231–240 of 334 posts
Hey WaPo, they increasingly dominate journalism, too. Perhaps you should hold a mirror up to yourself.
(As an aside, this is why blue checks on Twitter always have the worst takes.)
> 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…
...or nepotism, which is known to be extremely common in both academia and among billionaires.
Many big tech companies are indeed led by people from Worker Bee schools (Midwestern state schools, SEC, ACC, etc.) Except for Google, famously founded by Stanford students. Or Microsoft & Facebook: Harvard dropouts. It's quite a different story when you get to the people who really consider themselves Elite: big consulting firms, white shoe law firms, large media companies, and top echelons of the government. For th…
Yale doesn't report this statistic as far as I could find, although I found a blurb that says "more than one out of every six" (https://admissions.yale.edu/advice-first-generation-college-...).
Princeton's class of 2025 was 22% first-generation (https://www.princeton.edu/news/2021/04/06/extraordinary-year...).
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 situation has changed when we look at 2020. The overall number of degree holders is still relatively low compared to overall population (14%) but of this number a full 2/3rds now have degreed parents. The situation within this group has reversed.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
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.
Computer Science used to be for nerds that were into neat tech problems. Now it's just seen the same as business/law/finance/whatever. And accordingly, we now have a deluge of CS graduates that want nothing to do with tech and simply move into management as fast as possible.
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),…
Nobody said it is surprising. You don't need something to be surprising to write an article about it.
Nepotism has been around for millennia and it's good to point the finger at it.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
> 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.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
> 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.
Additionally, if you’re wealthy enough, going into a passion project is the viable option. It’s what privilege affords you- doing what you are passionate about. I wished everyone had this.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
>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.
That game will get worse over time as people optimize for it too. It'll be a matter of trying to guess what's going to be in demand but not so in demand that people are training for it because they are also trying to choose a career that's in demand. And as usual, those with the better information and means to switch paths or take multiple shots will be the ones who can come out ahead.
Flash forward to the 2010s and there are too many entry level accountants/financiers/managers in training, and too few software professionals. Even in fields with some shortages it's not a given that you will have bargaining power e.g. Nursing.