People from elite backgrounds increasingly dominate academia, data shows • Hacker News Board

Re: People from elite backgrounds increasingly dominate academia, data shows

#51

Post by AinderS » Mon, Jul 11, 2022, 4:50 AM UTC

cypress66 wrote: post #41

AinderS wrote: post #9

Interesting. Although US graduate students are only 53% white [1] (while the US is 57.8% white [2]) and women account for 53% of doctoral degrees [3], all 5 of the people in the generic stock photos in the article are white males, despite making up only an estimated 25% of graduates. A striking deviation from the photographic trend if one e.g. google image searches for "phd graduate". [1] https://www.equityinhighered…

You usually see men hanging with other men, and women with other women. There are 2 pictures shown. If you went to a campus and captured 2 such pictures of people at random, it would be completely common for both pictures to end up like the ones in the article.

> If you went to a campus and captured 2 such pictures of people at random

Yes. But if a Washington Post photographer went (or chose the pictures), it's vanishingly uncommon. A duckduckgo image search, limited to washingtonpost.com, of "phd graduation", "phd students", "phd graduate", "graduation", or "university students", yields almost no such pictures. Almost all are either very diverse, or entirely black.

They only find whites when it comes to "elites" "dominating".

Re: People from elite backgrounds increasingly dominate academia, data shows

#52

Post by usednet » Mon, Jul 11, 2022, 4:52 AM UTC

frognumber wrote: post #34

Elite schools want people from the power class. A lot of this is explicitly baked into admissions. Over 40% of white students at Harvard are side-door admissions (legacy, donors, children of faculty, etc.). This is especially true for minority admissions. For the most part, Harvard won't admit lower-class African Americans; they'll select from a much smaller pool who have already moved into the power networks. That's…

And all of this contributes to extremely low intellectual diversity at Ivy Leagues. I have the pleasure of frequently interacting with Harvard students and it is consistently true that they are always unremarkable individuals. These schools simply breed a managerial class that is capable of grinding hard and following orders.

Re: People from elite backgrounds increasingly dominate academia, data shows

#53

Post by grapeskin » Mon, Jul 11, 2022, 4:54 AM UTC

Hydraulix989 wrote: post #35

denimnerd42 wrote: post #27

Earlier quoted context omitted.

come on you can't make blanket statements like that. Plenty of my Ivy friends who took the tech path are senior ICs at big tech, startups (not founders), etc. Same as the stanford, caltech, MIT kids.. some are managers now of course. they're just normal people who happens to be extremely smart and also from wealthy backgrounds. maybe some day they'll be C-suite but they're only mid 30s right now. I would say only a h…

Nope, I worked at two FAANG companies and with not a single Harvard or Stanford graduate. I hosted an intern from Stanford once who received a top of band return offer and rejected it for a "better option." I had one coworker from MIT who admitted he should have gone in finance instead. He later left for a prestigious hedge fund and 7 figure compensation. Most of my coworkers ended up here on H1-B visas from top scho…

> Most of my coworkers ended up here on H1-B visas from top schools in their home countries, but no network or strong family wealth here in the US.

That's an interesting matter on its own. Americans are jumping through 12 stage interviews at a chance for a job and getting ghosted while somehow people from other countries are quickly filling up corporations.

It's also weird that so many people with no local connections and no reason to stay in the country get important roles in tech companies, return home, and data is consistently being leaked or "hacked" through various vulnerabilities obvious to employees.

Re: People from elite backgrounds increasingly dominate academia, data shows

#54

Post by jollybean » Mon, Jul 11, 2022, 4:57 AM UTC

Hydraulix989 wrote: post #20

metadat wrote: post #3

Isn't this to be expected with any similarly weighted network? Guess who private sector loves to promote to executive positions like VP and SVP? Harvard and ivy grads. Even in engineering, where it's supposed to be more of a meritocracy, you can see this at every bigco. Human idiosyncrasies lead to branding pedigree consistently being selected over pure skill and / or superior experience in favor of an abstract perce…

Nobody cares where you graduate from school in engineering. It's all about what you can do, and in larger corporations, also how politically savvy you are. Most of middle and upper management (VP / SVP) also has degrees from no-name schools. If anything, they'll have degrees from worker bee / nerd schools like CMU, Caltech, and UC Berkeley, not Ivy degrees (except for Cornell, which is basically a public school). Upw…

"Nobody cares where you graduate from school in engineering."

Oh yes they do. It definitely opens doors. After that, depending on the role, it can have subtle effects. For mid-level management, right in the grinder, probably no as you say. For externally facing things, yes. They also might have more opportunities for lateral moves, into BD/Sales etc..

