The Great Ivy League Snob Off, Part II:
Keith Olbermann Is Also Embarrassing.
Ann Coulter’s spat with Keith Olbermann over Cornell bragging rights began the way all great battles of the mind do — Does this Rush Limbaugh make the GOP look fat? — and ends the way our comment boards do, a degenerative slinging of acceptance rates and SAT scores eventually boiling down to one guy pointing at his diploma and screaming about how smart he is.
Welcome back to the Great Ivy League Snob Off. Let’s meet the contestants:
In the first corner: Cornell grad and MSNBC gravitas junkie Keith Olbermann, who says conserva-pundit Rush Limbaugh is a know-nothing plebe who couldn’t tell the Constitution from his left foot. He’s so dumb, he flunked ballroom dance! (True story. Check his Wikipedia.)
In the second corner: Cornell grad and journeyman blowhard Ann Coulter, who jumps to Limbaugh’s defense with an astonishingly baffling 900-word diatribe about how Olbermann is not the “scary smart” messiah his fans think he is, but an Ivy League fraud:
Keith didn’t go to the Ivy League Cornell; he went to the Old MacDonald Cornell. … Keith went to an affiliated state college at Cornell, the College of Agriculture and Life Sciences (average SAT: about that of pulling guards at the University of South Carolina; acceptance rate: 1 of every 1 applicants).
Touché, Coulter. You hit us East Coast intelligentsia right where it hurts– the threat of farm dirt, and athletes! This is even worse than the time we realized Obama went to some weensy school in LA* before transferring to Columbia. Her opponent reeling, the skeletor in the right wing’s closet delivers a bony little knock-out punch:
Olbermann’s incessant lying about having an “Ivy League education” when he went to the non-Ivy League ag school at Cornell would be like a graduate of the Yale locksmithing school boasting about being a “Yale man.”
A metaphor involving blue collar labor? Low blow.
But wait! Olbermann’s still got some fight in him. After the jump: The response that may require us to banish Keither Olbermann from the Ivy League forever.
Olbermann rolls up his sleeves and starts punching in his daily “World’s Worst” segment, where he whips out his big, shiny diploma and morphs into a belligerently insecure teenager trying out for the debate team:
This induces an inward cringe so severe as to cause us to shed our external shells and molt. Most amazingly, Olbermann comes out of the diploma-brandishing and statistics-rattling segment with a persuasive argument against his status as an Ivy Leaguer:
In my four years as a student at Cornell and nearly 30 years as an alumnus I have never before heard one graduate of one of the university’s colleges belittling all its other colleges as not counting. We always considered each other equals.
Sir, the whole point of attending an Ivy League university is earning the right to belittle your peers. In fact, it is a time-honored Ivy League pursuit second only to incessant defensiveness and the perpetual need to justify one’s intellectual validit–
Oh. Right. Congrats, Keith. Looks like you’re back in.
* To find out about Obama’s life pre-Columbia, I visited Occidental’s Wikipedia page, where the gravest of my fears was confirmed.
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Read more: aggies, ann coulter, Cornell, elitism, keith olbermann, politics, rush limbaugh, the great ivy league snob off, this is why people hate the ivy league
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March 6th, 2009 at 5:09 am
Olbermann seems to be in tears just about when he whips out the fake Cornell diploma. A great moment in Ivy history: The night Ann Coulter made Keith Olbermann cry. I think both of them possess equivalent Ivy cred, but Coulter was Law Review at Michigan and later clerked for an Appeals Court judge. That’s probably why she writes books and Olbermann rants and rants about worst person in the world.
March 6th, 2009 at 8:26 am
stopitstopitstopit shut up both of you you’re embarassing my school.
March 6th, 2009 at 8:26 am
stopitstopitstopit shut up both of you you’re embarrassing my school.
March 6th, 2009 at 11:45 am
I wonder if Andy from the Office was loosely based off Oberlmann, wow…this is pathetic. I’ve never been a fan of him and I wonder what the people who actually *like* watching this guy think. I get pissed off when they still allow him to anchor sports – you gave that up to become an egomaniac joke.
March 6th, 2009 at 11:48 am
“This induces an inward cringe so severe as to cause us to shed our external shells and molt.” LOL!
March 6th, 2009 at 12:17 pm
Occidental College?
