Is it like an “awesome”? A “lotsa”? A “cool”? A “powerful”? A “hottie”? Is it like some of these combined? All of these combined? None of these?
Is it an objective thing? When we encounter a dog, in almost any culture planet wide we know we have encountered a dog. How do we know when we encounter an “elite”? Are they everywhere, or few and far between?
Is it a strictly defined thing, or a loosely defined one?
Does an “elite” mimic other things, like “hotties”, and do other things mimic them?
If not objective, is an “elite” only subjective and relativistic?
Is an “elite” perhaps not even a thing at all, neither objective nor subjective, but rather nothing more than another iteration of contemporary popular language fashion, like the word “spendy”?
What is an “elite”?
H. M. Stuart
Alexandria
“Elite” is French in origin, and originally meant “chosen” or perhaps “select.” Now it apparently means anybody who is different from me and might conceivably think that means he’s better in some way. Or–no, it’s more complicated than that. Sports fans tend to think of classical music fans as “elite,” in spite of the fact that classical music fans are more likely to be at least moderately conversant with and comfortable with organized sports than sports fan are likely to be moderately conversant with and comfortable with classical music. In the immortal words of Columbo, help me out here, I’m confused.
I get particularly annoyed at versions of “elite” that point fingers at the eliteness of Ivy Plus colleges. On the one hand, yes, sure, they’re elite, and yes, sure, as with any such thing, some people have advantages that give them better starting odds of getting in than others. On the other hand, an Ivy Plus college is the kind of “elite” that you can’t get into without having done at least some of the work yourself. Even Chelsea Clinton wouldn’t have been admitted to Stanford if she couldn’t have produced the grades and SAT scores; it just doesn’t work that way. And I feel that people who make a big deal about the snobby eliteness of name brand schools are sometimes rather less resentful of forms of “eliteness” that didn’t have to be earned. As if the real sting of “elite” wasn’t that someone has more than you, earned or not, but that someone might actually be better than you at something.
“Even Chelsea Clinton wouldn’t have been admitted to Stanford if she couldn’t have produced the grades and SAT scores; it just doesn’t work that way. ”
I’ve heard the same thing about Obama – how he got into Columbia and Harvard solely based on his scores and grades. Problem is – all of these things are top secret. I don’t think Chelsea’s SAT scores are public either.
Speaking of which – I remember we were told that Bush is dumb. And yet, he also graduated from Harvard. Do you think Bush had high SAT scores and good grades?
“As if the real sting of “elite” wasn’t that someone has more than you, earned or not, but that someone might actually be better than you at something”
True that. Obama has a better skin color than me, and he has good political connections. I think that’s about it, I don’t think I missed anything.
“I’ve heard the same thing about Obama – how he got into Columbia and Harvard solely based on his scores and grades.”
1) I never said that Chelsea Clinton got in “solely on the basis of her scores and grades.” I said that she wouldn’t have gotten in *without* good scores and grades. There’s a difference. Stanford, Columbia, Harvard, etc., have admissions standards such that everyone who gets in has well above average scores and grades. They also take other things into account (explicitly so – I listed extracurricular activities, write essays, and go through alumni interviews in the course of getting admitted to both Stanford and Harvard).
2) I would absolutely say the same about Obama. He couldn’t have gotten into Columbia and Harvard without good scores and grades, and harder work and better intelligence than the average bear. The notion that there’s some affirmative action track to such schools that’s so low in standards that any old schmo could get in is nonsense. The reason Stanford and Harvard get high ranks from independent observers for their affirmative action programs is that *the black students that they admit graduate and go on to do good things*, unlike those schools who do their affirmative action through their athletic programs and then don’t wind up graduating those athletes.
“Problem is – all of these things are top secret.”
No, they’re not. As I’ve said before, when we touched on Ivy Plus schools and affirmative action in another thread, Stanford posts on its web site the range of SAT scores of students it admits. Though you can’t (quite appropriately, for privacy reasons) find out the scores and grades that got an individual student admitted, you can see from the range that there’s no room for a bunch of people to get admitted who were not above average in scores and grades. If you got admitted to Stanford, you were well above average in grades and scores, period.
“Do you think Bush had high SAT scores and good grades?”
Yes, I do. He wouldn’t have gotten into Yale and Harvard without them. I’ve said as much, to you directly in fact, in the past. I don’t think Bush was a good President, but I think liberal talk of his stupidity was overblown. I think his likely IQ is probably one standard deviation above that of the average person – not completely brilliant, but well above average. Lots of people are unwilling to believe that someone with different beliefs from them could possibly be intelligent. You do this with Obama – who, despite your knocks, by all evidence is quite bright – and people on the left do this with Bush.
