Is education no longer the ‘great equalizer’? • Hacker News Board

Re: Is education no longer the ‘great equalizer’?

#311

Post by gumby » Wed, Jun 23, 2021, 8:20 PM UTC

pydry wrote: post #279

mnouquet wrote: post #206

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Are 95% (to be conservative) of the tech unicorns US-based ? At this point, you can start drawing a trend. European successes are more the exception than the rule, which is kinda irrelevant anyway as 95% of European successes will end up being merged into a US behemoth...

Europe doesn't create Ubers because it doesn't have the capital. its not to do with innovation. VC as a model requires huge markets and huge amounts of financing. It doesn't require home grown innovation.

Europe has enormous, deep pools of capital. The culture though is to fear loss rather than fear loss of upside. Capital is deployed differently in the US and China.

Re: Is education no longer the ‘great equalizer’?

#312

Post by asdff » Wed, Jun 23, 2021, 8:20 PM UTC

ignJack188 wrote: post #134

Unfortunately, education in the US is becoming really expensive. The cohort based learning is the way to go! sites like Maven are the future.

Going to school in state is still cheap for most Americans. UCLA is 13k a year in state, CSULA is 6k a year in state. USC gives you a full ride if your household makes below a certain amount. It's no small chunk of change but its possible to put a dent in it if you work long hours in the summers between classes, and have roommates or live with family.

Re: Is education no longer the ‘great equalizer’?

#313

Post by WalterBright » Wed, Jun 23, 2021, 8:22 PM UTC

mcguire wrote: post #295

WalterBright wrote: post #254

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The thing is, the "fully-funding" issue has completely vanished from the agenda. It is never discussed anymore. It's back to the same old "we need more funding to make a difference" rhetoric. In fact, I recall the very day the legislation passed, the same advocates were demanding even more money. I've lived in Seattle for over 40 years now. Long enough to see innumerable funding increases based on demands that "this…

" The thing is, the "fully-funding" issue has completely vanished from the agenda. It is never discussed anymore. " The state was failing to provide funding to all of the school systems in the state. The legislature came up with a plan to fix that and the state Supreme Court agreed with it. There isn't much else to say there.

What is the plan on how to spend the money to improve results?

There is none.

Re: Is education no longer the ‘great equalizer’?

#314

Post by yardie » Wed, Jun 23, 2021, 8:25 PM UTC

WalterBright wrote: post #241

yardie wrote: post #219

Earlier quoted context omitted.

A couple years back is 2019. I'm not sure you know how schools work but suddenly pumping money in doesn't dramatically increase test scores the next fiscal quarter. I think nearly everyone agrees public schools could use more funding, the debates tend to be about "on what and how much."

I looked it up, it was fully in place by summer 2018. P.S. I didn't say "dramatically". I said "zero" improvement. Doing better than zero is as low a bar as possible . I fail to see that as unreasonable. There isn't even a plan for success.

What exactly were you expecting? I assume you aren't an educator.

Education is a process with a decade long pipeline. Simply doubling the budget doesn't turn into 2x brighter kids.

Re: Is education no longer the ‘great equalizer’?

#315

Post by xyzzyz » Wed, Jun 23, 2021, 8:27 PM UTC

dlp211 wrote: post #299

xyzzyz wrote: post #282

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You could easily implement universal healthcare on a state-by-state basis. This is just another excuse for federalization by power-grabbers.

At great cost, yes you could. This is one of the reasons everything costs so much in America, because we insist on making 50 independent systems.

Then why healthcare isn't greatly expensive in Europe, with, you know, 40+ independent countries?

Re: Is education no longer the ‘great equalizer’?

#316

Post by beerandt » Wed, Jun 23, 2021, 8:35 PM UTC

ipaddr wrote: post #64

kingsuper20 wrote: post #11

You have to ask if the majority of 'educated' people actually do things of value. Perhaps we should simply follow a Lysenkoist approach of simply handing out a diploma to one and all. Forgive me for the old man moment, but I was just musing about how little my life has changed since the 1970s. Noticeable differences: TVs have more pixels, airliners look the same but are slower, you can order manufactured goods from y…

A degree holder in any field in 1970 could open many doors. Today a degree by itself could land you at Burger King. You need more education to obtain less now.

It doesn't help that any student can get a loan to study whatever they want, often without any regard for future income potential.

Most STEM majors don't have problems finding jobs.

The days of an Art History degree being enough to qualify you as a "college graduate" for a 9-5 desk job in an unrelated field are certainly over.

