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What Oxford taught me about posh people

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Re: What Oxford taught me about posh people

#41

Post by approxim8ion »

stablenode wrote: post #23
approxim8ion wrote: post #16

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> at the expense of whom, exactly? Everyone they step on along the way.

Could you develop that point? I went to a northern comprehensive; I now lecture CS, but I have no recollection of being 'stepped on' by the Tarquins and Glorias of this world along the way -- in fact, I always felt that it is they who should be worried if they try. You may have some self esteem issues, mate.

I do have self-esteem issues, good catch, but I doubt my getting therapy would do much about already underpaid workers whose bosses are raking in bonuses while signing off on orders to furlough them, for example.

Re: What Oxford taught me about posh people

#42

Post by approxim8ion »

lightgreen wrote: post #26
approxim8ion wrote: post #16

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> at the expense of whom, exactly? Everyone they step on along the way.

[flagged]

You find my statements dangerous, I find the idea of viewing everyone as competition equally so. It all rounds out I guess.

Re: What Oxford taught me about posh people

#43

Post by vletal »

varispeed wrote: post #20
vletal wrote: post #4

My life goal was to attend one of these elite universities. I desired to work at companies such as Google or Apple. After graduating from the Czech Technical University I realized that 1. I am much less special then I thought 2. There is much more hard working focused average people then the few talented superstars, both usually achieving the same 3. Surprisingly many of the exceptionally smart people in my social bu…

Regarding 6. sometimes companies, especially start-ups hire those people not for their abilities, but to be able to tell investors they hire top uni educated workforce. They are more for PR than actual work. Sometimes it is frustrating, if they get paid the same as people who actually do work.

You made me remember how my boss boasted having top talent (meaning 2 out of 50) of Cambridge and UCL graduates in the company.

Re: What Oxford taught me about posh people

#44

Post by gyulai »

fallingknife wrote: post #33
gyulai wrote: post #10

I've studied in Cambridge myself, and feel like some context needs to be added here for American readers not to misunderstand something here: Admission to Cambridge & Oxford isn't related to family wealth in the same way as admission to "elite" universities in the U.S. For example: Tuition fees are in line with government-set rates and are no different for these institutions than other British universities (at least…

I don't remember being asked about wealth on college apps. Are you thinking of the FAFSA, which is a government form, and not part of the application process?

I was thinking of the M.I.T. application form circa 2004. I seem to recall that it explicitly asked not just if I had enough money but to disclose how much money I had precisely, and it also explicitly asked if there were family members who had attended M.I.T.

Re: What Oxford taught me about posh people

#45

Post by pm90 »

cblconfederate wrote: post #25

The UK has made an export industry out of this snobbery and attracts hundreds of thousands of international students for this prestige. I wonder if ethologists have studied this behavior. Queen bees are not selected with an IQ test, they re selected randomly and raised by the plebs to become their queen.It's a successful strategy evidently. I guess something similar might work in primates where the random selection i…

I’m not so sure. The Queen bees responsibilities as a “leader” are literally just to stay alive and reproduce. Most primate leaders have a lot more responsibilities which they need to excel at.

Maybe statistically they still turn out to not matter? Would be interesting to know.

Re: What Oxford taught me about posh people

#46

Post by zhdc1 »

bildung wrote: post #5
mmmrk wrote: post #2

I'm currently reading Taleb's Antifragility book and he strikes a similar tune: The education system being little more than a way to cement social status, with actual innovation and entrepreneurship largely taking place outside it. Wealth leads to education, not the other way around. I find this topic fascinating and it makes me see discussions about underfunded education systems and universities from a different ang…

I haven't read the book, but have often heard that trope - did he write about actual research into the topic? I ask because in the fields I'm familiar with many innovative approaches are actually university spin-offs. Edit: The point of this beautiful article, "a society that is blind to the potential of so many of its young people, is a wasteful, unfair and ineffective society" is a sad truth, but in my opinion the…

Same. The yearly local value added from eship alone at the university I work at is in the 200-300M+ USD/CHF range. The global value added is significantly higher.

