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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

#71

Post by fridif »

throwawayboise wrote: post #68
phone8675309 wrote: post #50

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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?

Admission is harder than graduation for sure. I only had an 80th percentile SAT but 99th percentile GPA

Re: How college became a ruthless competition divorced from learning

#72

Post by blaurence5 »

throwawayboise wrote: post #68
phone8675309 wrote: post #50

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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?

It’s much easier to complete school than it is to get in.

Re: How college became a ruthless competition divorced from learning

#73

Post by dang »

qntty wrote: post #49
8f2ab37a-ed6c wrote: post #40

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Case_Against_Education is a recommended read on this topic.

Bryan Caplan is a charlatan

Thoughtful critique is welcome here, but personal attacks and name-calling aren't, so please do the former instead of the latter.

https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html

Re: How college became a ruthless competition divorced from learning

#74

Post by throwawayboise »

fridif wrote: post #71
throwawayboise wrote: post #68

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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?

Admission is harder than graduation for sure. I only had an 80th percentile SAT but 99th percentile GPA

So getting in to Stanford is harder than graduating with a STEM degree? Doens't say much about the vaunted reputation of that school. I went to a midwest state university. Getting in was easy. Completing my CS degree took a lot of work. I cannot imagine any way I could have bullshitted my way through that.

Re: How college became a ruthless competition divorced from learning

#75

Post by dang »

mnouquet wrote: post #60
AlexandrB wrote: post #52

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Do you mean by putting themselves on a pedestal without having experienced life _at_all_ and living in nothing but theories. Yeah, sure. I hope the irony that this describes a large portion of the tech industry is not lost on you.

> I hope the irony that this describes a large portion of the tech industry is not lost on you. Of course, that's why I'm constantly getting downvoted, and got disowned. I witnessed my shitfaced +$150,000 salary co-worker in Santa Monica "educates" a hobo (with certainly his own fair share of mental health & drug issues) about how he claimed he had been rude to another co-worker. The same way some of my world travell…

Can you please not post in the flamewar style to HN? We're looking for thoughtful, curious conversation here, not denunciatory rhetoric. I'm sure there are many interesting things you could share about your experiences. Please do that, rather than fulminating, when posting here.

https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html

Re: How college became a ruthless competition divorced from learning

#76

Post by hardwaregeek »

hzay wrote: post #70
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.

Yeah that was maybe not the best example. Although I did explain it to him a couple times and he still didn't get it. He also didn't do his share of work but of course took credit for the accomplishments of the group in his college applications.

What I was trying to point it is that these students used these supposedly impressive accomplishments in the college applications when really they didn't do much at all.

Re: How college became a ruthless competition divorced from learning

#77

Post by vl »

jollybean wrote: post #47
Dah00n wrote: post #24

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Elite schools are worthwhile if it isn't in it for the money like most (all?) elite schools in the US. In that regard the Soviet system were far superior.

No, the Soviet System was a complete failure from top to bottom, producing some great scientists is nice but a side show. Using standardized tests from 14-21 to select leadership feels very meritocratic, but it's also very crude. Also there is the ugly notion that maybe the best way to lead a nation is not purely meritocratic. American Ivy League, despite their follies, produce a ton of very high calibre people. So d…

Well, I agree that Soviet Union was failure from top to bottom (non-market economy and dictatorship can get you just so far). But with this said, it was possible to get excellent education in Soviet Union, and (with a lot of hard work) it was available to anyone.

Re: How college became a ruthless competition divorced from learning

#78

Post by ggm »

HenryKissinger wrote: post #14

In some countries, like France and the United kingdom, the educational pyramid is even more skewed. In the United kingdom, graduates of Oxford University and Cambridge University are in a class of their own. Oxbridge alumni are overrepresented in politics, business, and the media. In France, the same phenomenon is at work with the École Polytechnique, the Écoles Normales Supérieures, and a few others. This creates sh…

I am not an Oxbridge or ENS graduate but I felt compelled to point out both had a competitive entry exam. I am unsure Oxbridge still does. The ecole normale system presupposes a national baccalaureate with ranking. The French took this seriously for decades. It was wafer thin egalitarianism because poor smart kids had a path in.

I have little doubt nepotism also plays its part, but the fundamental underpinning is ranked - elitism that was tested.

I've worked with many Oxbridge graduates and met, presented to ENS students and they were super smart.

Re: How college became a ruthless competition divorced from learning

#79

Post by [deleted] »

Anatole_maarika wrote: post #4

Something that keeps me up at night is my fear that I only studied computer science and became a programmer because of economic and status reasons. I do feel incredibly lucky to have the job and freedom I do, but it drains me. And now I feel it's such a specialized education and I didn't explore enough to know anything else, and so I have no idea if I would have liked something completely different.

[deleted]

Re: How college became a ruthless competition divorced from learning

#80

Post by mnouquet »

dang wrote: post #75
mnouquet wrote: post #60

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I hope the irony that this describes a large portion of the tech industry is not lost on you. Of course, that's why I'm constantly getting downvoted, and got disowned. I witnessed my shitfaced +$150,000 salary co-worker in Santa Monica "educates" a hobo (with certainly his own fair share of mental health & drug issues) about how he claimed he had been rude to another co-worker. The same way some of my world travell…

Can you please not post in the flamewar style to HN? We're looking for thoughtful, curious conversation here, not denunciatory rhetoric. I'm sure there are many interesting things you could share about your experiences. Please do that, rather than fulminating, when posting here. https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html

Thanks to prove my point, literally.
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