11–20 of 178 posts
I can't speak for other industries but I know in tech, the college you went to is basically irrelevant 1-2 years into your career. Even if say you have someone that went to MIT and then went to work for Google, as a hiring manager I would want to know more about what they did at Google than at MIT. I can really only think of two professions where your school matters: law and medicine. With Law I think it's the most i…
People in similar socioeconomic circumstances band together. If you stopped the successful doing it at Harvard they'd just find another way, whether it be geographic location, specific jobs, parties, the country club, whatever.
The author almost gets the point -- and even mentions the substantive reason people care in this sentence -- but then veers off a cliff in the last half of the sentence.
Huge portions of our economy are winner-take-all, with a very small number of winners. And the organizations that win are also increasingly winner-take-all.
The obsession with access to elite institutions makes more sense if you re-write these two sentences:
> We’re obsessed with high-status winner-take-all jobs. Our economy is dominated by superstar companies.
like this:
> We’re obsessed with high-status winner-take-all jobs BECAUSE our economy is dominated by superstar companies.
Is is that people are obsessed with status? Or is that people feel their basic needs -- housing, food, a sense of worth -- are at risk as long as they're not on top? And if they feel that way, are they wrong?
If you want to know why people are obsessed with becoming an Elon Musk, then look at how the man talks about his employees at Twitter. If the world is full of leaders who will stomp on you and lemmings who get stomped out, then you better try to claw your way as high as you can.
In comparison, credentials will have even more value than ever. Supply vs demand.
He suggests we should increase the number of spots at top schools. Perhaps. But I’m reading “End Times” by Turchin and this suggests “elite overproduction” is a major source of cultural instability. Maybe that’s wrong, but if so it would add an important reason to instead focus on the well being of “the productive class”, perhaps through expanding trade schools etc.
I can't speak for other industries but I know in tech, the college you went to is basically irrelevant 1-2 years into your career. Even if say you have someone that went to MIT and then went to work for Google, as a hiring manager I would want to know more about what they did at Google than at MIT. I can really only think of two professions where your school matters: law and medicine. With Law I think it's the most i…
I can't speak for other industries but I know in tech, the college you went to is basically irrelevant 1-2 years into your career. Even if say you have someone that went to MIT and then went to work for Google, as a hiring manager I would want to know more about what they did at Google than at MIT. I can really only think of two professions where your school matters: law and medicine. With Law I think it's the most i…
For a person who strongly believes in meritocracy, I really picked a stupid career.
The author has a point about broad access to education and its effects on mobility, but overlooks something vital: to be in the ruling class, entry into these schools is very important. All but one of the members of the current Supreme Court went Ivy (and nearly all in the 20th century before), and while Congress is more diverse when it comes to undergrad (it would be very interesting to see grad school data), 5 of t…
At least in my friend group (mostly White, Asian, and Latiné who attended the Top 50 ranked US News schools), most of us already knew each other via competitive high school extracurriculars (eg. Debate, Sports, DECA, MUN, Science Olympiads, Quiz Bowl, SAT Bootcamp, Intel Science Fair, Cyberpatriot, etc) and because we all attended the same 200-300 high schools nationally, did the same 5-7 majors, and are working in the same 3-4 industries.
Flagship Public Schools are becoming elite as well now that they are becoming much more selective, as well as the fact that STEM is increasingly valued outside the STEM industry (eg. PE/IB loves hire CS and Applied Math grads from target schools due to their analytical background)
Y'all boomers are arguing over a tree while ignoring the forest.
I can't speak for other industries but I know in tech, the college you went to is basically irrelevant 1-2 years into your career. Even if say you have someone that went to MIT and then went to work for Google, as a hiring manager I would want to know more about what they did at Google than at MIT. I can really only think of two professions where your school matters: law and medicine. With Law I think it's the most i…