I imagine that technical universities, like ETHZ/EPFL, have a much larger annual impact

Re: What Oxford taught me about posh people

#47

Post by fallingknife »

azalemeth wrote: post #31
iratic0 wrote: post #15

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Also comp educated and went to Oxford. I feel like in the last 5 years or so it's become "uncool" to be posh. Feel like this has been instigated by (in the West) Brexit and Trump bringing the Establishment down a notch.

Me too. Agree completely. I had to battle to get allowed to take the entrance exams -- my school didn't want to pay for an invigilator, so I sat them in the deputy head of the sixth form's office. I got in. It changed my life. I also realised that, on a course like physics, most of the students came from quiet, nerdy backgrounds like me. It was often history / english / classics / PPE etc where the "great public scho…

That's interesting, because Harvard has less students than that in a country with 5x the population. So, in terms of enrollment number / population, oxford is more like the whole ivy league rolled into one school.

Re: What Oxford taught me about posh people

#48

Post by iratic0 »

nicoburns wrote: post #18
iratic0 wrote: post #15

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Also comp educated and went to Oxford. I feel like in the last 5 years or so it's become "uncool" to be posh. Feel like this has been instigated by (in the West) Brexit and Trump bringing the Establishment down a notch.

When has it ever been cool to be posh?

In the UK after the Conservatives came to power in 2010 electing an Old Etonian, I felt culturally there was a shift towards "posh" is good as a signifier of status and social power.

I feel like in the last 5 years or so it has turned to posh is "uncool".

In the US, I feel like they had something similar. Obama was elected in 2008, but some people did have concerns of electing someone unestablished. To assuage these concerns, Obama promoted and kept safe the interests the elite at the time. Not detracting Obama here - that's the position he was in back in 2008 when some would have considered electing a black man to the Office as unthinkable.

Re: What Oxford taught me about posh people

#49

Post by jgrahamc »

The teaching was personalised, flexible and interactive. That kind of system keeps people like me in the room, fired up and engaged. Kids like me, who don’t flourish in school, can benefit from such attention, and focus, and belief. A good society would strive to give it to them.

Yes, this is the best part of Oxford. My undergraduate education there consisted of:

1. Lectures to large groups of students

2. Some small classes

3. One-on-one or one-on-two "tutorials" with specialists in their subjects

#3 is the core of the Oxford system and is what makes it (and a small number of other UK universities who do this) special.

I went there from a bog-standard state school and it was an excellent education.

Re: What Oxford taught me about posh people

#50

Post by aardvark179 »

varispeed wrote: post #14
gyulai wrote: post #10

I've studied in Cambridge myself, and feel like some context needs to be added here for American readers not to misunderstand something here: Admission to Cambridge & Oxford isn't related to family wealth in the same way as admission to "elite" universities in the U.S. For example: Tuition fees are in line with government-set rates and are no different for these institutions than other British universities (at least…

Do you think universities still offer knowledge otherwise not accessible anywhere else? I mean, there are courses that require "hands on" experience and guidance, but for things like IT, how uni is any better than e.g. Udemy, free lectures from around the world and meetups?

When I was doing CS we had a lecture course on Pi calculus with very extensive hand written notes, because it was a field still very much in development and there was no textbook.

I think there is a lot to be said for taking a degree which lends an element of structure not chosen by you. Sometimes you need to learn the stuff that doesn’t interest you to have a foundation to really understand the stuff that does, and you might find there are other things you had never been interested enough in to even consider which will turn out to be really interesting.

On top of that I think tuition in small groups is much better than I’ve seen any meetup group manage. I’ve organized it once at a previous employer to help get some our application developers to the point where they could work on the our core vm and database, and I think they found it helpful being able to ask questions and talk over where exercises had given them trouble.

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