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How college became a ruthless competition divorced from learning

theatlantic.com

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Re: How college became a ruthless competition divorced from learning

#61

Post by sjg007 »

hintymad wrote: post #59

> Skeptics challenge test scores and rankings on their own terms. Most commonly, critics say that the SAT is culturally or racially biased and fails to predict college grades or future career success. The deeper issue is not that scores and rankings are bad at calibrating what they try to measure. Test scores and rankings are bad at capturing education: SAT may not "capture education", but some tests certainly do. Th…

This is apparent in the SAT2s. Or APs. But the elites still want high SATs. Test prep makes a big difference.

Re: How college became a ruthless competition divorced from learning

#62

Post by minikites »

>Busyness has become a badge of honor as elites boast of their workloads: A 2015 advertisement for The Wall Street Journal stated, “People who don’t have time make time to read The Wall Street Journal.”

It's the hustle culture of capitalism applied to every facet of life. If you're not productive every single moment, you're falling behind and your self worth deserves to decline because of it. We've eliminated any "slack" from our jobs, from our lives, from our relationships in pursuit of ever more efficiency. We procrastinate because we feel guilty about not being maximally productive 100% of the time, there's no room for honest slack, we have to self-flagellate. We can't enjoy our time off because we know that work is piling up in our absence, having slack staff to compensate would be a waste. Our time with friends has to be scheduled and planned so it doesn't get in the way of our productivity, there's no room for slack in our social activities. We do all of these things because if we fall behind our job might be on the chopping block when the shareholders decide to squeeze fractions of a percent out of the share price. If we lose our jobs we lose medical care, food, shelter, and more.

We could fix all of these things if we chose to make our society that way, but we find it preferable for one man's divorce to have global implications for dozens of organizations and charities, all the people who work for him, and all the people who depend his whims for aid.

Re: How college became a ruthless competition divorced from learning

#63

Post by catgary »

bloaf wrote: post #55
DubiousPusher wrote: post #5

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I am very troubled by this. Because humanities degree holders are the true carriers of our cultures. Local history, news and art you won't find on the internet. You can't read about my town's coal history on wikipedia. A local historian does that. These people are the ones that work with the primary sources, sifitng them and passing on the highlights. As we squeeze these people down we lose our own selves. We need a…

You don't need a humanities degree to document your local coal mine's history or contribute to your local art culture. You do need a STEM degree if you are going to serve your local community as e.g. a doctor or an engineer. I'm not commenting on the relative value of the endeavors, just pointing out that there are opportunity costs associated with choosing a humanities degree over a STEM degree in our current enviro…

> You don't need a humanities degree to document your local coal mine's history or contribute to your local art culture.

Well you don’t need a CS degree to contribute to your town’s tech sector, but it sure helps.

Re: How college became a ruthless competition divorced from learning

#64

Post by est31 »

hardwaregeek wrote: post #45

As a current student, I see this first-hand. I go to a school that is moderately prestigious, but not well known for CS. Far too many of my classmates are obsessed with the same hamster wheel of optimizing grades, superficial extracurriculars and rec letter chasing. This isn't surprising; it's what got them into this school in the first place. Unfortunately for them it's also quite useless in tech. Some of them go as…

Maybe that kid who made the wrong website put more emphasis on things that places like MIT prioritize instead of reading about "useless" subjects like learning how to create secure websites? The issue is comparability. You can compare by SAT scores and grades far better than by a metric like "built a secure website". If places like MIT prioritized such things more, they'd become even more unfair. Don't get me wrong, I'd much rather work with you on a team than with someone who cares only about their personal success above the team's success, and can't listen to input as to why their approach was wrong.

As for the Zuckerberg example, I think it's a prime example because a social network website is comparatively cheap to create, but the key question is to get people to sign up. By launching first for top colleges, people who want to stay in touch with their "successful" mates would want access as well. Someone without access to a top tier institution's social life would not have been able to pull it off.

Re: How college became a ruthless competition divorced from learning

#66

Post by navait »

rejectedandsad wrote: post #44
xvector wrote: post #8

> the schools that focus their training on the quest for competitive advantage betray every plausible ideal of academic excellence. The author does not seem to understand that these are not mutually exclusive. You can receive a fantastic, genuinely excellent education that is also a competitive advantage. Indeed, they go hand in hand - I’d argue it’s harder to give an excellent education that’s somehow not advantageo…

What about the rest of us? Should we just be just be shunted to the second, third, and fourth rungs of society because we didn’t have the right extracurriculars or only got a 1450 instead of a 1550? 99% of Americans have never attended and likely could not gain admittance to the top 20 schools, to paraphrase William Jennings Bryan the rest of us should not be crucified on a cross of Ivy.

Are the second, third and fourth rungs so horrible? The bottom of the ladder is pretty bad, but people going to uni are unlikely to be on the bottom. As far as computer science goes, you can be a total fuck up and still easily live an upper middle class life.

Re: How college became a ruthless competition divorced from learning

#67

Post by Der_Einzige »

durge wrote: post #42
MeinBlutIstBlau wrote: post #32

Earlier quoted context omitted.

No they aren't. They hold worthless knowledge that literally anybody capable of reading and writing can do. They aren't some sort of priestly class that are only allowed to read and edit Wikipedia pages. They just wasted time getting a degree in something that people only do for fun to satisfy they're curiosity. There is absolutely no skill in being able to read and write about something if everyone else is capable o…

It’s ‘their’, not ‘they’re’.

People who correct others grammar on the internet "found to be less agreeable"

https://www.ladbible.com/news/news-people-who-point-out-gram...

Re: How college became a ruthless competition divorced from learning

#68

Post by throwawayboise »

phone8675309 wrote: post #50
hardwaregeek wrote: post #45

As a current student, I see this first-hand. I go to a school that is moderately prestigious, but not well known for CS. Far too many of my classmates are obsessed with the same hamster wheel of optimizing grades, superficial extracurriculars and rec letter chasing. This isn't surprising; it's what got them into this school in the first place. Unfortunately for them it's also quite useless in tech. Some of them go as…

If I owned a company I would refuse to hire graduates from MIT, Harvard, and Stanford. It's much more likely that you were good at lying than at studying if you went there, and I don't have time to teach the basics.

I'll accept the premise that it's possible to fake your way into a school like that. I think it would be much harder to fake your way to a diploma though. Am I wrong?

Re: How college became a ruthless competition divorced from learning

#69

Post by ab_testing »

This kind of acacdemic rat race is very common in developing countries like India and China where there are many times the number of candidates as available good jobs. For a long time, the US colleges avoided this competition mainly because the difference between good and bad career choices was not that great and being a college graduate meant that you were almost guaranteed to achieve a middle class lifestyle. However now with the exorbitant college costs and the reduced career choices for non STEM majors means that American students have to become competitive right from the time they enter high school.

Re: How college became a ruthless competition divorced from learning

#70

Post by hzay »

hardwaregeek wrote: post #45

As a current student, I see this first-hand. I go to a school that is moderately prestigious, but not well known for CS. Far too many of my classmates are obsessed with the same hamster wheel of optimizing grades, superficial extracurriculars and rec letter chasing. This isn't surprising; it's what got them into this school in the first place. Unfortunately for them it's also quite useless in tech. Some of them go as…

The kid who returned user's passed hash -- he could have simply learned more about better programming practices no? You make it sound like it's a crime and he's inherently flawed. But all of us did dumb mistakes in school/college in our early programming days, and then most of us learned not to do them.
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