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

It’s time to break up the Ivy League cartel

chronicle.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

131–140 of 379 posts

Re: It’s time to break up the Ivy League cartel

#131

Post by zumu »

I think this whole debate is centered on the shallow idea that "going to an Ivy League" in and of itself is what ordains "elite-ness". To unravel this, you first must consider the actual value proposition of Ivy Leagues relative to other schools.

Firstly, undergrad in America, especially at private schools like the Ivy Leagues, is more a daycare for rich kids, than it is a place of scholarship and learning. The education is certainly good, but there are plenty of other schools with rigorous academics. At these schools the children of the rich fraternize, drink and come of age with other children of the rich. The schools themselves are well connected as well but it's in large part through these bonds with their rich and powerful peers that the graduates of these schools go on to become "the elites". If you reduce the number of kids from rich and powerful families going to these places, you are going to drastically reduce the networking potential amongst classmates and start to erode school level affiliations. In short, you can't just limit admissions to solely "academic merit" without destroying a big part of what makes prestigious schools valuable. Ultimately, if the children of the rich and powerful are excluded, they will congregate elsewhere and all the prestige and kingmakers will follow.

Re: It’s time to break up the Ivy League cartel

#132

Post by PaulDavisThe1st »

BurningFrog wrote: post #100
paulpauper wrote: post #28

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Generations ago, elite colleges had quotas preventing or discouraging certain groups from applying. Those barriers have been removed. As it turns out, selecting for intelligence yields more for endowments and other benefits than selecting for prestige or lineage. This may not be completely fair, but is more fair than the old way.Tons of people apply to these schools. The SAT is still a useful despite being an imperfe…

Are they really selecting for intelligence though? The SAT, which actually does that fairly well, is on its way out.

If success in college is indicative of intelligence, then the low correlation between SAT scores and college success would argue against your claim.

Re: It’s time to break up the Ivy League cartel

#133

Post by rejectedandsad »

jvanderbot wrote: post #35
sokoloff wrote: post #11

> Faculty members at prestigious universities are 50 times more likely than the average person to have a parent with a Ph.D. American meritocracy has become a complex, inefficient, and rigged system conferring its graces on ambitious children of highly educated and prosperous families. What’s the ratio in other fields of top achievement for kids to follow in their parents’ footsteps? It’s entirely unsurprising that a…

This seems obvious and unharmful. Its funny, my co worker insisted that his children shall go to MIT so they can have all the opportunities he did. He didn't see any irony is saying this to me, his peer, a first gen engineer from University of Midwest Farm Community. And I agree, its not surprising kids learn by example and inherit so much from their parents.

Even your undergrad (which I’m interpreting as UIUC) is elite compared to most state schools for CS, and is very selective for direct to major. People like me are doubly screwed.

Re: It’s time to break up the Ivy League cartel

#134

Post by rejectedandsad »

scarmig wrote: post #54
fighterpilot wrote: post #22

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What's telling is how similar the Asian admit percentage is between the top colleges except for Caltech. It wasn't always like this, but they've all (ex-Caltech) converged on almost the same number now. It appears to be collusion either of the sort discussed in the article or the informal sort where each college copies their competitors' quotas.

College admissions' treatment of Asian American applicants is the most explicit form of institutional racism in the US today. It's the kind of racist discrimination that, if applied against any other group, would get the perpetrator sued to oblivion.

Honestly, anybody that says Asians are institutionally discriminated against because they are a slightly lower percentage at Harvard, even though there are a lot of Asians at Harvard, is basically saying people of all kinds, including other Asians like me that can’t get into any kind of elite school don’t matter and are inferior. It’s insulting, at this point, and the anti-AA Asian groups that further this ideology are marginalizing themselves for it.

Re: It’s time to break up the Ivy League cartel

#135

Post by rejectedandsad »

wolverine876 wrote: post #121
barry-cotter wrote: post #90

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> And the elite universities have acted on it, and many of their new classes are very different. No less elitist though. The idea of a selective college is elitist. The more selective, the more elitist. All the progressive talk is cant.

>> And the elite universities have acted on it, and many of their new classes are very different. > No less elitist though. The idea of a selective college is elitist. What does that mean? By that definition, everything selective is 'elitist', including my high school wrestling team. By non-elitist, we generally mean it's not biased in favor of the people who are already in society's elite. Some top colleges now admi…

I mean, yeah that is elitist especially because the point of college is education not to compete together as a team.

I went to CC in high school and a non selective engineering school. I’ve seen non-elitist and non-elite institutions.

Re: It’s time to break up the Ivy League cartel

#136

Post by analog31 »

LudwigNagasena wrote: post #68

It’s time to break up the education system from all the extracurricular fluff. The universities are fostering identities around themselves: students join debate teams, sports teams, religious groups , orchestra, etc under the aegis of their universities and attach their personal identities to these things. To me personally it seems kind of ridiculous. What if you are a young adult who is interested in trades, but you…

>>> What if you are a young adult who is interested in trades, but you want to play in an orchestra.

