Top colleges should select randomly from a pool of ‘good enough’ (2005) • Hacker News Board

Re: Top colleges should select randomly from a pool of ‘good enough’ (2005)

#71

Post by JumpCrisscross » Mon, Aug 24, 2020, 10:29 AM UTC

iguy wrote: post #60

JumpCrisscross wrote: post #39

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> What’s wrong with that? It’s using a ruler to aim an electron microscope. Standardised tests measure academic potential, i.e. probability of graduating and likely value added to society from the educational experience, with a fair amount of error. Taking everyone within a standard deviation of the cut-off and randomly selecting therefrom admits this error and removes the stigma from those just below the previous, f…

> randomly selecting therefrom admits this error Well, it enlarges the error. All you have done is to add an additional source of noise on top of the existing one. > and removes the stigma from those just below the previous, false cut-off This it may do, it may well be psychologically easier to accept that you got unlucky on the coin flip rather than unlucky on which topic came up in question 13. (Not sure what "fals…

False as in we don’t know the person ranked 1,001 has less academic potential than the person ranked 999.

We know, with a decent likelihood, that the person ranked 1 has more than the person ranked 750. But someone at 1,250 is quite likely to exceed the academic potential of someone at 900. Hence the “falseness” of the cut-off.

Re: Top colleges should select randomly from a pool of ‘good enough’ (2005)

#72

Post by [deleted] » Mon, Aug 24, 2020, 10:31 AM UTC

hliyan wrote: post #23

Commenters bringing up "meritocracy" don't seem to realize that fair meritocracies rarely exist in society. Often, your merit allows your to accumulate more merit, making the merit function geometric rather than linear. When the merit function is geometric, all it takes is a small change of fortune to start a rapid rise or a rapid decline. "Turning 100 dollars into 120 is work. Turning 100 million into 110 million is…

[deleted]

Re: Top colleges should select randomly from a pool of ‘good enough’ (2005)

#73

Post by tchaffee » Mon, Aug 24, 2020, 10:32 AM UTC

hliyan wrote: post #23

Commenters bringing up "meritocracy" don't seem to realize that fair meritocracies rarely exist in society. Often, your merit allows your to accumulate more merit, making the merit function geometric rather than linear. When the merit function is geometric, all it takes is a small change of fortune to start a rapid rise or a rapid decline. "Turning 100 dollars into 120 is work. Turning 100 million into 110 million is…

The concrete example I often give is that as a conference organizer we decide to be a meritocracy. Great! As a fair meritocracy, all else being equal between speakers a tie breaker is how many talks you have already done. Experience should count right? So let's look at it in detail. Fred and Sarah both submit great talk proposals. But Fred has done ten talks and Sarah has done nine, so he gets the slot. Looking back at Fred's talk history in detail we learn that one of the conferences has a slight bias towards white men they don't even know about, and another is a committee of mostly men who agree that male speakers are just better.

By choosing Fred, you just amplified sexism. And possibly even the less qualified person (assuming all of Sarah's prior talks were thanks to a fair selection process). A true meritocracy can't really exist unless you have knowledge of all prior decisions, which is impossible.

Now imagine how much this happens over a lifetime if you live in a racist and / or sexist society. This is why a healthy amount of randomness is at the very least an interesting idea, and perhaps even has... merit.

Re: Top colleges should select randomly from a pool of ‘good enough’ (2005)

#74

Post by Melting_Harps » Mon, Aug 24, 2020, 10:33 AM UTC

I recently heard a podcast with Andrew Yang and Scott Galloway (professor at NYU) [1] and the summary was pretty much that he attended UCLA at a time that it was not only affordable, but also when they were willing to take on local students with less than stellar or 'good enough' backgrounds, in order to remain apt to the articles title, as the lower acceptance rate wasn't something that added to the institutions supposed prestige.

