or standard was in "the real world" -- whether academic or otherwise. <p>Of course, this entailed far more work for me than if I had simply based my grading on a reading of their papers. Few students seemed to appreciate what I attempted to do for them. And more than a few gave significant "push back" even upon receiving that 'A'-minus! Given the number of PhDs minted in the last twenty years I've edited who clearly failed to show a grasp of even the rudiments of English -- the sentence, paragraph, and the basic rules of grammar, usage, and spelling -- I should not have been surprised. <p>All in all, I'm content to earn my living and pursue my career outside a teaching career in the university. Besides . . . "it's more lucrative!" ;-)

Well as another HBS grad from many years ago, I found the various opinions both interesting and surprisingly well written. I guess Harvard did at least either attract good writers or improve the writing skills of it's students while inflating their grades. Only a couple of points to add as a man who has raised four kids and paid lots of private school and college tuitions and is not only a past Work Study recipient but also the father of four recipients. Grade inflation currupts the whole process of education and steals the power that the faculty deserves to control the process of education with which they are charged. It is not the fault of the students, parents, faculty or the administration alone, but it is the aboragation of the responsibility of all of them together. To understand just how silly it is consider the problem of a graduate school admission committe on trying to judge the qualifications of a Harvard or many other "elite" colleges graduates for admission to their programs. With the silliness of fake grades they have no real idea what the student has learned or is capable of. It cheates the parents of their sizable tuition, it ultimately undercuts the job prospects of the graduates and it finally demeans the value of the education of it's students.

Your statement about the aggressiveness of students and grades made me laugh out of recognition of having had the same experience across the Charles, at Northeastern. A very telling and insightful essay that I, surviving on the various contracts that I can land among in-person and on-line colleges, appreciate for its dry wit and insight.