True, I also think that Nixon (to pick an example that won’t get me charged with bias toward Democrats) was smarter than Bush; having graduated from an actual Ivy League school isn’t everything in judging relative intelligence, and I see other evidence to make me judge Nixon to have more raw intelligence (but a way more flawed character) than Bush. (Of course, Nixon graduated from Duke, which counts as Ivy Plus, but even without that, the evidence of intelligence would be there, along with, sadly, the character flaws that undid him anyway.) But there’s a minimum standard for Ivy League plus admissions, and that minimum standard is such that you don’t get in without being smarter and harder working than the average bear (though some people then loaf, and others shine, once they’re beyond parental pressure and can move toward their naturally preferred level of accomplishment).
” I listed extracurricular activities, write essays, and go through alumni interviews in the course of getting admitted to both Stanford and Harvard”
Sigh. That’s what happens when I start to rewrite a sentence and get distracted and forget to finish; I look as if I’m both being boastful about where I got admitted and stupid about grammar. Make that “I had to list extracurricular activities, write essays, and go through alumni interviews in the course of getting admitted to both Stanford and Harvard.” And, of course, there’s the part of the application where you say whether you have any alumni family members …
Ivy League degrees, in and of themselves, don’t bestow “elite” status on a person. In that regard they’re not much more than the “degree” that the “Wizard of Oz” gave the Scarecrow in that vintage film. Like ANY educational experience they are worth what the recipient puts INTO them.
Proof of that is that there are too many Ivy League failures to mention….and some of them, are among the very best of that breed.”
I think what H-A was voicing was the suspicion that HMS alluded to, that among (probably) most Americans (and almost certainly an increasing number of Americans) today there is the very strong view that few, if any, of those who govern, run Companies, investigate and deliver the news, etc. are “elite,” in any way, and very probably aren’t even among the best within their fields, or at their own chosen crafts.
Now, that perception is very real and very widespread, so ultimately, it doesn’t really matter at all, if it’s true or if it’s not. However, it’s hard to imagine such a perception becoming so widespread if there weren’t some basis of truth to it.
Of course, it does sort of come down to how each of us would define “elite.”
I’m a harsh judge of such things, so I consider the likes of Jefferson, Lincoln, Washington, perhaps Thatcher, FDR and Reagan to rise to the level of “elites” in the area of government.
Richard Feynman, Fritz Haber (the father of chemical weaponry), Benoît Mandelbrot (the father of fractals) are certainly among the many true “elites” of 20th Century science, but in science and in business there are so many exceptional achievers, many of them barely recognized in their day, most of them without the connections the self-proclaimed “elites” often use as props, that any list of “elites” in such fields will be both biased and prone to overlooking many deserving entries. In government, there are so few exceptional people that the few who stand out above average, tend to be seen as “elites.”
This widespread skepticism of “authority of opinion” or so-called “expertise” is, in my view, entirely healthy. It’s as healthy to be skeptical of a Rush Limbaugh and his “elite” background as it is to be skeptical of, say Paul Krugman and his.
It’s impossible for any truly thinking person today to rely on “experts” in any given field for their views, as today we have much more direct access to the wide diversity of opinion within all fields. While many people tend to “cherry pick” so-called “experts” that they agree with, or who back views they hold, that has lost its power of persuasion today. . .and rightly so.
A Leftist might (dishonestly) quote Paul Krugman (from a generation ago) when he was still claiming that a “Command” (government-run) economy COULD work and actually outperform a free market one, and with far LESS wage/compensation disparity, but even without noting that Krugman’s appeared to have moved off that view as of late, the Conservative/Libertarian could easily counter with the equally prodigious opinions of the likes of Walter E Williams, Arthur Becker, James Buchanan and others.
And so it goes, today all opinions have their “elite” champions and there’s no way for opinion-posers to “Appeal to the Man,” as in, “Well Krugman says (A) and (B)” As the response to that from those who disagree is almost certainly going to be, “Just blow it out your arse mate! (note how much more polite, refined and “properly Continental” the anti-socialists are) “Because Friedman said (X) and (Y) and what’s more doctors Williams, Becker and Senholtz all back him up.”
For better, or worse (and please trust me on this, it’s for the BETTER) the age of “Appealing to the man,” or “Appealing to Authority” are pretty much GONE!
