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Break Up The Elite College Seats Cartel

sahajsharda.substack.com

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Re: Break Up The Elite College Seats Cartel

#71

Post by TuringNYC »

yieldcrv wrote: post #15
ajross wrote: post #6

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> We literally just handed out trillions minted out of thin air. It's so weird to see memes like this persist. No, no we didn't. Those spending bills were financed via deficit spending: they were loans. All spending bills are loans. The treasury department raises money by selling bonds. Every deficit dollar the government spends is a dollar it takes in from some investor somewhere who wanted to park money in US treas…

The COVID relief bills were actually a one-time exception to a 100 year old reality. 1) Congress directly modified the Federal Reserve's charter to give money directly to private persons. 2) There were also payments directly from the US Treasury. 3) There were also things that involved that traditional convoluted process of the Treasury selling more bonds to the international market and pretending not to know that th…

>> The COVID relief bills were actually a one-time exception to a 100 year old reality.

Disagree that QE-2020 was a "one-time event." I can think back 13 years to 2009 and recall both monetary and fiscal stimulus to provide post-2008 relief.

Re: Break Up The Elite College Seats Cartel

#72

Post by _jal »

xbar wrote: post #25

Dumb. Leave the elite game to the elite game players. Here's the solution: 1. Invest $50 Billion in a big computer. 2. Stuff it full of standard courseware 3. Hire 10,000 PhDs @ $100,000/yr remote ( 4. Have them grade tests 5. Declare it an accredited university. 6. Make it free to attend 7. Never expire units accumulated Congratulations, you have created a national public college for pennies. The quality of the educ…

> you have created a national public college for pennies.

You've slightly modernized correspondence school.

Just to start with what's missing, the vast majority of students need some degree of individualized attention to learn effectively.

Re: Break Up The Elite College Seats Cartel

#73

Post by rootusrootus »

harmon wrote: post #48
xbar wrote: post #25

Dumb. Leave the elite game to the elite game players. Here's the solution: 1. Invest $50 Billion in a big computer. 2. Stuff it full of standard courseware 3. Hire 10,000 PhDs @ $100,000/yr remote ( 4. Have them grade tests 5. Declare it an accredited university. 6. Make it free to attend 7. Never expire units accumulated Congratulations, you have created a national public college for pennies. The quality of the educ…

I agree and have had a similar idea for awhile. Have the best lecturers for given subjects create outstanding virtual courses, develop sets of curricula off of those courses, and have TAs (PhDs in your model) provide local instruction and tutoring to augment the standard coursework. It seems crazy to me that we have thousands of new faculty members and PhDs begrudgingly spending time developing their own way of teach…

Based on my experience, we'd get better real world results if we abandoned most universities and promoted community colleges to full undergrad level. My best teachers by far were at a community college. Probably because that's all they did. No begrudgingly 'teaching' students while really wanting to do research.

Not that there isn't a place for research teaching, and students along that path, but like 99% of everyone else would get better results from a different academic culture.

Re: Break Up The Elite College Seats Cartel

#74

Post by geodel »

quadrifoliate wrote: post #38
darawk wrote: post #33

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is what these discussions always miss. Harvard isn't conferring value, its recognizing it. It's not a value add, its a filter. People think you can create value by creating more elite universities, but it's exactly the opposite. All you're going to do is destroy the signal they provide. You can learn just as much at a non-elite university as an elite one. Attending an elite university just means you were in the…

> Attending an elite university just means you were in the top x% of your age cohort. By definition, the top x% is not a group who's membership you can expand. This would all be very well if you decided the top x% via an objective and reasonable standardized test. However, the mention of standardized tests to determine top x% objectively usually sends people running for the hills [1], and they quickly start talking a…

> I don't see why we can't have more elite universities.

Pretty simple really. Why wouldn't existing non-elite universities become elite university. I don't think there is some federal ban on creating elite universities.

Come to think of it University of Phoenix can be elite university as it offers world class online education to students who couldn't get admission elsewhere.

Re: Break Up The Elite College Seats Cartel

#75

Post by buzzy_hacker »

chrischen wrote: post #44
buzzy_hacker wrote: post #28

Tangential to the suggestion of taxing endowments, I like Michael Sandel's idea of turning admissions into a lottery once a threshold is met. E.g. anyone with a GPA above x and a SAT score above y with a personal essay judged to meet quality level z (simplifying for illustration) is told that they have passed the acceptance threshold and are entered into the random lottery. The threshold should be set so that student…

The problem with that lottery is that it still doesn’t solve the problem of artificial scarcity. There is no reason why a “Harvard” level class is restricted to just a room full of people. We totally have the technology and capabilities to scale it to the masses and make education vastly cheaper but we choose not to for some reason. I think part of YC’s philosophy is basically this. Think making startups accessible r…

I completely agree with you. I think it would be best to expand class sizes in addition to this lottery.

