You Draw It: How Family Income Affects College Chances
21–30 of 98 posts
Re: You Draw It: How Family Income Affects College Chances
#22Re: You Draw It: How Family Income Affects College Chances
#23As somebody who's spent some time studying the impact of various levers (income, educational achievement, maternal education etc) on university/college enrolment I'd like to throw in an economist's perspective that the NY Times did not include in the chart. You may draw the conclusion from the chart that income prevents the poorest from attending university because they can't afford the fees. This is highly misleadin…
I'm going to risk calling you out on this, because I think what goes unstated here is that public resources cannot compete with private ones when it comes to education. It's sad to look at Johnny Trust Fund, and see that he is born with a true educational leg up over poor children, and there's really no way around it. If Johnny's parents have the will and motivation to spend hundreds of thousands of dollars a year educating Johnny, they can. I'm sorry, but no country can compete with that. Even increasing per-pupil spending in public schools to that of the Phillip's Academies is arguably impossible in all but a handful of the top GDP/capita nations, let alone all the private tutoring and traveling and internships that Johnny has access to.
So, yeah, if you manage to educate poorer children as well as wealthy children, they would achieve similar university performance, but getting their educational background to parity with one-another is so far out of the realm of possibility for most nations that I don't think it should even be mentioned.
Re: You Draw It: How Family Income Affects College Chances
#24A lot of great comments here on the content and presentation. I'm really interested, also, in the technical aspects of how this was put together. For instance, the app was able to recognize the shape of the line I drew. On my first attempt, it correctly identified that my line was an S shape; then when I started fiddling around, it was able to identify that my line was (roughly) straight. I wonder what method they us…
Here's a list of the possible results:
[{
key: "kindaSShaped",
sentence: "Your line looked a little bit like an S, with a gradual increase for the poorest families and a leveling off for the rich. That’s what we guessed the first time, too. But we were wrong. It’s a straight line."
}, {
key: "underEstimatePoor",
sentence: "You underestimated the chances of college enrollment for the very poorest children. In reality, about one in four children in America’s poorest families go to college. (You guessed around " + e.round(t[0]) + " percent.)"
}, {
key: "overEstimatePoor",
sentence: "You overestimated the chances of college enrollment for the very poorest children. In reality, about one in four children in America’s poorest families go to college. (You guessed around " + e.round(t[0]) + " percent.)"
}, {
key: "justRightOnPoor",
sentence: "You correctly guessed that children from the very poorest families face tough odds in going to college – only about one in four do."
}, {
key: "underEstimateRich",
sentence: "You underestimated the chances of college enrollment for the very richest children. In reality, about 94 percent of children from America’s richest families go to college. (You guessed around " + e.round(t[20]) + " percent.)"
}, {
key: "overEstimateRich",
sentence: "You overestimated the chances of college enrollment for the very richest children. In reality, about 94 percent of children from America’s richest families go to college. (You guessed around " + e.round(t[20]) + " percent.)"
}, {
key: "justRightOnRich",
sentence: "You correctly guessed the exceptionally high rates of college enrollment for children from the very richest families – about 94 percent."
}, {
key: "veryStraight",
sentence: "Your line was very straight, which means you correctly guessed one of the more striking findings of this research: The relationship between college enrollment and parental-income rank is linear."
}, {
key: "kindOfStraight",
sentence: "Your line was relatively straight, reflecting one of the more striking findings of this research: The relationship between college enrollment and parental-income rank is linear."
}, {
key: "lineButNotSteepAddition",
sentence: "Your line was not steep enough: There’s more inequality than you guessed."
}, {
key: "lineButTooSteepAddition",
sentence: "Your line was too steep: There’s more equality than you guessed."
}, {
key: "perfectAddition",
sentence: "Your guess was extremely accurate. Is that you, Raj Chetty?"
}, {
key: "youAreWeird",
sentence: "We’re going to be honest here: Your line was pretty odd. Did you even try?"
}, {
key: "youAreCanada",
sentence: "Your line, which was relatively horizontal, was admirable: It suggests that everyone has the same chance of going to college regardless of parental income. But not even Canada is that egalitarian."