On the one hand, it’s distressing that there are actually STILL too many people who want to believe that a government-run economy CAN work and CAN deliver LESS wage/compensation diversity than a market-based one. . .as IF that’s a good thing, but on the other, it’s good that people aren’t able to be cowed into accepting suspect dogma merely because someone had the nerve to “Appeal to Authority,” or “Appeal to the Man,” whether it be Walter E Williams or Richard Feynman.
I personally find it refreshing that people can seek out their own “experts” and cling to such views (ie “socialism can work”) no matter how impractical and unworkable they may be. Without dumb people believing dumb things (like “the Command Economy can work”), speculators would find themselves bereft of opportunities to profit off the coming misery of those folks.
Come to think of it! Speculators (like the GREAT Victor Niederhoffer – originally George Soros’ Quantum Fund manager…..Soros relied on a Milton Friedman devotee to make his fortune! How wild is THAT?!) are probably the most truly “elite” people there are around today. They have to be knowledgeable in a broad range of disciplines and be able to collect copious data from across a wide information spectrum, condense that down to a single operating strategy on a given commodity, currency, company or country and then have the guts to act on that strategy. . .no matter what.
Ironically enough, few of us can name many (if ANY) such speculators.
“Ivy League degrees, in and of themselves, don’t bestow “elite” status on a person. In that regard they’re not much more than the “degree” that the “Wizard of Oz” gave the Scarecrow in that vintage film.”
Ivy League degrees (and the degrees of other similar “Ivy Plus” schools), in and of themselves, say that someone met the minimum standards to get in, in terms of grades and SAT scores (i.e., well above average), and then met the minimum standards to graduate. That means that, minimum, someone with such a degree has above average intelligence and at one time was capable of a certain amount of actual work. (And, along the way, conveniently for the degree holder, you get an opportunity for a good education and access to a good alumni network.)
Such a degree does *not* mean that the person possessing such a degree is smarter or harder working than *everyone* who didn’t get that degree (there will always be a fair number of people with similar intelligence who did something else, for perfectly good reasons, such as not wanting to incur more student debt than they could repay). It also does *not* mean that the person who got that degree *continued* to work hard; for *many* reasons, people who once applied themselves enough to get good grades in high school don’t always continue to apply themselves as adults.
And it doesn’t mean that I’d find every Ivy League graduate’s opinions on everything inherently more worth listening to, even when said Ivy League graduate goes on to reasonable success. For instance, I find college dropout Ta-Nehisi Coates on the whole a more interesting blogger than Harvard graduate Matthew Yglesias (though I read both at least some of the time).
It’s not that I particularly want automatic deference to Ivy League graduates (look at what people have actually done with their education after graduating, by all means), but that I don’t like seeing sneers at one or another person’s Ivy League degree used as a form of cheap political populism, come election time. Getting a degree from an elite college, in and of itself, indicates something good (a certain minimum IQ that’s going to be significantly above the population average, if nothing else). Not the only good, and not necessarily the most important good (anyone who picked candidates based only on who went to college where would be a fool), but not something that deserves to be put down. And I’ve seen this kind of cheap populist sneer, come election time, repeatedly over the years, directed at various candidates, and have gotten increasingly pissed off about it.
“Ivy League degrees (and the degrees of other similar “Ivy Plus” schools), in and of themselves, say that someone met the minimum standards to get in, in terms of grades and SAT scores (i.e., well above average), and then met the minimum standards to graduate.” (LGS)
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Exactly, and those standards are often NOT any stricter nor more difficult to achieve at other “less prestigious” Colleges.
In many cases, they can actually be argued to be significantly EASIER to achieve! A Chemical Engineering degree from MIT or Cal Tech is certainly much more valuable (in those fields) than a similar degree from Harvard, Princeton or Yale. . .and it SHOULD BE. MIT & Cal Tech are better schools for those disciplines.
But how about a Mechanical Engineering degree from Pace University? How do we compare that to a journalism degree from Columbia University?
I see one degree that requires stringent math and science credentials (often very challenging to master) compared to a much more subjective degree steeped in “essay contests” graded on how much a given instructor agrees with the essay in question….
So it comes down to the fact that it seems extremely difficult to quantify “eliteness.”
Moreover, for better or worse (I see it clearly for the BETTER), a large and apparently increasing number of Americans today question whether many (if any) of those who govern, run Companies, investigate and deliver the news, etc. are actually “elite,” in any appreciable way.
I recall during the financial meltdown when various CEOs were on TV, it seemed to shock many people that these guys “were as dumb as the politicians we hear from all the time.” I guess a lot of people didn’t realize that the likes of Henry Paulson, James Cayne (of Bear Stearns), Richard Fuld (Lehman Bros), like Robert Rubin before them were ALL politicians first and businessmen 2nd!
