[HN Gopher] Fire Them All; God Will Know His Own
___________________________________________________________________
Fire Them All; God Will Know His Own
Author : jseliger
Score : 207 points
Date : 2022-12-02 15:40 UTC (7 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (www.thecrimson.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (www.thecrimson.com)
| martin1975 wrote:
| What justifies paying 53k a year for Harvard? I went to a state
| university for my undergrad in CS. Would I have learned anything
| different at Harvard?
| bombcar wrote:
| Likely the education would be similar or even _worse_ at
| Harvard.
|
| But the main thing you get is graduating from Harvard, and
| knowing everyone from your class and school. Those connections
| are _huge_ , depending on the field you're going into.
|
| An MBA from a state school might work if you're staying in-
| state, but an MBA from an elite school opens the world.
| vecter wrote:
| Why would their education be worse at Harvard?
| bombcar wrote:
| Either Harvard is the best possible college for all their
| majors or it is not.
|
| If it is, then it should be worth any reasonable amount.
|
| If it is not, then there is some other college somewhere
| that is better at at least one major.
| vecter wrote:
| I don't understand this reasoning. Besides the fact that
| it just seems logically incorrect, it totally avoids the
| question of why a CS education from an unknown state
| school would be better than Harvard's.
|
| Harvard's undergraduate CS program is not in the top 10
| (if you believe US News's rankings, which I always take
| with a huge grain of salt), but that doesn't mean that
| it's worse that State U's.
| bombcar wrote:
| Which is why I said "similar or even worse" - there's no
| guarantee it's better.
|
| And if University of California, Berkley is better than
| Harvard at CS, then there you go, a state school that is
| better. The possibility certainly exists.
| gautamdivgi wrote:
| The admission departments need to be leaner - much much leaner.
| Coming from India I find American admission process ridiculously
| bloated. I mean asking an undergraduate to do an essay of what
| excites them. Interviewing an 18 year old about their plans for
| life. Seriously, I've never seen a bigger fucking waste of time.
| Run standardized tests and admit based on actual knowledge and
| ability. The rest is bullshit.
| fnordpiglet wrote:
| I'm glad my daughter doesn't have to aspire to take a grueling
| east/south asian style admissions test for her life to not be
| extreme poverty. It doesn't measure intelligence or aptitude or
| ability to conduct research, it measures the ability to take a
| high stakes test effectively. That's useless once the test has
| been taken. I have had a very successful career as a computer
| scientist, but my standardized test scores were abysmal due to
| some childhood ADD and a late in life diagnosed bipolar
| disorder (which is very common in highly intelligent people).
| While my intelligence tests consistently put me in the 99.9+
| percentile, my standardized test scores placed me pumping gas
| for a living.
|
| I'm certain my daughter will have my challenges, and I am glad
| for me, her, and all like her we didn't grow up in India.
| webmobdev wrote:
| > _It doesn't measure intelligence or aptitude or ability to
| conduct research, it measures the ability to take a high
| stakes test effectively._
|
| You are being too harsh and dismissive. These high stake
| tests often are a good indicator of certain characteristics
| and aptitude in a student. These students work hard, study
| hard with a consistent methodology to understand the subject
| of the test. They know they are competing with others and the
| rewards are high. All this requires a disciplined personality
| and aptitude (there are different kinds of intelligence). And
| most of those who succeed in this actually do well in life.
|
| Ofcourse, it doesn't mean that your criticisms against the
| current model isn't justified or without merit on some
| aspects, providing you judge it from the right perspective.
| For example, India is a developing country and our education
| system isn't looking to identify and groom the next genius.
| We don't have the resources for that. So it is currently
| aimed to create an educated working professional class from
| all sections of our society that can uplift the economy of
| the country by generating wealth and decrease the growing
| wealth gap between the rich and the poor (to create an
| egalitarian society). And what do any industry look for - a
| hard working, consistent performer, who has the capability to
| understand how a system / process works and can adapt to it
| well.
|
| That is why indians, and asians in general, are known and
| respected for their work ethics around the world in most
| industries.
|
| But yes, people like you and me would struggle in this
| system, because the system isn't designed to accommodate the
| needs of those who aren't "normal" / psychologically healthy.
