For a recently written full-throated critique of elite private higher education in the United States – not a political action or lawsuit, but instead a book – check out Poison Ivy by Evan Mandery. In lively prose, mixing personal experience with scholarly research, Mandery argues that elite higher education harms students, communities, and the overall educational landscape. The book’s subtitle is “How Elite Colleges Divide Us” and Mandery marshals much in support of that claim. Whether you agree with him or not, the book makes many complaints that beg for consideration.
The author is a dual Harvard graduate, with a BA and a law degree. Mandery is a prolific and successful author, too, with multiple works of fiction and non-fiction to his name, including publications in the popular press. He was won a Peabody and an Emmy, and for more than two decades, Mandery has taught at the City of New York (CUNY) John Jay College, where he is a professor. Mandery’s earliest public criticisms of elite higher education focused on legacy admissions. He has since expanded his aim. The structural disadvantages poorer students and especially students of color face rightfully enrages Mandery. Poison Ivy underscores the basic unfairness that higher education can, and often does, exacerbate. The stories Mandery tells of truly exceptional students struggling and occasionally succeeding are exactly the kinds of examples that give everyone committed to the values of public education reasons to cheer. Unfortunately, they are far too few in numbers and the way in which higher education is structured and operates is to blame.
It’s important to emphasize that Poison Ivy focuses on undergraduate education at the baccalaureate level. Mandery does not spend time on graduate education, research, community colleges, or the vast network of public institutions, save the examples he draws from CUNY. The data he offers in a limited number of charts is compelling. Wealthy institutions, in particularly the smaller private liberal arts institutions, enroll very few students of lesser means. Public institutions have the most. Economic mobility rates, how higher education can facilitate class advancement, are most dramatic at public institutions. Elite private institutions, on the other hand, are outstanding at maintaining the wealth and status of their privileged students. Moreover, an overlapping group of elite private institutions excel at propelling their wealthier students into the exclusive top 1 percenter, the very, very wealthy. The economic and political decisions that have brought us to this point are deftly explained. Manderly steers us through the history, for higher education has not always been like this. Shifts in funding and priorities began to take shape in the 1980s and have continued, apace. Today there are truly massive gaps between the wealthy private institutions and the rest of higher education, just as the very, very wealthy own an extraordinarily large percentage of the nation’s wealth.
Mandery does fine work exploring the myriad of ways that college athletics is deployed by elite institutions to keep wealthier students enrolling and happy. This is not about Big Ten or SEC football. Sports such as rugby, fencing, equestrian, lacrosse and rowing are over-represented at wealthier high schools and, correspondingly, elite private institutions. These networks have been developed over the decades as pipelines for the more privileged. Housing, jobs, careers and lifestyle choices reinforce exclusivity, advancing rates and structures of inequality. These shifts, too, have been accelerating for the past few decades. At times, this line of research pulls Poison Ivy into well-worn arguments about wealth and power that extend far beyond the role of Ivy League colleges and universities. For example, Mandery’s assertion that “the United States maintains an apartheid educational system” may make one sit up and pause. The key claims in the book, however, are not about the legal and systemic denial of education based on racial segregation. It is about something different: how elites and elite institutions reinforce privilege through higher education.
As a repository of anecdotes, arguments and data critiquing elite private institutions of higher education, Poison Ivy is an encyclopedic source. For those familiar with higher education, a good part of the book may cover familiar territory. Nonetheless, there is much to learn here. For this reader, one of the work’s most intriguing arrows concerned the purpose of higher education as reflected in students choice of majors. The contrast between students at CUNY, where more than half plan to work in public service, and Harvard, where more than 60% plan to go into finance, consulting or technology, could not be more distinct. Manderly effectively argues that the majority of students at elite institutions pursue careers that help themselves, and at public institutions, the majority of students pursue careers that help others.
Mandery reviews a number of reforms that could address these concerns, from promoting diversity in admissions to investing in community colleges and transfer, to changes in tax policy to facilitate the redistribution of resources. All of these efforts to advance the public purpose of higher higher education make reasonable sense. None are complicated or far-fetched. What they lack is popular support. The push to level the higher education playing field is not forthcoming from students, faculty, or boards. Those less resourced within academia are not effective critics, either. Many would welcome the opportunity to partner or work with the elite institutions. After all, there are untold numbers of brilliant academic colleagues working at these institutions.
Complicating matters, a well-spring of populist anger towards the elite institutions, resentment fueling all manner of proposals make selective reforms all the more unlikely. Unfortunately for higher education, less nuanced critiques ensnare wide swaths of academic institutions and efforts. Higher education is a complex and complicated business, often defying simple messaging. Elite institutions may be a net negative, as Mandery writes, yet they also provide significant benefit for a few. What is called for, what is needed, is a broader and shared commitment to the public good that higher education can and does provide. We simply need to do it more often, especially at the Ivies. Higher education needs elite institutions, universities with deep pockets and institutional arrogance, to do take up the challenge and help to shape the broader dialogue. My hope for Poison Ivy is that it is read – and debated – at the very institutions Mandery attacks. I am confident that the most meaningful reforms will come from within, aiding both all of higher education and the elite institutions that pick them up.
David Potash