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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

#221

Post by rossdavidh »

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…

"caste", the word you are looking for is "caste". It's not just a difference in incomes, it's a closed system for reproduction (college educated often meet their future spouse in college, and even if not are rarely willing to marry non-college educated). Closed system for reproduction plus inheritance (genetic and cultural both) is the predecessor to castes, given a few more generations of this kind of separation.

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

#222

Post by nemo44x »

Cthulhu_ wrote: post #203
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),…

> 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. You state this as if it's an inescapable fact instead of something that we as a society should improve upon. Case in point, I grew up in a "working class" factory but thanks to socialist…

Education is everywhere and essentially free today. There’s tons of content, some even from universities, on the internet and plenty of forums stocked with experts on subjects.

It’s the credential that’s expensive. It’s the gate you must pass through.

It would be nice if there were ways to determine someone’s level of expertise in a subject that didn’t directly involve the university system.

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

#223

Post by marcinzm »

hourago wrote: post #220
alexpotato wrote: post #213

This story is decidedly anecdata, even personal, but I think it's illustrative of what's going on in certain fields. - Had a friend who has multiple graduate level degrees in architecture related sub-specialties e.g. architecture criticism etc - HN being what it is, I will mention that the pay for most of the jobs you would get with the above is zero or near zero. - There is also a dramatic oversupply of candidates f…

> Why? The thought is that a museum hires the child of a hedge fund manager, there is a non-zero chance the wealthy parent will give or leave money to the institution when they die Another way that inequality damages society. When your best bet for your future is to appeal to the super rich instead of serving society and getting money from the government society losses its power. As you say, it is rational to work fo…

>best bet for your future

The best bet for the future is to pick a career path that is not massively over supplied with candidates. Once you get to that situation there's no system that will not cause most everyone to be unhappy.

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

#224

Post by lapcat »

MontyCarloHall wrote: post #211
lapcat wrote: post #204

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Citation please? For reference, I was in a PhD program in the humanities at the University of Wisconsin, and it was definitely not fully funded.

Sure: https://www.air.org/sites/default/files/downloads/report/STE... In STEM fields, 10% of PhD students reported using external (non-university) funds as their primary source of grad school funding; 10% of those externally funded students (1% overall) reported using loans as their primary funding source. In non-STEM fields, the proportion of non-funded PhD students is higher, at 35%, of which about half (17% overal…

> In STEM fields, 10% of PhD students

No. The link is a study of PhD recipients not PhD students. This is a crucial distinction, because my main claim was about the effects of attending graduate school on non-recipients. It's quite likely that PhD recipients are better funded than non-recipients, which funding helps them to complete their PhDs. In my academic department, there were many more students than there were sources of funding such as teaching assistantships, research assistantships, lectureships, and fellowships.

> In non-STEM

It's not clear to me that the study was comprehensive. It says STEM and SBE (social, behavioral, and economic), but does SBE mean non-STEM? Why didn't they just say non-STEM? Does SBE include Art, English, History, and Music, for example?

> Given that the majority of PhDs in the US are in STEM

~65% of PhDs awarded are in STEM, but only ~25% of Masters degrees are in STEM. This may say a lot about the PhD completion rate. At my school, a Masters was often rewarded on the way to a PhD, so it was kind of a (mostly worthless) consolation prize for those who didn't finish their PhD.

Anyway, the study is primarily about the "primary source" of funding, which is not quite the same as full funding.

The linked study was heavy with survivorship bias. Sadly, grad school dropouts are mostly forgotten and ignored by society.

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

#225

Post by cableshaft »

Hydraulix989 wrote: post #85
jollybean wrote: post #54

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"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..

Regardless of school, I would be hard pressed to find someone in my engineering organization who is an extroverted native English speaker with the very high EQ needed to hack it in sales. We're all better at working with computers than people.

Yeah probably not, because those people would realize they'll make more money for less work, being in sales.

I'm aware of at least one company a friend works at in the marketing department, and works directly with salespeople, and at that company a single salesperson brings in 40% of the entire company's revenue, makes 7-figures, and non-execs in the company complain they can't get him to do anything else in the job, like provide data for presentations and the like (personally I'm of the opinion that if they're generating that much revenue for the company, the salesperson has already done their job, and C-suite seems to think so too, but I digress).

Other salespeople at that company pull in a lot less but are still difficult to get them to do other work (except attend meetings here and there), just slightly less so. They're still making good money. And that seems to be the norm at all the companies my friend has worked at.

I imagine sales is more of a grind when you're starting from the bottom, and/or for companies where the margins are much smaller, but Corp2corp salepeople in particular seem to have a pretty sweet gig.

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

#226

Post by bernf »

alexpotato wrote: post #213

This story is decidedly anecdata, even personal, but I think it's illustrative of what's going on in certain fields. - Had a friend who has multiple graduate level degrees in architecture related sub-specialties e.g. architecture criticism etc - HN being what it is, I will mention that the pay for most of the jobs you would get with the above is zero or near zero. - There is also a dramatic oversupply of candidates f…

This is not really correct. Art and a lot of jobs that don't pay well go to children of rich people because they don't need the money, their parents are usually already in the network of influence and patrons. The current state of art is at the mercy of them anyway to keep up the illusion - the rich donate and get their benefits/private events and tax write offs. And since they're rich they end up becoming public figures themselves and bring even more attention to their institute.

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

#227

Post by nomdep »

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.

Well, most of the press is desperate to find a new big bad to generate clicks… and the in the case of the Washington Post to make us forget that they were the ones that gave a column to Amber Heard

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

#228

Post by zzbzq »

RickJWagner wrote: post #195
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).

Nepotism today is probably most notable in politicians and Hollywood. (Hollywood is especially fascinating. Royalty runs rampant there.)

Those are both the cases where there is a public demand for nepotism, though. People want to see the next generation of the royalty, perhaps more than the kingmakers want to supply it. For that matter, sports is similar but slightly more meritocratic; lots of "Known Athlete Jr." out there in most sports, all of whom are at least good enough to play, but some of them only barely.

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

#229

Post by NoGravitas »

charlescearl wrote: post #197

Elite Capture https://www.haymarketbooks.org/books/1867-elite-capture is a short book but gives some good ways of thinking about these and other processes as a systems problem. Also addresses how “elite” can span multiple dimensions: belonging to a socially dominant class, caste, having higher levels of education, being an “influencer” etc.

Excellent link. I can't recommend this book highly enough.

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

#230

Post by LudwigNagasena »

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…

For simplicity let’s assume a static equilibrium (i.e. the rate of degree holders doesn’t change across cohorts and people don’t marry outside of their class).

Obviously in such case the probability to get a degree if your parents have a degree are 20% (in 1970) and 66% (in 2020).

Now let’s calculate the probabilities to get a degree if your parents don’t have a degree:

1970: 0.04*0.8/0.96 = 3.33%

2020: 0.14*0.34/0.86 = 5.53%

Even a “whooping” 1.7 increase doesn’t make much of a difference.

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