Excellent Sheep
By William Deresiewicz
FREE PRESS
Something is rotten in higher education, William Deresiewicz writes in Excellent Sheep, as promising students, driven by an almost neurotic need for overachievement, are caught up in an escalating race. Deresiewicz, a former Yale prof, argues that America’s top institutions have become career mills that funnel privileged kids into a narrow selection of professions—namely consulting and finance (and more recently, tech). Many end up unfulfilled, anxious, depressed, and fearful of failure, he notes, citing reports from a Stanford mental-health task force and the American Psychological Association. While it’s largely anecdotal, the book still makes a pretty good case that these colleges are failing in their most essential mission: to help kids “build a self.”
