Douthat arrived at Harvard in the fall of 1998 carrying an idealized vision of Ivy League life. Instead, he found himself in a school rife with elitism and moneyed excess, an incubator for the grasping and ambitious, a college seduced by the religion of success. What Harvard taught him was not what he had gone there to learn: he was immersed in the culture of America's ever-swelling ruling class--a culture of privilege, of ambition and entitlement, in which a network of elite schools are viewed by students, parents, administrators, and professors more as stepping-stones to high salaries and coveted social networks than as institutions of academic excellence. This book is both a pointed social critique of this country's most esteemed institutions, and an exploration of issues such as affirmative action, grade inflation, political correctness, and curriculum reform.--From publisher description.