Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

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

chronicle.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

101–110 of 307 posts

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

#101

Post by pg_1234 »

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…

Picking randomly from "good enough" relegates you to a 2nd rate contender compared to those who skim off the absolute best.

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

#102

Post by bassman9000 »

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…

We can't lower global warming by 3 degrees, so it's useless to lower it by 2

Mostly fair is worse than completely fair, but way better than unfair or random.

If 80% is getting a fair deal, but you wanting to solve the issue for the remaining 20% results in making things worse for the 50%, you're not solving the issue.

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

#103

Post by advisedwang »

pg_1234 wrote: post #101
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…

Picking randomly from "good enough" relegates you to a 2nd rate contender compared to those who skim off the absolute best.

Or, it allows you avoid just selecting the people best able to game your admissions process.

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

#104

Post by murgindrag »

JumpCrisscross wrote: post #27

We have lower-hanging fruit. If a college accepts students taking government-subsidised loans, or otherwise receives any federal funding, it should not be permitted to consider legacy [1] or institutional advancement for admissions. [1] https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Legacy_preferences

I mean, the basic idea behind an elite school is you have:

* A community of rich folks who get to look smart-by-association

* A community of smart folks who get networked into the power networks

All the decision-makers would lose out on this. Why would this even fly? George Bush Jr went to Yale and Harvard. He looked smart. And, a bunch of people were friends with the President. Folks like him make the laws.

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

#105

Post by pg_1234 »

advisedwang wrote: post #103
pg_1234 wrote: post #101

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Picking randomly from "good enough" relegates you to a 2nd rate contender compared to those who skim off the absolute best.

Or, it allows you avoid just selecting the people best able to game your admissions process.

For all you know the "good enough" crowd were also trying to game your scores, but just sucked at it.

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

#106

Post by murgindrag »

34679 wrote: post #59

Top colleges should stop treating admissions like a limited release beer - driving up prices with intentional shortages - and build some damn classrooms.

The only difference between top colleges and not-so-top colleges is admissions and endowment.

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

#107

Post by Maximus9000 »

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…

It's a good point. Does it go both ways?

What if Sarah spoke at a women's only conference. At this conference, it's not just a "bias" towards women speakers, it's a downright rule.

How do we regard Sarah's experience here?

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

#108

Post by bumby »

Maximus9000 wrote: post #107
tchaffee wrote: post #73

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

It's a good point. Does it go both ways? What if Sarah spoke at a women's only conference. At this conference, it's not just a "bias" towards women speakers, it's a downright rule. How do we regard Sarah's experience here?

>assuming all of Sarah's prior talks were thanks to a fair selection process

That scenario might negate the above assumption, depending on how you view "women's only" conferences

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

#109

Post by pessimizer »

JumpCrisscross wrote: post #67
djrobstep wrote: post #61

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Using merit as a proxy for competence is where a lot of the trouble starts. They are very different. Merit really means ladder-climbing - plenty of incompetent and amoral people are are good at climbing the ladder. It is the ladder itself that is the core of the problem.

> Using merit as a proxy for competence is where a lot of the trouble starts These debates tend to get diluted absent a specific meritocratic measure. With respect to college, I think the sole question to be answered by such a measure is probability of the admitee graduating. We are able, to some degree, to predict this. Given such a measure, it doesn’t make sense to give a seat to someone who has a 5% chance of grad…

Are you the one who came up with the plan for the UKs GCSE and A-level results this year?

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

#110

Post by ausbah »

murgindrag wrote: post #106
34679 wrote: post #59

Top colleges should stop treating admissions like a limited release beer - driving up prices with intentional shortages - and build some damn classrooms.

The only difference between top colleges and not-so-top colleges is admissions and endowment.

and research output, the academic quality of the average student, class sizes, and more
Post reply on HN