alt Hacker NewsMaybe a bit that - but it's far more the change of elite 'class' institutions - to elite 'competitive' institutions.
'Grades Did Not Matter' 100 years ago so much.
It was where 'the only educated people sent their kids to be educated'.
Or maybe the nouveau riche bourgois did.
Now it's a 'Giant International Competition'.
You can see this where students are competitive with grades elsewhere in the world.
They're competing for jobs at OpenAI among a million others.
I'm shamed to admit I can't remember the quote from someone who lamented the fact that traditionally people 'knew their place' and there was on some level a quietude in that, a zen - but when 'anyone can be anything' it creates hyper competition, anxiety, sense of failure for most people who can never live up to being the 'most exceptional at whatever', and the constant stress of 'keeping up with the Jones's'.
See: Instagram - it's not pictures of family and friends - it's almost entirely 'social competition through lifestyle narration' ... which that includes University's as 'brand'.
Hence the competition.
Replies
This is exactly right. Gone are the days when you could get a C+ average at Harvard and still land a good job or a spot in a prestigious law program – purely by virtue of having gone to Harvard.
Everyone is in competition now. Everyone has to prove their worth, all the time. It's more egalitarian but it also creates a lot of stress.
> but when 'anyone can be anything' it creates hyper competition, anxiety
Not sure if you intended this but this is basically exactly Byung-Chul Han's point in The Burnout Society.
Not sure of the quote you have in mind, but the idea of equality causing status anxiety goes back to Tocqueville.
What you're talking about is often called elite overproduction: https://www.noahpinion.blog/p/the-elite-overproduction-hypot...
There's a rather technical but not too dry book about how elite overproduction tends to cycle, with comparisons of past cycles: https://press.princeton.edu/books/hardcover/9780691232607/we...
That’s a really good point. I do think the old ruling elite was in some ways more honest within the particular framework of their morality. But maybe that was easier when getting into Harvard meant being smart-ish from a prestigious family, instead of grinding to compete against not only everyone in America, but the biggest grinders and geniuses in India and China too.