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It’s time to break up the Ivy League cartel

chronicle.com

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Re: It’s time to break up the Ivy League cartel

#91

Post by BurningFrog »

nradov wrote: post #73
b9a2cab5 wrote: post #14

> recirculating resources among the most exclusive and wealthy while chanting social-justice keywords Indeed, Harvard aggressively defends its admissions program as "holistic" while rating Asians as having lower personal ratings that they define as measuring "likeability", "courage", and "kindness" [1]. You might ask yourself how an institution which claims to be anti-racist exhibits behavior of the opposite kind. [1…

So then the smart choice for any applicant would be to select whichever race checkbox on the form gives the greatest advantage. Since race is an artificial social construct with no clear objective definition there's nothing wrong with hacking the system to your advantage. Or just leave it blank.

In a rules based system, maybe.

In a "holistic" system, where they pick whoever they want to pick, pissing the selectors off will not work.

Re: It’s time to break up the Ivy League cartel

#92

Post by [deleted] »

sokoloff wrote: post #11

> Faculty members at prestigious universities are 50 times more likely than the average person to have a parent with a Ph.D. American meritocracy has become a complex, inefficient, and rigged system conferring its graces on ambitious children of highly educated and prosperous families. What’s the ratio in other fields of top achievement for kids to follow in their parents’ footsteps? It’s entirely unsurprising that a…

[deleted]

Re: It’s time to break up the Ivy League cartel

#93

Post by Robotbeat »

LudwigNagasena wrote: post #68

It’s time to break up the education system from all the extracurricular fluff. The universities are fostering identities around themselves: students join debate teams, sports teams, religious groups , orchestra, etc under the aegis of their universities and attach their personal identities to these things. To me personally it seems kind of ridiculous. What if you are a young adult who is interested in trades, but you…

You can usually audit classes of local universities. I’ve done it, and I recommend it!

Re: It’s time to break up the Ivy League cartel

#94

Post by areyousure »

bsder wrote: post #61
sokoloff wrote: post #11

> Faculty members at prestigious universities are 50 times more likely than the average person to have a parent with a Ph.D. American meritocracy has become a complex, inefficient, and rigged system conferring its graces on ambitious children of highly educated and prosperous families. What’s the ratio in other fields of top achievement for kids to follow in their parents’ footsteps? It’s entirely unsurprising that a…

> What’s the ratio in other fields of top achievement for kids to follow in their parents’ footsteps? It’s entirely unsurprising that academics raise academics, doctors doctors, Olympians Olympians, teachers teachers, etc. Actually, I suspect that most teachers discourage their children to follow in their footsteps ... And your points about doctors, olympians, academics, etc. have a common point: Large, up front expe…

> A child of a high-school teacher simply isn't becoming an Olympic figure skater. The monetary investment is far too titanic.

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

> Regarded as one of, if not the greatest male figure skater in history, Hanyu has broken world records nineteen times ...

> Hanyu was born ... the second and youngest child to his father, who is a junior high school teacher

Oh, maybe this doesn't count? After all, his father was a junior high school teacher. /s

Re: It’s time to break up the Ivy League cartel

#95

Post by fallingknife »

LudwigNagasena wrote: post #68

It’s time to break up the education system from all the extracurricular fluff. The universities are fostering identities around themselves: students join debate teams, sports teams, religious groups , orchestra, etc under the aegis of their universities and attach their personal identities to these things. To me personally it seems kind of ridiculous. What if you are a young adult who is interested in trades, but you…

Particularly when they're looking for the important personality trait of not Asian.

