[HN Gopher] It's Time to Break Up the Ivy League Cartel
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It's Time to Break Up the Ivy League Cartel
Author : hecubus
Score : 100 points
Date : 2021-06-11 21:20 UTC (1 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (www.chronicle.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (www.chronicle.com)
| eternalban wrote:
| > One of the great puzzles of American society is the position of
| the Ivy League. It is a bastion of privilege and power, and yet
| full of left-leaning professors who one might imagine would favor
| the redistribution of wealth.
|
| Re-imagining social norms -- not a conservative predisposition --
| has nothing to do with redistributing wealth. It is precisely the
| requirement for a shared mindset, or a demonstration of
| willingness to adhere to ideological dogma, that requires
| generational and selective admission. As the re-imaginings take
| to greater heights of fancy, the distance from the non-
| indoctrinated society at large (which generally feels and thinks
| via principles and not ideology) increases and this requires and
| motivates a greater degree of insularity by an establishment.
|
| It is certainly true that some children of the ideologically
| and/or culturally "unwashed" masses will arrive at the
| 'acceptable' socio-economic conclusion (due to their superior
| intellect) -- whether they acknowledge this consciously is not
| germinal -- but the risk to an establishment (regardless of their
| leaning on the fabled 1 dimensional L/R spectrum) to an 'open
| admissions and integration' policy are simply too great.
| mlac wrote:
| "In 1940, the acceptance rate at Harvard was 85 percent."
|
| I didn't realize that was the acceptance rate, but JFK's
| application to Harvard is interesting and that acceptance rate
| adds context:
| https://www.theatlantic.com/education/archive/2013/11/jfks-v...
|
| And maybe it's not people pulling the ladder up behind them -
| it's that the ladder has become more visible and desirable
| without expanding or changing.
|
| I do have some hope with Coursera and EdX. There are now blended
| programs starting online that allow students to start remote and
| show they can do the coursework, before completing the rest on
| campus: https://scm.mit.edu/program/blended-masters-degree-
| supply-ch...
|
| I'd argue the knowledge is becoming more open and freely
| available, but the network is not. Maybe the value of the network
| would drop if it was less personal and more people were there.
| There is some optimal program size and it's possible some
| programs could hold more. At the same time, do we really need
| more Cal tech grads? Not a slam at Cal tech (I chose the
| smallest), but how many people with those skill sets do we need
| vs. graduates from other less specialized schools.
|
| There is something special about Cal Tech's community, and I
| don't know I would want to dilute it just because other people
| should have the ability to go there to meet some arbitrary
| "fairness metric".
|
| The value these institutions have brought, and bring, to the
| country by making us the top in the world in a number of fields
| comes from how selective they are and their massive resources
| they can put toward problems. This makes them attractive to the
| world's top talent and gives them the freedom to work on some
| things without economic constraints, and that's a societal
| benefit. Pulling money away because they've managed it well could
| hurt us long term. And it's not like the Harvard endowment of
| $40B is just sitting there - it is invested into the economy like
| other funds until it is needed for investment in the community.
|
| Lastly - just because you didn't go to one of those institutions
| doesn't mean you can't be successful or attend one for grad
| school. And I've found grad school admissions to be meritocratic.
| analog31 wrote:
| Acceptance rates are meaningless. There is no limit on the
| denominator.
| thrower123 wrote:
| There's only four times as many people in the USA now as there
| were in the early 20th century, and still only about a thousand
| slots for Harvard freshmen.
| q-big wrote:
| But I bet the number of universities has increased by a lot.
| AnimalMuppet wrote:
| Why do you think that's relevant? The post you replied to
| was talking about Harvard, and the article was talking
| about the Ivy League. Has the number of Harvards increased?
| Has the Ivy League expanded very much?
| SkyMarshal wrote:
| paywalled
| fighterpilot wrote:
| https://archive.is/kk0CY
| tedunangst wrote:
| What would happen if Harvard were required to accept 40 percent
| of all applicants as before?
|
| I think it would be pretty amusing if they got 50000 applicants,
| admitted 20000, and then said "guess what Cambridge, we're
| building 200 new dormitories, here, there, and everywhere."
| graeme wrote:
| Either it would have to expand its undergrad programs, or
| student quality (as Harvard measures it) would decline.
|
| Joseph Heath has a very interesting article comparing US elite
| schools (tiny undergrad program) and Canadian elite schools
| (massive undergrad programs, bigger than Ivy League)
|
| http://induecourse.ca/the-bottleneck-in-u-s-higher-education...
| tedunangst wrote:
| I've seen this before, and I think it's ridiculous to assume
| that there's some arbitrary cutoff about top 10 colleges. Why
| is not percentile based?
