Beitzel: Ivy-League education a pass to exclusivity

Justice John Paul Stevens announced his retirement this month. His vacancy leaves a series of… Justice John Paul Stevens announced his retirement this month. His vacancy leaves a series of demographics unrepresented on the nation’s highest bench. Despite his nomination by Gerald Ford, Stevens was the liberal’s liberal. He was the only justice who served in World War II. He was the only Protestant on the bench.

The most important trait of Stevens, though, is that he was the only non-Ivy-educated justice. Specifically, he was the only justice who didn’t go to either Harvard or Yale.

More than Stevens’ departure, his replacement’s nomination will showcase a clear message about class in the United States. Namely, that you can do anything in this world, but only if you went to an Ivy League university. Class is the tallest, hardest glass ceiling, and one that only thickens with time.

Three of the four top contenders to replace Stevens went to Harvard: Elena Kagan, Merrick Garland, and Jennifer Granholm. Diane Wood went to the University of Texas, though she taught with President Obama at the University of Chicago’s law school. So you can apparently get around this class barrier if you worked with a president.

However, it’s not likely any Pitt students can count future presidents as current colleagues. Not since Ronald Reagan has a president lacked an Ivy League education: George H.W. Bush (Yale), Bill Clinton (Yale), George W. Bush (Yale) and Barack Obama (Harvard).

That list, though, exposes an alternate side to this idea of the reserved-for-Ivy meritocracy. All of those presidents came from wildly different backgrounds, including low-class upbringings. For them, an Ivy degree was an arbiter of class, propelling them upward in a way that no other action could have.

Institutions like Harvard and Yale possess mammoth endowments — somewhere around $26 billion and $16 billion, respectively. This allows the universities to offer equally massive financial aid to lower-class students, so long as they get accepted. Basically, if you get in, you can go.

But who gets in? Obama got in at Harvard after a lifetime of toiling and achievement. But George W. Bush got accepted to Yale with a 1206 on the old-form SATs. He got in because of his powerful alumnus father. That’s not a judgment — any Pitt student would accept the same deal.

Unlike Pitt graduates facing a dearth of job prospects, Ivy graduates suffer from a different problem. They have too many offers. Whereas they once wanted humanitarian or public positions, they pick Wall Street or Halliburton after they get a load of their loan repayment figures. Or maybe they’re already liquid and they just see the salary offerings of the private sector.

They have a chance to elevate, or at least retain, a high social class. Conversely, many graduates from non-Ivy institutions might be wondering if the cost of their education actually lowered their class. Tens of thousands of dollars in debt, no job prospects and four or more potential years in the workforce lost.

When this happens, the dangerous flipside to questioning the exaggerated importance of Ivy educations is a festering anti-intellectualism. It’s tempting to describe the Tea Party in this fashion — and sometimes it’s true — but more likely they just want the Ivy-educated conservatives like Bill O’Reilly (Harvard) and Pat Toomey (Harvard) who hypocritically decry those “academic elitists.”

But there is just something fundamentally unsound about Ivy degrees as prerequisites for self-actualization. Yes, Harvard and Yale offer world-class educations. On one hand, they are catapults for a select few unprivileged students who gain acceptance. On the other, the remaining middling children of this country awake to find themselves expatriates of the American Dream, excluded from the highest levels of public service despite phenomenal educations of their own.

Justice Stevens reminded us that non-Ivy graduates are not completely excluded from the top ranks of the U.S. government. They just have to scale Mt. Everest without the Sherpas given to Harvard grads. Without Stevens, the next best role model is Vice President Biden. And he’s in a class by himself.

This is my final column for The Pitt News. It’s been a pleasure having this conversation for the past two years. Keep it weird. E-mail me at drb34@pitt.edu.