New Consciousness Review Spring 2015 | Page 57

OUR WORLD REVIEW Excellent Sheep: The Miseducation of the American Elite and the Way to a Meaningful Life By William Deresiewicz A A Call to More Democratic Higher Education Emphasizing Thinking H igher education is urgently in need of reform, ex-Yale-professor Deresiewicz explains in EXCELLENT SHEEP. America’s elite universities, including Yale, Harvard, and Stanford, are no longer the places of inner transformation they once used to be, but instead have become primarily concerned with their school rankings in US News & World Report. Now that universities are as concerned with their ranking as college-bound students have been with SAT scores, rather unfortunate trends toward grade-inflation, and admissions rejection inflation have become the norm. What Deresiewicz points out with clarity and wit is the growing gulf between student needs for genuine growth and discovery and the kind of factory processing that now occurs. A large number of elite university students, graduates, professors and administrative staff mock those who express interest in pursuing something other than the four areas of power majors comprising the majority of elite university courses of: Finance, Consulting, Medicine, and Law. Students at elite universities are so accustomed to running on an academic treadmill prior to university in order to attain the stratospheric GPAs and extra-curriculars required that they continue mindless momentum through college, often missing out o