|
| For reference, there's 12 Houses at Harvard. With a bit of
| paperwork, they could each be a separate college, pushing
| Dartmouth all the way down completely out of the top 20. But
| would the education at Dartmouth have gotten worse in any
| way?
|
| Rephrased, what if we instead classify the Ivy League as a
| single college with eight campuses? What's the difference?
| sokoloff wrote:
| That's in the same article where they compare the value of
| an endowment (measured in dollars) against the GDP of three
| random countries (measured in a different unit: dollars per
| year [per country]). Analytic rigor is not high.
| gowld wrote:
| It's interesting to note that Harvard could fund an
| entire country for a year.
| fighterpilot wrote:
| It could easily do that, but its status and signaling value
| would be negatively impacted.
| poopypoopington wrote:
| Or why do they have to be in Cambridge? Why not expand in Las
| Vegas or Houston or something?
| jlund-molfese wrote:
| https://outline.com/YAPKuj
|
| Non-paywalled link
| Causality1 wrote:
| I wonder what the deal is with such a large percentage of
| submissions being paywalled sites. Do the submitters have
| subscriptions to everything and just don't realize? Does
| everybody reading HN have anti-paywall extensions installed?
| Sure there's always the archive.is link but someone has to see
| the article in the first place.
| bradleyjg wrote:
| Maybe content that has a reasonable revenue stream supporting
| it is just better.
| chirau wrote:
| Full no paywall article here
|
| https://outline.com/YAPKuj
| [deleted]
| torstenvl wrote:
| I strongly disagree. Having elite schools is far far better for
| upward mobility.
|
| Being a poor kid and going to Harvard is a far more effective
| ticket to the upper middle class than any alternative the author
| proposes.
|
| Sure, you could theoretically dilute academic signaling strength,
| by force, to the point of homeopathic levels - but who does that
| help? Whose life completely changes for the better by attending
| such an institution?
| paulpauper wrote:
| >The economist Raj Chetty has found that nearly 40 of the
| country's elite colleges and universities, including five in the
| Ivy League, accept more students from families in the top 1
| percent of income earners than from the bottom 60 percent. The
| computer scientist Allison Morgan recently released a study
| examining 7,218 professors in Ph.D.-granting departments in the
| United States across the arts and sciences. She found that the
| faculty come from families almost 34-percent richer than average
| and are 25 times more likely than average to have a parent with a
| Ph.D. 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.
|
| This is like the 'branch cut' equivalent of the social sciences,
| but rather than making the integral easier to compute, makes the
| argument sound more convincing than it actually is or supported
| by the evidence.
|
| If one looks aat the actual data, admitees of elite colleges are
| hardly among the elite, but just somewhat wealthier than average.
|
| http://yaledailynews.com/wp-content/uploads/2017/02/admissio...
|
| We're not taking Rockefeller-level of wealth here.
|
| But this holds even for non-elite colleges. 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.
| jhayward wrote:
| > _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.
| paulpauper wrote:
| 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 imperfect filter.
| grecy wrote:
| > _... more students from families in the top 1 percent of
| income earners than from the bottom 60 percent_
|
| These institutions exist for the purpose of making money. Why
| would anyone be surprised they have rich customers to extract
| money from?
|
| I'm sure if you look at the top hospitals in the USA the vast
| majority of their customers are insanely rich.
|
| That's not a coincidence, it's by design. These things exist to
| make as much money as possible.
|
| Ivy League Cartels are not the problem. For profit institutions
| that should not be are the problem.
| sokoloff wrote:
| > 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 academics raise academics, doctors doctors, Olympians
| Olympians, teachers teachers, etc.
|
| It's equally unsurprising that the ambitious children of highly
| educated and prosperous families themselves pursue such a similar
| path and achieve similar outcomes. I'm an engineer and my spouse
| a scientist. Our kids have commensurately higher chance to pursue
| one of those or a closely related field due to exposure and
| biases.
| MattGaiser wrote:
| Yeah, so many of these arguments about who comes from what
| category seem to assume that talent and inclination is randomly
| distributed among 18 year olds and that university where you
| find yourself.
| jvanderbot wrote:
| This seems obvious and unharmful.
|
| Its funny, my co worker insisted that his children shall go to
| MIT so they can have all the opportunities he did. He didn't
| see any irony is saying this to me, his peer, a first gen
| engineer from University of Midwest Farm Community.
|
| And I agree, its not surprising kids learn by example and
| inherit so much from their parents.
| zamfi wrote:
| Also, what is this "has become" language for? It implies that
| the this elite group is _more_ self-reinforcing than it used to
| be, but there's no evidence for that. Harvard's 1940s admission
| rate of 85% was certainly not a more meritocratic time.
