There is nothing wrong with taking pride in one’s intellect or knowledge. There is something wrong with the smugness and self-congratulation that elite schools connive at from the moment the fat envelopes come in the mail. From orientation to graduation, the message is implicit in every tone of voice and tilt of the head, every old-school tradition, every article in the student paper, every speech from the dean. The message is: You have arrived. Welcome to the club. And the corollary is equally clear: You deserve everything your presence here is going to enable you to get. When people say that students at elite schools have a strong sense of entitlement, they mean that those students think they deserve more than other people because their sat scores are higher.

From the archive, Tom Friedman:

Are Americans suffering from an undue sense of entitlement?

Somebody said to me the other day that the entitlement we need to get rid of is our sense of entitlement.

On the election:

In all his speeches, John McCain urges Americans to make sacrifices for a country that is both “an idea and a cause”.

He is not asking them to suffer anything he would not suffer himself.

But many voters would rather not suffer at all.

As a counterpoint, it is worth mentioning Open Courseware, but I suppose that is sort of like the difference between a concert and a concert CD. Especially if the concert in question is Woodstock, or the Beatles at Shea, or Bach's impromptu visit to King Frederick the Great of Prussia, as recounted by Hofstadter in GEB. Or perhaps Brian Moriarty's talk at GDC 2002, as compared to its transcript.

The Disadvantages of an Elite Education