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Maybe the problem is that Harvard exists

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Re: Maybe the problem is that Harvard exists

#171

Post by [deleted] »

beebmam wrote: post #55
glimshe wrote: post #39

This is a typical "let's be all equally poor/bad" argument. Harvard is simply a private institution with excellent reputation and not a single person is required to go there or hire someone from there. Why do Harvard people "drive 20% above the speed limit"? Because selecting good people in a sea of resumes is HARD. Degrees aren't amazing proxies for productivity, but they are decent proxies. I've seen dozens of theo…

I totally agree that Harvard has (and should have) a right to do whatever they want with their institution and admit whoever they see fit. But if we're serious about a liberal/conservative "equality of opportunity" vs a progressive/socialist "equality of outcome" reality, then we should consider that children have very little consent over the kind of education and familial upbringing they get, yet that childhood educ…

[deleted]

Re: Maybe the problem is that Harvard exists

#172

Post by samvher »

blitzar wrote: post #142
samvher wrote: post #93

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm from a non US country, so the concept of a Harvard is foreign to me as well. And yes, I've also worked for selective employers where maths degrees mattered a lot. It never bothered me. Not sure what you're trying to say. Hiring people based on individual merit and skills is not the same thing as hiring people based on an exclusive network. The Harvard employer favored Harvard folks over others who otherwise had t…

I doubt anyone anywhere ever has been the "best" hire - even / especially the greatest hires of all time, there was someone who had the same (or better) skills. There are ~8 billion others, rounded to the nearest meaningful number ~8 billion people never saw the job ad or applied for it or were eligable because of the exclusive network of "countries". Unless there is an epidemic of Harvard Art Majors being made Head…

I don't like the exclusive network of countries either... I guess we have different perceptions of what's fair/acceptable.

Re: Maybe the problem is that Harvard exists

#173

Post by api »

gonehome wrote: post #141
lapcat wrote: post #64

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> This is a typical "let's be all equally poor/bad" argument. I think you missed the point of the article, which was "Harvard exists to make society less meritocratic, and it does that while subsidized by everyone else." > Because selecting good people in a sea of resumes is HARD. Degrees aren't amazing proxies for productivity, but they are decent proxies. The author discusses this: "The hardest part of Harvard is g…

> “On a personal note, I was accepted to an Ivy League school (though not Harvard) as a high school senior, but my family couldn't afford to send me there, so I had to go to a state school instead. My classmate and friend was accepted to MIT but also had to go to a state school because of money.” This does fit my hypothesis that the outliers at state schools are likely undervalued in the market by recruiters. The ave…

Recruiters and HR people are usually not subject matter experts, so they don't have the expertise to select great people from among outlier groups or from the larger population. They end up relying on indicators like top schools or top prior employers.

I've hired outstanding people for dev roles with all kinds of backgrounds including self-taught, low-mid tier state schools, unfinished college, etc., but that's because I am a developer and I can tell who knows things and who doesn't. I couldn't do the same for, say, a mechanical engineering position since I am not an expert in that field.

Re: Maybe the problem is that Harvard exists

#174

Post by JKCalhoun »

neilv wrote: post #125
glimshe wrote: post #39

This is a typical "let's be all equally poor/bad" argument. Harvard is simply a private institution with excellent reputation and not a single person is required to go there or hire someone from there. Why do Harvard people "drive 20% above the speed limit"? Because selecting good people in a sea of resumes is HARD. Degrees aren't amazing proxies for productivity, but they are decent proxies. I've seen dozens of theo…

> Not very different than an Apple product being generally better than a product from some random vendor from Amazon with names like "GREAT TECH" or "SUPER QUALITY PRO". I think "SUPER QUALITY PRO" almost certainly isn't as good of quality as Apple. So I disagree with the analogy, when we're talking about people who went to big-name schools vs. everyone else.

Also think the analogy should have used more realistic company names like "HYTGH" and "WYSHI".

Re: Maybe the problem is that Harvard exists

#175

Post by CrazyStat »

gonehome wrote: post #141
lapcat wrote: post #64

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> This is a typical "let's be all equally poor/bad" argument. I think you missed the point of the article, which was "Harvard exists to make society less meritocratic, and it does that while subsidized by everyone else." > Because selecting good people in a sea of resumes is HARD. Degrees aren't amazing proxies for productivity, but they are decent proxies. The author discusses this: "The hardest part of Harvard is g…

> “On a personal note, I was accepted to an Ivy League school (though not Harvard) as a high school senior, but my family couldn't afford to send me there, so I had to go to a state school instead. My classmate and friend was accepted to MIT but also had to go to a state school because of money.” This does fit my hypothesis that the outliers at state schools are likely undervalued in the market by recruiters. The ave…

> The averages at selective schools are a lot higher

This is what I expected when I went from undergrad at a solid but not elite shool (top 100, ~50% admission rate) to grad school (top 10, single digit admission rate).

It's not what I experienced. The undergrad students I taught and TA for at the elite school were no better, on average, than my peers at my undergrad school. They were more ambitious and entitled. They were not smarter or harder working or more engaged or motivated.

