Harvard and Managerialism

Harvard Creates Managers Instead of Elites by @saffronhuang

• I don’t think you can rely on a top-down hierarchical institution to select and train creative elites consistently — and if this view is correct the problem at Harvard can’t be fixed. You need to have diversity across multiple dimensions to have an effective elite, and that includes behavioral and ideological diversity. Standardised selection and education procedures tend to militate against that, and even if not, people at the bottom of a hierarchy will tend to emulate those at the top — to flatter them, so as to be favoured by them. But creativity requires going against the status quo, and that won’t be favoured by a top-down hierarchy.

• Note: hierarchy is probably necessary, and my issue is where the process of selection is controlled by those at the top. You could have a hierarchy where selection is more algorithmic, based for example on peer assessment. That could prevent a great deal of unproductive polticking and sycophancy within an organisation. But this idea is untested, so perhaps there are other problems it may introduce.

• Some interesting quotes from the article:

  • The lack of meaningful guidance and substantive vision, the insular bubble students live in, and the nudges towards marginal optimization kill innovative, interesting, and socially beneficial ambition. This molds the supposed rising strategic elite into the mindset of an upper-middle class striver

  • The Pavlovian response of racking up points at the margin sets students up perfectly for careers as mid-level managers looking for small wins, laser-focused on keeping the books balanced. Not only does marginal thinking mean that the American elite trained this way don’t have their eye on the bigger picture, but it makes them more risk-averse and conservative.

  • Students flock to career-oriented campus organizations only to learn how to manage structures that already exist, or execute a task that others have done hundreds of times before. Very few clubs create a generative and imaginative vision for your future self at work, or for what you should be working on. Although this is the stated purpose of a Harvard liberal arts education, campus culture has elevated managerialism above creation.