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Break Up The Elite College Seats Cartel

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Re: Break Up The Elite College Seats Cartel

#41

Post by paulryanrogers »

darawk wrote: post #33
endisneigh wrote: post #5

Status is zero sum, so it’s not even possible to create an arbitrary amount of elite schools to begin with.

This is what these discussions always miss. Harvard isn't conferring value, its recognizing it. It's not a value add, its a filter. People think you can create value by creating more elite universities, but it's exactly the opposite. All you're going to do is destroy the signal they provide. You can learn just as much at a non-elite university as an elite one. Attending an elite university just means you were in the…

This presumes the prestigious schools grow in proportion with the society.

Re: Break Up The Elite College Seats Cartel

#42

Post by jjeaff »

codelorado wrote: post #17
zeusk wrote: post #7

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Because when the Federal Reserve buys those treasuries, you're creating money out of thin air (QE).

This comment highlights the most crucial insight on QE: it is a relatively novel monetary policy innovation that was implemented as an emergency response to the 2008 crisis on a very large scale and, as such, we had no experience using it. 14 years later, we’re finding out what it means for an economy to have the Federal Reserve buy a large amount of US debt.

I don't think we are finding out that much. Most other countries are experiencing the same inflation we are and not all of them deficit spent a lot during the pandemic. Nor do most even have that power.

Surely some of the inflation and really low unemployment is due to QE. But it's likely a lot more of it is due to an economy growing while the active workforce is shrinking and external factors like the pandemic and war in Ukraine causing supply issues.

Re: Break Up The Elite College Seats Cartel

#43

Post by cycrutchfield »

projektfu wrote: post #36

It would make a lot of sense for the top schools to expand like they did in other countries. Oxford and Cambridge have 12,000 undergrads each. University of Toronto has 44,000. Harvard and Princeton have about 5,000 each and Stanford has like 8,000. The US has more top schools, perhaps, than other countries, but not as many seats, I think.

Not going to happen because the rankings racket rates them based on their exclusivity.

Re: Break Up The Elite College Seats Cartel

#44

Post by chrischen »

buzzy_hacker wrote: post #28

Tangential to the suggestion of taxing endowments, I like Michael Sandel's idea of turning admissions into a lottery once a threshold is met. E.g. anyone with a GPA above x and a SAT score above y with a personal essay judged to meet quality level z (simplifying for illustration) is told that they have passed the acceptance threshold and are entered into the random lottery. The threshold should be set so that student…

The problem with that lottery is that it still doesn’t solve the problem of artificial scarcity. There is no reason why a “Harvard” level class is restricted to just a room full of people. We totally have the technology and capabilities to scale it to the masses and make education vastly cheaper but we choose not to for some reason. I think part of YC’s philosophy is basically this. Think making startups accessible rather than just some elite institution for wealth preservation.

Re: Break Up The Elite College Seats Cartel

#45

Post by ceeplusplus »

buzzy_hacker wrote: post #28

Tangential to the suggestion of taxing endowments, I like Michael Sandel's idea of turning admissions into a lottery once a threshold is met. E.g. anyone with a GPA above x and a SAT score above y with a personal essay judged to meet quality level z (simplifying for illustration) is told that they have passed the acceptance threshold and are entered into the random lottery. The threshold should be set so that student…

This is done entirely to admit fewer Asians as a form of racial discrimination. See: Lowell High School.

Re: Break Up The Elite College Seats Cartel

#46

Post by chrischen »

darawk wrote: post #33
endisneigh wrote: post #5

Status is zero sum, so it’s not even possible to create an arbitrary amount of elite schools to begin with.

This is what these discussions always miss. Harvard isn't conferring value, its recognizing it. It's not a value add, its a filter. People think you can create value by creating more elite universities, but it's exactly the opposite. All you're going to do is destroy the signal they provide. You can learn just as much at a non-elite university as an elite one. Attending an elite university just means you were in the…

They operate a filter to bring in quality people for the benefit of the other legacy students who pay to get in. It’s like how Google shows and gathers organic results… so they can get eyeballs on their paid results. In fact google doesn’t even need to improve their organic results past a certain point as long as it’s good enough to bring eyeballs.

Elite institutions thus only need to get a good enough sample of extraordinary individuals to bolster their status, but they do not live necessarily to bring an exceptional education to those who deserve an exceptional education.

Re: Break Up The Elite College Seats Cartel

#47

Post by jjeaff »

yieldcrv wrote: post #15
ajross wrote: post #6

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> We literally just handed out trillions minted out of thin air. It's so weird to see memes like this persist. No, no we didn't. Those spending bills were financed via deficit spending: they were loans. All spending bills are loans. The treasury department raises money by selling bonds. Every deficit dollar the government spends is a dollar it takes in from some investor somewhere who wanted to park money in US treas…

The COVID relief bills were actually a one-time exception to a 100 year old reality. 1) Congress directly modified the Federal Reserve's charter to give money directly to private persons. 2) There were also payments directly from the US Treasury. 3) There were also things that involved that traditional convoluted process of the Treasury selling more bonds to the international market and pretending not to know that th…

What individuals did the fed give money too? The stimulus payments were paid through the US Treasury like any other congressional spending bill.

Re: Break Up The Elite College Seats Cartel

#48

Post by harmon »

xbar wrote: post #25

Dumb. Leave the elite game to the elite game players. Here's the solution: 1. Invest $50 Billion in a big computer. 2. Stuff it full of standard courseware 3. Hire 10,000 PhDs @ $100,000/yr remote ( 4. Have them grade tests 5. Declare it an accredited university. 6. Make it free to attend 7. Never expire units accumulated Congratulations, you have created a national public college for pennies. The quality of the educ…

I agree and have had a similar idea for awhile. Have the best lecturers for given subjects create outstanding virtual courses, develop sets of curricula off of those courses, and have TAs (PhDs in your model) provide local instruction and tutoring to augment the standard coursework.

It seems crazy to me that we have thousands of new faculty members and PhDs begrudgingly spending time developing their own way of teaching material (instead of working on research which is what they actually want to do and are good at) when there are people who are clearly the best in the business at teaching their subject matter whose work we should be using instead.

Re: Break Up The Elite College Seats Cartel

#49

Post by maybelsyrup »

xbar wrote: post #25

Dumb. Leave the elite game to the elite game players. Here's the solution: 1. Invest $50 Billion in a big computer. 2. Stuff it full of standard courseware 3. Hire 10,000 PhDs @ $100,000/yr remote ( 4. Have them grade tests 5. Declare it an accredited university. 6. Make it free to attend 7. Never expire units accumulated Congratulations, you have created a national public college for pennies. The quality of the educ…

I can't tell if this is real or a parody of the SV ed-tech solution-ism of the last decade

Re: Break Up The Elite College Seats Cartel

#50

Post by barry-cotter »

cycrutchfield wrote: post #43
projektfu wrote: post #36

It would make a lot of sense for the top schools to expand like they did in other countries. Oxford and Cambridge have 12,000 undergrads each. University of Toronto has 44,000. Harvard and Princeton have about 5,000 each and Stanford has like 8,000. The US has more top schools, perhaps, than other countries, but not as many seats, I think.

Not going to happen because the rankings racket rates them based on their exclusivity.

The tax code and federal funding is a very big stick to hold over universities to get them to do what you want. If the federal government can force US states to change their drinking laws through highway funding they can do whatever they please.

Remember, the constitution restrains the government exactly as much as it wants to be restrained.

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