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It didn't dawn on me that there might be a few holes in my education until I was about 35. I'd just bought a house, the pipes needed fixing, and the plumber was standing in my kitchen. There he was, a short, beefy guy with a goatee and a Red Sox cap and a thick Boston accent, and I suddenly learned that I didn't have the slightest idea what to say to someone like him. So alien was his experience to me, so unguessable his values, so mysterious his very language, that I couldn't succeed in engaging him in a few minutes of small talk before he got down to work. Fourteen years of higher education and a handful of Ivy League degrees, and there I was, stiff and stupid, struck dumb by my own dumbness. "Ivy retardation," a friend of mine calls this. I could carry on conversations with people from other countries, in other languages, but I couldn't talk to the man who was standing in my own house.
It's not surprising that it took me so long to discover the extent of my miseducation, because the last thing an elite education will teach you is its own inadequacy. As two dozen years at Yale and Columbia have shown me, elite colleges relentlessly encourage their students to flatter themselves for being there, and for what being there can do for them. The advantages of an elite education are indeed undeniable. You learn to think, at least in certain ways, and you make the contacts needed to launch yourself into a life rich in all of society's most cherished rewards. To consider that while some opportunities are being created, others are being cancelled and that while some abilities are being developed, others are being crippled is, within this context, not only outrageous, but inconceivable.
(Score: 2) by Hyperturtle on Thursday December 29 2016, @04:32PM
This is called the "Peter Principle" in the workplace.
It happens when someone is promoted to a role beyond their competence--hopefully not to far into incompetent territory. Unfortunately, many colleges have no problems accepting money in exchange for incompetent students. Workplaces often suffer financially, though, which has lead to strategies to help curtail it.
Sometimes it is used to get rid of people, by promoting them away to another department where they can fail and get fired for being unable to do their job, as opposed to being fired for just being merely educated beyond their intelligence. Everyone usually can spot that guy except for the guy himself.
You can't easily get rid of someone just for being stupid where it counts; as a result, you often need proof of the damage that person is causing if there is a paperwork requirement to go with it. To get that -- make sure that the person and their fancy education get into a position they are likely unable to succeed at (with a pay raise to go with it, to ensure acceptance--a small price to pay). Then let them fail.
I don't want to say it happens all the time, but it happens enough that the process got a name for when someone exceeds their level of competence in the workplace.