Which makes sense, economically. More college graduates means more specialized degrees to fill niche jobs, which generally pay better. Bushiness have a better chance of getting someone who's degree matches the job position, and don't need to settle for "college graduate" in unrelated field.

Re: Is education no longer the ‘great equalizer’?

#317

Post by oh_sigh » Wed, Jun 23, 2021, 8:36 PM UTC

AlexTWithBeard wrote: post #293

oh_sigh wrote: post #246

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's not really clear to me that being a "black grassroot mayor who understands the needs of the community" is a benefit without any kind of experience managing and operating large organizations. The operating budget of Baltimore is approximately $4B/year. I can't imagine many companies with that kind of budget that would hire a CEO/COO with Scott's resume to run it.

The sky will fall before a greedy fat cat corporate CEO will be elected as a public official - no matter what his track record in managing other people's money is.

Sure - I wasn't saying a corporate CEO would even be the right person to run a large city(though Bloomberg did pretty well relative to the expectations of a NYC mayor), but merely pointing out that businesses with operating budgets of a similar size are much choosier with who they put in charge.

In Baltimore, the democratic mayoral candidate is a shoe-in. So the Democratic mayoral primaries are actually the real election. And Scott bested his opponents in that competition with ~45,000 votes total.

So really only about 7% of the city(pop 620,000) voted for him, but that's just how the system works.

Re: Is education no longer the ‘great equalizer’?

#318

Post by wutbrodo » Wed, Jun 23, 2021, 8:38 PM UTC

arminiusreturns wrote: post #291

The oligarchs have been working to detroy the middle class for a long time now (see the Norman Dodd interview or The Leipzig Connection), and education is a key piece of that work, because it truly can be a great equalizer. You will notice not just different curriculum, but entirely different methods being used at a posh place for the elite like Eton, vs a (US) public school or even most upper middle class private sc…

I believe the gap between private schools and public schools, because I've seen it (a good friend of mine had to repeat a grade coming from his rich-area public school to our private school). But is there any evidence of a gap in instructional quality between (eg) Eton and upper-middle-class private schools? I don't know a ton about the topic, but this would be pretty surprising given my current low-confidence understanding.

I believe that there's a success gap, but that's plausibly down to the inescapable networking advantages of concentrating elites, and isn't relevant to the specific claim you're making.

Re: Is education no longer the ‘great equalizer’?

#319

Post by mcguire » Wed, Jun 23, 2021, 8:41 PM UTC

treis wrote: post #160

ARandumGuy wrote: post #146

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Funding in U.S. schools is super unequal. Most school funding in the U.S. comes from local property tax. But if a district has a lot of poverty, then revenue from property tax is low. That means low funding for the local school, which lowers the quality of education for students, which makes it harder for the students to get out of poverty, which keeps the district's poverty level high. It's a self reinforcing cycle,…

>Most school funding in the U.S. comes from local property tax. But if a district has a lot of poverty, then revenue from property tax is low This is a common myth but it's not backed up by the numbers. Poverty is (mostly) concentrated in inner cities and those inner cities typically contain large office builds which pay lots of real estate taxes but send no kids to schools. If you look around different states the hi…

"Poverty is (mostly) concentrated in inner cities..."

False. (https://www.census.gov/library/visualizations/interactive/20...)

Atlanta Public Schools, per student: $16,402, $8,923 instructional

Fulton County Schools, $11,619, $7,021 instructional

Buford City Schools, $11,299, $7,271 instructional

Douglas County, $10,271, $6,577 instructional

Clayton County, $10,472, $6,379 instructional

State Charter Schools- Georgia Cyber Academy, $6,294, $5,224 instructional

This is fun! https://nces.ed.gov/ccd/schoolmap/

Re: Is education no longer the ‘great equalizer’?

#320

Post by IdiocyInAction » Wed, Jun 23, 2021, 8:41 PM UTC

zepto wrote: post #151

alexgmcm wrote: post #81

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> why is there substantially less innovation in Europe? I know people who started start-ups and spun out side projects here in Europe (both the UK and the continent). One thing I noticed was that when it came time to raise money almost of all of them ended up needing American investment. We don't have anywhere near as much VC capital here in Europe and the banks are incredibly conservative. Plus depending on the coun…

> I'd also argue it's a sort of 'digital colonialism' for want of a better term I think that’s a terrible term for it unless you think that America is somehow responsible for preventing Europe from developing its own tech industries.

Not purposely, but the dominance of American tech does make it almost impossible for European competitors to arise. That's why the Chinese are hesitant about US tech.