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How college became a ruthless competition divorced from learning

theatlantic.com

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Re: How college became a ruthless competition divorced from learning

#181

Post by MagnumOpus »

ollifi wrote: post #116
HenryKissinger wrote: post #14

In some countries, like France and the United kingdom, the educational pyramid is even more skewed. In the United kingdom, graduates of Oxford University and Cambridge University are in a class of their own. Oxbridge alumni are overrepresented in politics, business, and the media. In France, the same phenomenon is at work with the École Polytechnique, the Écoles Normales Supérieures, and a few others. This creates sh…

> Countries with more equal societies, like the Nordics, and Canada, do not have strong populist movements like those in the US and the UK. Maybe besides the point, but nordic countries do have significant populist movements. In Finland (which I know best) populist Finns Party[1] is the largest party according to polls at the moment. We had our trump/brexit moment in 2011 when they took landslide victory against what…

"Landslide" meaning 19%, and not able to form a government. A far cry for the 40%+ for hard-right Brexiteers or 48% for Trump.

Re: How college became a ruthless competition divorced from learning

#182

Post by MagnumOpus »

Smithalicious wrote: post #138
hardwaregeek wrote: post #112

Earlier quoted context omitted.

A few things have changed. College is no longer a tool of social mobility. It is table stakes to keep your current status. If you do not go to college, you are unlikely to stay within the middle class. People may cite plumbers but they don't make a fortune and the physical toll is quite serious. Second, funding has been cut for public universities significantly. A lot of public universities charge tuition that is far…

....... Does being a good golfer really matter for this in the US? I don't like pulling the "haha Americans weird" card but I'm glad my education does not depend on my golf game here in Europe.

Being a top golfer/fencer/rower/tennis player does not just serve as a signal of dedication and grit (otherwise being in the piano guild or running a 3hr marathon or being lead guitarist in a band would help just as much), but also as a proxy of parents being in the 0.1% of wealth - both because these are upper class pursuits and because they are generally expensive to train and find elite private lessons for.

And because of the culture of university endowments/donations, US elite universities massively chase the 0.1% unlike in other parts of the world.

Re: How college became a ruthless competition divorced from learning

#183

Post by fridif »

throwawayboise wrote: post #74
fridif wrote: post #71

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Admission is harder than graduation for sure. I only had an 80th percentile SAT but 99th percentile GPA

So getting in to Stanford is harder than graduating with a STEM degree? Doens't say much about the vaunted reputation of that school. I went to a midwest state university. Getting in was easy. Completing my CS degree took a lot of work. I cannot imagine any way I could have bullshitted my way through that.

Google the concept of the gentleman's B. if you show up, most teachers will take pity and not fail you even if you are subpar on your tests.

i dont know what trauma you went through at iowa state university's calc 3 hazing but I personally pulled the patrician move and graduated with a degree in history, only to get a job programming straight away anyway.

leetcode, system design, and book knowledge questions about java will forever be more manageable than a compilers class or multivariable calculus, for purposes of making enough money to live a middle class life without burning out

Re: How college became a ruthless competition divorced from learning

#184

Post by qzw »

kiba wrote: post #51
qzw wrote: post #36

Earlier quoted context omitted.

China also has an education system that’s supposed to be based on exam results, yet funny how the scions of high-level officials and billionaires usually end up at the most elite schools. Of course, it’s possible that they all got there on pure merit...

Pure merit means stratification based on unequal access to resources, genes, or upbringing. It isn't surprising that the elite makes it to the top. Meritocracy isn't exactly egalitarianism.

It’s usually just nepotism. I know a retired principal of an elite high school, and he’s full of stories of the shenanigans surrounding admissions. He would get calls from governors and mayors offering favors and applying pressure. He told me that half the buildings on the school campus were built as a result of accepting the children of high officials and rich businesspeople. In fact he once showed me a picture of the ornate gate of the school and said, “I call it the chicken gate, because it was the admission ticket of a kid whose family owned a chain of famous chicken restaurants.”

Re: How college became a ruthless competition divorced from learning

#185

Post by ollifi »

MagnumOpus wrote: post #181
ollifi wrote: post #116

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Countries with more equal societies, like the Nordics, and Canada, do not have strong populist movements like those in the US and the UK. Maybe besides the point, but nordic countries do have significant populist movements. In Finland (which I know best) populist Finns Party[1] is the largest party according to polls at the moment. We had our trump/brexit moment in 2011 when they took landslide victory against what…

"Landslide" meaning 19%, and not able to form a government. A far cry for the 40%+ for hard-right Brexiteers or 48% for Trump.

True. Landslide is a wrong word here. I meant It had similar Nobody saw it coming -narrative attached to it. Also hard to compare vote result percentages between multiparty and two options votes.

Re: How college became a ruthless competition divorced from learning

#186

Post by hikingsimulator »

pmezard wrote: post #176
hikingsimulator wrote: post #137

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Wealth helps tremendously indeed. Usually, before accessing those schools, you have to study for 2 years in a preparatory program called a Classe Préparatoire. Point is, the best can be quite expensive. The most egregious thing though is that during school holidays in France, some private organisms (in Paris) offer 1 or 2-week cramming programs for €10-15k a pop where you get tutored by the very people that write the…

TL;DR: wealth helps a lot, but not in the "parents paid the diploma" direct way. More because good social status helps putting people in the right track. Hard work is still required IMHO (at least for the engineering track, I do not know about the business schools variant). Wealth definitely helps in the sense it gives you a better environment to support you during your studies. About it helping you being tutored by…

Wealth has a compounding effect.If your parents have the means to provide you tutoring lessons and a private education at top institutions from an early age, this has a stronger influence that mere talent. Talent is just not a good term to use here, it obfuscates that actual talent is rare compared to the much more common state of being "well taught and prepared," which is very much correlated to wealth and geography. Who gets to go to Top Schools in France? An majority of sons and daughters of Parisians. And I wouldn't imply top talents mostly occur in Paris.