I think this underscores what happens when a supposed Social Good (which is funded as such at both a State and Federal Level) is used to primarily serve as a state-subsidized monetization scheme on it's Brand which will bend backwards to maximize its profits with International Students. I sincerely believe this is what inevitably comes when Education is centralized and is reduced to serve as an expensive commodity in the form of virtue signalling rather than serve as an actual institution of Higher Education for it's populace. And this needs to be understood before any reform to accommodate people who really shouldn't be there, which is quite honestly a large percentage of students with University degrees, before anything is undertaken.

I personally wanted to walk away when I realized what a farce University had become and I had to be talked into going back to class after I got Honors in Philosophy and told I'd get all expenses paid to debate moral ethics, all while I was a Biology major struggling to get classes to advance to Junior status and transfer to a CSU campus with more STEM based offerings only to get hit with budget and strikes when I transferred that resulted in even less course availability due to the financial crises.

Personally, I'm really enjoying seeing how quickly the disruption has occurred to Higher Education in the US, and the UK as you can now get some degrees for pre-2000s prices on Coursera. College of London offers an Online Bsc CS degree for $17k, and CU Boulder offers an MSc EE for ~$20k. I paid 65k for BSc at a CSU and graduated in 2009. And while I'd love to see a further race to the bottom in terms of pricing, I take solace in that they know that its inevitable.

CU Boulder recently allowed students to move in last week, and in that time 13 people have tested positive for COVID on campus, and one has died in the county in that time [2]. But it must be said, if you're really thinking going for the 'Campus Life' during this pandemic than I'm afraid to say no prestigious degree is going to save you from the Real World when it comes crashing down and you have no real understanding of cost-risk-benefit analysis. It must also be noted that the only classes offered on campus right now are for things like Latin according to an interviewed student.

1: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gESwwG9sa2Y

2: https://www.timescall.com/2020/08/21/cu-boulder-now-up-to-13...

Re: Top colleges should select randomly from a pool of ‘good enough’ (2005)

#75

Post by _qulr » Mon, Aug 24, 2020, 10:33 AM UTC

gridlockd wrote: post #65

josephg wrote: post #58

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Sure; but we don’t want to let perfect be the enemy of the good. “Fair capitalism” also doesn’t exist in society. But in both cases it’s worth asking - do we want more capitalism / meritocracy or do we want less? Is the problem that our assessment tools are too easy for rich people to game, or is the problem meritocracy itself? Random selection would get obviously terrible outcomes too, but for different reasons. I’v…

Random selection is important to know if your system actually improves anything, or if the results are only good because the input was good to begin with. For all we know, those universities that only pick the best and brightest may actually produce inferior results that are nevertheless still very good. Thomas Sowell, when challenged on the success of charter schools in New York as being biased due to a "better sele…

> Random selection is important to know if your system actually improves anything, or if the results are only good because the input was good to begin with.

Right, this is the scientific approach. You have to disprove the null hypothesis, otherwise your theory is unsubstantiated.

Re: Top colleges should select randomly from a pool of ‘good enough’ (2005)

#76

Post by Broken_Hippo » Mon, Aug 24, 2020, 10:34 AM UTC

blackbear_ wrote: post #16

chii wrote: post #12

education is not a scarce goods - why not accept _all_ candidates that are good enough? The cost of educating one more student is marginal, and if there's a large enough number, economies of scale can kick in as well.

Works for a bachelor but fails for a PhD, where students need to have a much closer relationship with their professors.

If we simply cannot accept the PhD students that qualify and are willing, then maybe we are doing it wrong.