|
| The ratio you ask for is almost certainly decreasing over time,
| not increasing, right?
| ttul wrote:
| You likely don't realize that your kids will also have an
| easier chance at succeeding because of other privileges they
| enjoy, aside from the merits of having intelligent and educated
| parents.
|
| Take a similarly educated family who happen to live in Gaza,
| for instance, and it's obvious that the children will have a
| different set of opportunities available to them.
| sokoloff wrote:
| Is there any basis for your assumption that I don't realize
| that?
| jedberg wrote:
| From the NYT:
|
| Working sons of working fathers are, on average, 2.7 times as
| likely as the rest of the population to have the same job but
| only two times as likely to have the same job as their working
| mothers, according to an analysis by The New York Times, one of
| the first to look at mothers and daughters in addition to
| fathers and sons. Daughters are 1.8 times as likely to have the
| same job as their mothers and 1.7 times as likely to have the
| same job as their fathers. [0]
|
| From the General Social Survey[1]:
|
| If your father was a legislator, you are 354 times more likely
| to be drawn to that career, too. Kids whose father was a doctor
| are 23 times more likely to follow in his footsteps. If your
| father was a lawyer, you're 17 times more likely to become one,
| as well.
|
| Jobs in the trades figure into these statistics, as well.
|
| - The sons and daughters of plumbers are 14 times more likely
| to pursue a job in this field.
|
| - The sons and daughters of electricians are nine times more
| likely to pursue a job in this field.
|
| - The sons and daughters of carpenters are five times more
| likely to pursue a job in this field.
|
| And, maybe it's all that brushing and flossing - but the sons
| and daughters of dentists are 13 times more likely to become
| one, too.
|
| [0] https://www.nytimes.com/2017/12/01/learning/will-you-
| follow-...
|
| [1] http://gss.norc.org/About-The-GSS
| retrac wrote:
| I was just going to look for data on plumbers and carpenters.
| One common theme to all these jobs is that they tend to be
| quite stable, and require a life-long set of skills.
|
| My father did metalwork before moving to an office job in the
| civil service. He was the son of a die pressman. Who was the
| son of a blacksmith. Dad taught me how to weld and cut and so
| on before my teens. My intellectual interests went to math
| and computers early on, and he did encourage me to go
| wherever that might lead. Yet after university and exploring
| the world I end up in a job where I make circuit boards. It's
| nearly all automated now but I still do far more welding in
| my job than most people with a degree.
|
| Sometimes it feels like our life scripts are often sketched
| out by circumstance and trends long before we're even born.
| marcosdumay wrote:
| So, looks like contacts and internal knowledge are much more
| important for a PHD than it is for most professions, but the
| situation is still much better than for politicians.
|
| I'd say that means the PHD job market has a large problem.
| When politicians are the ones you can compare yourself to
| look good, it's because things are not good at all.
| namesafe77 wrote:
| Thats Indian Varna system right there.
| bradleyjg wrote:
| _There is a large supply of scholars and teachers ready, willing,
| and able to work. Public universities, colleges, community
| colleges, and HBCUs have for decades been starved. The Biden
| family understands public education, and Jill Biden is an
| educator. With something like a Works Project Administration
| program to bring arts and sciences education to Americans, the
| administration could restore democratic education in the U.S._
|
| This makes the mistake of accepting that college is about
| education. It isn't. If it were those that barely graduate
| college and those that barely flunk out would have about the same
| outcomes, having learned about the same amount. They have very
| different outcomes because college is about the endless treadmill
| of credentialism.
| hpcjoe wrote:
| I had a similar discussion with a young colleague considering
| grad school recently. My two cents is now, with nearly 25 years
| post Ph.D. under my belt, that it is a union card for some
| jobs, and irrelevant for others. The degrees don't make the
| person. The content of the character and drive do.
|
| I got a Ph.D. as I had the goal of being a physics prof
| someday. I knew that was an essential milestone on the path to
| this. Now, my goal is to save for retirement, and do what I
| enjoy doing while doing this, and maybe after retirement
| teaching physics/math/etc. at a local uni/college.
|
| The treadmill of credentialism is an apt phrase though. I don't
| need a Ph.D. in my current job. Or most of my previous ones.
| b9a2cab5 wrote:
| > 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]: https://nypost.com/2018/10/19/harvards-own-study-reveals-
| uni...
| fighterpilot wrote:
| What's telling is how similar the Asian admit percentage is
| between the top colleges except for Caltech. It wasn't always
| like this, but they've all (ex-Caltech) converged on almost the
| same number now. It appears to be collusion either of the sort
| discussed in the article or the informal sort where each
| college copies their competitors' quotas.
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