What you read at Columbia is Plato's Republic and Homer's Iliad. What you learn at Columbia is that reading isn't education. Education is figuring out the hard way that at a school like Columbia, what you read isn't nearly as important as what you wear, how you look, and how much you know about sucking up to professors who really couldn't give a shit about whether some nameless, faceless kid in the 23rd row will work or starve after graduation.