Re: Top colleges should select randomly from a pool of ‘good enough’ (2005)

#77

Post by hliyan » Mon, Aug 24, 2020, 10:35 AM UTC

tchaffee wrote: post #73

hliyan wrote: post #23

Commenters bringing up "meritocracy" don't seem to realize that fair meritocracies rarely exist in society. Often, your merit allows your to accumulate more merit, making the merit function geometric rather than linear. When the merit function is geometric, all it takes is a small change of fortune to start a rapid rise or a rapid decline. "Turning 100 dollars into 120 is work. Turning 100 million into 110 million is…

The concrete example I often give is that as a conference organizer we decide to be a meritocracy. Great! As a fair meritocracy, all else being equal between speakers a tie breaker is how many talks you have already done. Experience should count right? So let's look at it in detail. Fred and Sarah both submit great talk proposals. But Fred has done ten talks and Sarah has done nine, so he gets the slot. Looking back…

Correct. Meritocracy, when iterated over time with the effects of previous iterations brought forward, can have unintended and counter-intuitive consequences.

Re: Top colleges should select randomly from a pool of ‘good enough’ (2005)

#78

Post by unishark » Mon, Aug 24, 2020, 10:37 AM UTC

ForHackernews wrote: post #29

kokooo wrote: post #3

College should be a meritocracy, it's just that we want people to be able to be able to afford it and not be shit out of luck if they can't go to it. This would also reduce stress as you don't have to worry about not getting into a college if you know your life is going to turn out fine either way. Why has this goal been malformed and twisted around to the point where people are coming up with any solution that doesn…

You're assuming that standardized testing procedures, high school grading, and college admissions officers have the precision necessary to correctly distinguish between the 99.9997% perfect candidate and the 99.9998% perfect candidate. All I can say is that's nuts. I got a perfect score on my ACT, and I know for a fact that I guessed on some questions. Am I really a stronger applicant than somebody else who made less…

On average people with slightly-higher scores/grades/etc should still be smarter.

Anyway the alternative proposed here is replacing lucky question guesses with luck via a lottery.

Re: Top colleges should select randomly from a pool of ‘good enough’ (2005)

#79

Post by ex_amazon_sde » Mon, Aug 24, 2020, 10:38 AM UTC

giantDinosaur wrote: post #36

hliyan wrote: post #23

Commenters bringing up "meritocracy" don't seem to realize that fair meritocracies rarely exist in society. Often, your merit allows your to accumulate more merit, making the merit function geometric rather than linear. When the merit function is geometric, all it takes is a small change of fortune to start a rapid rise or a rapid decline. "Turning 100 dollars into 120 is work. Turning 100 million into 110 million is…

Right - but are we talking the 'merit' of billionaires or the 'merit' of being an engineer who can pass difficult math exams? Totally different things, and conflating them is not helpful.

Of course there are different things.

But what is merit? Take the "aptitude and the willingness" in the other reply: we cannot decide to be naturally driven or passionate about something, or being quick learners and so on.

We can only decide to put efforts into something. Unless our energy is depleted by issues that we cannot control, ranging from being concerned about financial difficulties, family issues, to physical and mental health, and so on.

Re: Top colleges should select randomly from a pool of ‘good enough’ (2005)

#80

Post by frobozz » Mon, Aug 24, 2020, 10:43 AM UTC

chii wrote: post #12

education is not a scarce goods - why not accept _all_ candidates that are good enough? The cost of educating one more student is marginal, and if there's a large enough number, economies of scale can kick in as well.

The cost of filling one more seat in a massive lecture theatre is marginal. At university, I audited a number of courses with no impact on staff or students.

The cost of marking one more essay and giving comprehensive feedback is more significant, even if there is a comprehensive rubric to hand it off to an assistant.

The cost of running one more seminar/tutorial group for every 10 extra students is significant. A degree based on lectures alone, without giving all students the opportunity to ask questions, is less valuable.

The cost of courses that involve more consumables (chemistry, biology) or more face-to-face interaction (languages) is significant per student.

Economies of scale might work in the first term, where the the purpose is to get everyone up to a certain common (and quite low) level. Someone with only a first degree in the subject might be capable of teaching that. In later years, you can't all be taught by a world-class expert in the field.

The cost of physically expanding a university is significant. It can also be very difficult. I once had a term when I had a 15-20 minute walk between adjacent classes, because the nearest place the university could expand into was an old school about a mile away.