| (Hopefully that will change with economical growth and
| development in education). Note though that this doesn't mean
| that students who fail to adapt to this system all
| necessarily end up as failures in life. This is where the
| social culture also comes into picture in many asian
| societies. The family and social network of person in the
| society all try to help them too, both in trying to get
| access to best education they can afford and in trying to
| professionally help someone. (A good example of this is how
| parents make sacrifices and pay for their kids education. And
| thanks to that, the majority of us with a degree enter the
| professional world debt-free. (If you are in the US, can you
| afford to pay for your daughter's education and will you?)
| It's not all black and white as you think ...
| fnordpiglet wrote:
| You are of course, correct. I think it's also an issue of
| overall scarcity and an enormous population scale for too
| few seats. It's easier to scale standardized testing vs
| assessing the person in totality.
|
| Reality is when I grew up standardized testing made or
| broke a person, and I couldn't go to school. I was lucky in
| that I had always programmed and landed a great job at
| Netscape. But Netscape was one of the first that hired
| uneducated engineers in the history of computing. Had I
| been 5 years older my life would be much different. I later
| went back to college and graduated highest honors from UIUC
| CS, but found a side door into the program owing to my
| standardized testing failures blocking the normal route
| through. Given my performance above all other students in
| my class, my standardized test scores had no correlation to
| my ultimate academic performance.
|
| Now there's more focus on the total person and that's both
| expensive, but I believe leads to overall better academic
| outcomes by selecting people individually for their ability
| to excel in the academic environment of the specific
| school.
|
| But give the sheer scale of the population applying in
| India assessing each individual is obviously on the surface
| impractical. This isn't an inditement of India or it's
| people or it's system. But it's also a tragedy. The world
| is sadly full of those.
|
| I would however hold my statement is still true if harsh.
| While high test scores may indicate an ability to work hard
| and ambition, low test scores don't indicate the opposite.
| I would argue it's more closely correlated to the ability
| to acquire funding for tutoring and a family without the
| need of your time to help the family. To your point my wife
| is from Southeast Asia and her family was extremely poor,
| but they had her siblings drop out of school and work to
| pay for her books and clothes and afford her time to study
| for the tests, which she passed top of her country. But her
| siblings paid for it with their future. I'm proud of her,
| but not of the system. Her siblings aren't failures per se,
| they just never got an opportunity.
|
| But if you have applicants >> slots and an inability to
| scale a more accurate measure, a capricious but difficult
| criteria works. But I wouldn't be particularly proud of
| that.
|
| Finally, I'd note that Asian society often doesn't have
| much of a second chance path. My wife's siblings even if
| they went back to school and were accepted wouldn't be able
| to find jobs because they followed a non traditional path.
| This is sad, and I wonder how much faster their country
| would advance if they had a less rigid job path for their
| people. How many people are disenfranchised because they
| matured slower, experienced hardships or illness, or
| weren't able to afford the costs of education yet? I'll
| betcha is a very large number.
| booleandilemma wrote:
| Since when is India a country the US should be emulating?
|
| _Run standardized tests and admit based on actual knowledge
| and ability. The rest is bullshit._
|
| Isn't that what India does, and isn't the system rife with
| cheaters?
| debacle wrote:
| I understand and mostly agree with what you're trying to say,
| but your first statement seems a bit prejudiced.
| RestlessMind wrote:
| > Isn't that what India does,
|
| Yes.
|
| > and isn't the system rife with cheaters?
|
| That's an orthogonal point. Even the American system is rife
| with cheaters, either explicit[1] or legalized cheating aka
| College Prep industry which helps you with everything
| including essays if you pay enough.
|
| So again, what is the US achieving exactly?
|
| [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Varsity_Blues_scandal
| throwaway23236 wrote:
| I feel like one is a cultural problem and one was an
| isolated incident. See my above comment on really some east
| vs west culture.
| janalsncm wrote:
| There's a larger point about institutionalized
| unfairness, though. Sure, it may have been an isolated
| incident of some students pretending to be athletes, but
| the larger question is why are athletes being given
| preferential admission to Harvard in the first place?
|
| And whatever the answer to that question is, it's going
| to require a bloated admissions department to make it
| happen.