Re: Break Up The Elite College Seats Cartel

#76

Post by geodel »

paulryanrogers wrote: post #41
darawk wrote: post #33

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is what these discussions always miss. Harvard isn't conferring value, its recognizing it. It's not a value add, its a filter. People think you can create value by creating more elite universities, but it's exactly the opposite. All you're going to do is destroy the signal they provide. You can learn just as much at a non-elite university as an elite one. Attending an elite university just means you were in the…

This presumes the prestigious schools grow in proportion with the society.

Yeah right. Just like a village of hundred people had one chief, now a village of ten thousand people can have hundred chiefs with same level of power/prestige.

Re: Break Up The Elite College Seats Cartel

#77

Post by mlyle »

tomcat27 wrote: post #40
endisneigh wrote: post #5

Status is zero sum, so it’s not even possible to create an arbitrary amount of elite schools to begin with.

The US population increased 100 times since 1800s from 5M to 500M. Harvard enrollment increased 4 times since 1800s from 1.5K to 20K. The number of universities in the US did grew greatly during these 200 years, but the funding distribution to these universities is as skewed as the income inequality in the US. For instance, 60% of NIH funds go to The scholarly work at these elite universities might not appear deservi…

> Harvard enrollment increased 4 times since 1800s from 1.5K to 20K.

?

You might mean 4 "doublings", but then the other number doesn't make sense. Or 14 times?

> It seems fair to assume doubling elite universities would not be catastrophic to elitism.

How do you double elite universities? It's more like we have an eliteness gradient (T10, T20, etc...) and the masses together decide what's "elite enough". Is WUSTL elite? Is Cornell? Is UCLA?

Re: Break Up The Elite College Seats Cartel

#78

Post by photochemsyn »

I'm sure experiences vary but I did all my general ed stuff at a very good community college with excellent teachers and a class size of about 20-30 people max per teacher. Many teachers were professionals with other jobs who taught as well, so it was an excellent educational experience, for the kind of things most people take in their first two years at any university.

Then I transferred to a well-recognized research-centric university, and I have to say, those first-year undergrads had it rough in huge classes with grad students doing most of the teaching. On the other hand, this 'second tier' school had upper-level math and science classes and I got to work in actual research labs with tons of cutting-edge equipment. There were some questionable researchers for sure (borderline frauds), but the majority were top-notch and dedicated to doing good science.

When looking around for a grad school I actually went to one of the 'top elite schools' to check it out - the labs were absolute crap at the one I went to, and the overall snooty attitude was even worse (I don't think they even like grad students at those places, they're more for undergrads). I turned down that offer, and never regretted it.

China's technological boom isn't being fueled by British-style elite schools for the posh to rub elbows at. They're more along the lines of MIT and Caltech from what I understand:

https://www.scmp.com/news/china/society/article/2140178/new-...

America is going the way of Britain in the late 19th century and early 20th with its class divide, and the elite schools are a good example of why that's a bad idea. We need more MITs and Caltechs, not more Harvards and Yales.

Re: Break Up The Elite College Seats Cartel

#79

Post by meowkit »

chrischen wrote: post #44
buzzy_hacker wrote: post #28

Tangential to the suggestion of taxing endowments, I like Michael Sandel's idea of turning admissions into a lottery once a threshold is met. E.g. anyone with a GPA above x and a SAT score above y with a personal essay judged to meet quality level z (simplifying for illustration) is told that they have passed the acceptance threshold and are entered into the random lottery. The threshold should be set so that student…

The problem with that lottery is that it still doesn’t solve the problem of artificial scarcity. There is no reason why a “Harvard” level class is restricted to just a room full of people. We totally have the technology and capabilities to scale it to the masses and make education vastly cheaper but we choose not to for some reason. I think part of YC’s philosophy is basically this. Think making startups accessible r…

> The problem with that lottery is that it still doesn’t solve the problem of artificial scarcity.

This is assuming it's a problem that can be solved with simple tweaks or "startup disruption". It's an issue very much related to conspicuous consumption as education >in the Ivy League/cohortFreakonomics[1] just did an episode on this, but I've come across similar data points else where. It's a stamp of not just a good education, but a social credential implying you have connections or money.

You can already get an equivalent education to one you might get at Harvard (or better in some majors) at many other public/private universities. The key here is the human connections you form, which go on to pay dividends later given the point above.

MOOCs were the golden child a decade ago, and they are working to some extent, but they're not breaking the elite walled garden of premier higher education.

[0] https://www.nber.org/papers/w29309

[1] https://freakonomics.com/podcast/the-university-of-impossibl...

Re: Break Up The Elite College Seats Cartel

#80

Post by jdkee »

"The impact of this seat scarcity has been higher prices at elite colleges, which has eventually trickled down into higher prices at other schools also. Scarcity of seats leads to systemically higher prices. As we obviously want systemically lower prices, we have to start thinking about reducing the scarcity of seats at elite colleges."

But that belies the whole point of "elite" colleges. They are selling a Veblen good and dilution of the "elite" brand is not what the consumer of higher-ed wants. They are purchasing "elite" status.

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