I’d like Obama more if he was an “exceedingly weird” Oxy grad.
March 6th, 2009 at 2:05 pm
I like Olbermann. I think Coulter is…well, largely an ignorant person with a great marketing team behind her (Oh and Lev O’Malley… boo-hoo, she writes books; so does Joe the Plumber. It means jack. Have you ever read one of those things. Utterly laughable)
With that said…this is all kind of sad. You went to Cornell for God’s sake. A great school yes, but as far as the ivies go it’s not exactly the creme de la creme.
At this point in your life, your main source of pride shouldn’t be where you did your undergrad.
March 6th, 2009 at 5:12 pm
This whole mess started with Olbermann bragging about how he went to Cornell (without specifying which school) and repeatedly bashing the intelligence of DOJ lawyers who went to lower ranked law schools.
Regardless of how good CALS is for those interested in farming and agriculture careers, it’s clear that Olbermann neither pursued that type of career nor was promoting the Ag’s schools achievements in either of those areas. Instead, it was a shameless prestige whore play by him — where he was trying to say:
1) I went to Cornell (note, without specifying which school)
2) Cornell (A&S) is a selective school that only takes the top applicants who are super intelligent
3) Therefore, I was a top applicant who was super intelligent AND I can lord that over people with less prestigious college and grad degrees
Coulter rightfully called him out on it because regardless of CALS’s merits, it’s simply not anywhere as selective (by all statistical measures) as Cornell A&S or any of the other Ivy schools. And, therefore, you can’t exactly use it to lord your intelligence and/or elite status over someone else as he was trying to do. Or if you do, expect to be called out on it. End of story.
March 6th, 2009 at 5:58 pm
I lord my intelligence and elite status because I can. First, as an engineering grad, my A&S GPA was nearly a full point higher than my engineering GPA. (I also know that A&S students would always come over to my school take intro to computer science or physics, only to drop it by the second week). More importantly, I married a hot A&S grad.
Feel free to call me on any of this …
March 6th, 2009 at 6:38 pm
Quoting Olbermann: We always considered each other equals.
No we don’t. Hotel School is, was, and always will be low man on the totem poll. And more than picking on colleges we pick on majors. Communications is low no matter where you went to school Ever notice the majority of college football players are comm majors?
March 6th, 2009 at 7:28 pm
Sort of like letting people think you went to “Amherst”, when you really went to U Mass AT Amherst.
March 6th, 2009 at 7:39 pm
Or, even more close to Olbermann’s situation, letting people think you went to Harvard College or Columbia College, when you actually went to Harvard Extension School or Columbia’s School of General Studies.
March 6th, 2009 at 7:40 pm
Ivygate, congratulations on putting a stop to your previous suckitude. Seriously, much improved. Just in time for midterms!
Thanks.
March 6th, 2009 at 8:56 pm
but for the first time in my life, i’m with ann on this one. sorry, keith but you were called out. and rightly so.
March 6th, 2009 at 8:57 pm
@MissingThePoint
I don’t see where you are getting point number two from. All of Cornell is a considered a “top school” that educates bright students, and the Ag School offers many great programs in the applied social sciences and has produced a number of notable journalists. Any level-headed Cornell alum will tell you that there are very impressive students in all seven undergraduate colleges (yes, Hotel included), and it’s also pretty clear that in the grand scheme of college admissions world, any selectivity differences between any of the undergraduate colleges at Cornell is pretty trivial.
This all said, I agree that Olbermann is rather boorish and he shouldn’t go around whoring his credentials. But Coulter’s ad hominem attack on Olbermann on the basis that he attended a certain school at Cornell is utterly ridiculous. I don’t think she got one thing right in her entire article. The entire university is private. The entire university is a land-grant institution. Average SAT scores for both colleges are higher than the ones she quoted, etc.
March 6th, 2009 at 10:37 pm
I don’t know enough about Cornell to wade into this one, but I will say that I hope Coulter and Olbermann duel to the death and both kick it in the end.
March 6th, 2009 at 11:46 pm
Not enough has been said about how bad this makes all of Cornell look. My sympathies to all the good Cornellians out there.
