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People from elite backgrounds increasingly dominate academia, data shows

washingtonpost.com

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Re: People from elite backgrounds increasingly dominate academia, data shows

#191

Post by lapcat »

The article totally fails to mention the elephant in the room: graduate school costs!

Moreover, the public debate over student loan forgiveness typically fails to mention that graduate students owe 50% of all student loan debt, despite being only 25% of all student loan debtors.

Getting a PhD often takes many years, and the PhD completion rate for incoming graduate students is very low. Even after you get a PhD, it can be difficult to get a tenure track job. For those who get on the tenure track, you'll probably be fine financially, but for everyone else... going graduate school can ruin your life. You may waste the best years of your life while accumulating a debt you can never pay off, without even an official graduation certificate to show for it.

College, including graduate school, is so much more expensive now than it was decades ago. And people forget that the post-WWII generation could use the GI Bill to pay for both undergraduate and graduate school.

Re: People from elite backgrounds increasingly dominate academia, data shows

#192

Post by lotsofpulp »

slt2021 wrote: post #80
sudosysgen wrote: post #61

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Do you know of some place where there are still nerds into neat tech problems?

Less popular but still hardcore places like Carnegie Mellon, Caltech, some state schools like Ohio State, UMich come to mind. Just stay away from woke ivy league

FYi, MIT is not Ivy League.

Re: People from elite backgrounds increasingly dominate academia, data shows

#193

Post by RickJWagner »

lapcat wrote: post #191

The article totally fails to mention the elephant in the room: graduate school costs! Moreover, the public debate over student loan forgiveness typically fails to mention that graduate students owe 50% of all student loan debt, despite being only 25% of all student loan debtors. Getting a PhD often takes many years, and the PhD completion rate for incoming graduate students is very low. Even after you get a PhD, it c…

That's one of the reasons I oppose taxpayer-funded debt dismissal.

It's just not right to ask low-income taxpayers (including those who didn't go to college) to pay off the debts of those who did go-- and have a higher earnings potential.

It's also a great dis-service to those who have paid into Social Security for decades and now face a looming shortfall. Those people actually paid in and are going to have to deal with a benefit reduction, while the student borrowers took out and may potentially have their debts funded by the same taxpayers!

Re: People from elite backgrounds increasingly dominate academia, data shows

#194

Post by moralestapia »

sudosysgen wrote: post #61
frognumber wrote: post #55

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I've been affiliated with MIT in one way or another for more than a quarter-century. What's been astounding is the change in faculty. Historically, MIT faculty were nerds into neat tech problems. New MIT faculty are slick politicians with an increasing sleazy Enron-style vibe. That's true of MIT leadership as well.

Do you know of some place where there are still nerds into neat tech problems?

Caltech's still the real deal.

Re: People from elite backgrounds increasingly dominate academia, data shows

#195

Post by RickJWagner »

carlob wrote: post #138
oofnik wrote: post #102

Why is this at all surprising? In any status-conscious society (read: any human society), given enough time, the people who make it to the top will invariably maximize opportunity afforded to their affinity group (i.e. offspring) at the expense of everyone else. This process manifests itself regardless of the role merit plays in the sorting algorithm. If the rules are relatively meritocratic (and relatively stable),…

A small caveat: nepotism was the practice when cardinals (who were celibate) would push their nephews into positions of power. So, strictly speaking, it is the other way around: celibacy caused nepotism, otherwise we would have had filism (from filius/son rather than from nepos/nephew).

Nepotism today is probably most notable in politicians and Hollywood. (Hollywood is especially fascinating. Royalty runs rampant there.)

Re: People from elite backgrounds increasingly dominate academia, data shows

#196

Post by lotsofpulp »

forum_ghost wrote: post #66
mudrockbestgirl wrote: post #16

From my own experience in academia I was surprised by how many of my peers went into academia because they were expected to do so by their parents, who were also academics. It's a smallish sample, but ~90% of the people I talked to never considered other careers paths. Their parents were academics, so it's just natural that they become one too. They already knew this ever since high school. As someone who got into ac…

not at all uncommon with other highly specialized professions either. MD's kids are 24x more likely to become MDs as well.

I wonder if that will maintain going forward. All the doctors I am business partners/friends with advise their kids to go into commercial real estate/tech/law/finance/engineering.

They say declining pay and difficulties negotiating with bigger players such as governments and larger and larger healthcare employers in combination with the bad quality of life at work no longer make the costs of becoming a doctor worth it.

Re: People from elite backgrounds increasingly dominate academia, data shows

#197

Post by charlescearl »

Elite Capture https://www.haymarketbooks.org/books/1867-elite-capture is a short book but gives some good ways of thinking about these and other processes as a systems problem.

Also addresses how “elite” can span multiple dimensions: belonging to a socially dominant class, caste, having higher levels of education, being an “influencer” etc.

Re: People from elite backgrounds increasingly dominate academia, data shows

#198

Post by [deleted] »

robocat wrote: post #148
chrchang523 wrote: post #131

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The math is trickier than that: - If 4% of parents have degrees, something like 7% of the next generation has at least one parent with a degree. Because children have two parents, and only one of those two parents needs to have a degree. So the correct number to compare 20% against is ~7%, not 4%. - Suppose a child of a degree-holder is 3 times as likely to become an economics PhD as a child of no degree-holders. The…

> If 4% of parents have degrees, something like 7% of the next generation has at least one parent with a degree. Are you presuming marriage and degree-holding are independent variables? Although I presume there are fewer female degree holders, so perhaps it makes little difference.

[deleted]

Re: People from elite backgrounds increasingly dominate academia, data shows

#199

Post by UncleMeat »

ethav0 wrote: post #29
anon291 wrote: post #25

Earlier quoted context omitted.

STEM PhDs in industry are not really in 'academia', as their research is typically not arbitrary.

Can you elaborate slightly? I don't want to misinterpret you.

"Academics" usually means "university faculty or people working in research labs." These people tend to make low wages compared to typical industry positions. PhDs also don't tend to open too many doors in industry. At the major tech companies, they are roughly equivalent to 3-6 years of industry experience. They might make a resume more attractive, but you end up going through the same hiring process and largely working on the same stuff.

Re: People from elite backgrounds increasingly dominate academia, data shows

#200

Post by MontyCarloHall »

lapcat wrote: post #191

The article totally fails to mention the elephant in the room: graduate school costs! Moreover, the public debate over student loan forgiveness typically fails to mention that graduate students owe 50% of all student loan debt, despite being only 25% of all student loan debtors. Getting a PhD often takes many years, and the PhD completion rate for incoming graduate students is very low. Even after you get a PhD, it c…

Most graduate school debt is due to master’s degrees and professional degrees (e.g. JDs, MDs, MBAs). The vast majority of PhD programs are fully funded, fully covering tuition and providing a (modest) stipend.
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