Who Gets to Graduate? • Hacker News Board

Re: Who Gets to Graduate?

#91

Post by tomsaffell » Fri, Jun 06, 2014, 5:29 AM UTC

js2 wrote: post #81

incision wrote: post #14

For everyone who can't be bothered to read the article: 'The second trend is that whether a student graduates or not seems to depend today almost entirely on just one factor — how much money his or her parents make. To put it in blunt terms: Rich kids graduate; poor and working-class kids don’t.' --- 'But the disadvantaged students who had experienced the belonging and mind-set messages did significantly better: 86 p…

This is a bummer: Vanessa called home, looking for reassurance. Her mother had always been so supportive, but now she sounded doubtful about whether Vanessa was really qualified to succeed at an elite school like the University of Texas. “Maybe you just weren’t meant to be there,” she said. “Maybe we should have sent you to a junior college first.” After reading the whole article, this is what really stuck with me. I…

>Why does her supportive mother suddenly undermine her at such a critical juncture?

I had the same reaction as you. Assuming that the mother has the best intentions for Vanessa, and that she know less of the ways of UT than Vanessa (and probably you or I), I'd hazard at the following meanings:

Maybe you just weren’t meant to be there = You have not failed (at something you were supposed to succeed). The failure was in walking down a path that does not lead to the (pre-ordained) future.

Maybe we should have sent you to a junior college first = It was my mistake to lead you down that path.

No matter how you spin it, it's not what Vanessa needed to hear. But putting your self in the shoes of someone who is trying to comfort their child, and who knows little of the university system, it seems like a natural enough reaction.

Re: Who Gets to Graduate?

#92

Post by watwut » Fri, Jun 06, 2014, 6:06 AM UTC

js2 wrote: post #81

incision wrote: post #14

For everyone who can't be bothered to read the article: 'The second trend is that whether a student graduates or not seems to depend today almost entirely on just one factor — how much money his or her parents make. To put it in blunt terms: Rich kids graduate; poor and working-class kids don’t.' --- 'But the disadvantaged students who had experienced the belonging and mind-set messages did significantly better: 86 p…

This is a bummer: Vanessa called home, looking for reassurance. Her mother had always been so supportive, but now she sounded doubtful about whether Vanessa was really qualified to succeed at an elite school like the University of Texas. “Maybe you just weren’t meant to be there,” she said. “Maybe we should have sent you to a junior college first.” After reading the whole article, this is what really stuck with me. I…

I'm not sure parents are supposed to be encouraging no matter what. You are not supposed to encourage kids to waste years and get into debt if the kid can not finish.

That being said, neither mother probably can evaluate Vanessas chances correctly, one failed course is not a catastrophe. Her high school apparently suxed: "she never had to study for math tests; she aced them all without really trying." - that could not be good school. Learning how to study for math at 18 is hard if you never had to do it before. She really might need more structured support at this point.

Re: Who Gets to Graduate?

#93

Post by watwut » Fri, Jun 06, 2014, 6:09 AM UTC

Agathos wrote: post #68

3pt14159 wrote: post #58

Earlier quoted context omitted.

IQ is correlated to wealth and IQ is hereditary, so it follows that children from wealthy parents would, on average, have higher IQ than their classmates.

Can't be bothered to read the article, indeed. When you read about those gaps, you might assume that they mostly have to do with ability. Rich kids do better on the SAT, so of course they do better in college. But ability turns out to be a relatively minor factor behind this divide. If you compare college students with the same standardized-test scores who come from different family backgrounds, you find that their e…

Risk reward ratio is entirely different when you are poor and when you are rich. If you are from super rich family, failure to finish university is no big deal. If you are poor, had to take ton of debt, failure to finish makes your life sux for years to come.

Re: Who Gets to Graduate?

#94

Post by orbifold » Fri, Jun 06, 2014, 6:13 AM UTC

reubenmorais wrote: post #12

tlb wrote: post #6

This is interesting because it shows a specific mechanism by which smart kids of non-college-educated parents drop out. She failed a test in her first month in college, and her mother told her maybe she wasn't meant to be there. I vaguely remember failing a test early in college too, but it never would have occurred to my (intelligentsia-class) parents that I wasn't meant to be educated. I can only imagine how discou…

Her mom's doubt certainly makes things worse, but I think the mechanism in motion in this case is best described by Eric Raymond's "Curse of the Gifted" [0]. She's smart, intuitive, and hadn't had any trouble in academia before. When things get really complicated in college, everything collapses, and it takes a lot of effort and support to get back on your feet. Having college educated parents helps with the support…

She is really not all that smart, nursing is something you would learn at a vocational school in other countries and I can't imagine the statistics they had to learn in the first year were harder than what you usually would learn in an advanced high school class. Being smart would mean that you are able to absorb new material quickly, which she obviously failed to do.

Re: Who Gets to Graduate?

#95

Post by watwut » Fri, Jun 06, 2014, 6:14 AM UTC

dragonwriter wrote: post #34

cperciva wrote: post #27

The second trend is that whether a student graduates or not seems to depend today almost entirely on just one factor — how much money his or her parents make. To put it in blunt terms: Rich kids graduate; poor and working-class kids don’t. Or to put it more statistically: About a quarter of college freshmen born into the bottom half of the income distribution will manage to collect a bachelor’s degree by age 24, whil…

> I find this very interesting in light of studies I've seen in Canada and Europe: Those studies all found that parental income was irrelevant after regressing for the overwhelming effect of parental education. All past US studies I've seen have shown the same thing, or at least that parental educational attainment is a better predictor of a persons educational attainment than any other factor, including parental inc…

It is also about opinions on college utility. Do parents think college is a waste of time? If parents think it is waste of time, you are more likely to think the same and drop out.

