Former Stanford dean explains why helicopter parenting is ruining a generation

Post by morgante » Sat, Oct 17, 2015, 7:18 PM UTC

School-Cotton wrote: post #162

fsloth wrote: post #151

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I'm left wondering why the parent would be compulsed to push the child agressively. Maybe it's a US thing? We are are engineer parents in northern Europe, we try to raise our kids so they remain curious and emotinally fullfilled, we wish every good thing for them - but it's really hard to imagine to go all helicopter on them. If anything, I imagine we will let them make all the right and wrong decisions about their e…

Elite schools in the U.S. are more competitive along arbitrary criteria than in Europe. To get into top schools in Europe, it's enough to do better on exams than everyone else. But since the U.S. public education system is so easy and perfect grades don't provide much of a signal, top schools are looking for proof that you're an "interesting person" in a lot of ways that seem a priori to be unrelated to academia.

Post by ZanyProgrammer » Sat, Oct 17, 2015, 7:28 PM UTC

obstacle1 wrote: post #114

ZanyProgrammer wrote: post #75

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Better to be a Harvard dropout (Zuckerberg) than have a CS degree from Humboldt State.

Better to win the megabucks than the $5 scratch-off ticket. What's your point? That being an enormous outlier is sometimes a great thing?

Post by ThomPete » Sat, Oct 17, 2015, 8:16 PM UTC

wfo wrote: post #153

ThomPete wrote: post #128

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All areas that are going to be increasingly disrupted by technology and digitalization. So sure for now but this will change.

Signalling and networking and group association and stereotypes are inherently human and have remained the same for the past 6000 years of human history no matter the changes in technology. You can't just throw out contentless buzzword bingo like "disruption" and "technology" and seriously expect anyone to believe it's going to change.

Post by cthalupa » Sat, Oct 17, 2015, 8:22 PM UTC

seiji wrote: post #147

cthalupa wrote: post #138

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Stanford has 27 billionaire alumni. At any given time, there are ~15,000 students studying at Stanford. Getting the top 10 schools for creating billionaires, it accounts for 206 total. (Though this number also includes Cambridge, and I'm not sure if the 11 billionaire alumni from there are part of the same 500ish US billionaires) Out of the 500ish billionaires in the US, nearly 100 of them have no degree at all. So,…

nearly 100 of them have no degree at all. Because many of them dropped/stopped out of Stanford after being accepted. You can ask the same of NYC. How many supreme court justices are from NYC versus Idaho? Location matters. Location changes you. Peers change you. relatively small sample size Outliers can't be analyzed using aggregate methods. Powerlawpeople.

Post by Thriptic » Sat, Oct 17, 2015, 9:08 PM UTC

zkhalique wrote: post #166

Thriptic wrote: post #124

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It's never been necessary to go to an elite school to be successful; it's simply much easier to get your foot in the door with employers if you have the words "MIT" or "Stanford" on your resume as opposed to "Coursera" or some random college. Moreover, employers COME TO YOU if you are at these institutions, you don't need to go out and beg for face time.

Depends on the major. I would say in many majors it's work experience that matters. I agree that the first job is easier to get when you're from Stanford, but that's it.