Re: People from elite backgrounds increasingly dominate academia, data shows

#55

Post by frognumber » Mon, Jul 11, 2022, 4:57 AM UTC

usednet wrote: post #52

frognumber wrote: post #34

Elite schools want people from the power class. A lot of this is explicitly baked into admissions. Over 40% of white students at Harvard are side-door admissions (legacy, donors, children of faculty, etc.). This is especially true for minority admissions. For the most part, Harvard won't admit lower-class African Americans; they'll select from a much smaller pool who have already moved into the power networks. That's…

And all of this contributes to extremely low intellectual diversity at Ivy Leagues. I have the pleasure of frequently interacting with Harvard students and it is consistently true that they are always unremarkable individuals. These schools simply breed a managerial class that is capable of grinding hard and following orders.

I've been affiliated with MIT in one way or another for more than a quarter-century. What's been astounding is the change in faculty.

Historically, MIT faculty were nerds into neat tech problems.

New MIT faculty are slick politicians with an increasing sleazy Enron-style vibe. That's true of MIT leadership as well.

Re: People from elite backgrounds increasingly dominate academia, data shows

#56

Post by seanmcdirmid » Mon, Jul 11, 2022, 4:59 AM UTC

blobbers wrote: post #46

oxff wrote: post #40

> People from elite backgrounds increasingly dominate academia Even if your system was pure Meritocracy that'd make 16th century Anglos proud, you'd still expect it to eventually come to this (smart people have smart kids, dumb people have dumb kids)

I can't believe this comment hasn't been downvoted into oblivion, but I tend to agree. It's a markov model. Educated people care about educating their children. Uneducated either a) want their kid to be the first to reach higher education (but struggle to do so or b) don't value education. Pretty rare to find a well educated person who places no value on education. Guys like Peter Thiel (educated, but promote non-tra…

Parents also provide pretty bad advice if they don’t have experience in your path. My parents aren’t really uneducated, but they didn’t go to 4 year schools, and so I was pretty much on my own from high school on in figuring out how to go about getting into university and such. I got lucky, but I always feel like I could have done better with some better advice.

Re: People from elite backgrounds increasingly dominate academia, data shows

#57

Post by httpz » Mon, Jul 11, 2022, 5:00 AM UTC

Going into academia is usually not the best way to maximize your financial earning potential. So usually people who go into academia value pursuit of knowledge over money.

Academics tend to raise children with those values.

Re: People from elite backgrounds increasingly dominate academia, data shows

#58

Post by kmeisthax » Mon, Jul 11, 2022, 5:01 AM UTC

kepler1 wrote: post #43

Let's play it forward where in some alternate reality we were able to reset the current "inequity" and give lots more people from non-elite backgrounds a good shot at proving their capabilities. Or even have that as an ongoing policy in a very fair way. ("Fair" being the problematic word which will constantly be debated.) Do you imagine that a new elite of some new type of class would not emerge? Would that new elite…

Since elite classes are probably inevitable without significantly reengineering the human condition, we at least want elite social structures that...

1. Do not stifle the well-being of lower classes

2. Allow upwards mobility into the elite class from lower classes

Today's elite caste fails both criteria: the current elites have architected the US, if not the world, to the detriment of the working class. Upwards mobility is very low - which drives resentment and distrust. The elite tends to select for its children moreso than any hypothetical notion of "merit", which gives the feeling that they are less "the best our country has to offer" and more "space aliens that happen to run everything".

Re: People from elite backgrounds increasingly dominate academia, data shows

#59

Post by seanmcdirmid » Mon, Jul 11, 2022, 5:01 AM UTC

eek2121 wrote: post #14

zamfi wrote: post #4

Earlier quoted context omitted.

And prior to that, education used to be a lot more expensive, and was only for the rich. Your claim is not just cause-and-effect, it's historical fact too.

Not in the US it wasn't? Costs for higher education have tripled in the past couple decades, to say NOTHING of costs in the 80s or 90s. Note that I already knew this, having a free ride thanks to the U.S. Pell Grants, however I DID to a basic google search. Among many other sources, this one is eye opening. Curious as to what your thoughts are: https://politicalcalculations.blogspot.com/2014/04/the-ongoi... In case y…

Higher education was only made affordable after WW2 in the western world, and has been rising ever since then (at least in the USA). Before WW2, it was something mostly rich kids did.

Re: People from elite backgrounds increasingly dominate academia, data shows

#60

Post by ethav0 » Mon, Jul 11, 2022, 5:03 AM UTC

blobbers wrote: post #46

oxff wrote: post #40

> People from elite backgrounds increasingly dominate academia Even if your system was pure Meritocracy that'd make 16th century Anglos proud, you'd still expect it to eventually come to this (smart people have smart kids, dumb people have dumb kids)

I can't believe this comment hasn't been downvoted into oblivion, but I tend to agree. It's a markov model. Educated people care about educating their children. Uneducated either a) want their kid to be the first to reach higher education (but struggle to do so or b) don't value education. Pretty rare to find a well educated person who places no value on education. Guys like Peter Thiel (educated, but promote non-tra…

Millennials who entered college in 2010-2015 -- prior to the deep learning era -- are more subject to placing less value on education. Attention was turned to business, not education.