28 Paris on the Charles Theory
There are those who say the specialness of Harvard comes from its location in Cambridge, America's most suave and continental and sophisticated city. That's something of a chicken and egg problem, but people do sit around in coffeehouses in Cambridge a lot and there are a lot of bookstores and newsstands and people talking French in the street. Nobody seems to get up before noon. Where else are there block-long lines to see twenty-year-old Swedish-language films on weekday nights?
Harvard and the World
29 Ruling Class or Training Ground of the Elite Theory
Charles William Eliot said, "There is an aristocracy to which the sons of Harvard have belonged and, let us hope, will ever aspire to belong." Eliot should know; when he came to Harvard he was related by blood or marriage to sizeable chunk of the faculty and administration. It's not quite so close-knit now, but Introducing Harvard maintains, "No description of the educational process at Harvard could be complete without mentioning the college's historic function: educating the sons and daughters of the nation's elite."
The average parental income of students here is sky-high, and the University's Governing Boards, if not its faculty, are still populated by the heirs to America's oldest East-coast fortunes. In that sense Harvard's real function is to train the children of the powerful to take the power themselves, so as to keep it in the family. The reason Harvard graduates have has such a profound influence on America--five of them have been U.S. presidents, countless others presidents of corporations--is not so much their innate talent as their good luck at being born to the right parents. Harvard just added the polish and gave the elite's children a chance to get acquainted with each other.
30 Meritocracy or Breeding Ground of the Elite Theory
The more current view of Harvard in American society is that the University is the ultimate agent of upward socio-economic mobility; a perfect meritocracy, it culls the one or two best kids from practically every high school in America. It's competitive and high-key, so much so that even staunch liberals like David Riesman '31 are beginning to have doubts. In his new book Riesman says the meritocratic atmosphere doesn't do much for learning or finding yourself or that sort of thing. Maybe you'll end up a part of the new anti-meritocracy, slide right through Harvard, and go back to Dubuque after you graduate to work on the farm. By then you'll probably have a few theories of your own