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Maybe the problem is that Harvard exists

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Re: Maybe the problem is that Harvard exists

#81

Post by kneebonian »

programmarchy wrote: post #38
kneebonian wrote: post #12

No the problem goes thusly. The university was a place of learning, education, and becoming a better person. It was focused on the pursuit of knowledge for the sake of knowledge. Then it became noticed that smart educated people went to college, and so the idea then became if you went to college you to must be smart and educated. Then because that was accepted as true many people saw college as the path to a better l…

Seems like you've got your rose tinted glasses on. The first universities were established by religious leaders to organize/control priestly power. Basically the same as today.

Seems like your off. The first universities were the Acadamy of Plato and the rehtorical schools of the ancient Greeks.

During the middle ages the universities were associated with the monastaries because those were the few places where literate people congregated.

Plus there were only 5 areas of study in the early university.

- Theology

- Law

- Medicine

- Natural Scene

- And mathematics (I think)

So you're wrong, like really wrong, like wrong wrong, can't be more wrong. But hey I'm sure if you go back to /r/athiesm you'll get some more good talking points.

Re: Maybe the problem is that Harvard exists

#82

Post by ghaff »

glimshe wrote: post #39

This is a typical "let's be all equally poor/bad" argument. Harvard is simply a private institution with excellent reputation and not a single person is required to go there or hire someone from there. Why do Harvard people "drive 20% above the speed limit"? Because selecting good people in a sea of resumes is HARD. Degrees aren't amazing proxies for productivity, but they are decent proxies. I've seen dozens of theo…

Honestly, leading with Harvard is probably a distraction. There are quite a few good schools that don't have the same level of baggage but are pretty competitive with respect to admissions standards. (Of course, the details likely matter depending on the field in question to at least some degree.)

Certainly undergrad school is far from a perfect filter but I agree that if that were really all you had to go on, there is signal there whether one likes that fact or not. (And how could there not be? A lot of people who get into top schools could, shall we say, not super-concentrate on academics as undergrads and many will still do pretty well--although others will flame out.)

Re: Maybe the problem is that Harvard exists

#83

Post by metabagel »

zeroonetwothree wrote: post #59
Barrin92 wrote: post #42

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>I’ve never once felt someone else going to Harvard impacted my life in any way whatsoever Eight of the nine current sitting Supreme Court Judges are either Yale or Harvard Law graduates. It's pretty likely Harvard has had an impact on your life in a lot of ways because a lot of people who govern you went there. Degrees from those schools are basically licenses to occupy the highest positions in the country's adminis…

Local laws have more effect on 99% of people than any scotus decision. And I doubt that your local government is composed of Harvard grads.

Corporate management has more effect on most people than local laws. It’s where we are employed, and where the primary economic decisions are made. And Ivys are over-represented in corporate management.

Really, it’s an argument about whether you agree in meritocracy or elitism.

Re: Maybe the problem is that Harvard exists

#84

Post by [deleted] »

hospitalJail wrote: post #70
glimshe wrote: post #39

This is a typical "let's be all equally poor/bad" argument. Harvard is simply a private institution with excellent reputation and not a single person is required to go there or hire someone from there. Why do Harvard people "drive 20% above the speed limit"? Because selecting good people in a sea of resumes is HARD. Degrees aren't amazing proxies for productivity, but they are decent proxies. I've seen dozens of theo…

> Harvard is simply a private institution with excellent reputation It used to. Now when I see someone went to Harvard, I imagine they had rich parents or were part of Affirmative Action. Not to mention their cheating scandals and forged data. Heck, I talked to a Harvard law grad last week and asked them for specific points on their speech and they had no follow up, they regurgitated. This was no AAA student, this wa…

[deleted]

Re: Maybe the problem is that Harvard exists

#85

Post by AlotOfReading »

satvikpendem wrote: post #40
AlotOfReading wrote: post #28

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There were plenty of agricultural societies that were also fairly egalitarian. One interesting bias we tend have is that we identify "advanced" societies by how much they look like our own. This leads to a general bias towards deeply hierarchial, stratified societies being described/perceived favorably in media against their less familiar neighbors.

