Comment by SmooL

I would think that it goes without saying that higher education is not the 'be all end all' in overall 'life' education.

While I don't believe the author is directly incorrect in his claims of of university behavior/culture, I feel like most of the 'disadvantages' he lists are of his own decisions, whereas for a lot of people they are forced.

'Yet it is precisely that opportunity that an elite education takes away. How can I be a schoolteacher—wouldn’t that be a waste of my expensive education? Wouldn’t I be squandering the opportunities my parents worked so hard to provide? What will my friends think? How will I face my classmates at our 20th reunion, when they’re all rich lawyers or important people in New York? And the question that lies behind all these: Isn’t it beneath me?'

There's nothing preventing the author from being a teach aside from his own mental barriers that he can overcome himself - I'm sure if he applied, most school boards would leap at the chance of having him. For others though, that simply isn't the case, and they have real, hard, economic/environmental barriers.