CORRECTION APPENDED

Why does college matter? Ask an Eli.

The New York Times Magazine announced on Friday that it had chosen a Yale junior as the winner of its “Why College Matters” essay contest—beating out at least five Harvard students.

Nicholas Handler’s prize-winning essay was written in response to an article by historian Rick Perlstein arguing that American college campuses are no longer the incubators of radical thought they were in the 1960s because of a modern-day obsession with market-centered thinking.

College, Perlstein wrote, is no longer a place for creative exploration, but rather for infantilization by highly scheduled student bureaucracies where students tailor their fun for their resumes.

In his essay, Handler responded that the lack of massive protests and student takeovers of administrative buildings is merely the result of the digital revolution, which has transferred the free expression of ideas from the picket lines to the Internet.

“Perhaps when our parents finally stop pointing out the things that we are not, the stories that we do not write, they will see the threads of our narrative begin to come together; they will see that behind our pastiche, the post generation speaks in a language that does make sense,” Handler wrote in the essay. “We are writing a revolution. We are just putting it in our own words.”

Handler’s essay was published alongside Perlstein’s on Sunday and both appear on the Times Web site.

Online reaction to Handler’s victory was largely negative, said Jim Schachter, the deputy editor of the magazine.

Much of the online criticism lampooned Handler’s Ivy League origins and allegedly flowery language.

“If only this article was also post-pretentious,” wrote one reader, referring to the title of Handler’s essay, “The Posteverything Generation.”

Schachter, who helped choose the winning essay, said that the organizers of the competition discussed how it would look to have an Ivy Leaguer win.

But he insisted that in the end top editors chose the best written essay as the winner.

“Whoever we chose, The New York Times would have been criticized,” he said.

Schachter added that 600 undergraduates submitted essays since the contest opened in July. Handler was the only Ivy League student among the five finalists, although five essays submitted by Harvard students appear on the Times Web site.

Matthew S. Blumenthal ’08, a former member of The Crimson’s news staff who entered the contest, said he found the essay interesting.

“It was a good essay from an academically critical viewpoint,” Blumenthal said.

CORRECTION: The Oct. 2 news article "Why College Matters, According to Yale," misstated the number of essays submitted by Harvard students that appear on the Web site of The New York Times. Not five but 14 essays by Harvard students appear on the site.