Replace the prestige economy

If you grew up in the prestige economy, you have been trained to see life as a competition. But if you are young, you are losing no matter what. You will have better luck in the long run by rearranging the social order, rebuilding broken institutions, and broadening opportunity for all.

Sarah Kendzior in an interview with Sam Bakkila in Policymic.com about the “prestige economy”. It’s pretty damning of higher education’s role in accelerating our society’s widening equality gap.

I wonder what my fellow Whitties think when they read this. Is Whitman part of the solution or problem? Is your degree valuable? What do you tell young people considering applying?

Douglas Adams on the Internet

Interactivity. Many-to-many communications. Pervasive networking. These are cumbersome new terms for elements in our lives so fundamental that, before we lost them, we didn’t even know to have names for them

— Douglas Adams in a remarkably good essay from years ago on how elements of the Internet are perfectly natural for humans. Worth reading start to finish.