Break Up The Elite College Seats Cartel • Hacker News Board

Re: Break Up The Elite College Seats Cartel

#121

Post by maneesh » Thu, Jun 02, 2022, 6:07 AM UTC

bnralt wrote: post #97

chrischen wrote: post #44

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

Harvard is a good example of artificial scarcity. They have an extension school[1], where they advertise that you'll be given a Harvard education, by Harvard faculty, virtual or at the Harvard campus. It has somewhat open-enrollment, and thousands of people enroll every year. They're happy to take their money, but the students aren't allowed to say they're a Harvard graduate, they have to say they're "Harvard Extensi…

I'm finishing my masters with Harvard Extension School and it's mostly as you say. It's good curriculum, pretty good professors (in comparison to my Stanford undergrad) but open-enrollment + Harvard's famous grade inflation does make it somewhat of a back door.

Re: Break Up The Elite College Seats Cartel

#122

Post by cbozeman » Thu, Jun 02, 2022, 6:08 AM UTC

barry-cotter wrote: post #50

cycrutchfield wrote: post #43

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Not going to happen because the rankings racket rates them based on their exclusivity.

The tax code and federal funding is a very big stick to hold over universities to get them to do what you want. If the federal government can force US states to change their drinking laws through highway funding they can do whatever they please. Remember, the constitution restrains the government exactly as much as it wants to be restrained.

> Remember, the constitution restrains the government exactly as much as it wants to be restrained.

No, the American population is unwilling to die for rights any longer, because we're all too comfortable... excepting a few people like the Bundy Ranch standoff situation.

I guarantee you if 50,000 rifle-toting Americans had shown up at the Capitol and told the Federal Government, "Anyone who votes for a federal drinking age of 21 answers to us. Permanently.", we wouldn't have a nationwide drinking age of 21. To an extent, this is even how the Founders expected unlawful conduct by lawmakers would be answered...

They didn't realize we'd become so prosperous that we're no longer willing to die and kill to preserve rights that should be states' rights or local municipality rights.

More's the pity, if you ask me.

Re: Break Up The Elite College Seats Cartel

#123

Post by gameman144 » Thu, Jun 02, 2022, 6:13 AM UTC

harmon wrote: post #57

pcmoney wrote: post #19

Its not like those schools are demonstrably better its that those schools are exclusive and provide social connections to elite social classes. The whole point of them existing is to be exclusive more than it is to educate.

I disagree. I went to a "tier 3" school for undergrad and then "elite" schools for post-graduate education. The difference in course and instruction quality, experience level of the professors, student ambition, and caliber of student between the classes of schools was night and day. The "mediocre" undergrads I met during my post-graduate education were as good as the best people I went to school with for undergrad.

This is super interesting, since I had the opposite experience: I learned much more and received more personalized instruction and high-quality material at my low-status undergrad than I did during my top-ten graduate education by a wide margin.

Re: Break Up The Elite College Seats Cartel

#124

Post by clairity » Thu, Jun 02, 2022, 6:14 AM UTC

ajross wrote: post #39

colechristensen wrote: post #3

The size and longevity of these enormous endowments is a problem, but it is quite naive to think that you could create a top tier university with an arbitrarily large amount of money. There is quite a lot more to the quality of an institution than the ability to build facilities, pay salaries, and buy equipment.

> The size and longevity of these enormous endowments is a problem Is it? The largest university endowment in the world is $50B. That's wouldn't even crack the top 100 US companies by market cap. If it's a problem, it's certainly not a big one.

comparing endowment to market cap is misunderstanding basic finance and accounting. endowments are more directly (but not perfectly) comparable to (long-term) assets on the balance sheet. those are typically a small fraction of the market cap of a company. apple, for instance, has a $2.4T market cap, but it's non-current assets are $216B (of which $128B are investment assets).

Re: Break Up The Elite College Seats Cartel

#125

Post by brewdad » Thu, Jun 02, 2022, 6:17 AM UTC

rootusrootus wrote: post #70

quadrifoliate wrote: post #52

Earlier quoted context omitted.

From sources like this [1], it looks like the cohort of high school graduates is usually between 3 and 4 million. So that means the total college-eligible cohort is 12 - 16 million. Let's say 25% (a fourth) of them end up attending this magical national public college. That's a 3000000 / 10000 = 300:1 ratio of students to teachers. That's a lot of students per PhD to handle, for a $100k salary with greatly reduced ca…

> By comparison, the student/faculty ratio at a typical "good" college is about 5:1. Even knocking down the projected enrollment one order of magnitude (so 1/40th of the college-age cohort) gets you a 30:1 ratio which is still 6 times worse. What qualifies as a good college, for this description? Typical state school, e.g. Oregon State University? What counts in the 5:1 ratio? Because it sure isn't just teachers, tha…

For the record, OSU lists their student:faculty ratio at 18:1. First year gen ed courses are huge but most upper level classes are a much more manageable size.

https://oregonstate.edu/about

Re: Break Up The Elite College Seats Cartel

#126

Post by Hermitian909 » Thu, Jun 02, 2022, 6:37 AM UTC

caffeine wrote: post #119

Hermitian909 wrote: post #108

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> We need more MITs and Caltechs, not more Harvards and Yales. While this is a very crass over-generalization, I've found you really see this in the graduates. I've found Ivy league school graduates to be sort of... disconnected from reality? Like experts in education who clearly don't understand any of the on-the-ground realities of teaching (your lesson plan is beautifully structured, but we can't use it because it…

At my old job in the UK, we always got better results hiring engineers from Imperial College (which is the UK attempt at an MIT/Caltech-type of school) than from Oxbridge. We eventually figured out that the Imperial students had written thousands and thousands of lines of code by the time they graduated, in several different types of languages (Prolog, Haskell, C, Verilog, Java, Python, Javascript) and at all levels…

This all makes sense though for clarity I think I'm discussing something a little different.

