"The Point Is Not What You Do but Why You Do It"

"The whole system is driven by the admissions process at elite private colleges. So I would start by reforming the admissions process to encourage curiosity, risk-taking, and independent-mindedness rather than hoop-jumping, conformity, and credentialism. But the fact is that elite private colleges will only ever go so far. They will always favor the affluent, if only because they have to. What we really need to do is make them irrelevant by creating free or low-cost high-quality public higher education. And the fact is that we did this once, in the decades after World War II. Look at what the University of California once was: the greatest public system in the world. And there were also terrific systems in Wisconsin, Michigan, Virginia, North Carolina, and other states. Now we have allowed them to fall into decay, and simply because we’ve refused to continue to make the financial commitment required to sustain them.

"But parents and kids can't wait for the rest of us to get our act together. Believe me, I understand that it isn’t easy. I understand that parents are worried about their children’s future. But we have to look at what we're doing to our kids. We have to have the strength to raise them to care about something other than 'success' in the very narrow terms in which it's come to be defined. I'm not saying you can have it all: In fact, that's one of my biggest messages in the book. You have to choose. Parents already tell their kids to 'do what you love' and 'follow your dreams.' But kids know that they don't really mean it, that what they really want is status and success. Well, we have to really mean it."

Rebecca Schuman at Slate interviews William Deresiewicz about his new book, Excellent Sheep: The Miseducation of the American Elite and the Way to a Meaningful Life.


And in The New Republic, Deresiewicz defends his views from critics (such as Steven Pinker).