I recommend that you skip Excellent Sheep by William Deresiewicz altogether, even though there's a decent section in the middle (but I'll give you the scoop on that). Here's the rundown:
First, this retired Yale professor blames the general worsening of mental health in this country on the curricula of the Ivy League schools! I suppose he really is focusing on Ivy League students, but he seems unaware that mental health is worsening across the board for young people, especially--and of course those under high pressure are going to experience some of the brunt of it. He doesn't acknowledge causes like the rampant use of technology, especially screen time, endocrine disruptors in our environment, or a myriad of other potential causes. Instead, Dr. Deresiewicz is ready to dismantle the rigorous curricula that some of the most brilliant minds in our country have developed over centuries, when that's precisely what these students are there for! They've worked so hard to get there, to receive that education, yet he seems to advocate undoing that Ivy League rigor when instead they could just ease the grading system (see below, 4th paragraph from the end for more on that). Sure, the curricula are not static; they've changed over time and must continue adapting as necessary, but I repeat: a rigorous education is what students are there for in the first place. Perhaps it's simply not for everyone--and certainly there will be individual courses that are completely unreasonable in their demands and far too stressful, but these should be evaluated on a case-by-case basis. And of course the schools should do their best to provide adequate mental health services for their students, especially given the pressures they are under.
The tirade that Dr. Deresiewicz let out against parents of Ivy Leaguers was frankly offensive, and I'm not even one of them! He speaks as if they are all atrocious parents and in the wrong. Hmm. Apparently he spent too many years listening to his students' frustrations with their parents and being annoyed by their intrusions upon himself--and he lets it out here in a way that I suspect is fed by his own ingratitude towards and resentment towards his own excellent parents. I found it rather intolerable to listen to. Talk about 'privileged'! He's rarely been around students, I suspect, whose parents were neglectful or uninvolved. Not to say that he doesn't have a point that the kids' feelings of worth are perhaps too wrapped up in their success and GPA and such, but he is coming from such a place of bias that it's difficult to swallow his contempt for these remarkable parents. (I say they're remarkable because of how spectacular their kids have turned out--despite the students' sometimes endless complaints about mom and dad, no doubt--and not remotely because of anything this professor said.)
The book does get better, briefly:
Around the middle of the book, he begins to discuss the value of reading, and so of course I'm jolted on board, at least for a bit! He refers to a quote that majoring in English is like majoring in finding yourself, or something lovely like that. To be honest, however, as much as I adore novels, I never took the first English class in college, as I'd placed out with AP credits. My daughter has a strange aversion to taking English courses herself, saying that she doesn't want anyone else selecting what novels she reads. Hah, so while I meant to praise what he had to say there, I'm not sure my experience reflects how it relates to college life and curricula, exactly. Even he says that we should curate our own reading lists, as only we know what we are drawn to, what will connect for us. I'm paraphrasing broadly. [Note that he actually does have another book out about getting A Jane Austen Education, and I actually did read all her books one summer while in college, so perhaps he wouldn't have curated my reading list too far off!]
He also talks about the value of the liberal arts in creating well-rounded thinkers. I've heard this before, but suddenly it hit home. Perhaps it was how well he expressed and supported it. Perhaps it was because he cited figures that suggest that businesses are looking for those thinkers, actually preferring them oftentimes. He discusses how it takes years and years to obtain that broad background, to learn to think constructively, whereas hard skills can be taught pretty quickly. If his statistics hold up, then they should allay some of our worries about the liberal arts degrees not being so 'practical'--though I'd still want to do some of my own research on that, if practicality and a high income are truly the priority. [On this note, I'd like to interject that he also has a book out called, The Death of the Artist: How Creators Are Struggling to Survive in the Age of Billionaires and Big Tech. Just sayin'.] [Also, knowing how complex entire fields of science are, with so much depth and breadth, it's hard for me to understand how liberal arts majors could possibly just 'step into it'. I'm aware that some do, going straight to medical school with their English degrees, but I'm convinced they must be geniuses!]
Personally, I was both a science major AND advocate a liberal arts education. I'm particularly keen on the social sciences, in retrospect. I was so zoned in on my biochemistry major that I only took social science classes to meet the core liberal arts requirements, yet it turns out they were some of the most world-view-changing courses in my undergraduate career--especially World Religions and Anthropology (I didn't even know what a hunter-gatherer was before that course!). While we'd like to think we did most of our educational rounding-out in childhood, I, for one, very much needed that liberal arts college curriculum.
Towards the end of the book, Dr. Deresiewicz actually does start to convince me that the Ivy Leagues may not provide the best education for our brightest students, and it's specifically when he talks about the pressure on professors to do research and publish. I have seen that for myself, that professors' priorities are often not the students, and they increasingly use professional jargon in their teaching, rather than plain speak. It's a bit akin to doctors working for the insurance companies, not the patients.