It appears that that perception is very real and very widespread, so ultimately, it doesn’t really matter at all, if it’s true or if it’s not. However, it’s hard to imagine such a perception becoming so widespread if there weren’t some basis of truth to it. AND hearing the likes of a Fuld or a Schumer speaking DOES NOT generally inspire much confidence.
Still, it all comes down to how each of us would define “elite.”
We are left with “polarized sources.” The Left (about 20% of America) doesn’t accept sources like The Heritage Foundation, AEI, CATO, FNC, etc., while “the Right” (about 44% of America) doesn’t accept sources like MSNBC, the NY Times, MediaMatters, the Center for Constitutional Rights, People for the American Way, etc.
No one has yet to find a credible way to assess whether “Left” or “Right” is more often correct, and few have even appeared to have considered trying to do that.
Both sides seem to accept that they won’t convince or convert the other and that’s that. We’re really only talking about a shrinking 30 to 30 percent of truly Independent voters/thinkers, people more concerned with raising families than with ideology and politics (the poor bastards).
“A Chemical Engineering degree from MIT or Cal Tech is certainly much more valuable (in those fields) than a similar degree from Harvard, Princeton or Yale”
That’s why I said “Ivy Plus,” rather than “Ivy League.” Stanford, the school I went to, is actually no more part of the Ivy League than MIT and Caltech are, and its graduates are just as good as Harvard graduates. But MIT, Caltech, and Stanford all qualify as “Ivy Plus.” I also completely agree that the major should be taken into account. I’d take a CS degree from MIT or Carnegie Mellon over one from Harvard, other things equal. Johns Hopkins has a comparable medical school. Caltech can compete with anybody in the technical specialties where it excels.
“But how about a Mechanical Engineering degree from Pace University? How do we compare that to a journalism degree from Columbia University?”
That would depend on what skill we’re judging.
“So it comes down to the fact that it seems extremely difficult to quantify “eliteness.””
I don’t use the word “elite” to mean “good.” I use it as a social signifier, for anything that gets accorded high prestige, that may or may not track with “good.” Harvard is as elite as it gets, in college terms, but it isn’t always as good as it gets; that depends on the field and on what you’re comparing with Harvard. Berkeley is less elite than Stanford, but it’s really pretty comparable in terms of the education you get and the quality of the students, even if Stanford is my alma mater and Berkeley my alma mater’s football rival.
Similarly, if you’re in the top 1% (to borrow a category from the Occupy movement), you’re elite, whether you got into the top 1% by inheriting the money, by starting a wonderfully productive company, or by doing a fabulous job of embezzling.
But, if I don’t use the word “elite” to mean “good,” I also don’t think it should, in and of itself, signify something bad. A lot of the time, “elite” includes at least *some* degree of merit (even if not always more merit than every “non-elite” competitor).
“Moreover, for better or worse (I see it clearly for the BETTER), a large and apparently increasing number of Americans today question whether many (if any) of those who govern, run Companies, investigate and deliver the news, etc. are actually “elite,” in any appreciable way.”
Questioning authority is a good thing, especially when authority fails to deliver. A single source doesn’t deserve all that much deference just because the single source happens to teach at Harvard. (Findings that pass peer review, have been repeatedly replicated, and get widespread support from the relevant scientific community deserve more weight.)
I’m not talking about questioning authority, but about stirring up class resentment against people with Ivy League degrees, for political purposes. An Ivy League degree shouldn’t be an automatic ticket to credibility; other factors should be taken into account. But it shouldn’t be an automatic negative, either. In itself, it’s a good thing (but one good thing among many, and not necessarily always better than some competing good thing).
“I don’t use the word “elite” to mean “good.” I use it as a social signifier, for anything that gets accorded high prestige, that may or may not track with “good.” Harvard is as elite as it gets…” (LGS)
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This where communication issues come into play.
“Elite” is sadly all too often construed to mean “best,” or even “best and brightest,” when it really SHOULD only mean “high status/prestige.”
I hold an engineering degree and I believe that I write better than many journalists because my logical faculties tend to be superior to theirs. I’m also able to redo the math on other people’s “statistical analysis” something which most “journalists don’t do, because most can’t.
It does NOT escape my observations however that such “journalists” reliably seem to parrot those statistical analyses and “scientific opinions” that agree/resonate with their own preconceived viewpoints. . .or at least those of their editors.
I think too many Americans feel that too many of those who pass for “elites,” simply aren’t worthy of such a designation and that’s at least ONE of the reasons more and more people have, for better or worse, tuned out much of America’s mainstream media and lost faith in their government and Corporate leaders.