March 7th, 2009 at 12:23 am
@Cayuga: It’s not ad hominem if Coulter disputes Olbermann’s claims about his education. It would be ad hominem if Coulter claimed that Olbermann’s crummy education at Cornell’s Ag School rendered him incapable of distinguishing between worse and worser.
I happen to disagree with Coulter because the Ivy League is defined as an athletic conference. Membership in the Ivy League is defined as eligibility to play in regular Ivy competition. I assume students at the Ag School are allowed to play. So they’re Ivy. I don’t know whether students at Columbia’s CGS or Harvard Extension are eligible. But eligibility to participate in Ivy sports fully determines the matter, irrespective of other snob obsessions. It’s not SATs, class rank, GPA, or any other weenieisms.
I loved seeing Olbermann cry. He’s a tortured soul, desperately in need of Coulter’s compassion and love.
March 7th, 2009 at 1:37 am
olbermann is pathetic. seriously what middle aged person regularly tells people where he went to college? It’s obvious he just touts the ivy league name so that listeners have a confirmational bias and assume that he must be right, since he went to a good school. if what he said on his show was actually intelligent then he wouldn’t need to be spouting off his credentials.
March 7th, 2009 at 4:24 am
I’m sorry but this is nonsense. Anyone who went to Cornell should know that it really doesn’t matter what college you were in. And anyone who says one of the seven colleges is “easier” than another does not realize that any Cornell course is open to students in any of the colleges. During my time at Cornell, I took classes in Arts, Ag, and even the Hotel school. Different colleges also offer different majors, and most people I know applied to a college based on what he or she wanted to study, not which college was easy to get into.
I proudly admit that I am a graduate of CALS. But I must point out that the “Ag School” is not just classes on cow milking. Most of the life science majors and departments are actually considered to be part of the College of Agriculture and Life Sciences. I myself was a Biological Sciences major in CALS, but I took the EXACT SAME courses as students were biology majors in Arts and Sciences. In fact, the only difference between a biology major in Arts and a biology major in Ag is that my degree was a BS as opposed to a BA. The reason I went to CALS was for the tuition break for NYS residents. I knew I wanted to major in biology at Cornell, but would it make sense to pay almost twice as much for the same education?
All students I have known during my time at Cornell were smart, hardworking, and well qualified to be there regardless of what college they were in. Both Olbermann and Coulter are coming off stupid, but if anyone is trying to be an elitist, it’s Ann Coulter. Personally, I disagree with almost everything she says, but it’s the USA and she has every right to spew her ignorance.
Now if you’ll excuse me, this graduate of “Old Mac Donald” college has to get back to working on her Phd.
-’07 Ag and Proud
March 7th, 2009 at 4:29 am
I just want to point out that CALS (College of Agriculture and Life Sciences) is consistently regarded as one of (if not the) top ag schools in the nation. the same cannot be said about A&S. the AEM major (as much of a joke as it is) is the #4 undergrad business program, meteorology is tops, agricultural economics is very prestigious, biology is *amazing* (the bio research at Cornell is impressive in both its accolades and its breadth) and Plant Science basically begins and ends at Cornell.
the ag school is not a school of ‘farmers’ (though i’m sure there are farmers in it). It’s part of a large research university that actively investigates and studies agriculture and life sciences— hence the name. name something the life sciences and its happening at cornell.
in fact, from ornithology to physics, cornell has tremendous research and classroom oppurtunities. If you work your way down the list of top universities, few schools top cornell with such a strong research focus. I guess Stanford, MIT and Harvard come to mind, but they sort of cherry pick top disciplines at the expense of the vibrancy you get at a school with, for example, a Center for Grape Genetics.
March 7th, 2009 at 12:18 pm
@Lev
Olbermann criticized Rush for not knowing the difference between the Declaration of Independence and the Preamble to the Constitution. Coulter criticized Olbermann’s criticism by erroneously asserting a bunch of things about his undergraduate institution. Is that not an argument to the man?
@cuEnginerd
Don’t think that CAS isn’t an impressive institution in its own right — its programs in the humanities and physical sciences are among the best in the country. Of course, I’m just an ILRie, so what do I know?
March 7th, 2009 at 3:15 pm
You’re forgetting that Olbermann is the master of ad hominem and in fact, started the whole pretentious education line of argument. He was the one who repeatedly took shots at DOJ lawyers for going to lower ranked law schools with quotes like “by sending 100 box tops to Religious Lunatic University.”
