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People from elite backgrounds increasingly dominate academia, data shows

washingtonpost.com

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

#151

Post by TrackerFF »

wenc wrote: post #117
metadat wrote: post #78

Earlier quoted context omitted.

My experience has been in tech, so I don't have information handy for other sectors.

Even in tech, the majority of executives don't have Ivy League degrees. Some of them might have MBAs from good schools, but many went to ordinary colleges. I work in tech and in my entire reporting line, there is exactly 1 Ivy league graduate. Tim Cook went to Auburn (MBA at Duke). Satya Nadella went to Manipal Institute of Technology (then UW-Milwaukee, and later an MBA at UChicago Booth).

Had to check up the CEOs of the largest tech companies in the US - looks like the following:

Alphabet - Sundar Pichai (IIT, Stanford, Wharton)

Amazon - Jeff Bezos (Princeton)

Apple - Tim Cook (Auburn, Duke)

Microsoft - Satya Nadella (MIT Manipal, UW–Milwaukee, UChicago)

Meta - Mark Zuckerberg (Harvard - dropped out)

Tesla - Eleon Musk (UPenn / Wharton, Stanford - dropped out)

Nvidia - Jensen Huang (Oregon State, Stanford)

Broadcom - Hock E. Tan (MIT, Harvard)

Oracle - Safra A. Catz (UPenn)

Adobe - Shantanu Narayen (Osmania University, Bowling Green State University, University of California, Berkeley)

Cisco - Chuck Robbins (UNC)

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

#152

Post by barry-cotter »

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…

What you say is true for undergraduate admission but unless you’re from an URM that’s not how graduate admission works. They admit people they think will make excellent researchers, or that they think are capable of graduating, for URMs. Law school, need school and business school may pay more attention to those kinds of concerns but I’m not aware of e.g. Yale Law having legacy preferences.

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

#153

Post by achenet »

beardyw wrote: post #132

It was ever thus. Look back on history - academia was always dominated or even the exclusive preserve of those from wealthy backgrounds. It is wrong, but it is in no way new.

This is true.

As an optimist, however, I believe that it doesn't have to be.

Looking back on history, slavery was the dominant method of production for several thousand years - until we industrialized.

Looking back on history, human flight was the preserve of fools - until the Wright brothers.

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

#154

Post by barry-cotter »

roel_v wrote: post #142

"PhD programs tend to require a hidden curriculum of classes in subjects such as mathematics that are not technically required for economics majors." "subjects such as mathematics that are not technically required for economics majors" Eh? Who lets clueless writers like this near a keyboard?

Real Analysis, Linear Algebra and Calc I-III are not required to get an Economics degree but they will help enormously if you want to go to MIT(number one programme), Harvard (two) or even someplace like Penn(somewhere in the top 20). You do not need to get a Math minor to get an Economics major.

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

#155

Post by robocat »

gnicholas wrote: post #77
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 think your analysis mixes up college degrees and graduate degrees. 'College degree' refers to a 4-year BA/BS, whereas 'graduate degree' typically refers to a PhD, Master's degree, or professional degree (JD/MD/MBA).

Postgraduate education in UK etcetera means graduate education in North America - as per https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Postgraduate_education

The quotes from the article seem to be using graduate in the US sense, which is what would be called post-grad in NZ.

FYI, AFAIK college degree or professional degree means little in New Zealand, and probably not the UK either.

Also see https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Undergraduate_degree

I'm just saying that to people outside the US, the article is unclear because the words mean different things in different countries, which could affect some commenters.

Disclaimer: I only know what we call degrees in NZ so I am just trying to say why people from different countries could be confused. And this comment probably is confused itself, sorry.

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

#156

Post by barry-cotter »

nostromo wrote: post #118

They’re defining having an elite background as having a parent with a post-graduate degree… which seems like a stretch to me. Post graduate degrees are not that special anymore and they often don’t earn you much additional money, let alone power.

Twenty or thirty years ago a graduate degree was very unusual. Now it’s clearly not a marker of elite status. Things have changed.

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

#157

Post by JumpCrisscross »

Ekaros wrote: post #92
vlunkr wrote: post #49

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 realistically we are at point where having a degree doesn't make you an "elite" anymore. Not necessarily even having PhD... The value of degrees has also inflated.

> value of degrees has also inflated

Nitpick: the degree has inflated. Its value has decreased. If something’s value inflates its price has deflated.

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

#158

Post by barry-cotter »

aj7 wrote: post #94

Academia does not equal economics, a field where a Nobel Prize winner ran a multibillion dollar hedge fund into the ground, and economists can’t agree on whether a person deserves healthcare.

> economists can’t agree on whether a person deserves healthcare.

Economists have no special insight into deserts, any more than philosophers. Is does not imply ought and all that.

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

#159

Post by KptMarchewa »

robocat wrote: post #148
chrchang523 wrote: post #131

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The math is trickier than that: - If 4% of parents have degrees, something like 7% of the next generation has at least one parent with a degree. Because children have two parents, and only one of those two parents needs to have a degree. So the correct number to compare 20% against is ~7%, not 4%. - Suppose a child of a degree-holder is 3 times as likely to become an economics PhD as a child of no degree-holders. The…

> If 4% of parents have degrees, something like 7% of the next generation has at least one parent with a degree. Are you presuming marriage and degree-holding are independent variables? Although I presume there are fewer female degree holders, so perhaps it makes little difference.

>Although I presume there are fewer female degree holders, so perhaps it makes little difference.

Since ~80s there are more female undergraduate students than male.

EDIT: with graduate degrees it got equal just in 2005. Which is relatively close to the age of current students...

https://www.statista.com/statistics/185167/number-of-doctora...

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

#160

Post by achenet »

privatdozent wrote: post #12
seibelj wrote: post #8

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Also a lot of lifetime academics are generally insufferable. Hugely important vision of themselves, lack of knowledge of reality, and are totally useless if they had to do a job outside of their hyper-specialized area. I see a lot of value in hard-science / math research. Don’t see a lot of value in yet another 80 page treatise on Proust that only 8 people will ever read. Hopefully everything gets priced so high that…

Haha. Because math research is so widely read

Well some of it is used a LOT - for example all of digital technology is basically applied boolean algebra, and calculus is the base of physics. Granted, the original research for those was 200-400 years ago, but the current day applications are everywhere.

So while a new research paper on some obscure subset of point-set topology may not appear to be useful today, it is possible that in the future it will be. :)

EDIT: misread your comment as "widely used", not "widely read", my bad.

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