This week, former Yale professor William Deresiewicz published an article in the New Republic titled “Don’t Send Your Kid to the Ivy League,” with the provocative statement that “the nation’s top colleges are turning our kids into zombies.” While he accurately points to several major problems with higher education as a whole (for a start, the overwhelming popularity of a few select industries, an emphasis on grades rather than learning, and a lack of diversity), he assigns the blame to a few of the elite schools in the nation, the same ones constantly targeted for producing out-of-touch, privileged kids who become carbon copies funneling into Wall Street.

It’s understandable that that generalization exists, and it’s a popular one. A Forbes article written earlier this year illustrated the same claim, that Ivy League schools mass-produce students for the same few career paths (with more than 60% of Princeton’s graduating class entering the fields of finance and management consulting).

However, the idea that everyone who emerges from an Ivy League school is a “zombie,” as Deresiewicz states, is too simplistic. It’s not that the students of each graduating class really are so lost and confused that they become easy prey for investment banks and consulting firms. More often, it’s a calculated choice, an individual assessment of risk—and, for many, the best chance of success (in terms of income and prestige) is at Goldman Sachs, McKinsey, and the like.

Why students consistently make this choice isn’t simple, either, and it differs from person to person. They want to make their education worth what they put into it, to know that they’ve taken advantage of the opportunities that Ivy League universities can provide. They need to be able to pay back student loans. At Columbia, the estimated expenses for a single academic year just rose to $64,144, and that number probably won’t get lower anytime soon. They are genuinely interested in finance and consulting (yes, it’s possible). They feel pressured to have the prestigious career and high salary that we as a society value so highly. Or, like any other adult in the working world, they want security.

While these reasons don’t necessarily justify the overall results of this trend and Deriesiewicz is right to question the risk-aversion mindset, they are valid. I’m far from being a proponent of the Ivy-League-to-Wall-Street path (and have in fact worked as a member of CORE to give students at Columbia career opportunities with startups as an alternative), but it exists for a reason. More than that, the trend is beginning to change.

Beyond criticizing graduates’ career choices, Deresiewicz mourns the loss of intellectualism in these universities. Echoing the IvyGate response to the article, that’s just not true. At Columbia, the Core ensures that every student participates in larger academic conversations in areas ranging from literature to science to global cultures. We read classic works, learn about different schools of thought, and are asked to not just absorb, but to question what we are taught. I’ve been in classrooms where my peers argued passionately with each other over the relative philosophies of Hume and Kant or with the professor on whether Homer was sexist or merely portraying the sexism in his society at the time. That’s not how students behave when they care only about getting a good grade. To me, this atmosphere embodies the essence of intellectualism, and it’s why I decided to attend Columbia.

There are times when learning for the sake of learning takes a backseat to pre-professionalism. Our society (not our top universities) has emphasized practicality, applicability, and earning potential. Students hear that the world needs more people in business and the STEM fields and that English majors become English teachers. So they decide accordingly. Still, even English is far from dead, despite the bad rap it’s received.

Deresiewicz is right that we need to reemphasize the importance of art, music, literature, and more—after all, I’m studying philosophy (maybe the least practical major there is) because I think the humanities matter beyond their applications. But do we want elite universities to be detached institutions of learning that don’t address the reality that their students are heading into the working world upon graduation? Liberal arts colleges focus on broad knowledge and general intellect, but it’s not wrong to structure an education with a future career in mind, as long as the learning doesn’t become rote and mechanical. The problem only arises when that education becomes solely a means to an end rather than a source of intrinsic value.

And, in the same way, it’s reasonable that students consider return-on-investment (ROI) when they choose their majors and aim for certain jobs. Whether that’s the first or last concern they have, it makes sense that it’s a factor. To me, it’s more entitled and out-of-touch for Deresiewicz to suggest that every Ivy League student can target a job as a social worker making $40,000 a year after going to a college that costs $250,000 for four years. That choice would be admirable, to be sure, but often isn’t realistic, financially or otherwise—because, contrary to the stereotype that the New Republic article perpetuates, Harvard and Yale aren’t filled to the brim with the children of wealthy one-percenters.

I know people from single-parent households, people who immigrated to the U.S. with their families, people who went to small-town schools that offered vastly fewer courses than my public high school. And the bulk of the people I know are from middle-class and upper-middle-class families who worked hard to send their kids to top-tier schools. In 2013, 60% of the students at Harvard received financial aid, and other Ivies cite similar numbers.

While true diversity of class and race is a long way from where we are now, Deresiewicz repeats the cliché of the Ivy League student as the silver-spooned child of rich white parents, raised with a private tutor and maybe a subscription to The Economist. There is privilege in being able to attend an elite school at all, but I find that the people around me tend to be acutely aware of the opportunity that they have been given. They don’t take it for granted. The concept of privilege (of gender, class, race, sexual orientation, and so on) is constantly a topic of discussion at Columbia, and students push themselves to recognize the advantages that they have and work to correct them for others. We fall short at times, but rarely is the problem blind entitlement.

Dereciewicz, at his extreme, takes on the tone of a man foretelling a coming apocalypse, with new armies of Ivy League “robots” and “zombies” graduating each year. Few would contest his argument that we should have top-tier state schools, but progress is slow. Public universities can still be great places of learning, but student-faculty ratios are often too high, and funding is too low. While we need to work harder to raise the quality of higher education for everyone, turning from the schools that (according to him) provide a “first-rate education” helps no one.

Top universities continue to produce high numbers of thoughtful, intellectually curious people who become great writers, successful entrepreneurs, and cutting-edge scientists. As J.D. Chapman writes in his rebuttal to the original piece, “I agree that class lines are hardening in dangerous ways; the Ivies have too much money and power; and meritocracy is a delusion. That does not mean that an Ivy League diploma isn’t valuable, especially for someone whose family has no history of access to elite careers like teaching at Yale or writing for The New Republic. It means that it is valuable.”

No one should ever go to an Ivy League school just to say that they did, and often public universities or small liberal arts colleges are the right place for a student when the Ivy League is not. But these eight schools aren’t at fault for our society’s failings; telling parents to keep their kids out of them isn’t a solution. Increasing accessibility to top schools, refocusing our values in education and the workplace, and improving the standard of learning across the nation is.