class and achievement

I confess to a certain wistfulness when I read the alumni publications of my undergrad college, especially articles about how undergrads have helped faculty refine and expand their research or develop new research directions. Could that ever happen in my professional life?? It seems we are talking about two parallel universes of higher education.

The majority of my students are in front of me because someone, somewhere, has convinced them that a college degree is a desirable (or necessary) accessory to a better life (usually meaning better-PAYING). This irritates me on two levels.

I am especially irked at the whiney assumption some students have that they are automatically disadvantaged because they go to state college instead of Ivy League. (That idea is being instilled in them by the Marxist element, and it's total bullshit.) (George Bush went to Yale; need I say more??) I believe that my students, if they READ the assignments, and think about them, and engage with their classmates and me in interrogating them, could get just as deep an education as the average student at the Ivy League.