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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

#241

Post by adamsmith143 »

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).

Check Linkedin, it's been a revelation for me. Filter by company and school and you will find hundreds of Ivy League+ types as Upper Level Management. Idk why one would only look at C-suite

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

#242

Post by adamsmith143 »

corncob15 wrote: post #233
AlbertCory wrote: post #75

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…

Most colleges actually do track this metric - generally it's reported as "first-generation students." (Generally defined as parents without a four-year degree, not parents with zero college education, but same concept.) Here's Harvard's press release for the class of 2026, saying "Students who will be in the first generation of their family to graduate from a four-year college or the equivalent represent 20.3 percent…

Harvard has more students from the top 20% income percentile than the bottom 80%.

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

#244

Post by aquaduck »

bhouston wrote: post #207
klqp wrote: post #136

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is an excellent explanation, but I have one small remark: Diversity and equity is taught at elite cadre schools and used as a distinguishing marker from the proletariat. This gives elite children a wedge to get into Ive League institutions without high test scores. Think of it as the new "extracurricular activity" on steroids. Diversity and equity have been co-opted by the elites and are a powerful tool (smoke s…

> Diversity and equity is taught at elite cadre schools and used as a distinguishing marker from the proletariat. This gives elite children a wedge to get into Ive League institutions without high test scores. Can you prove that in any way? This sounds like a made up "fact."

I'm not OP, but this is a made-up interpretation, not a fact. Unlike facts, interpretations don't have unambiguous true/false values - the question is whether or not (or to what extent) the statement is consistent with facts.

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

#245

Post by corncob15 »

adamsmith143 wrote: post #242
corncob15 wrote: post #233

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Most colleges actually do track this metric - generally it's reported as "first-generation students." (Generally defined as parents without a four-year degree, not parents with zero college education, but same concept.) Here's Harvard's press release for the class of 2026, saying "Students who will be in the first generation of their family to graduate from a four-year college or the equivalent represent 20.3 percent…

Harvard has more students from the top 20% income percentile than the bottom 80%.

This is true, but also doesn't conflict in any way with the 20% first-generation statistic. After all, the corollary of "20% first-generation" is that the vast majority of Harvard students do have one or more parents with a college degree.

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

#246

Post by geoduck14 »

SamoyedFurFluff wrote: post #239
marcinzm wrote: post #223

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.

Picking a career path isn’t that simple. Who can really predict what will be oversupplied 4 (college), 6(college + masters) or 8/10 (college + PhD) years from now? 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.

>Picking a career path isn’t that simple. Who can really predict what will be oversupplied 4 (college), 6(college + masters) or 8/10 (college + PhD) years from now?

Seriously? In the late 1990s, I was in middle school. My grand parents sat me down and told me to work towards a degree that makes a lot of money. They had lists of "typical starting salaries, by college degrees". We picked the top 3, and I started working towards those. I later reassessed and picked the top 1 - Electrical Engineering.

In 2010, I got my BSEE, and my starting salary was more than the average US salary.

Looking back, it was a hard road, but I get paid enough to provide for my wife and kids, and our life is good.

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

#247

Post by treis »

barry-cotter wrote: post #185
carlob wrote: post #161

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

Depends what you mean by “worked”. It prevented the emergence of priest kings quite well. Not allowing legitimate sons puts a major crimp in anyone’s plans to turn a religious organization’s land into their personal property. See how the Teutonic order turned into Brandenburg upon Protestantisation.

The Pope was a priest king for centuries not to mention the smattering of Bishop/Cardinal led mini statesi n the HRE.

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

#248

Post by john-radio »

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 isn't necessarily a criticism since everyone here is acting rationally from an economics perspective. I do wonder about the poor kid from a bad neighborhood who could have become the next great museum curator if not for the fact that his parents aren't wealthy.

I guess you're right, as long as you take it as axiomatic that capitalism should govern absolutely every part of our society.

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

#250

Post by TimPC »

lumost wrote: post #240
SketchySeaBeast wrote: post #238

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Pretty much, We don't talk about it as often as we should - but post dot-com Software was a bad place to be. There was general fear that outsourcing to India would do to software what outsourcing to China was doing for Manufacturing. These fears culminated in an under-supply of CS majors through the 2000s and an oversupply of various "business" degrees. The assumed "ideal path" was to be in management so as not to be…

Even after the dot com crash software was never a bad field it just felt that way because it was worse than it had been at the peak. There was still enough demand for most people to get actual jobs somewhere just not at the wages they like. Fields that suffer from this in academia have small percentages of people who study for it actually end up doing related work. Sometimes as low as 5% of the people. Software is nowhere close to 19 in 20 people working outside the field even during its worst crashes.
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