Play the bassoon. ;-) A friend of mine who was a school music teacher told me that getting good at the bassoon was pretty much a ticket to a generous college scholarship. Not necessarily at your first choice of scholarship, but somewhere.

If they can't get a student to play bassoon, then they have to hire a ringer from the community. So you could also do that.

Re: It’s time to break up the Ivy League cartel

#137

Post by rejectedandsad »

zumu wrote: post #131

I think this whole debate is centered on the shallow idea that "going to an Ivy League" in and of itself is what ordains "elite-ness". To unravel this, you first must consider the actual value proposition of Ivy Leagues relative to other schools. Firstly, undergrad in America, especially at private schools like the Ivy Leagues, is more a daycare for rich kids, than it is a place of scholarship and learning. The educa…

Honestly, if the admissions committee decides you’re good enough to get into any of the top schools you’re already an elite of some kind (in math, rowing, “activism” etc). All of these elites need to be knocked down a few pegs.

I’d go as far as to say all MIT admits are fundamentally, inherently elite (especially compared to a low IQ sap like me) and should be punished regardless. They’re rich because people like me are poor.

Re: It’s time to break up the Ivy League cartel

#138

Post by rejectedandsad »

AnimalMuppet wrote: post #40
q-big wrote: post #36

Earlier quoted context omitted.

But I bet the number of universities has increased by a lot.

Why do you think that's relevant? The post you replied to was talking about Harvard, and the article was talking about the Ivy League. Has the number of Harvards increased? Has the Ivy League expanded very much?

Because there are lots of opportunities to get an education that aren’t nearly as selective. The number of total slots has increased considerably.

I think they should build more UCs and more UTs and A&Ms etc but to a great extent they already have and increased the class sizes to boot.

Re: It’s time to break up the Ivy League cartel

#139

Post by barry-cotter »

wolverine876 wrote: post #121
barry-cotter wrote: post #90

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> And the elite universities have acted on it, and many of their new classes are very different. No less elitist though. The idea of a selective college is elitist. The more selective, the more elitist. All the progressive talk is cant.

>> And the elite universities have acted on it, and many of their new classes are very different. > No less elitist though. The idea of a selective college is elitist. What does that mean? By that definition, everything selective is 'elitist', including my high school wrestling team. By non-elitist, we generally mean it's not biased in favor of the people who are already in society's elite. Some top colleges now admi…

> Some top colleges now admit much more economically and ethnically diverse students.

Yes, there are lots more black and Hispanic students than before, and since the universities refuse to share the data we can’t be sure that this increase in diversity mostly means more children of Nigerian doctors and Colombian lawyers, mostly paying full international student fees but that’s the way to bet.

Regarding economic diversity.

Harvard[1], Yale[2], Princeton[3] Stanford[4] all have average family incomes above $160,000. Less selective colleges with smaller endowments that need the money from fees more are not going to be more economically diverse if they can possibly avoid it.

Selecting by standardized test scores would result in a substantially less socially elite student body than the current system. A more Asian one. Stopping that is why there’s a movement to get rid of the SATs. Asians are being discriminated against now as Jews were in the early 20th century, for similar reasons.

[1] According to The New York Times, the median family income of a student from Harvard is $168,800, and 67% of students come from the highest-earning 20% of American households. About 15% come from families in the top 1% of American wealth distribution.

[2] According to The New York Times, the median family income of a student from Yale is $192,600. Roughly 69% of Yale students come from the highest-earning 20% of American households.

[3] According to The New York Times, the median family income of a student from Princeton is $186,100, and 72% come from the highest-earning 20% of American households

[4] According to The New York Times, the median family income of a student from Stanford is $167,500

Re: It’s time to break up the Ivy League cartel

#140

Post by wearywanderer »

bsder wrote: post #61
sokoloff wrote: post #11

> Faculty members at prestigious universities are 50 times more likely than the average person to have a parent with a Ph.D. American meritocracy has become a complex, inefficient, and rigged system conferring its graces on ambitious children of highly educated and prosperous families. What’s the ratio in other fields of top achievement for kids to follow in their parents’ footsteps? It’s entirely unsurprising that a…

> What’s the ratio in other fields of top achievement for kids to follow in their parents’ footsteps? It’s entirely unsurprising that academics raise academics, doctors doctors, Olympians Olympians, teachers teachers, etc. Actually, I suspect that most teachers discourage their children to follow in their footsteps ... And your points about doctors, olympians, academics, etc. have a common point: Large, up front expe…

Quite a few teachers enjoy being teachers. When my younger brothers moved out of the house, my mother decided to become a school teacher to occupy her time. She can yak for hours about the school board blundering or administration being dicks or her colleague being a weirdo but make no mistake; she loves that job. Every summer, all she can talk about is how she can't wait for the school season to start again.

I guess you mean that teachers do a lot of lobbying, and take that to indicate job dissatisfaction. But if so, that's a mistake. Thinking that you aren't receiving enough funding and simultaneously enjoying your work are not mutually exclusive.

Post reply on HN