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Break Up The Elite College Seats Cartel

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Re: Break Up The Elite College Seats Cartel

#61

Post by AlbertCory »

ajross wrote: post #6
seibelj wrote: post #2

> To break up elite colleges therefore, all you need to do is break up the endowments. Siphoning resources from school endowments is actually quite easy. Wow straight up suggesting we steal money from private institutions to give to politicians to decide how to redistribute it. Totally insane. The government prints $40 billion like it’s nothing. We literally just handed out trillions minted out of thin air. Maybe we…

> 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…

> People need to stop saying that. Why do people keep repeating something that is so clearly incorrect?

Because they have a better understanding of it than you do.

The Fed buys government bonds, aka "Quantitative Easing." That is printing money. They started doing that after the 2007-8 recession, because just lowering the interest rate to zero wasn't doing enough (in their view). They didn't want to have negative interest rates like some countries did, so QE was the only choice.

Re: Break Up The Elite College Seats Cartel

#62

Post by temp8964 »

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 guess you can use the same idea to create a national car company, a national cloud service company, a national food company, a national computer store, a national hospital, a national everything company. What a great idea!

Re: Break Up The Elite College Seats Cartel

#64

Post by TuringNYC »

>> For example, Harvard’s endowment is worth something around $50 Billion. If this year, you assessed a tax on Harvard for $40 Billion, you would leave Harvard with a $10 Billion dollar endowment, and enough money to endow four new Harvard caliber schools with $10 Billion dollars each.

Who would get to spend the $40B? How would it even be spent effectively? Wouldnt it just end up on an educational equivalent Bridge to Nowhere, Big Dig, or end up contributed to insider Union projects, or end up disappearing alltogether?

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Big_Dig

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bridge_to_nowhere#United_State...

https://nypost.com/2019/02/28/de-blasio-and-co-mayor-wife-ha...

https://nypost.com/2019/02/27/mccrays-thrive-initiative-on-t...

Re: Break Up The Elite College Seats Cartel

#65

Post by willnonya »

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…

Your assertion about increasing the top x% is only true in absolute terms. If we're talking top x% of college admissions then that changes the picture. There's a big difference between that top x% being 1,000 and that same percentage being 50,000 students.

Re: Break Up The Elite College Seats Cartel

#66

Post by TuringNYC »

georgeburdell wrote: post #23

Saudi Arabia is trying to create an elite university from a large starting endowment. Let's see how it goes in a generation https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/King_Abdullah_University_of_Sc...

There is already a mature experiment of throwing money at the problem, 15+yrs in the running:

https://www.qf.org.qa/education/education-city

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Education_City

To consider: what is the yield per dollar of such experiments?

Side note: Education City might not be the best example because Qatar effectively has to pay 2x for employees and supplies/raw materials to compensate people for moving there, so right away all yields are halved.

Re: Break Up The Elite College Seats Cartel

#67

Post by gautamdivgi »

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…

It's a filter. Most importantly it's a network. You cannot replicate elite universities because the network effects cannot be replicated.

Re: Break Up The Elite College Seats Cartel

#68

Post by geodel »

chrischen wrote: post #46
darawk wrote: post #33

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 extr…

So why would those who deserve exceptional education go elite universities if there is no value to it?

Re: Break Up The Elite College Seats Cartel

#69

Post by BurningFrog »

quadrifoliate wrote: post #38
darawk wrote: post #33

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

> Attending an elite university just means you were in the top x% of your age cohort. By definition, the top x% is not a group who's membership you can expand. This would all be very well if you decided the top x% via an objective and reasonable standardized test. However, the mention of standardized tests to determine top x% objectively usually sends people running for the hills [1], and they quickly start talking a…

> This would all be very well if you decided the top x% via an objective and reasonable standardized test.

I interpret OP's point to be more cynical:

The arbitrary selection is the point. Harvard, somehow, through a secret process, selects those who are likely to form a good portion of "the ruling class" for the next 3-4 decades.

Past performance so far indicates that they do a good job of it, so Harvard remains very prestigious.

Re: Break Up The Elite College Seats Cartel

#70

Post by rootusrootus »

quadrifoliate wrote: post #52
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…

From sources like this [1], it looks like the cohort of high school graduates is usually between 3 and 4 million. So that means the total college-eligible cohort is 12 - 16 million. Let's say 25% (a fourth) of them end up attending this magical national public college. That's a 3000000 / 10000 = 300:1 ratio of students to teachers. That's a lot of students per PhD to handle, for a $100k salary with greatly reduced ca…

> By comparison, the student/faculty ratio at a typical "good" college is about 5:1. Even knocking down the projected enrollment one order of magnitude (so 1/40th of the college-age cohort) gets you a 30:1 ratio which is still 6 times worse.

What qualifies as a good college, for this description? Typical state school, e.g. Oregon State University? What counts in the 5:1 ratio? Because it sure isn't just teachers, that's probably more like 50:1.

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