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  1. The New York Times CompanyRON LIEBER3/15/197 min
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    The New York Times Company
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    • bill
      Top reader of all time
      5 years ago

      Do you hear that firebang? It’s the sound of a nail getting slammed on the head. This is Right. On. The. Money.

      We need to stop deluding ourselves that elite private schools exist to serve the public interest. They don’t. They’re businesses. Rather than serve as beacons for upward mobility and opportunity, they rake it in by reinforcing the status quo, keeping the rich rich. (Plus lots of babysitting of young adults.) It’s such a painful cringe when people point to the few poor kids (and especially poor minorities) at private schools as a way to defend what’s obviously going down. The shame is everywhere if you’re willing to zoom out and call a thing what it really is.

      Higher education needs atomic levels of disruption. Preference for children of alums should immediately disappear. (It would be better for the students with alum parents too! Sure, most wouldn’t get in, but the ones that do wouldn’t have to spend the rest of their lives wondering whether or not they actually earned it. That really is a curse!)

      A funny upside to this voyage through dystopia that we’re all on right now is that we’re newly capable of seeing old broken shit for what it’s always been: old and broken. Hopefully we seize the moment and do something about it. Pitchfork at the ready.