}, {
key: "trustFundDip",
sentence: "You guessed that there would be a small decrease in college attendance for the richest families – something we’ve called the trust-fund dip. It makes some intuitive sense – if you’re born into an extremely wealthy family, it’s reasonable to think that there’s less incentive to attend college. But the trust-fund dip does not exist."
}, {
key: "youIgnoredOurNote",
sentence: "It looks as if you didn’t use the free point we gave you, which may be one of the reasons you performed worse than other people."
}, {
key: "downwardSlope",
sentence: "Your line sloped downward. Did you believe that rich children were less likely to go to college than poor children? Or did you misunderstand the axis?"Re: You Draw It: How Family Income Affects College Chances
#25A lot of great comments here on the content and presentation. I'm really interested, also, in the technical aspects of how this was put together. For instance, the app was able to recognize the shape of the line I drew. On my first attempt, it correctly identified that my line was an S shape; then when I started fiddling around, it was able to identify that my line was (roughly) straight. I wonder what method they us…
Re: You Draw It: How Family Income Affects College Chances
#26If your family makes just above $150K per year in the US (not uncommon, especially in high cost of living areas like NYC, SF, DC, etc), you fall in the category where you have no "need" and according to some outdated government formula can afford the whole tuition, usually 20-60K per year. The reality, however, is that 150K is the minimum living wage for a family with two kids in a place like SF, and usually not enou…
The only government subsidies that are worth anything are Pell grants and they phase out well below 150k. Also, they are limited to like 6k a year, way less than your 150k family can kick in. The elite private schools have a similar formula that sort of screws over these people. But you have no right to an elite education. Just go to Berkeley instead of Stanford or UVA instead of Duke.
Re: You Draw It: How Family Income Affects College Chances
#27If your family makes just above $150K per year in the US (not uncommon, especially in high cost of living areas like NYC, SF, DC, etc), you fall in the category where you have no "need" and according to some outdated government formula can afford the whole tuition, usually 20-60K per year. The reality, however, is that 150K is the minimum living wage for a family with two kids in a place like SF, and usually not enou…
Re: You Draw It: How Family Income Affects College Chances
#28If your family makes just above $150K per year in the US (not uncommon, especially in high cost of living areas like NYC, SF, DC, etc), you fall in the category where you have no "need" and according to some outdated government formula can afford the whole tuition, usually 20-60K per year. The reality, however, is that 150K is the minimum living wage for a family with two kids in a place like SF, and usually not enou…
If you choose to sacrifice your childrens' college education so you can live in SF, that's your prerogative. Most families don't even have this choice. Complaining that you're minimum living wage at these amounts is hugely insulting to the vast majority of the population.
Re: You Draw It: How Family Income Affects College Chances
#29As somebody who's spent some time studying the impact of various levers (income, educational achievement, maternal education etc) on university/college enrolment I'd like to throw in an economist's perspective that the NY Times did not include in the chart. You may draw the conclusion from the chart that income prevents the poorest from attending university because they can't afford the fees. This is highly misleadin…
> The key to raising university enrolment among poor students is to provide better education/development opportunities and aspiration. I'm going to risk calling you out on this, because I think what goes unstated here is that public resources cannot compete with private ones when it comes to education. It's sad to look at Johnny Trust Fund, and see that he is born with a true educational leg up over poor children, an…
"Even increasing per-pupil spending in public schools to that of the Phillip's Academies is arguably impossible in all but a handful of the top GDP/capita nations, let alone all the private tutoring and traveling and internships that Johnny has access to."
It is reasonable to expect that we can educate kids at a standard where income doesn't affect outcomes for most folks.
Re: You Draw It: How Family Income Affects College Chances
#30I can't be the only one who is tired of seeing all of these snippets about small parts of a large system.
We need to deal with wealth inequality. We live in a world... hell, we live in countries, in cities with 10 orders of magnitude wealth difference.
A western person earns 10e6 - 10e7 over a lifetime, revenue.
A western person stashes away 10e0 - 10e7 over a lifetime, balance sheet.
Why? It is predominantly not about decision making and choices to save. Yes, people do make suboptimal decisions. But mostly, people are simply unable to save because the baseline of living sucks up all of their work.
In the UK a poor person rents instead of owning because we allow the group of capitalists to own all housing and restrict new building.
Until we deal with that we are just pissing around.