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Why Are We So Infatuated With Ivy League Colleges?
Deconstructing the origins of this strange obsession, and the problems it brings.
If you follow certain stories, you’d think all of America happens on an Ivy League campus. Every scandal, which would barely make the local news at other colleges, ends up gracing the front pages of major magazines and newspapers.
Every busted cheater and contentious protest spawns teams of camera crews, swelling the incidents into a supernova that draws the eyes of the world.
And it speaks to an odd question: Why are we so infatuated with Ivy League institutions? It’s admittedly a newer trend I encountered in adulthood. This entire power-student mindset was always alien to me. I’m even embarrassed to admit that I didn’t know The University of Chicago was an elite school until my 20s. I’d thought it was just a college for a city, like San Diego City College.
I know much better now. It’s hard not to.
Yet it does feel odd now at age 40, as the spouse of a professor at The University of South Florida, where so many interesting things, research, student activities, are abounding under the radar.
All of the media oxygen, collective concerns, and academic hegemony, is established and given to a handful…
