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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

#191

Post by esyir »

light_hue_1 wrote: post #86
flowerlad wrote: post #43

College admissions in the US are messed up. There is no way for a student to be in control of their destiny through hard work, because there are far too many variables and randomness in college admissions. Ideally what colleges should do is to use a standardized test and go strictly by the results of the standardized test. Standardized tests are not perfect, but if there are flaws in standardized tests then fix them,…

> Ideally what colleges should do is to use a standardized test and go strictly by the results of the standardized test. Standardized tests are not perfect, but if there are flaws in standardized tests then fix them, because it is better than the alternatives Standardized tests are terrible. Predicting the outcomes of standardized tests is very simple, it's a function of your parents income. https://economix.blogs.ny…

Well standardised tests seem to do badly at that, seeing that they're deliberately tweaking cutoffs to hinder certain groups. And reducing its wishes to exclude them.

Turns out discrimination doesn't apply to Asians, as far as universities go.

Re: How college became a ruthless competition divorced from learning

#192

Post by medvezhenok »

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.

Yes, this is the case for most of the top universities (and likely med school, law school, you name it).

Universities like to keep their graduation rates high to ensure competition at the front of the pipeline. Also, by keeping admission so competitive you basically ensure that whoever does end up getting in has the capacity to do well at any program (though statistics are still gamed - for example it is almost impossible to "drop out" of MIT - you are just placed on indefinite leave if you express that desire. That way their graduation rate very high since the people on indefinite leave don't factor into it).

Re: How college became a ruthless competition divorced from learning

#193

Post by minikites »

max_ wrote: post #142
minikites wrote: post #62

>Busyness has become a badge of honor as elites boast of their workloads: A 2015 advertisement for The Wall Street Journal stated, “People who don’t have time make time to read The Wall Street Journal.” It's the hustle culture of capitalism applied to every facet of life. If you're not productive every single moment, you're falling behind and your self worth deserves to decline because of it. We've eliminated any "sl…

Maybe most of contemporary employment is slavery as people like David Greaber, Noam Chomsky & Nassim Taleb have asserted. The problem with a change that alters this however, is that you may be tampering with the bread of alot of powerful people. There alot of incentives for the powerful to keep things the way they are.

There are a lot more of us than there are of them. The problem is that many people have been tricked into believing they are on the same side as the capital class.

Re: How college became a ruthless competition divorced from learning

#194

Post by jl2718 »

Is college still a thing? I sort of thought that it would at least start to die in the permanent-pandemic era. Right now even the elites look a lot like University of Phoenix Online, and I don’t think they’re ever going back to any meaningful physical experience. It sounds a lot more like a very expensive honorarium.

Re: How college became a ruthless competition divorced from learning

#195

Post by abstractbarista »

hardwaregeek wrote: post #76
hzay wrote: post #70

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The kid who returned user's passed hash -- he could have simply learned more about better programming practices no? You make it sound like it's a crime and he's inherently flawed. But all of us did dumb mistakes in school/college in our early programming days, and then most of us learned not to do them.

Yeah that was maybe not the best example. Although I did explain it to him a couple times and he still didn't get it. He also didn't do his share of work but of course took credit for the accomplishments of the group in his college applications. What I was trying to point it is that these students used these supposedly impressive accomplishments in the college applications when really they didn't do much at all.

Working with these people in college was rather frustrating at times. I always did good work, started working on projects early and often. Because I knew programming a solution is sort of an unknown until you really dive in to it. Many students got better grades than they deserved because I was in their group. They were great people, just horrible team mates.

Re: How college became a ruthless competition divorced from learning

#196

Post by phone8675309 »

Hydraulix989 wrote: post #140
phone8675309 wrote: post #50

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If I owned a company I would refuse to hire graduates from MIT, Harvard, and Stanford. It's much more likely that you were good at lying than at studying if you went there, and I don't have time to teach the basics.

