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What the elite expect and receive from an Ivy League education

washingtonpost.com

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Re: What the elite expect and receive from an Ivy League education

#81

Post by nnfy »

Animats wrote: post #25

Harvard's graduation rate is 97.5%. Yale 97%. Princeton 96.9%. It's hard to flunk out of the Ivy League. Non Ivy League highly selective schools: Caltech 92.3%. Stanford 93%. MIT 92.2%. UC Berkeley: 90.9%. Low 90% success rate is normal there.

It could also be at least partly related to higher selectivity and more financial aid, and/or rich parents, that make school easier.

But I dont actually know what goes on in ivy and off ivy league elite schools.

Also consider that these may just be better run schools which also provide more and more useful assistance to students.

Edit: I would like to add I think this article title is extremely clickbaity, and plays on the recently resurgent class warfare phenomenon. It pains me that articles like this, from sources like this, are becoming normalized and even acceptable on HN. There's no merit to this biased pile of shit. And I'm not an ivy league graduate having a security crisis. Journalism should be objective.

Re: What the elite expect and receive from an Ivy League education

#82

Post by 11thEarlOfMar »

There is a recurring theme of incentives becoming out of alignment with purpose. This happens in business, medicine, government...

It's become a real focus for me, and CEOs should consider this very carefully. What are the company's goals, really, and are the incentives offered, all the way from the janitors up to their own compensation, in alignment with those goals?

The professor stated blatantly: The students are paying too much for us to fail them. Said another way: The students bought their grades.

Does anyone have knowledge of incentive structures at universities that they'd defend as being in strong alignment with the goal of turning out the best educated students? What was that incentive structure?

Re: What the elite expect and receive from an Ivy League education

#83

Post by taysic »

jforman wrote: post #41

This article has very little basis in reality based on my experience at Harvard as an undergrad and at Princeton as a grad student and TA. Yes, students are arrogant and push for grades quite a bit. But I saw zero evidence of systemic catering to them as a whole or to any specific sub-population. I imagine the Development Office (the folks who would cater to the ultra powerful) may get involved in extreme cases? But…

The nature of the grading system is that it doesn't have a ton of transparency. It doesn't sound too surprising that the wealthy and well-connected might use any lever possible to increase their standing. This is actually one of the many things that drew me to tech as a profession - more meritocratic and you can feel it.

At the end of the day, without more data it's impossible to know.

Re: What the elite expect and receive from an Ivy League education

#84

Post by L_Rahman »

jforman wrote: post #41

This article has very little basis in reality based on my experience at Harvard as an undergrad and at Princeton as a grad student and TA. Yes, students are arrogant and push for grades quite a bit. But I saw zero evidence of systemic catering to them as a whole or to any specific sub-population. I imagine the Development Office (the folks who would cater to the ultra powerful) may get involved in extreme cases? But…

The mistake is in thinking of this as an overt control instead of a system of subtle nudges. A professor known for harsh grading gets a question from his department head and next year the curve shifts a little.

And that is how your undergrad program has a proportion of grade inflation that verges on embarrassing.

Re: What the elite expect and receive from an Ivy League education

#85

Post by JumpCrisscross »

ryandrake wrote: post #63

The silliness, of course, is that if you are among the "elite" and "privileged" going to an Ivy League school, nobody is going to give a shit about your grades anyway. Your career and success is already pre-ordained. Why on earth would you bother arguing with your professor that your "A-" should be an "A"? You're going to go to work at your daddy's investment bank after you graduate either way! You think big name ban…

> You're going to go to work at your daddy's investment bank after you graduate either way!

Privilege has its limits. Let's take your example. If you're inheriting Dad's investment bank, you still have to keep winning their clients. Most institutional investors have policies which require them to freeze and reconsider firms after leadership changes. If you flunked your way through Harvard, that's going to be difficult.

More often, Dad doesn't own the investment bank. He's a senior officer there. This, again, confers some advantage. But outside of inheriting an estate, there are lots of controls prevent blatant nepotism.

Re: What the elite expect and receive from an Ivy League education

#86

Post by adrianratnapala »

NumberSix wrote: post #9

The article ends with: It’s a system that polishes privilege, its byproduct a contempt for earned authority. Many of the people who started with this attitude had it ratified and encouraged by perhaps the most prestigious university in the world — and now they’re running the whole show. Emphasis on now added. Who in their right mind thinks people who attend Harvard and a handful of other elite universities and prep s…

The modern US has centralised more power in the hands of institutions which those Ivy League graduates dominate (i.e. the federal government and the large banks). Also other big capitalist enterprises in the past cared less about degrees than now.

So I'd say that America always had class distinctions, and the Ivy League always was a ticket to the highest class. But it dominates that class more than it used to.

Re: What the elite expect and receive from an Ivy League education

#87

Post by taysic »

WillPostForFood wrote: post #79
tptacek wrote: post #45

Earlier quoted context omitted.

When you say "very little basis in reality", you mean "disagrees with my own experience". The difference between those two phrases isn't subtle. The author is relating their own actual experience teaching at Harvard, and the directly related experiences of other teachers.

The parent is relating their own actual experience to you. Which you chose to believe is more a product of confirmation bias than reality. The author of the article, so I'll be generous and suggest she liberally is using poetic license with the truth to make a point. Do you really believe this is how the supposed incident happened? "Then, in front of the student, he pressed me to explain the reason for my poor teachi…

If the student was well-connected, and the professor was worried about their position (nontenured) and did not find arguing worth the hassle - then yes, why not? Doesn't sound that surprising.

Re: What the elite expect and receive from an Ivy League education

#88

Post by jameshart »

vostok wrote: post #44
irrational wrote: post #14

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Is Harvard really considered more prestigious than Oxford or Cambridge? That doesn't follow my perception.

In academic circles, yes. Socially, not so much. A huge portion of the middle class in the UK went to Oxford or Cambridge. Something like 25% of Etonians get into Oxford or Cambridge. For the Westminster school that number is something like 45%. Harvard does not have that same grip on the corresponding class stratum in the US, but Harvard also has far fewer undergraduates than Oxford or Cambridge and the US is a much…

Eton and Westminster schools are not open to the 'middle class'. Of course, they'll accept the upper class, because that's traditional, but what they really want is the ruling class, which is no longer the same thing. But mere middle class?

Re: What the elite expect and receive from an Ivy League education

#89

Post by [deleted] »

katastic wrote: post #55
ahelwer wrote: post #48

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Really? Spreading grades out among various assignments and tests is how I managed to pass university (I coincidentally also attended the University of Calgary, hi rdlecler1!). I would have imploded if it all came down to a single giant exam. Why the heck would you want academic achievement to come down to a handful of hours of actual performance? What goal does that serve? University isn't the Olympics.

The true answer is: No grades should matter except the final exam and you should be able to take the final exam as many times as you want. (With a reasonable minimum period between retakes, possibly increasing each time.) If you take AC motors, and fail, and study your ass off and six months later can pass it with 100%, shouldn't that really be... your actual grade? Isn't a grade supposed to represent your ability an…

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