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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

#161

Post by carlob »

barry-cotter wrote: post #147
carlob wrote: post #138

Earlier quoted context omitted.

A small caveat: nepotism was the practice when cardinals (who were celibate) would push their nephews into positions of power. So, strictly speaking, it is the other way around: celibacy caused nepotism, otherwise we would have had filism (from filius/son rather than from nepos/nephew).

Cardinals were very often not actually celibate, just like less promoted priests.

Yeah, those nephew were often illegitimate sons, but that just goes to prove that forced celibacy has never worked.

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

#163

Post by everdrive »

thethethethe wrote: post #145
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…

> Also there should be a high correlation between kids being college-material and parents being college-material. Whether you believe in nature (genetics) or nurture (good parenting, high standards, role model, access to education, etc), or a mix of both, either way, you should not expect the % of college students from graduate families to match the % of graduate families in the country. So not sure what point the ar…

I'm not sure it suggests that society is stratifying, though. People didn't go to college nearly so much prior to the 70s. Once college became ubiquitous, I would expect that the number of people who's parents went to college could have to go up no matter what. ie, there is a smaller and smaller pool of people who's parents did not go to college since the 1970s. I'm not even suggesting that society is not stratifying; I just don't think this is proof of it.

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

#164

Post by KptMarchewa »

grapeskin wrote: post #87
slt2021 wrote: post #81

Earlier quoted context omitted.

it says more about your skill that someone from 3rd world country, whose parents earn $10/mo is more skilled and smart to pass interview. Keep in mind it is more expensive for company to hire foreigners as there are 12 hoops to bring foreigner in board, they just desperate for any talent that can do the job (at high bar though)

Nah. H1B sponsor mills are a well documented issue that the US government has been trying to handle for a while now. These organizations go as far as filing multiple applications so they can more easily push one through. [1] It's nothing to do with "skill level" but everything to do with employers pushing down wages and wanting employees that are easily churned when necessary and kept obedient with the threat of thei…

You're talking about two different things. Google, Microsoft, other FAAGs's H1Bs are not the same as Infosys or Wipro.

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

#165

Post by dgb23 »

TrackerFF wrote: post #151
wenc wrote: post #117

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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, Stan…

Those are predominantly elite schools right?

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

#166

Post by achenet »

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…

would a new elite emerge? Probably, if there are certain traits which tend to predict success in a given endeavor, the new elite would tend to have those traits.

But one would hope for an elite rather like the Navy SEALs, where selection is based on the ability to handle difficult conditions, not one where selection is based on being born to the right family.

Yes, there is evidence that intelligence is at least partially hereditary, so if we assume intelligence is correlated with academic success, one would expect children of academic successes to have a slightly higher chance of academic success. Similarly, if we assume that height is correlated with success in basketball, since height is partially genetic we should expect children of basketball successes to have a slightly higher chance of success in basketball.

Still, I think an elite based on "fair" selection in the form of some set of hard-to-game test (for an unfeasible example, give everyone who wants to apply to a PhD program a 3-6 month mini-research internship, select the best ones and ignore all other criteria) would create a society where the people in charge tend to make better decisions/increase the global utility function more/produce better research in the case of academia than one where it's just rich kids aping their parents.

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

#167

Post by TrackerFF »

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…

While this is a very inflamed area of discussion, there's a considerable portion of right-wing politicians - even some with degrees from prestigious school - that are becoming more and more hostile against education.

It is current day anti-intellectualism. Nothing new, but unfortunately not dead either.

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

#168

Post by iso1631 »

robocat wrote: post #155
gnicholas wrote: post #77

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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/Undergr…

In the UK you do GCSEs about age 16, A-Levels about age 18 (there are some vocational certificates too), both while typically living at home.

You then typically go away for a Bachelor degree which lasts 3-4 years and gives you a BSc, BA or similar. After that you might do a Masters degree which would be 1 year (full time) which gives you an MSc/MA, then you'd start a doctorate which takes several years before getting a PhD

At 16 people leave that track and do formal qualifications in more vocational areas (bricklaying, farming, etc), at 18 people who didn't do vocational training from 16 may leave, a gap year is quite popular at that point, where you have a year off and travel the world.

Most people who do BA/BSc level courses will finish after graduation, typically age 21-23 (depending on gap year and length of course). Some stay direct on, plenty of people do Masters remotely part time later in their careers.

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

#169

Post by chrchang523 »

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.

“Something like 7%” is noticeably less than twice 4%, so no, I didn’t make that assumption. (I also explicitly stated that this was a back-of-the-napkin-quality analysis.)

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

#170

Post by roel_v »

barry-cotter wrote: post #154
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.

"You do not need to get a Math minor to get an Economics major."

That wasn't the claim. The claim was that it's somehow surprising that economics is math heavy. Yes there are 'policy' or 'international business' degrees camouflaging as 'economics' degrees, but how can it be a surprise to any but the most uninformed that 'economics' (at least the prestigious degrees, which are the ones that will produce the majority of future academics) are math heavy? And I'm not even talking about just the pure math courses. Courses like Operations Research are notorious 'filter courses' for economics students, good luck passing those without math fundamentals.

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