Re: Who Gets to Graduate?

#96

Post by notsureifwant » Fri, Jun 06, 2014, 6:16 AM UTC

dragonwriter wrote: post #34

cperciva wrote: post #27

The second trend is that whether a student graduates or not seems to depend today almost entirely on just one factor — how much money his or her parents make. To put it in blunt terms: Rich kids graduate; poor and working-class kids don’t. Or to put it more statistically: About a quarter of college freshmen born into the bottom half of the income distribution will manage to collect a bachelor’s degree by age 24, whil…

> I find this very interesting in light of studies I've seen in Canada and Europe: Those studies all found that parental income was irrelevant after regressing for the overwhelming effect of parental education. All past US studies I've seen have shown the same thing, or at least that parental educational attainment is a better predictor of a persons educational attainment than any other factor, including parental inc…

My personal interpretation is that a lot of this effect is driven by the fact that income (which I think we tend to think about as a proxy for standard of living, including quality of school system and safety of neighborhood, and not just what their family can buy) is often difficult to measure, and parental education might actually offer a much better measure of "standard of living" children experience (which is why it may show up as significant, while income may not, in those analyses).

Re: Who Gets to Graduate?

#97

Post by watwut » Fri, Jun 06, 2014, 6:17 AM UTC

roymurdock wrote: post #23

Vanessa averaged A's in high school but tested a 22 on the ACT: she was the top of her class, but her class was very far behind the students in the rest of the country. Her high school was clearly ineffective and set her up for failure on her first test. Good for her for sticking with it and working through/around/with a terribly unequal system that disadvantaged her from the start. Perhaps instead of an SAT or an AC…

I read somewhere that relative standing against your classmates is better predictor of success then SAT.

Re: Who Gets to Graduate?

#98

Post by thaumasiotes » Fri, Jun 06, 2014, 6:23 AM UTC

dwaltrip wrote: post #72

thaumasiotes wrote: post #45

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> As a general rule, "qualified" students are much more likely to exhibit the behaviors this program implements Well, yes. So the idea here is to take a bunch of underperforming students and invest money and effort into them in the hopes of raising their performance. Suppose we invested similar amounts in students who were already not failing. We might see an increase in their performance too. Would that be valuable?…

Well, the main goal was to increase graduation rates, so in that context, probably not (the advantaged students already had 90% graduation rates). What definition of valuable were you thinking of?

Let's say society prospers when there's more stuff and withers when there's less stuff. The traditional way to measure the amount of "stuff" is by looking at GDP (on a societal level) or GDP per capita (on an individual level). None of this has any obvious effect on the population of the country, so they're the same thing.

I'll also make the assumption that your lifetime earnings are a multiple of your entry-level salary, just to have an anchor for the numbers. Equivalently, assume that whenever you get a raise, it's defined as a percentage of your current salary.

With that assumption and the GDP definition of value-to-society, we can immediately see that it's 50% better to, by intervention, raise someone's starting salary from $50K to $80K than to raise a different person's starting salary from $10K to $30K. But it might be cheaper and easier to produce a 60% improvement in the $50K guy than a 200% improvement in the $10K guy.

Re: Who Gets to Graduate?

#99

Post by thaumasiotes » Fri, Jun 06, 2014, 6:33 AM UTC

wmgries wrote: post #88

thaumasiotes wrote: post #46

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Quick fact check: she's not smart. She's smart only in comparison to the rest of her high school, and the article points out she was admitted under UT's affirmative action program, wherein (for Austin) if you outperform 93% of your high school classmates, they let you in. But the article also points out that she scored the equivalent of a 1030 on the SAT. She's barely above average for the ACT-taking population of Te…

So apparently getting a certain grade on a standardized test makes you smart? Having never met this girl, none of us have any idea if she's smart, but she's certainly not dumb for a score she got on a standardized test when she was like 16...

You do realize the entire idea of a standardized test is to give you information about someone you've never met? The ACT and SAT are well-developed intelligence tests.

Re: Who Gets to Graduate?

#100

Post by thaumasiotes » Fri, Jun 06, 2014, 6:36 AM UTC

watwut wrote: post #92

js2 wrote: post #81

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is a bummer: Vanessa called home, looking for reassurance. Her mother had always been so supportive, but now she sounded doubtful about whether Vanessa was really qualified to succeed at an elite school like the University of Texas. “Maybe you just weren’t meant to be there,” she said. “Maybe we should have sent you to a junior college first.” After reading the whole article, this is what really stuck with me. I…

I'm not sure parents are supposed to be encouraging no matter what. You are not supposed to encourage kids to waste years and get into debt if the kid can not finish. That being said, neither mother probably can evaluate Vanessas chances correctly, one failed course is not a catastrophe. Her high school apparently suxed: "she never had to study for math tests; she aced them all without really trying." - that could no…

> Her high school apparently suxed: "she never had to study for math tests; she aced them all without really trying." - that could not be good school.

Her high school was definitely awful, but that's not evidence. I never studied for math tests either. The difference here is that she aced all her math tests without knowing math.