Entry into Grandes Ecoles is usually a function of three things: knowledge, preparedness, and, indeed, talent. But that last variable has a much lesser effect that what people tend to assume.

Re: How college became a ruthless competition divorced from learning

#187

Post by the_only_law »

rejectedandsad wrote: post #44
xvector wrote: post #8

> the schools that focus their training on the quest for competitive advantage betray every plausible ideal of academic excellence. The author does not seem to understand that these are not mutually exclusive. You can receive a fantastic, genuinely excellent education that is also a competitive advantage. Indeed, they go hand in hand - I’d argue it’s harder to give an excellent education that’s somehow not advantageo…

What about the rest of us? Should we just be just be shunted to the second, third, and fourth rungs of society because we didn’t have the right extracurriculars or only got a 1450 instead of a 1550? 99% of Americans have never attended and likely could not gain admittance to the top 20 schools, to paraphrase William Jennings Bryan the rest of us should not be crucified on a cross of Ivy.

So funny thing. I was doing some research into the “non traditional” programs at the top schools.

A handful have programs for people who have been outside of academic for some years, and allows them to earn the same undergrad degree.

However the same gpa and test score requirements are all in place and you’re still being judged by who you were at 17/18. I suppose the main difference is instead of looking at involvement in things like sports, student organizations, volunteering, etc. it’s looking at work experience or membership in professional organizations.

But at that point why not just have the apply as a normal undergrad?

Re: How college became a ruthless competition divorced from learning

#188

Post by the_only_law »

hardwaregeek wrote: post #112
1vuio0pswjnm7 wrote: post #106

Maybe someone on HN can answer this for me. Why are these articles about the American system written as if they are new developments. Nothing in this article sounds any different from how things were 50 years ago, and probably earlier. I am guessing that 1. more kids are going to college today than 50 years ago (that should be a good thing) and competing for spots at top schools (thus more competition) and 2. the Ame…

A few things have changed. College is no longer a tool of social mobility. It is table stakes to keep your current status. If you do not go to college, you are unlikely to stay within the middle class. People may cite plumbers but they don't make a fortune and the physical toll is quite serious. Second, funding has been cut for public universities significantly. A lot of public universities charge tuition that is far…

> People may cite plumbers but they don't make a fortune and the physical toll is quite serious

The “trades” argument has always felt rather disingenuous to me. Sure you can maybe make money in many trades in a state with a strong union culture or if you own your own business (at which point I argue that the “business” aspect is bigger than the “trade”) one, but in most places I’ve lived, you’re making low 5 figures, maybe upper 5 figures if you have decades of work experience.

Re: How college became a ruthless competition divorced from learning

#189

Post by the_only_law »

Anatole_maarika wrote: post #4

Something that keeps me up at night is my fear that I only studied computer science and became a programmer because of economic and status reasons. I do feel incredibly lucky to have the job and freedom I do, but it drains me. And now I feel it's such a specialized education and I didn't explore enough to know anything else, and so I have no idea if I would have liked something completely different.

I’m in the process of trying going back right now (for a non-CS STEM field). It’s going to be contrived and expensive as the education system really doesn’t seem to care for non traditional students (and much to my dismay is not as hackable as I had hoped).

Yes, I will come out in debt, yes I could make more money doing what I do now in the time it would take now, but I don’t particularly care.

Re: How college became a ruthless competition divorced from learning

#190

Post by imtringued »

SadCanadian wrote: post #152
usaar333 wrote: post #96

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> People try to claim that it really doesn't matter where you go to college. That's not true. There's probably edge cases, like for some startup founders or supreme court justices, but for the more "advantaged" than average children, it largely doesn't seem to matter in aggregate ( https://www.researchgate.net/publication/228303493_Estimatin... )

The economic pie is shrinking. Elites are spending more and more of their money sending their kids to the best prep schools and resume padding to ensure they don't slip through the growing cracks in the developed world (i.e. inequality that is well accepted at this point). See the college admissions scandal. That was the canary in the coalmine for intra-elite competition. They spent hundreds of thousands to low digit…

The economic pie isn't shrinking, it's not being allowed to grow.

Companies produce more things when the price goes up. This works amazingly well for consumer goods.

However, companies have been banned from doing so in the housing market. What follows is a shortage, the driver of all inflations. However, this only reflects rents, not necessarily the prices of homes because they are primarily driven by the availability of cheap credit whose monthly payments may stay the same despite a more expensive house.

From what I can tell rent inflation itself went up by 3%+ every year since 2000. One problem with rents is that the only way they can employ people is via construction and since that isn't happening it will not translate into increased wages, which will cause wages to lag behind as most people are employed in an industry whose maximum wage increases are effectively bounded by CPI+productivity growth, not rent inflation+productivity growth, rents outpacing wages is only natural.

Education is one way to increase productivity growth, but another way would be to simply reduce the productivity growth needed to have a normal life, by building more housing.

rent inflation - CPI = education shortfall

or

rent inflation - CPI = construction shortfall

it's a choice and a lot of people are picking 1. because it's other people that have to get educated to pay for the shortfall, not the ones owning the land.

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