Your comment begs the question: Have you ever personally worked with graduates from any of those schools?

Yes, and I have been unimpressed at best and disappointed at worse.

Re: How college became a ruthless competition divorced from learning

#197

Post by usaar333 »

BlueTankEngine wrote: post #170
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... )

This study is based on data from the college students of the early 1990s, and previous works in the field use data from 1980's college students. I think your claim might have been true 2 decades ago, but now? I highly doubt it....

Why not?

I don't see tech say getting worse than it was a decade ago in terms of school bias. If anything it is better thanks to hacker rank, triplebyte, etc.

Re: How college became a ruthless competition divorced from learning

#198

Post by username90 »

Clewza313 wrote: post #117

> In law, for example, of the roughly 2,000 people admitted to the top-five law schools each year, no more than a smattering choose to enroll in a law school ranked outside the top 10. Am I the only one whose parser is throwing a syntax error for this sentence? "People already admitted to top-5 law schools don't choose to go non-top-10 schools instead"?

The problem here is that you can't imagine students being admitted to top schools not wanting to go to other schools. That was his whole point, top schools are seen as such a superior choice that some people can't even imagine students choosing to go to lesser schools.

Re: How college became a ruthless competition divorced from learning

#199

Post by flowerlad »

light_hue_1 wrote: post #86
flowerlad wrote: post #43

College admissions in the US are messed up. There is no way for a student to be in control of their destiny through hard work, because there are far too many variables and randomness in college admissions. Ideally what colleges should do is to use a standardized test and go strictly by the results of the standardized test. Standardized tests are not perfect, but if there are flaws in standardized tests then fix them,…

> Ideally what colleges should do is to use a standardized test and go strictly by the results of the standardized test. Standardized tests are not perfect, but if there are flaws in standardized tests then fix them, because it is better than the alternatives Standardized tests are terrible. Predicting the outcomes of standardized tests is very simple, it's a function of your parents income. https://economix.blogs.ny…

> Standardized tests are terrible. Predicting the outcomes of standardized tests is very simple, it's a function of your parents income.

Correlation is not causation. See Skirt Length Theory https://www.investopedia.com/terms/s/skirtlengththeory.asp

Re: How college became a ruthless competition divorced from learning

#200

Post by light_hue_1 »

StandardFuture wrote: post #166
light_hue_1 wrote: post #81

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Donald Trump's election in 2016 has been dissected and explained hundred different ways. But it is undeniable that his victory (despite the fact that he lost the popular vote by approximately three million) is attributable in part to popular resentment against political and business elites It's very deniable. This simply cannot be the explanation. Trump is an elite. He inherited vast amounts of money and vastly und…

You are talking about the man himself and not the policies that he was promoting. While both are reasonable things to discuss, you did not actually negate the comment you were responding to.

> the policies that he was promoting

Name a policy that helped his supporters. His policies either helped elites or hurt the other side, but did not help his base. Virtually the only thing he ever did for his own base was to give out COVID relief support.

Caging children at the border? All about hurting the other side that cares about immigrants.

Lowering corporate taxes? Help for elites, particularly for those with huge fortunes overseas. Workers saw virtually nothing from the tax cuts.

Stopping California from imposing stricter emissions standards? Help for elites.

Abortion? His side isn't having them anyway, it's all about hurting others.

Stopping student loan forgiveness? Either helping elites or hurting the other side. Maybe both.

Revoking the EPA's jurisdiction over waterways so that there is more pollution? Helping elites and hurting his side. Republican states are far more polluted than Democrat ones.

The trade war that particularly hurt farmers?

We could keep going like this. Virtually all of Trump's policies were designed to help elites, hurt the left, but not to help right.

The clearest way to put it, is the way his own supporters put it "He is hurting the wrong people." That's what Trump sells. It's a world divorced from reality where anyone who doesn't agree is an enemy.

Trump is not anti-elite. His supporters are not anti-elite. They love elites.

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