I think American students should study, work and live in Chindia for at-least 2 years
The Disadvantages of an Elite Education (2008)
31–39 of 39 posts
Re: The Disadvantages of an Elite Education (2008)
#32A childhood friend who had gone to Harvard invited me to hang out with some Harvard grads in SF two weeks ago. It was strange--as an outsider--to listen to their college stories; they would talk about how they'd drive down to Yale and scream "Harvard, Harvard!" and it was then, I realized, how little I had in common with these grads. I tried to talk to one of the Harvard grads, and asked him what he was doing. Appare…
Fellow Sun Devil and Computer Systems Engineering grad here. CSE was a great program, got me some great GRE scores, an NSF research fellowship, and a great basis for a career. I hope it's done the same for you.
Drop me a line if you'd like, my HN user name with an 'f' inserted after the first character, through Google's email service.
Re: The Disadvantages of an Elite Education (2008)
#331. Isn't this a repost?
2. Maybe the plumber didn't feel like chatting while he worked.
Re: The Disadvantages of an Elite Education (2008)
#34In addition to talking about the good and bad of elite educations, Deresiewicz's piece also strongly praises the traditional liberal arts degree. He seems to think it far more valuable than more practical degrees. But, I'm not convinced.
First, shying away from practical studies reminds me of exactly the fallacy that drove me to leave philosophy after I finished in undergrad. My experience was very similar to what pg writes about in http://paulgraham.com/philosophy.html. Asking the 'big questions' devolved into quibbling over split hairs and avoiding useful, testable hypotheses that could really make the world a better place (not that 'big questions' are bad, but we should try solving them in useful ways, not randomly)
Also, the author seems to think that a glorified form of vocational training is a bad thing. But, could it be possible to create an educational system where vocational training creates the thinking man Deresiewicz wants? That is, could an interest in say, programming, motivate studying history by examining the development of mathematics and computing machines over time? Could it lead to a study of economics through questions about the Pareto Principle or the right way to offer our programs to the public (free, product, service, and so on)? Could it lead to philosophy and psychology by asking if man is potentially programmable and why certain types of programs can't be written with our current model of computation?
In short, could vocational training take a singular interest and use it to create the sort of individuals Deresiewicz decries elite schools for failing to produce?
Re: The Disadvantages of an Elite Education (2008)
#35Earlier quoted context omitted.
The author doesn't mean Elite in the sense of "good" or "high quality". The Elite he's referring to is the Upper Class. The culture at the top Ivies is nothing like that at any of the schools that you listed. State and tech schools have a lot more class diversity, and while Stanford isn't state or tech, it seems to value diversity more than the Ivies. . . . so the author isn't saying you get a better education (almos…
You're absolutely right that elite = ivy when you're talking about social class, which clearly is what is going on here. What I'm trying to do is put in a claim on the word. Ever read Henry James's "The American"? It's a story from the late 1800s about a wealthy American in Paris who, at one point, seeks to marry a young woman from an aristocratic French family. The brother (I think) informs him that there is a probl…
The problem is that "elite" doesn't just mean "best", and never did. Look at the etymology [1]: it just means "chosen", which is exactly what it means when referring to the Ivy League.
Re: The Disadvantages of an Elite Education (2008)
#36Graduates of elite schools are not more valuable than stupid people, or talentless people, or even lazy people. That's a common enough platitude, but I'm not convinced that it's true. Or rather, it's the sort of thing we like to pretend is true for the sake of a functioning society (since nobody likes to discuss exactly who is worth more than whom) and everybody goes along with it. We'll admit extreme cases (like Bee…
I believe the "platitude" is in all senses practical in that assigning worth is only easy and fully accurate posthumously. Also, no person is so one-dimensional that they can be accurately summed up by the singular adjectives "stupid", "talentless", or "lazy" -- that's just not a realistic situation. A lot of famous people throughout history were in fact poor bums on the street, and are now held in very high regard b…
You mean like Diogenes? :)
Re: The Disadvantages of an Elite Education (2008)
#37The author mentioned Yale university. I took a look at the web traffic graph: http://www.quantcast.com/yale.edu 4 times drop in four years. Could anyone explain why it happened?
"Rough estimate"
It's likely that whatever Quantcast uses as a measure is what's changing rather than the actual traffic.
Re: The Disadvantages of an Elite Education (2008)
#38The author mentioned Yale university. I took a look at the web traffic graph: http://www.quantcast.com/yale.edu 4 times drop in four years. Could anyone explain why it happened?
I don't think Quantcast makes that big errors while measuring high-trafficked web site.
There should be another explanation. Either Yale is losing popularity, or students prefer to use other web resources while learning about Yale (e.g. Facebook).
Re: The Disadvantages of an Elite Education (2008)
#39This has popped up a few times on HN already, I wonder if there is an upper bound to when you're allowed to repost an old article?