Re: Maybe the problem is that Harvard exists

#176

Post by PaulDavisThe1st »

Kon-Peki wrote: post #159
PaulDavisThe1st wrote: post #56

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> It's pretty likely Harvard has had an impact on your life in a lot of ways because a lot of people who govern you went there. And, in addition, because at least presently, anyone who didn't do Ivy+ is essentially never going to be a SCOTUS judge. The obvious objection is that given there are only 9 justices at a time, essentially nobody is ever going to be a SCOTUS judge anyway. But that misses the important gating…

> And, in addition, because at least presently, anyone who didn't do Ivy+ is essentially never going to be a SCOTUS judge. For your example, you need to do a post-graduate degree (law) from the Ivy+. This article is talking about the gating functions of the undergraduate admissions departments. The graduate school admissions officers are far more likely to consider strong candidates from "normal" universities than th…

> For your example, you need to do a post-graduate degree (law) from the Ivy+. This article is talking about the gating functions of the undergraduate admissions departments.

6 of the 9 nine current justices did undergrad at Harvard, Yale or Princeton.

Re: Maybe the problem is that Harvard exists

#177

Post by gonehome »

api wrote: post #173
gonehome wrote: post #141

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> “On a personal note, I was accepted to an Ivy League school (though not Harvard) as a high school senior, but my family couldn't afford to send me there, so I had to go to a state school instead. My classmate and friend was accepted to MIT but also had to go to a state school because of money.” This does fit my hypothesis that the outliers at state schools are likely undervalued in the market by recruiters. The ave…

Recruiters and HR people are usually not subject matter experts, so they don't have the expertise to select great people from among outlier groups or from the larger population. They end up relying on indicators like top schools or top prior employers. I've hired outstanding people for dev roles with all kinds of backgrounds including self-taught, low-mid tier state schools, unfinished college, etc., but that's becau…

Yeah, this is one reason why I think the outliers at state schools are undervalued. These heuristics are indirect and lead to inefficient selection, competition over the same scarce resources.

If you’re a startup there’s a strategic advantage in trying to look for talent where others aren’t and leveraging your own subject matter expertise to do so.

In moneyball the scouts selected on stupid stuff rather than on base percentage - if you know what to actually look for you can find stuff mispriced.

Re: Maybe the problem is that Harvard exists

#178

Post by pc86 »

JohnBooty wrote: post #148
endisneigh wrote: post #109

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Why does it matter if your kids go to "elite" colleges or not? They're probably going to be successful in their own way anyway with those stats. shouldn't your concern be the objective success they achieve, not their attendance of an "elite" institution? I know people who want to say University of Virginia who have had better outcomes than some folks I know who went to Harvard College - just to cherry pick a single s…

Follow the discussion. It probably shouldn't matter, but it does. Very much so.

Maybe it does help if your goal is to attend a top 3 medical or law school, and then go on to equally impressive practices after, or if you want to go into very very high level investment banking or something. It's shouldn't be a terribly controversial statement to say that if you want to be one of the top in the world in a given field you probably need to go to one of the top universities. Even then you'll find plenty of people from University of Whatever in those classes.

I worked with a guy who had a Bachelor's from Harvard and was a mid-level HR manager in a boring suburban part of a boring state for a company nobody has ever heard of. Not everyone from Harvard is killing it.

Re: Maybe the problem is that Harvard exists

#179

Post by cosmojg »

ryandrake wrote: post #67
fnordpiglet wrote: post #8

I find the Harvard angst interesting. I’ve never once felt someone else going to Harvard impacted my life in any way whatsoever. I’ve advanced further than everyone I know that went to Harvard in my career and not once did someone wink at the Harvard guy and pass me over. I’m sure it happens, and I’m sure there are secret clubs I don’t get invited to (well the Harvard club is pretty nice and I was invited there by a…

The existence of billionaires and millionaires negatively affects everyone else's standard of living via gentrification. Imagine you live in a community of 1000 middle class people, all making, say, $30K/yr to $60K/yr. You make $45K/year so you're about average. You can all afford homes, goods, and so on. Suddenly, 10 millionaires move in. Housing prices start to rise a little bit, grocery stores get a little more up…

This sounds more like a problem with real estate than with people. The old Georgist schtick of a ~80% land value tax coupled with a citizen's dividend (i.e., UBI for those affected by improvements upon said land) would nip this problem in the bud, eliminating the rent-seeking that causes gentrification.

Keeping with your analogy, we might similarly eliminate rent-seeking on prestige by banning legacy admissions and making applications more quantitative (i.e., test-based) and less subjective.

Re: Maybe the problem is that Harvard exists

#180

Post by PaulDavisThe1st »

fnordpiglet wrote: post #165
PaulDavisThe1st wrote: post #56

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> It's pretty likely Harvard has had an impact on your life in a lot of ways because a lot of people who govern you went there. And, in addition, because at least presently, anyone who didn't do Ivy+ is essentially never going to be a SCOTUS judge. The obvious objection is that given there are only 9 justices at a time, essentially nobody is ever going to be a SCOTUS judge anyway. But that misses the important gating…

So, according to Wikipedia, 18 justices graduated Harvard, 9 Yale, and 39 some other law school. Yes, it helps to go to Harvard or Yale. But most justices didn’t.

That's a good long term historical view, and provides some hope.

However, the current court composition is what we face today, and there are members who will likely be on the court for 30 years or more.

While the historical picture is more encouraging, it doesn't negate the significance of the current makeup.

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