I don't generally feel like MIT students aren't particularly less or more well versed in theory than their peers at Harvard. However the approach taken to solving big problems feels very different. I think a story is illustrative.

One of the more impressive people from MIT I know got their degree in electrochemistry. After working in the industry for a while they realized the thing holding back their work was bad software. Their response was to abandon a super senior technical role, take a massive pay cut, and work as a junior software engineer. They worked their way up to senior at a FAANG then jumped back into batteries. They're running a very exciting startup solving some very interesting and important problems.

The attitude that allows for people to both identify that they need to do some pretty unglamorous work to achieve their goals and then do it is what feels more common out of MIT or Caltech.

My experience is that Ivy schools impose more of an attitude of "you're the leaders of society, start solving problems now!" whether or not the students really have the know-how to be proposing solutions.

Re: Break Up The Elite College Seats Cartel

#127

Post by l33t2328 » Thu, Jun 02, 2022, 6:40 AM UTC

boeingUH60 wrote: post #113

colechristensen wrote: post #3

The size and longevity of these enormous endowments is a problem, but it is quite naive to think that you could create a top tier university with an arbitrarily large amount of money. There is quite a lot more to the quality of an institution than the ability to build facilities, pay salaries, and buy equipment.

King Abdullah University of Science and Technology (KAUST) in Saudi Arabia started in 2009 with a $10 billion endowment [1]. As far as I can tell, they’re still not noteworthy on the global stage. 1- https://www.science.org/content/article/can-saudi-arabia-bui...

That’s not that much to start a school from scratch. You need dozens of buildings and a huge amount of equipment to be competitive, and that’s without mentioning the fact that many academics don’t want to work in Saudi Arabia.

Re: Break Up The Elite College Seats Cartel

#128

Post by bruceb » Thu, Jun 02, 2022, 6:42 AM UTC

boeingUH60 wrote: post #113

colechristensen wrote: post #3

The size and longevity of these enormous endowments is a problem, but it is quite naive to think that you could create a top tier university with an arbitrarily large amount of money. There is quite a lot more to the quality of an institution than the ability to build facilities, pay salaries, and buy equipment.

King Abdullah University of Science and Technology (KAUST) in Saudi Arabia started in 2009 with a $10 billion endowment [1]. As far as I can tell, they’re still not noteworthy on the global stage. 1- https://www.science.org/content/article/can-saudi-arabia-bui...

Because very few young people would list Saudi Arabia as place to visit, even for free.

Starting with a $10b endowmwnt in North America, Europe, or East Asia would probably create a noteworthy university inside 15 years.

Re: Break Up The Elite College Seats Cartel

#129

Post by djbebs » Thu, Jun 02, 2022, 6:57 AM UTC

bruceb wrote: post #128

boeingUH60 wrote: post #113

Earlier quoted context omitted.

King Abdullah University of Science and Technology (KAUST) in Saudi Arabia started in 2009 with a $10 billion endowment [1]. As far as I can tell, they’re still not noteworthy on the global stage. 1- https://www.science.org/content/article/can-saudi-arabia-bui...

Because very few young people would list Saudi Arabia as place to visit, even for free. Starting with a $10b endowmwnt in North America, Europe, or East Asia would probably create a noteworthy university inside 15 years.

Millions of people go to Saudi Arabia yearly...

Re: Break Up The Elite College Seats Cartel

#130

Post by mmarq » Thu, Jun 02, 2022, 7:09 AM UTC

derbOac wrote: post #34

jjeaff wrote: post #29

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't think there is any proof that the elite connections make any difference on average. The Dale and Krueger study in fact found evidence that there was no statistical difference in lifetime income for ivy league grads vs less elite schools when controlling for factors like sat scores. In fact, they compared people who were accepted but did not go to an ivy league vs those who did go. Other subsequent studies by…

I don't know. Just as one example, I've seen here on HN ads for positions that explicitly mention (in not so many words) that they're only looking for grads from elite colleges. The UK just codified this into visa law. Income is a fuzzy thing, and distinct from opportunities. I'm always looking for empirical data to bear on a question, so the studies you're mentioning are important. But at the same time I'm sort of s…

> The UK just codified this into visa law.

It’s going to be very funny when they realise that nobody with a Harvard or a ETH Zurich degree is going to spend 3K£ for the privilege of moving to the UK, where they will earn a third of what they would be making home. Then the government will water it down as they did with salary requirements, finally they’ll blame the “talent” shortage on the EU and on millennials eating avocados.