| RestlessMind wrote:
| > an isolated incident
|
| what? US has legalized cheating in so many ways
| (athletes, college preps, dean's lists, legacies...).
| People with enough resources and/or enough motivation
| will always find a way to get what they want. US gives
| them a paved road while in the East, they have to cheat.
| When they can't find a paved road, they cheat in the West
| as well.
| pessimizer wrote:
| > I feel like one is a cultural problem and one was an
| isolated incident.
|
| I don't know you, but I'm going to guess the cultural
| problem is a problem of a culture not your own, and what
| happens in your culture is the series of isolated
| incidents.
| throwaway23236 wrote:
| I just want to say, and I hate that saying this makes me come
| off as racist because I don't want to speak about a whole
| country.
|
| I go to a pretty good American school which has a lot of
| foreigners going on visas, the majority being Indian and
| Chinese students. The group of Indian students in my under
| grad got caught cheating all together. They were just hanging
| out in discord giving each other answers.
|
| In a lot of other countries it's seen as an "Us vs The Man"
| mentality. So if you are cheating or figure out how to take
| advantage of a system you are seen as beating "The Man or The
| System" and you are smarter than it. In a lot of Western
| counties, that is not the case.
| janalsncm wrote:
| I think it's a stretch to say that test-based admission
| causes cheating in Indian university admissions. They co-
| occur, but I don't see the causal relationship.
| docandrew wrote:
| I guess when everything rides on a single test result it's
| more tempting to try and game it?
| throwaway23236 wrote:
| While you might be right on some of this. I think the colleges
| are looking for people not based on standardized tests alone.
| Most standardized tests are just rote learning and
| memorization.
|
| I would challenge that these schools are looking for people who
| think better than most people. Yes they need to be smart when
| it comes to doing school work, but they need to be more than
| that to attend an elite university.
|
| The people that go to these schools go on to be the upper-crust
| of society. They can think outside of the box and push the
| envelope of human knowledge.
|
| Can other people do that without going to these schools? Sure.
| But these schools are looking for those people.
| dbingham wrote:
| There is so much classism, elitism, and unsupported effect
| therefor cause reasoning in this comment I don't even know
| where to start with it.
|
| Which is ironic, because I am also generally against the idea
| of colleges basing their admissions solely on standardized
| tests. Those tests have their roots in the eugenics movement,
| have been shown to be deeply problematic and biased, and have
| completely failed to predict future success when you remove
| confounding factors.
|
| > I would challenge that these schools are looking for people
| who think better than most people. Yes they need to be smart
| when it comes to doing school work, but they need to be more
| than that to attend an elite university.
|
| I would argue that far more people who "think better than
| most" people come out of public schools than the "elite"
| schools. What the elite schools do very well is laundering
| the mediocrity of the upper class. (See "legacy admissions")
|
| > The people that go to these schools go on to be the upper-
| crust of society. They can think outside of the box and push
| the envelope of human knowledge.
|
| ...
|
| https://hbr.org/2020/09/graduates-of-elite-universities-
| get-...
|
| > Our results offer some solace to the traditional
| recruiters. After controlling for age, gender, and the year
| of study, we found that graduates from higher-ranked
| universities performed better, but only nominally and only on
| some dimensions of performance. Specifically, the overall
| performance improved by only 1.9% for every 1,000 positions
| in the Webometrics global university rankings. When comparing
| the performance of candidates whose universities rank further
| apart -- a graduate from a top university versus a "global
| average" university -- the performance differential jumps to
| 19%.
|
| > The 19% difference in performance between the top and the
| average seems significant, but keep in mind that this is for
| graduates from universities that are 10,000 university
| ranking positions apart. At a given organization, candidates
| are likely to be selected from within a much narrower pool,
| perhaps from universities whose rankings differ by a couple
| of hundred positions. In this more realistic case, the
| predicted difference in performance would be closer to 1%.
|
| Keep in mind, this[1] is the ranking they are using. The top
| 10 includes public universities and omits several Ivy league
| "elite" universities.
|
| [1] https://www.webometrics.info/en/world
| jimbokun wrote:
| >...and have completely failed to predict future success
| when you remove confounding factors.
|
| The research I've seen claims the opposite.