Re: It’s time to break up the Ivy League cartel

#96

Post by neom »

obstacle1 wrote: post #87
neom wrote: post #52

Used to have this argument regularly with executives of startups I've worked for who had worked in more "traditional" industries. The number of times I've had to interject around "pedigree" being "useful" is.. sad. (Most)Everyone I've hired from Harvard, Stanford, Columbia, etc have been the worst performing, and the most far behind in relevant skills. RIT, Rutgers, etc, waaaay far ahead. It got to the point where I…

Maybe the problem is you're hiring CS/engineering students to "show KPIs" or "set up mixpanel" or "not program"? I can't imagine any competent student from those disciplines, never mind a student from a top tier school, being happy at any kind of job like that. Especially if they were sold a job that would use their full abilities. Sounds like a recipe for otherwise talented people half-assing your job while looking…

Why would I hire engineers to set up mixpanel? You hire marketing people for that!

Re: It’s time to break up the Ivy League cartel

#97

Post by rajin444 »

sokoloff wrote: post #11

> Faculty members at prestigious universities are 50 times more likely than the average person to have a parent with a Ph.D. American meritocracy has become a complex, inefficient, and rigged system conferring its graces on ambitious children of highly educated and prosperous families. What’s the ratio in other fields of top achievement for kids to follow in their parents’ footsteps? It’s entirely unsurprising that a…

Science needs to advance more so that we can determine nature vs. nurture. It's all genetic (nature) in the end - but I think being able to say "x lacks the genetic makeup to dunk a basketball" vs "x was malnourished as a child so they wont grow enough to be able to dunk a basketball" is useful. I think articles looking at outcomes of the children of successful people are unhealthy and will focus too much on environmental impacts. We will see uneven breakdowns (by race, sex, height, etc.) and think that means something needs to be fixed...but we aren't able to fully explain how the breakdowns got to where they are.

Re: It’s time to break up the Ivy League cartel

#98

Post by Der_Einzige »

neom wrote: post #52

Used to have this argument regularly with executives of startups I've worked for who had worked in more "traditional" industries. The number of times I've had to interject around "pedigree" being "useful" is.. sad. (Most)Everyone I've hired from Harvard, Stanford, Columbia, etc have been the worst performing, and the most far behind in relevant skills. RIT, Rutgers, etc, waaaay far ahead. It got to the point where I…

I have a funny anecdote here. In competitive parliamentary debate, almost every school "plays by the rules" and doesn't do some relatively easy and hard to detect cheating. Not RIT though - they cheat blatantly and hard. They come in with pages and pages of evidence that they simply could not have hand written in the 15 minutes they're given for preparing. I have a slightly more poor opinion of any RIT graduate as a result of this experience. I know nothing about the school but I can sure tell you that being unscrupulous is not reserved only for the ivy league elite.

Re: It’s time to break up the Ivy League cartel

#99

Post by s5300 »

thomastjeffery wrote: post #84
s5300 wrote: post #72

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You essentially want institutions to bend to your will? Good luck with that... Why don't you go out and build from the ground up/front money to building a place solely for those "just interested in trades"

They essentially want institutions to be less involved in their community and social circles. Why should educational institutions be allowed to monopolize social groups in the first place?

Well, once upon a time, likely not too long ago, politicians that were voted in decided to establish a framework in which this was possible/prevailed.

For those who personally don't like it, I don't know what to tell you. Your ideology is clearly a minority, and the only way minorities will get what they want in a capitalistic system is through large amounts of money.

Re: It’s time to break up the Ivy League cartel

#100

Post by BurningFrog »

paulpauper wrote: post #28
jhayward wrote: post #25

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> It not that top colleges are biased against the lower classes, but that lower classes may just be less inclined to apply or score lower on standardized tests Oh, my. This is such a straight-textbook example of not seeing systemic bias.

Generations ago, elite colleges had quotas preventing or discouraging certain groups from applying. Those barriers have been removed. As it turns out, selecting for intelligence yields more for endowments and other benefits than selecting for prestige or lineage. This may not be completely fair, but is more fair than the old way.Tons of people apply to these schools. The SAT is still a useful despite being an imperfe…

Are they really selecting for intelligence though?

The SAT, which actually does that fairly well, is on its way out.

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