America's New Mandarins

McArdle nails the phenomenon.

All elites are good at rationalizing their elite-ness, whether it's meritocracy or "the divine right of kings". The problem is the mandarin elite has some good arguments. They really are very bright and hard-working. It's just that they're also prone to be conformist, risk averse, obedient, and good at echoing the opinions of authority, because that is what this sort of examination system selects for.

In conclusion:

But they are not the only qualities worth having, and the things that mandarins know are not the only things worth knowing. My grandfather had maybe ten books in his house (that weren't written for children), but he could take a failing service station and make it succeed, while I'm pretty sure that I would take a successful gas station and make it fail. He also, I might add, was very successful at actually running a small town (as an alderman) and a charitable institution (the local Rotary). I'm not sure we're better off cutting off the paths to success and power taken by people like him, so that we can funnel it all through a series of academic hoops. I'm not sure we haven't ended up with a class of people who know everything about gas stations except what it takes to make one succeed.