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People from elite backgrounds increasingly dominate academia, data shows

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

#121

Post by thaumasiotes »

oofnik wrote: post #102

Why is this at all surprising? In any status-conscious society (read: any human society), given enough time, the people who make it to the top will invariably maximize opportunity afforded to their affinity group (i.e. offspring) at the expense of everyone else. This process manifests itself regardless of the role merit plays in the sorting algorithm. If the rules are relatively meritocratic (and relatively stable),…

> many long-lasting power structures throughout history attempted to mitigate the phenomenon of hereditary nepotism via the policy of enforced celibacy among the elite class: eunuch advisors in many classical near-Eastern empires

That is not a goal of having eunuchs around. Eunuchs usually don't have children, but they pretty much always have family members.

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

#122

Post by raducu »

vlunkr wrote: post #49
cm2187 wrote: post #32

> In 1970, just 1 in 5 U.S.-born PhD graduates in economics had a parent with a graduate degree. Now? Two-thirds of them do, according to a new analysis from the Peterson Institute for International Economics. The trends are similar for other fields (and for foreign-born students), but economics is off the charts. > This partly reflects population trends: Over that same period, the share of parents with graduate degr…

I had the same thoughts. The country is now more educated than it was before, and they want to paint that as a bad thing. And point some fingers at the “elite,” Which is now people who’s parents have a college degree I guess.

> and they want to paint that as a bad thing

I would think it's obvious to anyone that the bad thing is the creation of a caste system and lack of social mobility.

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

#123

Post by mkl95 »

Is it a recent phenomenon in the US? My country has a pretty straightforward pay-to-win scheme, which leads to degrees with a higher barrier of entry (mostly STEM) having a disproportionate amount of middle-upper class students.

Even university is partially pay-to-win since well-off students usually spend thousands a year on private lessons that are the uni equivalent of cheat codes. Even if it weren't dominated by the elite, it would still be a fundamentally elitist system.

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

#124

Post by zozbot234 »

tintedfireglass wrote: post #119
brutusborn wrote: post #105

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What does the entrance process for Tsinghua, IIT, and C9 look like? I'm just wondering how they are more meritocratic, do they just have less side-door admissions?

IIT is pseudo-meritocratic. It's a very rigorous exam and the person who can spend their whole high school time studying phy, Chem and maths and who can spend the most money joining the best coaching institutions and best mentors bacially get the admission. Doesn't matter if someone has an IQ of 200 or India's best football player or coding genius unless they get the highest marks in physics chemistry in maths they a…

There's nothing "flawed" about rewarding rigorous practice over irrelevant "skills" like being a good football player or scoring well on an I.Q. test. Sure it might be nice to pick up other meaningful predictors of achievement including e.g. deep interests, but that's very hard to do reliably in any sort of high-stakes situation, and school admissions are no exception.

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

#125

Post by raducu »

oofnik wrote: post #102

Why is this at all surprising? In any status-conscious society (read: any human society), given enough time, the people who make it to the top will invariably maximize opportunity afforded to their affinity group (i.e. offspring) at the expense of everyone else. This process manifests itself regardless of the role merit plays in the sorting algorithm. If the rules are relatively meritocratic (and relatively stable),…

> attempted to mitigate the phenomenon of hereditary nepotism via the policy of enforced celibacy among the elite class

That just tells us nepotism is bad. We have much better ways of dealing with it -- strong independent institutions, transparent rules, free education, social programs for the poor and so on.

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

#126

Post by brutusborn »

thrown_22 wrote: post #86
brutusborn wrote: post #76

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Not exactly like that, but close. As % of people with college degrees approaches 100%, all students will have parents with a college degree, so it will approach 5/5. The logic in the parent comment still stands.

What you care about is how much more likely a person with parents who had degrees is to have a degree over one who doesn't. In 1970 4% of people had degrees and 20% of degree holders had parents with degrees. That means that children of degree holders got 5 times as many degrees as children of non-degree holders. In 2020 14% of people have degrees and 66% of degree holders have parents with degrees. That means that c…

It doesn't work like that because you need to include the rates of people who have a degree and whos parent's don't.

CD = Child has a degree PD = Parent has a degree

Your rates would be calculated with P(CD|PD)/P(CD|notPD) = [4x20/(4x80+96A)]/[4x80/(4x80+96(100-A))] where A = Probability of parent having a degree and child not having degree

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

#127

Post by schnitzelstoat »

mkl95 wrote: post #123

Is it a recent phenomenon in the US? My country has a pretty straightforward pay-to-win scheme, which leads to degrees with a higher barrier of entry (mostly STEM) having a disproportionate amount of middle-upper class students. Even university is partially pay-to-win since well-off students usually spend thousands a year on private lessons that are the uni equivalent of cheat codes. Even if it weren't dominated by t…

The biggest difference I noticed at University was not that wealthier students would pay for private lessons, but rather that wealthier students didn't need to do part-time work to get by. This gave them much more time to study.

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

#128

Post by TrackerFF »

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…

Those endowment funds need donors.

Or, maybe they don't anymore. But I bet that historically, there must have been some baked-in probability of how much a student will potentially give back in the future.

Not sure how that correlates with old vs new money. But coming from old money has some clear advantages, like knowing how to play the game.

(I'm fairly sure at least business schools judge applicants on their potential power and influence, in the future.)

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

#129

Post by WiSaGaN »

thrown_22 wrote: post #86
brutusborn wrote: post #76

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Not exactly like that, but close. As % of people with college degrees approaches 100%, all students will have parents with a college degree, so it will approach 5/5. The logic in the parent comment still stands.

What you care about is how much more likely a person with parents who had degrees is to have a degree over one who doesn't. In 1970 4% of people had degrees and 20% of degree holders had parents with degrees. That means that children of degree holders got 5 times as many degrees as children of non-degree holders. In 2020 14% of people have degrees and 66% of degree holders have parents with degrees. That means that c…

This is wrong. By this logic, "25% of people have degrees and 100% of degree holders have parents with degrees" is better than the 4%/20%, because it's only 4 times instead of 5 times. One of the better methods would be to calculate the "Bayes factor"(https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bayes_factor) for estimating possibility of holding degree given the evidence of "parents holding degree". In this case, we need to know the parents degree percentage for both people in 1970 and 2020.

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

#130

Post by [deleted] »

raducu wrote: post #125
oofnik wrote: post #102

Why is this at all surprising? In any status-conscious society (read: any human society), given enough time, the people who make it to the top will invariably maximize opportunity afforded to their affinity group (i.e. offspring) at the expense of everyone else. This process manifests itself regardless of the role merit plays in the sorting algorithm. If the rules are relatively meritocratic (and relatively stable),…

> attempted to mitigate the phenomenon of hereditary nepotism via the policy of enforced celibacy among the elite class That just tells us nepotism is bad. We have much better ways of dealing with it -- strong independent institutions, transparent rules, free education, social programs for the poor and so on.

[deleted]
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