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