Editing Ivy League (section)

===Social elitism===
[[File:Columbiaman.jpg|thumb|A cartoon portrait of the stereotypical Columbia man, 1902]]
The Ivy League is often associated with the [[American upper class|upper class]] [[White Anglo-Saxon Protestant]] community of the [[Northeastern United States|Northeast]], [[Old money]], or more generally, the [[Upper middle class in the United States|American upper middle]] and upper classes.<ref>{{cite book | title=Snobbery: The American Version | first=Joseph | last=Epstein | year=2003 | publisher=Houghton Mifflin | isbn=0-618-34073-4 | url-access=registration | url=https://archive.org/details/snobbery00jose }} p. 55, "by WASP Baltzell meant something much more specific; he intended to cover a select group of people who passed through a congeries of elite American institutions: certain eastern prep schools, the Ivy League colleges, and the Episcopal Church among them." and {{cite book | title=The Ideal of the University | first = Robert Paul |last = Wolff | publisher = Transaction Publishers | year=1992 | isbn = 1-56000-603-X}} p. viii: "My genial, aristocratic contempt for Clark Kerr's celebration of the University of California was as much an expression of Ivy League snobbery as it was of radical social critique."</ref><ref>{{cite web|url=https://www.npr.org/blogs/itsallpolitics/2012/09/17/161295588/the-end-of-wasp-dominated-politics|title=The End Of WASP-Dominated Politics|first=Alan|last=Greenblatt|date=September 19, 2012|work=NPR}}</ref><ref>{{cite web|url=http://spectator.org/articles/34941/missing-wasps|title=Missing the WASPs|first=Christopher|last=Orlet|date=August 23, 2012|work=The American Spectator|access-date=October 12, 2014|archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20160107201033/http://spectator.org/articles/34941/missing-wasps|archive-date=January 7, 2016|url-status=dead}}</ref><ref>{{cite news| url=https://www.nytimes.com/2010/06/28/opinion/28feldman.html |archive-url=https://ghostarchive.org/archive/20220103/https://www.nytimes.com/2010/06/28/opinion/28feldman.html |archive-date=2022-01-03 |url-access=subscription |url-status=live | work=The New York Times | first=Noah | last=Feldman | title=The Triumphant Decline of the WASP | date=June 2, 2010}}{{cbignore}}</ref> Although most Ivy League students come from upper-middle and upper-class families, the student body has become increasingly more economically and ethnically diverse. The universities provide significant financial aid to help increase the enrollment of lower income and middle class students.<ref name="theatlantic.com">{{cite web|url=https://www.theatlantic.com/education/archive/2014/02/why-ivy-league-schools-are-so-bad-at-economic-diversity/284076/|title=Why Ivy League Schools Are So Bad at Economic Diversity|first=Robin J.|last=Hayes|date=February 2014|work=The Atlantic|access-date=March 7, 2017|archive-date=March 7, 2017|archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20170307113555/https://www.theatlantic.com/education/archive/2014/02/why-ivy-league-schools-are-so-bad-at-economic-diversity/284076/|url-status=live}}</ref> Several reports suggest, however, that the proportion of students from less-affluent families remains low.<ref>Time magazine, Noliwe M. Rooks, February 27, 2013, [https://ideas.time.com/2013/02/27/the-biggest-barrier-to-elite-education-isnt-affordability-its-accessibility/ The Biggest Barrier to Elite Education Isn't Affordability. It's Accessibility], Retrieved August 27, 2014, "... accessibility of these schools to students who are poor, minority ... the weight that Ivy League and other highly selective schools ... unfortunate set of circumstances ... gifted minority, poor and working class students can benefit most from the educational opportunities ..."</ref><ref>August 26, 2014, Boston Globe (via NY Times), [http://www.boston.com/business/news/2014/08/26/generation-later-poor-are-still-rare-elite-colleges/pL5EU7PrPXvpEflvgXAuEJ/story.html A Generation Later, Poor are Still Rare at Elite Colleges] {{Webarchive|url=https://web.archive.org/web/20140903094207/http://www.boston.com/business/news/2014/08/26/generation-later-poor-are-still-rare-elite-colleges/pL5EU7PrPXvpEflvgXAuEJ/story.html |date=September 3, 2014 }}, Retrieved August 30, 2014, "more elite group of 28 private colleges and universities, including all eight Ivy League members, ... from 2001 to 2009, ... enrollment of students from the bottom 40 percent of family incomes increased from just 10 percent to 11 percent. ... "</ref>

Phrases such as "Ivy League snobbery"<ref>{{cite book | title=The Ideal of the University | first = Robert Paul |last = Wolff | publisher = Transaction Publishers | year=1992 | isbn = 1-56000-603-X}} p. viii: "My genial, aristocratic contempt for Clark Kerr's celebration of the University of California was as much an expression of Ivy League snobbery as it was of radical social critique."</ref> are ubiquitous in nonfiction and fiction writing of the early and mid-twentieth century. A [[Louis Auchincloss]] character dreads "the aridity of snobbery which he knew infected the Ivy League colleges".<ref name="autogenerated1"/> A business writer, warning in 2001 against discriminatory hiring, presented a cautionary example of an attitude to avoid (the bracketed phrase is his):