Which ones were fairly egalitarian compared to others?

The ones I was specifically thinking about were the Puebloans of the American Southwest. There's a famous old paper whose title summarizes the situation pretty well:

"Although they have petty captains, they obey them badly"

Re: Maybe the problem is that Harvard exists

#86

Post by komali2 »

user3939382 wrote: post #69
glimshe wrote: post #39

This is a typical "let's be all equally poor/bad" argument. Harvard is simply a private institution with excellent reputation and not a single person is required to go there or hire someone from there. Why do Harvard people "drive 20% above the speed limit"? Because selecting good people in a sea of resumes is HARD. Degrees aren't amazing proxies for productivity, but they are decent proxies. I've seen dozens of theo…

> The top schools can be pretty darn great I've seen research suggesting that the schools aren't necessarily great, the students are. They were already great which is how they passed the admissions criteria, and their career success can be attributed to the qualities that they arrived at e.g. Harvard with. They would have been as successful regardless of where they attended. I'm sure the truth is somewhere in the mid…

Given the argument that the wait-list students that didn't get to actually attend did worse in life than wait-list students that did get to attend, how does your implication that the "students were already good and that's why they did well in life" hold up?

Re: Maybe the problem is that Harvard exists

#87

Post by ghaff »

RC_ITR wrote: post #74
lapcat wrote: post #64

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> This is a typical "let's be all equally poor/bad" argument. I think you missed the point of the article, which was "Harvard exists to make society less meritocratic, and it does that while subsidized by everyone else." > Because selecting good people in a sea of resumes is HARD. Degrees aren't amazing proxies for productivity, but they are decent proxies. The author discusses this: "The hardest part of Harvard is g…

>The hardest part of Harvard is getting in. This is always such an interesting argument people make when nearly every 'next step' after undergrad is more selective than Ivy League schools. Tier-1 Tech/Banking/Consulting/Law School/Med School all reject plenty of people from Harvard because they didn't do a good enough job there. Plenty of Harvard grads languish. It's true that getting a degree is simple once you're i…

>It's true that getting a degree is simple once you're in

Historically, that was at least somewhat true of undergrads in general. But wasn't necessarily the case for the top law schools and Big Law still, as far as I know, has something up an up or out career ladder.

Re: Maybe the problem is that Harvard exists

#88

Post by endisneigh »

ryandrake wrote: post #67
fnordpiglet wrote: post #8

I find the Harvard angst interesting. I’ve never once felt someone else going to Harvard impacted my life in any way whatsoever. I’ve advanced further than everyone I know that went to Harvard in my career and not once did someone wink at the Harvard guy and pass me over. I’m sure it happens, and I’m sure there are secret clubs I don’t get invited to (well the Harvard club is pretty nice and I was invited there by a…

The existence of billionaires and millionaires negatively affects everyone else's standard of living via gentrification. Imagine you live in a community of 1000 middle class people, all making, say, $30K/yr to $60K/yr. You make $45K/year so you're about average. You can all afford homes, goods, and so on. Suddenly, 10 millionaires move in. Housing prices start to rise a little bit, grocery stores get a little more up…

that is not how it works at all, lol.

Re: Maybe the problem is that Harvard exists

#90

Post by photochemsyn »

The issue is that American academic institutions have adopted the inherited-wealth / social-class-based model that was so prevalent in Britain in the early 20th century. Elite schools are not centers of education so much as they are centers of networking for feeding the anoited few into positions in government and business, regardless of what actual skills and talents and abilities they possess.

Eliminating legacy admissions and ensuring that K-12 schools across the country are of uniform high quality (in particular in the STEAM fields, yes that includes Art) would do much to reverse this trend, along with reducing college tuition costs.

It's like wild salmon vs. farmed salmon - pampered students who never have to swim upstream don't develop the best qualities.

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