Deresiewicz and the Popular Response

This afternoon I re-read William Deresiewicz's The Disadvantages of an Elite Education. He began the essay with how he realized the deficiency of his elite education when he couldn't even make small talk with his plumber for ten minutes. He then moved on to many other relevant topics but overall I really connected with this article although it obviously has a lot of generalizations. I was curious about what other people think of it--it turned out the essay was much more controversial than I had expected, if not drawing mostly negative responses. It was a twelve page thread in College Confidential. Many people there criticized Deresiewicz for his over-generalizations and "straw-man" fallacy of blaming his own deficiency (not able to communicate with the plumber) on his elite education.

What interests me is that these people's evidence and support tend to be "I or my child or my friends can make small talks with the plumber with no problem" and therefore Deresiewicz is wrong. (Isn't this a straw-man fallacy also? Just like what they presume Deresiewicz's arugment is?) Deresiewicz may be the stereotypical elite who always uses big words or talks about Descartes (I'm not sure if he is really like that) but he is certainly not stupid. I'm sure he is not saying that EVERYONE in Yale and Columbia are socially stupid with people outside of their class. I think it's a common sense that exceptions always exist, and exceptions alone is not good enough to reject Deresiewicz's argument.

One person pointed out that, among the twelve page thread, if we look at it another way, we can say that a plumber doesn't know how to talk to a college professor. To take this further, a professor may not even be able to talk to another professor because their areas of studies have become so narrow and specific that there is only a handful of people in the entire world that study similar subjects.

My point is, who is able to talk to whom does not make or break Deresiewicz's argument in the essay. Many people in the thread, however, are so caught up with this controversial opening to the essay that they are losing the big picture, which is written right beneath the title: Our best universities have forgotten that the reason they exist is to make minds, not careers.