However, these bright points in the very middle of the book almost belie the rest of the manuscript. Though he talks about the benefits of a liberal arts education here, he later insists that these hard-working students are in no way truly brighter, superior, more deserving, any of it... and while, of course, every person has inherent worth, and grades are not everything, he seems to be maligning their accomplishments out of resentment of their self-conceived 'superiority'. In fact, he relates how he would tear them down if he were their commencement speaker (he doesn't call it that, but if you listen to what he says, that's what it is). Not that it's not good to be mindful of all the ways we are lucky and blessed, and that could be a component of it, but I do hope he is never invited to deliver a commencement speech, as those hard-working students do not deserve his contempt, especially at their very graduation ceremony.
I don't agree with Dr. Deresiewicz about the quality of the students not being a draw at the Ivy Leagues [for goodness sakes, he was even pointing out how Harvard dropouts Bill Gates and Mark Zuckerburg made important connections that helped them professionally while there--and I wouldn't cry if they'd been my son's roommates at college, either!], but I certainly feel that he has a point about some of our smaller universities having wonderful instructors more focused on the students. His recommendation to look at some of the better liberal arts colleges struck me as excellent advice for equipping our college students to face life with a broad knowledge base and the ability to think and interact intellectually--and without such pressure. This was not actually a motivating force in considering colleges for my own children, and I may have viewed the college choices a bit differently if I'd heard this audiobook when we were considering colleges for them. That said, once that nice liberal arts foundation has been assured at a good school, I still think rankings do matter--mostly in view of the other students our own children will be around, their influences.
I am frankly alarmed by his insistence that we 'even the playing field' by not crediting students with any achievements that their parents' money helped to acquire. He talks about handicapping their applications while giving extra points to needier students, willy-nilly. For all his insistence on not feeling superior, on not demeaning the 'other', he sure isn't very sympathetic to the hard-working Ivy League candidates that come from families that were able and devoted to supporting them.
In fact, I find it telling that he bemoans these 4.0+ GPA high school students averaging 3.3 GPAs at their Ivy League Schools, as if they don't deserve it. First he's so alarmed about them being pushed too hard, wailing about their mental health, but then he wants to push them even harder, undeservedly? No, I really don't think he is an advocate for his former students much at all, aside from those who serve his purpose by resenting real and perceived deficits of their Ivy League educations and experiences. I'd personally suggest that the Ivy Leagues actually shift to a Pass/Fail system, since they have already ensured that their students are top-notch. My graduate school did this, and it certainly took a tremendous pressure off both me and my instructors: I stopped worrying about arguing if I thought I should get credit for a question or two, so concerned about that 'A'. Instead, I glanced at my test, saw that I did fine, and moved on with my life (and the teacher could, too!). It helps reduce stress immensely. I was also more free to focus on my areas of interest.
He disparages the idea of charity 'service' as a superiority mindset--an argument that may have some merit, though hopefully students and listeners are not dissuaded from still trying to do good, from participating in important charity work. Instead, he suggests students transfer from the Ivy League schools to state universities and take service jobs, like working in restaurants. What terrible advice, at least the first part. However, he does have a point that perhaps one of the best ways for privileged young people to develop true empathy and a better sense of equality with those who do manual labor and service work is to do at least a stint of it for themselves. I have seen this be eye-opening more than once. So... it might not be the worst idea to require such service-industry work from nearly every Ivy League student, probably no more than part-time for a semester, but I think it would improve their consideration for service-industry workers in general, at least. So, it seems there is a seed or two of wisdom amidst Dr. Deresiewicz's overall bad advice.
One last bit of truth to Dr. Deresiewicz's book is this: that the Ivy Leagues like to tout their selective acceptance rates, so they market to loads of young people that they know don't stand a chance, just to achieve those numbers. Frankly, though Dr. Deresiewicz doesn't himself go over it, I learned from an admission officer's book that you can't just be a perfect student with perfect scores--you either must be obviously disadvantaged or have achieved something truly remarkable [or simply 'remarkable' if it fits a specific niche that they're having difficulty filling] or be from a legacy family; yet even she didn't acknowledge the cruelty of marketing to and wasting the time and resources of the very best and brightest across the country--and of disappointing them. If they believe they actually stand a chance of getting in, if they've been actively recruited to apply, then they are going to feel acute rejection when they are rejected by this dream school, when there actually was no true rejection, as they never stood a chance in the first place. It's a cruel trick and one to be mindful of if we're truly concerned about their mental health.
So, my advice is to skip this book and probably to skip the Ivy League application as well, unless you are a celebrity or a minority (with a perfect academic record) or a potential legacy student, something of that nature, anyhow. My best takeaway from this book is to seriously consider a liberal arts college no matter the major, 'practical' choice or not.
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