|
| https://freddiedeboer.substack.com/p/you-arent-actually-
| mad-...
| sokoloff wrote:
| > have completely failed to predict future success when you
| remove confounding factors.
|
| It seems to me that measuring/estimating the scholastic
| ability/preparedness of a prospective student has value
| independent of whether that preparedness is correlated with
| some other variables (wealth, neighborhood, childhood
| nutrition, other socioeconomic markers).
|
| "Are they prepared/do they have the aptitude to succeed
| here?" matters much more than the underlying reasons why
| they might or might not be prepared.
| elgar1212 wrote:
| > The people that go to these schools go on to be the upper-
| crust of society. They can think outside of the box and push
| the envelope of human knowledge.
|
| Yeah, kind of like SBF
|
| > I would challenge that these schools are looking for people
| who think better than most people. Yes they need to be smart
| when it comes to doing school work, but they need to be more
| than that to attend an elite university.
|
| I'd counter this and say the insistence on qualitative
| standards just opens the door for classist decision making.
| The second you allow people to introduce qualitative
| standards, it opens the door for discrimination
| throwaway23236 wrote:
| Training someone to pass a test to get in is not the same
| as finding the right person to go there. Does this open up
| the possibility of discrimination? Yes.
|
| Tell me about how many people I know who went to a CISSP
| bootcamp, passed the test, and walk around not knowing
| shit? It's the same in a lot of universities too. Elite
| universities are looking for people who fit their image and
| who they believe are going somewhere in life. Universities,
| especially universities are looking for people that are
| going places. They are looking for people who will bring
| recognition, money, and fame back to the university.
| elgar1212 wrote:
| > Tell me about how many people I know who went to a
| CISSP bootcamp, passed the test, and walk around not
| knowing shit? It's the same in a lot of universities too.
|
| So because bootcamps are an insufficient means of
| testing, standardized testing in general is inadequate?
| And not just this specific test in particular?
|
| > Training someone to pass a test to get in is not the
| same as finding the right person to go there.
|
| Only if the test is insufficient. "finding the right
| person" is just a racist, classist dog whistle from a
| group of people that feel entitled to the right to
| discriminate
|
| You want to see a living example of this entitlement?
| Listen to the audio from the recent Supreme court verbal
| argument regarding the Harvard case. Specifically the
| "oboe players" comment. Juxtapose this with the
| historical racist and antisemitic discrimination and ask
| yourself whether Harvard should be trusted to "find the
| right person" in this sort of way
| throwaway894345 wrote:
| > Most standardized tests are just rote learning and
| memorization.
|
| Most of the non-standardized test stuff is subjective and
| lends itself pretty directly to classist and racial
| prejudice. No one is arguing that standardized tests are the
| perfect way to test for aptitude, but the pro-standardized-
| test folks argue that the alternatives are significantly
| worse.
| HDThoreaun wrote:
| Harvard admissions are classist on purpose. They want to
| admit mostly upper class people because they want every
| single one of their graduates to become upper class, and
| the easiest way to do that is to start upper class.
| chinchilla2020 wrote:
| The issue with the essay system is coming up with an
| evaluation criteria that isn't completely biased and prone to
| manipulation.
|
| The essay system favors people who hire admissions
| consultants to write them, or who study the online guides
| about what types of essays get into Harvard. They also tend
| to chase sensational sob stories - the claims within those
| stories are never verified by admissions officers.
|
| I can't find the study at the moment on google, but I recall
| some work asking to end essays in admissions packages since
| it discriminates against Black and Hispanic applicants who do
| not have the background resources to write appropriate
| admissions essays.
| throwaway23236 wrote:
| You are right, it is not. I totally get that and I think we
| should work to remove bias out of the process.
|
| Maybe removing names and genders from the essays or similar
| entry requirements. There are ways to reduce bias without
| resorting to some kind of standardized test which only
| shows that they can pass a test.
|
| Elite Universities are looking for people of character,
| that could be anyone from any walk of life. But it is self-
| serving, they are looking for people who will end up
| bringing money, recognition, and fame back to the school.
| They are looking for people who want to go there, who will
| go far in life _and_ talk about how X university is where
| it all started.
