Excellent Sheep

Excellent Sheep is a critique of education by William Deresiewicz, an American literary critic and former English professor at Yale University. The author studied at and taught at Ivy League schools for more than twenty years in total; in 2008, his essay "The Disadvantages of an Elite Education" sparked widespread discussion, and he later gathered his lectures, interviews, and reflections into this book. The book argues that students produced by America's top universities are often smart, hardworking, and highly motivated, yet they are commonly anxious, afraid of failure, and lacking a sense of purpose; they excel at solving the problems handed to them, but cannot say clearly why they are alive or what kind of person they want to become. The author calls these "excellent yet docile" young people "sheep." The book is divided into four parts: Part One dissects the elite education system itself, tracing the selection mechanisms, training methods, and institutional logic of elite schools and showing how it becomes a system that "forces students to choose success"; Part Two turns to the individual, discussing the true mission of college, how to "create your own life," and the meaning of leadership; Part Three focuses on the institutional level, discussing the humanities canon, mentors, and the misleading nature of college rankings; Part Four lifts its gaze to society, analyzing how elite education reproduces a privileged class and how it might redeem itself. The Chinese edition was translated by Lin Jie and first published by Jiuzhou Press in 2016, at one point reaching a Douban rating of 8.1; in 2025 CITIC Publishing Group released a tenth-anniversary edition, adding a new author's preface, a self-check list for middle school and college freshmen, and introductory recommendations from figures in education and intellectual circles including Hu Min, Yao Yang, Wan Weigang, Lin Xiaoying, Yan Fei, and Fan Deng. The book does not offer universal answers; rather, it encourages readers to question the default assumption that "a top school means success," to rediscover themselves through a liberal arts education, and to become independent thinkers rather than excellent sheep.