Educational Elite

Graduate-bot says what?

I've been thinking a lot about school lately. In fact, I've been thinking about higher education, Ivy-league and otherwise, since before I finished undergrad. I'm not talking academics, here, because I've been thinking academics since forever. My official membership in the Nerd Herd was granted in high school, and I keep the flame burning in my adult life by making grammar jokes and geeking out about fonts on the regular.

No, I'm talking about something far more insidious, something which I'll call "Schooling." I started thinking about this before the end of high school, when I was applying to colleges. Even though I had a 4.0, high SAT scores and seven million extracurricular feathers in my hat, I knew my family couldn't afford Wellesley or Harvard, so I didn't bother applying. I picked the closest, cheapest public university. I held steadfastly to the idea that "good" schools don't equal "smart" people. And I still believe that's true with all my heart.

But a couple years out of college, I started reading a bunch of junk about class (Snobbery: The American Version, and Class: A Guide through the American Status System, among others) that adjusted my perspective. Sure, going to a "good" college doesn't make you a "good" person. But having credentials from a "better" school WILL make people perceive you as "better" - better at your job, better at thinking/living/succeeding - and you will therefore be the recipient of preferential treatment, likely advancing farther and faster than your averagely-schooled countrymen. Thus, the perception that people who went to good schools are better/smarter/faster becomes a self-fulfilling prophecy.

In true Baader-Meinhof style, my new perspective was reinforced wherever I went. My current workplace is above-average in its obsession with Schooling. My immediate supervisor not only gleefully puts down my alma mater, but includes my hometown(s), parental occupations and the part of Portland where I live as dry tinder for the fires of devaluation. Introductions to new people are prefaced with long strings of alma maters, followed by names as inessential afterthoughts.

Not me, I swear.

A recent article from The Cronicle of Higher Education took educational elitism to a whole new level, reinforcing my suspicions that it's not what you accomplish or how smart you are, but where you've been and who you know that matters in certain (powerful, rich) circles.

"Why all this prognostication?" you may ask. Outside of discourse for discourse's sake, some of you know that I've been mulling pursuing my masters for oh, say, ever. I applied to a few schools, and got into all of them. I've narrowed my choices down to two: One is close to home and dirt-cheap. The other is far away and Ivy league. So research into educational elitism is not only interesting, but personally a propos. If the coursework is the same - and I believe it is - which one do I choose? Do I follow the proletariat's path and attend the former, or "sell out" and attend the latter? Dear readers, weigh in in the comments. Do it now, lest I royally screw up my future, my credibility, or both!

*By the by, linking to these books don't equate to authorial laudability - both authors are a tad douchey, and exhibit little humanity in belittling those-of-lesser-means, which ought to be a cardinal sin in the writing world. If you can't empathize, you shouldn't storytell.