He also has repeatedly bragged about how smart he is based on the prestige / name of his undergraduate degree: “My Ivy League education taught me how to cut corners, skim books and take an idea and write 15 pages on it, and also how to work all day at the Cornell radio station and never actually go to class.”
Therefore, as much as Ann Coulter can be a polemic and unilaterally bring up issues to pick on people, I really don’t see how you can put this one on her. Olbermann sat there bragging about his Cornell degree and was making fun of other peoples’ allegedly less prestigious degrees. He was asking to be called out on it and he finally was.
March 7th, 2009 at 4:02 pm
This whole thing just makes me want to watch that episode of The Office where Dwight tells Andy he’s going to apply to Cornell.
March 7th, 2009 at 6:28 pm
For shame! Olbermann might be attempting to suggest that the part of Cornell that is private *lifts* the part that is not into academic Valhalla. Au contraire. The part of Cornell that is public sullies the entire mess above Lake Cayuga.
While I’m at it, if the name of the school contains the name of the state you’re in, IT’S NOT AN IVY LEAGUE SCHOOL EITHER. University of Illinois? Public. University of California? Public. University of Michigan? Public. University of Pennsylvania? Public. QED, biatch.
March 7th, 2009 at 6:46 pm
@ @ Cayuga
You need to separate Olbermann’s own Cornell and Ivy-promoting buffoonery from the matter at hand.
In one corner we have somebody questioning the increased connections between the DOJ and an evangelical law school. And in the other corner we have somebody claiming that one shouldn’t be in a position to raise a critical eye towards this trend on account of the fact that they didn’t attend a school in a certain sports conference. But, in fact, they did…
March 7th, 2009 at 7:29 pm
Oh stupid Keith. He’s a fat, insecure, looser.
March 7th, 2009 at 7:41 pm
Defensive much?
March 7th, 2009 at 9:12 pm
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mdwLuW1QcZI
Worth a few minutes.
March 7th, 2009 at 9:15 pm
Check out the link. Ag school is run/funded by SUNY, a state school with way less competition for acceptance (notice Keith qualifies his figures with ‘now’ and leaves out the SAT averages). Keith’s diploma also notes the state school distinction, which is what he doesn’t want the camera zooming in on at the bottom corner. Communications is not a real degree anyway. All of those ‘undecideds’ have to go somewhere. Of course they end up on TV, sucking wind getting less ratings than the public access station. The more talented become professional athletes, while the double majors…well they become successful in their primary major, and forget about the communications degree they had to do as required by the institution. Also, Coulter does not degrade the ‘farmers’ at the Ag school in the slightest. To the contrary, she specifically mentions that graduates in those sciences ARE the best in THAT particular field. She is critical of Andy, I mean, Keith because he clearly did not apply to the Ag school for the amazing ‘Communications’ program. You must learn to differentiate her comments about ‘Old MacDonald Cornell’ as digs at Keith, not at the farmers. It is Keith’s insecurity about his own shortfalls that make that a personal insult for him. She knows that it bothers him, because he uses the same techniques on others, and now that the mirror is squarely placed on him, well you can see that it is never pretty watching a ‘grown man’ cry. Do you really think that successful farmers give a flying f*** about their educational credentials? Get real.
http://patterico.com/jury/2009/03/05/too-good-to-be-true-but-it-is-keith-olbermanns-resume-fraud/#comments
March 7th, 2009 at 9:26 pm
OMG! ihateolby’s link to the RedEye youtube clip was one of the funniest things I’ve ever seen. Ever. Thanks.
March 8th, 2009 at 3:22 am
This is unbelievably awkward.
March 8th, 2009 at 3:49 am
Sigh. Let’s go through this again, shall we? The College of Agricultural and Life Sciences is a private institution that is contracted with the State of New York to perform research, education, and outreach pertaining to the well-being of all New Yorkers. As it is a private institution, it is not run by SUNY, and state appropriations amount to less than 20 percent of the college’s entire budget. And it is more than just a farm school — it features a lot of fantastic departments not only in the agricultural sciences, but also in the biological sciences, earth sciences, engineering sciences, and applied social sciences.