{{blockquote|We Ivy Leaguers [read: mostly white and Anglo]<!--This bracketed phrase is part of the quotation and is in the original, not an editorial interpolation.---> know that an Ivy League degree is a mark of the kind of person who is likely to succeed in this organization.<ref>{{cite book|title=The 10 Lenses: your guide to living and working in a multicultural world|url=https://archive.org/details/10lenses00mark|url-access=registration|first=Mark|last=Williams|year=2001|publisher=Capital Books|isbn=9781892123596}}, [https://books.google.com/books?id=bkiuOG-k2vUC&pg=RA1-PA85 p. 85]</ref>}}

The phrase ''Ivy League'' historically has been perceived as connected not only with academic excellence but also with social elitism. In 1936, sportswriter [[John Kieran]] noted that student editors at [[Harvard University|Harvard]], [[Yale]], [[Columbia University|Columbia]], [[Princeton University|Princeton]], [[Cornell University|Cornell]], [[Dartmouth College|Dartmouth]], and [[University of Pennsylvania|Penn]] were advocating the formation of an athletic association. In urging them to consider "[[United States Military Academy|Army]] and [[United States Naval Academy|Navy]] and [[Georgetown University|Georgetown]] and [[Fordham University|Fordham]] and [[Syracuse University|Syracuse]] and [[Brown University|Brown]] and [[University of Pittsburgh|Pitt]]" as candidates for membership, he exhorted:

{{blockquote|It would be well for the proponents of the Ivy League to make it clear (to themselves especially) that the proposed group would be inclusive but not "exclusive" as this term is used with a slight up-tilting of the tip of the nose.<ref>{{cite news|last=Kieran|first=John|title=Sports of the Times—The Ivy League|url=https://query.nytimes.com/gst/abstract.html?res=9C0CE3D9173EEE3BBC4C53DFB467838D629EDE|work=The New York Times|date=December 4, 1936|access-date=May 30, 2017|page=36|quote=There will now be a little test of 'the power of the press' in intercollegiate circles since the student editors at Harvard, Yale, Princeton, Cornell, Columbia, Dartmouth and Penn are coming out in a group for the formation of an Ivy League in football. The idea isn't new. ... It would be well for the proponents of the Ivy League to make it clear (to themselves especially) that the proposed group would be inclusive but not 'exclusive' as this term is used with a slight up-tilting of the tip of the nose." He recommended the consideration of "plenty of institutions covered with home-grown ivy that are not included in the proposed group. [such as ] Army and Navy and Georgetown and Fordham and Syracuse and Brown and Pitt, just to offer a few examples that come to mind" and noted that "Pitt and Georgetown and Brown and Bowdoin and Rutgers were old when Cornell was shining new, and Fordham and Holy Cross had some building draped in ivy before the plaster was dry in the walls that now tower high about Cayuga's waters.}}</ref>}}

Aspects of Ivy stereotyping were illustrated during the [[1988 United States presidential election|1988 presidential election]], when [[George H. W. Bush]] (Yale '48) derided [[Michael Dukakis]] (graduate of Harvard Law School) for having "foreign-policy views born in Harvard Yard's boutique."<ref>{{cite web|url=http://www.tarpley.net/bush22.htm|title=George Bush: The Unauthorized Biography: Chapter XXII Bush Takes The Presidency|first1=Webster G.|last1=Tarpley|first2=Anton|last2=Chaitkin|publisher=Webster G. Tarpley|access-date=December 17, 2006|archive-date=February 7, 2010|archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20100207080707/http://www.tarpley.net/bush22.htm|url-status=live}} <!-- Obviously a poor source but it has the exact phrase the New York Times columnists are referring to, which I couldn't find in the NYT articles themselves. --></ref> ''New York Times'' columnist [[Maureen Dowd]] asked "Wasn't this a case of the pot calling the kettle elite?" Bush explained, however, that, unlike Harvard, Yale's reputation was "so diffuse, there isn't a symbol, I don't think, in the Yale situation, any symbolism in it. ... Harvard boutique to me has the connotation of liberalism and elitism" and said ''Harvard'' in his remark was intended to represent "a philosophical enclave" and not a statement about class.<ref>Dowd, Maureen (1998), "Bush Traces How Yale Differs From Harvard". ''The New York Times'', June 11, 1998, p. 10.</ref> Columnist [[Russell Baker]] opined that "Voters inclined to loathe and fear elite Ivy League schools rarely make fine distinctions between Yale and Harvard. All they know is that both are full of rich, fancy, stuck-up and possibly dangerous intellectuals who never sit down to supper in their [[undershirt]] no matter how hot the weather gets."<ref>Baker, Russell (1998). "The Ivy Hayseed". ''The New York Times'', June 15, 1988, p. A31.</ref> Still, the next five consecutive presidents all attended Ivy League schools for at least part of their education—George H. W. Bush (Yale undergrad), [[Bill Clinton]] (Yale Law School), [[George W. Bush]] (Yale undergrad, Harvard Business School), [[Barack Obama]] (Columbia undergrad, Harvard Law School), and [[Donald Trump]] (Penn undergrad).  Indeed, since 1989, [[Joe Biden]] has been the only president to ''not'' be Ivy League-educated.