Privilege : Harvard and the education of the ruling class
(Book)

Douthat arrived at Harvard in the fall of 1998 carrying an idealized vision of Ivy League life. Instead, he found himself in a school rife with elitism and moneyed excess, an incubator for the grasping and ambitious, a college seduced by the religion of success. What Harvard taught him was not what he had gone there to learn: he was immersed in the culture of America's ever-swelling ruling class--a culture of privilege, of ambition and entitlement, in which a network of elite schools are viewed by students, parents, administrators, and professors more as stepping-stones to high salaries and coveted social networks than as institutions of academic excellence. This book is both a pointed social critique of this country's most esteemed institutions, and an exploration of issues such as affirmative action, grade inflation, political correctness, and curriculum reform.--From publisher description.