Moreover, the Communication department in Ag school is a reputable department, with legions of successful alumni. The department specializes in the dissemination of scientific knowledge as well as how people interact with old and new media, combined with changing information technologies. (Imagine that — a school grounded in the expansion of the sciences for the betterment of the human condition wanting to conduct research in how to best distill knowledge!)
I also do not think that Keith is bothered in the least by the fact that he attended CALS for a degree that he was interested in. (After all, he does seem to have an interest in communication/journalism… especially given his role at WVBR while he was an undergraduate.) I suspect that what bothers Keith — just as it bothers so many other Cornell alums (contract college or not) is that it is patently absurd to be disparaged by a fellow alum due to your particular undergraduate college.
March 8th, 2009 at 6:17 pm
oh em gee Ann Coulter is ridiculous.
I was just in an interview last week and the employee interviewing me was in DG with Ann and graduated the same year as her. She said Ann was an absolute ignorant bitch who had no perspective in the early 80’s too. Not sure how we got on that subject, but anycrazyhoannis…
I have to agree with “cuEnginerd.” Ann is on some next level loony business because only the re-re’s of the world use the whole state college retort as if it has any clout. A&LS has some of the most superior programs at Cornell, so Ann can sit down somewhere. (I must admit I am highly irked that only the NY residents get the reduced fee. I pay full Cornell tuition. :[). The whole acceptance rate thing is BS and Ann knows it. It’s something Arts & Science students concocted to make themselves feel better that the majors in their school are about as easy as god knows what. If I majored in Creative Writing and French Literature (2 things I actually like), I’m sure I would graduate Cornell with a 4.0 too.
But let us not sleep on AEM… Engineers always have to go there and yet they feel the need to apply to business related fields for employment… Can I if you’re OR you’re just not a real engineer… just saying lol j/k
March 9th, 2009 at 12:58 am
Harvard Extension is nothing like Columbia GS. HES students are separated from Harvard college and are even limited in the amount of classes they can take at HC. They cannot live on campus either, it’s basically a Cont. Ed. school.
At Columbia, Columbia College students and GS students take the SAME classes from the SAME Arts and Sciences dept.
March 9th, 2009 at 5:04 pm
Just in case anybody was wondering about the Cornell Review’s reaction (the paper she helped establish), here it is: http://cornellreview.wordpress.com/2009/03/09/coulter-on-the-intricacies-of-cornells-schools/
March 10th, 2009 at 2:38 am
Wow. This makes Penn’s Wharton-College dynamic look like a veritable love feet. Thanks, Cornell!
March 10th, 2009 at 2:58 pm
lol. Take any ag Communication major and wave an Arts & Sci English degree in front of their face. Each and every one drools – there isn’t any competition for an Arts and Sci English BA.
March 10th, 2009 at 3:13 pm
(because this was too good)
“Disappointed said
March 10, 2009 at 4:59 am
Totally serious. On the Dept. of Communications website, there is spotlight on Dr. Jeff Hancock who is meant to discuss ‘how people use tools like Facebook to their advantage.’ Wow, it’s a good thing that we have this ‘expert’ helping us work out the ins and outs of Facebook, which is really tough to use. And I couldn’t possibly figure out how it might be advantageous to my life unless I attended this lecture. I think I’ll bring my 88 year old grandmother along so she can ask loads of useful questions about this highly intriguing, and deeply complex topic.
Grandma Charlotte: “Why are these people always writing on my wall? I don’t think they should be messing with my wall, making all kinds of graffiti. Good for nothing hooligans.” Dr. Hancock: “No Ma’am, it’s not an actual wall they are writing on, it’s just an electronic post, like a cork board in your kitchen…” Grandma Charlotte: “I don’t want anybody coming in and messing with my cork board either. I’ve got it all arranged just how I like it, with the grocery list in the upper right, electric bill below that, water bill….now wait a minute. Did I pay that water bill last week or did I forget to mail it when I went to Perkins for lunch with Thelma? I can’t remember…” Dr. Hancock: “No, Ma’am again not an actual cork…”
Uses to online networking???….hmmmm….I’m just drawing a blank. Maybe I should get a Communications degree.”
– http://cornellreview.wordpress.com/2009/03/09/coulter-on-the-intricacies-of-cornells-schools/
March 10th, 2009 at 9:13 pm
where does the ILR school rank in this whole intra school prestige contest?
