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)

#131

Post by newen » Mon, Aug 24, 2020, 9:13 PM UTC

bilbo0s wrote: post #127

rjkennedy98 wrote: post #122

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Answer: Everyone involved! What about the rest of us? Did we benefit that George Bush (who claimed never to read a book at Yale) got the certification of an elite degree? What you are saying is the equivalent of saying everyone in the mafia benefited by being part of the mafia. And btw before anyone talks about how Yale (or any other elite school) is private and can make their own decisions - no - they receive MASS…

The point he's making is that if the funding is removed, Princeton or Yale would no longer need to put up the façade. So the only thing that would matter is whether or not the Bush-type families of the US benefit from the system that is in place. The commenter is positing that the answer is "Yes". I agree with that assessment.

The other side of the argument is that if the facade is not there, if they only admit rich people, the university will lose its reputation and become irrelevant overnight.

The thing that gives elite universities their reputation both their academic reputation and the elites that attend them. If they lose the academic reputation, the unis become irrelevant and might as well be a party house for rich people; no one will care except tabloids. If they lose the elites, the universities will still be prestigious universities.

So to spell it out, what I’m saying is that rich people attending elite universities are not important for elite universities. It mainly benefits rich people.

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

#132

Post by slaymaker1907 » Mon, Aug 24, 2020, 9:15 PM UTC

pattusk wrote: post #11

j7ake wrote: post #4

There is discussion of these partial lotteries in academia as a way to improve the procedure of getting grant money. https://journals.plos.org/plosbiology/article?id=10.1371/jou...

This is generally known as sortition and was common in the ancient world. I've always felt it modern democratic politics would benefit greatly from such a system. I'm not sure the same is true of academia, you want students good enough that they do not risk failing at an elite institution, but when setting the threshold for "good enough" it's easy to reproduce the same inequalities you were trying to avoid in the fir…

I think the point is that the underlying metrics have a degree of randomness which we need to recognize. Instead of just deciding what is good enough to make it at Harvard and have that be the cutoff, you could certainly set the cutoff higher but still have randomness after that point. Don’t introduce arbitrary sorting when that is really not possible.

I TA’d a class where we used a grading metric sort of like this. It turns out that it is a lot easier to grade assignments by grouping them into 5 buckets than it is to give an extremely precise point value to everything.

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

#133

Post by hardwaregeek » Mon, Aug 24, 2020, 9:16 PM 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…

Not to mention, what even is merit? Is it present skill? Potential for future skill? I know plenty of people who are advanced not because they're brilliant, but because they got started earlier, because they had parents who enrolled them into math camp, because they went to schools that taught a more in depth curriculum.

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

#134

Post by tyingq » Mon, Aug 24, 2020, 9:16 PM UTC

hardwaregeek wrote: post #130

One interesting example is the UT system. Because affirmative action was banned in Hopwood v. Texas, the UT system resorted to a program where they accept the top 10% of each high school's class into all UT schools. It's an interesting way of doing admissions, albeit not perfect. One critique that I'm anticipating seeing is that this encourages going to a mediocre high school. Except...getting good students to go to…

"they accept the top 10% of each high school's class into all UT schools"

Sort of. Most of them that want to go to UT want UT Austin. There's not enough room there for all of them.

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

#135

Post by pdonis » Mon, Aug 24, 2020, 9:16 PM UTC

newen wrote: post #113

murgindrag wrote: post #104

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

The fact that GWB went to Yale made it possible for him to become President. Elite schools make it easier for people who have money (but aren’t too academically inclined) to get into positions of political power by building credentials and connecting with a community of smart people.

Wouldn't the obvious fix for this be to reduce the amount of power that is available to people in this way? In other words, reducing the amount of power that we give to institutions (like government) whose membership is largely determined by these factors, instead of by people having to produce actual results in the real world?

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

#136

Post by TheOtherHobbes » Mon, Aug 24, 2020, 9:18 PM UTC

ex_amazon_sde wrote: post #79

giantDinosaur wrote: post #36

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 physic…

Meritocracy really means eliminating the issues that can be eliminated.

And that's much harder than it sounds because so much of this culture is based on maintaining and perpetuating privilege.

To be clear - the US caste system is ridiculously rigid and self-sustaining. It has no interest at all in being more permeable to social mobility.

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

#137

Post by LegitShady » Mon, Aug 24, 2020, 9:18 PM UTC

ausbah wrote: post #110

murgindrag wrote: post #106

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

those are side affects of the two things he mentioned, not policy.

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

#138

Post by mikeyouse » Mon, Aug 24, 2020, 9:19 PM UTC

abeppu wrote: post #126

A bunch of commenters here have gotten fixated on two questions: (a) "meritocracy" and what it means or should mean and (b) whether the value of top colleges derives mainly from being exclusive. I think an interesting / illustrative case is the AMA as the credentialing authority for medical schools. An association of people in the profession, who have a clear interest in the supply of doctors being low, has a clear l…

The AMA doesn't restrict the number of people in medical school, you're thinking of residency slots, and they don't restrict that either. They're in favor of expanding the number of residencies available since everyone knows there is a shortage of doctors. The restriction comes from funding since it's all Federal dollars to pay for the training.

https://www.ama-assn.org/press-center/press-releases/ama-bui...

Congress, and more specifically right now, the Republican Senate is the only thing holding up funding tens of thousands of more slots (the bills are cosponsored by ~130 congresspeople, of which 100+ are Democrats and by 17 Senators, of which 15 are Democrats)

https://www.congress.gov/bill/115th-congress/house-bill/2267...

https://www.congress.gov/bill/115th-congress/senate-bill/130...

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

#139

Post by wonder_er » Mon, Aug 24, 2020, 9:20 PM UTC

abeppu wrote: post #126

A bunch of commenters here have gotten fixated on two questions: (a) "meritocracy" and what it means or should mean and (b) whether the value of top colleges derives mainly from being exclusive. I think an interesting / illustrative case is the AMA as the credentialing authority for medical schools. An association of people in the profession, who have a clear interest in the supply of doctors being low, has a clear l…

My simple upvote is too small of a token to reflect how strongly I agree with everything in this comment.

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

#140

Post by newen » Mon, Aug 24, 2020, 9:20 PM UTC

murgindrag wrote: post #118

newen wrote: post #113

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The fact that GWB went to Yale made it possible for him to become President. Elite schools make it easier for people who have money (but aren’t too academically inclined) to get into positions of political power by building credentials and connecting with a community of smart people.

Isn't that exactly what I wrote? The whole point of elite schools is to give rich people appearance of intelligence by association. If you take 2000 valedictorians and 500 rich douchebags, have the 500 rich douchebags pay to educate the whole lot, and everyone comes out with a common brand stamp, who benefits? Answer: Everyone involved! Taking away federal funding (as if that were politically possible) would slow it…

You make it sound like it’s preordained that people like Bush make the laws and smart people should be grateful that they get to attend elite universities to network with the heirs presumptive of future presidencies.

In reality, it’s the rich that benefit by getting connections to a network of future political operatives, academics, media people that allow them to use their wealth in order to advance their political interests.