Harvard exists for strategic reasons. It helps maintain the establishment (that ambiguously defined collection of people and processes that keep the US running and a major world power). Getting rid of it would likely have a very negative effect in the medium-term.
Maybe the problem is that Harvard exists
201–210 of 386 posts
Re: Maybe the problem is that Harvard exists
#202Earlier quoted context omitted.
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…
> 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.
That's the huge take-away, and why startups and other small to medium sized businesses are so critical for class mobility.
Re: Maybe the problem is that Harvard exists
#203I agree that there are many aspects of how elite universities work that are not what's best for society. I don't think this is the best thinkpiece on it though. One small thing that jumped out at me is the bit about "we don't have to sort kids at 18, because most colleges teach the same stuff". To support this point, the author compared Harvard Math 1a to SIUE Math 150. This is a bad comparison, because these are int…
> Having taken math courses for math majors at both an Ivy school and a decent non-Ivy, it is my experience that while they teach roughly the same subjects, they do not teach the same things within those subjects, nor at the same pace, nor to the same level of rigor. Nor are the students in those classes equally good at math. So, while sorting those students can and does contribute to injustice (especially with the actual way it's done!), it's also not a completely pointless just for the sake of giving gold stars.
OK, and? How does this change anything? You have to be a PhD to be a mathematician anyway.
I've become negatively polarized against this rigor fetishization, which serves exclusively to otherize normal folks in increasingly esoteric ways
Re: Maybe the problem is that Harvard exists
#204Earlier 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…
The “Harvard exists to make society less meritocratic” idea is repeated a couple of times, and the article doesn’t seem to make any argument at all that it’s correct. An alternative hypothesis, entirely consistent with the author’s arguments, is that Harvard exists to educate its students (and to do research and have fancy sports and pretty buildings and cultural events, etc), that it’s quite good at this but not nec…
> Harvard ... gating function developed over time and is unfortunate.
You're not quite arguing that it doesn't do that gating function.
"The purpose of a system is what it does"
Re: Maybe the problem is that Harvard exists
#205Earlier quoted context omitted.
> 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…
> People shit on it constantly and call it the backdoor, not-so-honest way to get associated with Harvard. This sounds like it's not actually going to Harvard, and you'd only get the slimy Harvard benefits by pretending you did a different program at harvard
I appreciate your statement in support of my argument :)
Re: Maybe the problem is that Harvard exists
#206[deleted]
Re: Maybe the problem is that Harvard exists
#207Earlier quoted context omitted.
> 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.
25% of the current Ivy+ SCOTUS judges did not go to an Ivy+ for undergrad? With additional reforms of the graduate programs would you expect that future numbers would increase or decrease? EDIT - for some reason it will not allow me to reply to your reply... There are 8 current judges from Ivy+ law schools and 6 of them went to Ivy+ undergrad programs. That's how I got to 25%. I guess I question why increasing the nu…
I would expect changing the size of the court to have more impact.
And BTW, 3 of 9 is 33%.
Re: Maybe the problem is that Harvard exists
#208This 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…
> Having managed over 100+ people, I can say that on average the people from better institutions are better employees - even though I have managed amazing people without college degrees and bad people with amazing degrees. The top schools can be pretty darn great, Harvard being just one of them. What do you recommend those of us who didn't get into any top schools do then? If clearly we're destined to be inferior for…
I don't think so, but life will be harder. Life is harder if you are born poor. I graduated from an unknown university (in the US) overseas, so I started in lower places and climbed my way up through hard work, study, luck and skill development (which include social skills). You are not destined to be inferior, but if the cards are not stacked in your favor, you will just have to make up for it somehow.
Re: Maybe the problem is that Harvard exists
#209Working at NYT isn't as gated as the article suggests. I know two people who work there. AFAIK, neither went to an Ivy. (Old joke: How do you know if someone went to an Ivy? They tell you.) You do need a college degree, but you can work at a smaller paper first and get recruited from there.
Re: Maybe the problem is that Harvard exists
#210Earlier quoted context omitted.
> "lets all be poor" As the parent of two exceptionally-achieving children who were rejected from the "elite" colleges - I've become a lot more sympathetic to the mindset behind this line of thinking. My kids literally couldn't have done more or tried harder - since kindergarten - than they did. They both graduated valedictorian with perfect GPAs, scored in the top 99% of the SAT, did sports, did clubs, volunteered,…
Why would Ivy schools pass your children over?
Because higher education is objectively not a meritocracy. The mere existence of legacy admissions proves this.
Of course those with degrees from Ivys and other selective schools don't want to acknowledge this - it devalues their degree. Same for those who aspire to attend these schools - whether they have an 'unfair' advantage or not.