March 11th, 2009 at 6:49 pm
Well I think both points are void, because we all know Cornell sucks anyway. Just above Brown on the ivy scale.
March 12th, 2009 at 6:01 pm
no, cornell is awesome.
and although i do not agree with ann coulter on 99% of life… she’s totally right about this. people in ag are just so much dumber than people in arts. i am just glad someone finally said it out loud.
March 17th, 2009 at 2:38 am
ILR is also a state school, same bag as Ag and HumEc. The requirements doesn’t match up to the endowed colleges of Arts, Engr & AAP (but esp Arts and Engr)
March 18th, 2009 at 2:18 am
Cornell sucks!!!
March 25th, 2009 at 4:22 pm
For the record, CALS also includes the #10 undergrad business program in the country…
April 17th, 2009 at 2:29 am
coulter is a stupid woman.
I graduate from University of Michigan at Flint. I notice I know that I tell graduates from the Ann Arbor campus, they say my degree is not same as theres. But my degree says University of Michigan just like theres. I work just as hard as them, just at diferent campus.
May 3rd, 2009 at 2:47 am
Dart09 needs to grow up. I live in L.A. and NOBODY knows or cares abou Dartmouth. It practically doesn’t exist except for East Coast preppies. Cornell, on the other hand, has a huge reputation.
May 7th, 2009 at 8:47 pm
I’m a Kieth fan but appreciate a well-written smack down. BTW, the Rush Limbaugh trivia on ballroom dancing was enlightening. Rush couldn’t make it into his second year at the august Southeast Missouri State University.
May 15th, 2009 at 7:01 am
I went to Cornell for four years and later worked at the university for three years.
There were f*cktards in A&S, CALS, Johnson, Hotel, ILR, Vet, Engineering, AAP, and HumEc. F*cktards do not discriminate between colleges in their attendance. There are morons in every school. Maybe there’s a difference in the abrasive quality of the jackassery in different schools – hotelies are outgoing in their obnoxiousness! A&Sses are snobby! – but, hey, a prick is a prick is prick.
Yes, there were smart people in all the schools, too. Some of them were also tools. Funny how that works.
Oh, yeah, I work at Harvard now. Guess what? It’s full of tools, too.
Go Ivy.
September 6th, 2009 at 12:04 am
What’s so wrong with a major in Communications? I can understand other universities’ communications programs may be pretty easy, but Cornell’s is a lot different since they focus quite a lot on it being a social science like psychology or sociology would be. It’s also a gateway to fields like marketing and journalism (since there are no majors for either in Cornell) which I think are both respectable fields. Look at what the top CMOs (Chief Marketing Officers) of companies are making and you may think twice about Communications being such a throwaway. Same with Keith Olbermann. He makes millions a year.
September 22nd, 2009 at 5:01 pm
keith is a ignorant liar ,his mama was a whore who slept with his friends,,thinkj gang bang!
September 25th, 2009 at 5:01 am
To be fair, Olbermann isn’t a news show. It’s a show for people like Olbermann: narcissistic, hypocritical people with smugness and rage fueled by low self-esteem. I don’t have a problem with their not having ‘opposing points of view’ because it’s a show meant for a choir of like-thinking dittoheads. What bugs me is that he has the gall to pretend he’s not like Bill O’Reilly. Olbermann is actually worse because you have to add in what a complete douchebag he is, the hypocrisy of his entire act, plus those tired, childish voices he pulls. You know it just eats at his black little heart that O’Reilly has ten times his audience.
I’ll never get how statists fool themselves so thoroughly. Barack Obama made $2.7 million last year writing books about how oppressive this society is. Michael Moore made millions doing the same. Olbermann is a millionaire. Garofalo has money. They all live lives of luxury and spit the most vile hatred for working-class people … then pretend to be about the ‘common man’.
September 25th, 2009 at 7:52 am
Both of these people are so far gone, I can’t believe I am even wasting 45 seconds of my time writing this…Although I have more respect for Coulter (oooh, can’t believe I said that), they’re both confrontational egomaniacs. KO’s show sucks! I didn’t like him on SC and I don’t like him now. He reminds me of the whiny kid on the block who annoys the crap out of you until you beat his ass. Just not a fan of unfair, illogical BS passed off as reporting or journalism from KO or his transgender clone, Maddow. btw – i am a communications drop-out, so my opinion doesn’t really count anyway.
September 25th, 2009 at 10:32 am
How surprising that someone flaunts their education like it’s their identity. I’ll give points to Coulter on this one, but both are equally smug about something that overall doesn’t mean very much. Just because you have a college education, it doesn’t make you a smart person. (And yes, I am college educated, so I’m not playing a “jealousy” card. I went to a prestigious university for undergrad and grad, but it doesn’t mean the folks I graduated with are better human beings.)
September 25th, 2009 at 12:14 pm
I’m joining this discussion a few months late, and I’m amazed that it’s still raging. As with a previous poster, I find myself astonished that I would agree with Ann Coulter about anything, but I do. Trouble is, it’s like a playground fight: loud, furious, utterly meaningless.
Both combatants are childish snobs; both are too old to wave their academic credentials around; both are established spokespersons for the idiot right and the idiot left. (I usually side with he idiot left, but in this dumb confrontation, I side with the prettier idiot.)College students (and some alumni) play the status game constantly. It means a lot to the kids, and in fact it’s a serious component in hiring for one’s FIRST job, out of school. Afterwards, it’s of decreasing importance in the real world; it’s what you do after you leave school that counts. (In the interest of full disclosure: I went to a college generally regarded as second-tier then – now it’s top-tier – and my classmates and I were all Ivy wannabees. After college, I made it into TWO Ivy professional/graduate schools, hated both, and left without a degree. That ended any school snobbism I might have had left.)
But Coulter is right in “catching” Olbermann with false – or at least misleading – statements about his education. Putting myself back into my student head, I see a clear distinction between the Ivy and non-Ivy components of a university like Cornell; my own university had a School of Continuing Education, generally regarded as THIRD tier, or lower.
But this is all “purely academic” now. Where Coulter and Olbermann were educated simply doesn’t matter today: Olbermann is a credit to the Ag school and should be proud of it. Coulter is a well-educated piece of work and is overly proud of herself.
And both should simply shut up about the issue.
October 5th, 2009 at 8:08 pm
Unsurprisingly, people are still willing to argue about this issue. Possibly rightly so, as Coulter and Olbermann were equal and opposite dumbasses in this fight. Apparently this is the first law of newtonian douchebagery. Surprising, possibly, was Coulter’s old paper’s reaction: http://cornellinsider.com/2009/03/09/coulter-on-the-intricacies-of-cornells-schools/
October 21st, 2009 at 12:45 am
Anyone who thinks there is not a hierarchy has either never seen test scores or is ignoring their own subservience.
Engineering is the best in the Ivy League and among the best in the world. Ag & Life Sciences is good, but loses style points for replicating Arts & Sciences departments and paying less tuition. ILR… union organizer. Ugh. ‘Nuff said. HumEc exists so we can have a few fashionable and attractive people on campus. Architecture, Arts and Planning are solid except in fine arts. Hotelies are very nice, not really academically solid, almost as attractive as HumEc but more organized — and wanting to run a restaurant or resort to hang with the jet set for their career. Finally: Arts & Sciences, the preening-yet-underperforming college. Some parts are tops (physics, math) while others are just also-rans. Unfortunately, nobody can get that across to the Artsies because they conflate envy from A&LS mirror-majors with actual prestige.
So for prestige, we have: Engr > AAP > Arts > Hotel > A&LS > HumEc > ILR; but, for academic rigor: Arts (phys/math) > Engr > A&LS > AAP > Arts (fluffy) > ILR > Hotel > HumEc.
The fluffy Artsies did get the Arts Quad though. So that got that going for them. Which is nice.
January 1st, 2010 at 2:18 am
New Jersey City University (NJCU) is often called “Harvard on the Hudson.”
The New Jersey Commission of Higher Education has written three letters stating that the President of NJCU used fraudulent academic credentials to become president.
But nothing else can be done about this fraud — unless the NJ Governor instructs his Attorney General to do so. And, he won’t — because this NJCU President is a member of his Education Commission; and this President’s second full-time job (Director: Provident Securities; over $1,000.000 in earnings during the past three years)makes this President too much of a politically connected asset.
Google: “Fraud at New Jersey City University” for more details.