|
| I get that this is a difficult topic, and I want everyone
| in the world to be a lifelong learner, reader, and more.
|
| But not everyone is built the same, that doesn't mean they
| won't go far in life. And I don't think recognizing that
| difference is racist or discriminatory. Not everyone will
| become a Harvard grad, the president, CEO of a company,
| etc. Some people are dealt a shittier hands in life and get
| less draws from the deck, we should work to fix that, but
| we shouldn't lump everyone into one basket.
| RestlessMind wrote:
| > we should work to remove bias out of the process.
|
| How would you remove the biggest bias of money? People
| with money will throw it at gaming anything used by
| college admission process.
| throwaway23236 wrote:
| Remove names, gender, race from admissions. Have a
| selection board base their decisions solely on a
| combination of transcripts and essays.
|
| I think standardized testing is gaming the system, what
| you cannot game are transcripts of life long learners who
| value their education. If you remove all gendered
| language, names, mentions of race from essays you will
| hopefully be able to make your _group_ decisions with
| less bias. The group should be diverse enough on multiple
| metrics.
|
| Will it be perfect, no. But I think it's a better start
| than what we currently have.
| tester756 wrote:
| >what you cannot game are transcripts of life long
| learners who value their education.
|
| What does it even mean?
| throwaway23236 wrote:
| I mean that seeing someone's grades over the course of
| several years is more useful then test scores.
| tester756 wrote:
| Test score is almost 100% under someone's control
| meanwhile grades are subject to bias, heavily.
|
| Grades only hint that you gave a fuck about school.
| sokoloff wrote:
| Isn't "gave a fuck about school" relevant to scoring a
| college applicant?
| criddell wrote:
| A lot of your criticisms of the essay apply to standardized
| tests as well.
| gautamdivgi wrote:
| You can make the tests harder. There can be IQ testing to
| estimate ability to handle out of box thinking. Fwiw - anyone
| able to fork out $52k/year for their child is wealthy enough
| so that the child has had enough flexibility for out of box
| thinking growing up.
|
| A lot of out of box thinking is conditioning to the
| environment. If you are taught not to have constraints your
| ability to think out of the box is much better.
| kyrra wrote:
| Can the universities prove that whatever process they have
| now (or is trying to do) is better than a pure meritocracy?
| Obviously we would need to agree on what "better" means here
| (ie: what outcomes they are measuring).
|
| The question to you is, how do you measure "needs to be more
| than that". If this isn't something that you can't quantify,
| it's just going to let administrators pick students to
| satisfy whatever the current cultural hot button issue is.
| throwaway23236 wrote:
| That is a good question. I think the university should
| decide on the "why" and base candidates off of that. And
| you are are right, much like picking a hire, a best friend,
| your spouse, there is a lot that isn't quantifiable.
|
| 4.0 student who you interview and they come off as a Jerk,
| they are smart as hell or a 3.93 student who is passionate
| about learning, wants to be there, and is a humble person.
| Which do you want affecting your school's culture?
| [deleted]
| criddell wrote:
| Harvard's freshman class is around 2000 people. They probably
| get more than that many applicants with perfect test scores.
|
| I suspect if you apply to Harvard and can point to a film you
| made with your friends that placed well in some film festival
| or have some success with your music on Spotify or have done
| some stand up comedy or painted a mural in your city or
| something else that showcases talents that are more rare than
| high grades, you have a much better chance at being accepted.
| They want an interesting and diverse freshman class. To succeed
| there academically you really don't need perfect test scores.
| There really isn't any point in focusing solely on that.
| xkcd-sucks wrote:
| The thing here is that elite universities aren't necessarily
| "best" at education in all cases, rather their value is in
| networking which makes them more like clubs/societies with an
| educational component.
| idontpost wrote:
| Loughla wrote:
| The problem is that standardized tests are more a measurement
| of access to resources and parental support than raw knowledge
| or future success. It does feel nice to say that everyone is
| equal, but not everyone has an equal chance.
|
| In theory, squishy admissions processes exist to identify those
| students who have raw potential, but may not be identified by
| standardized test scores.
|
| High school GPA and class rank are a more accurate indicator of
| success in postsecondary (but I could also argue that's really
| just a measure of how well you 'conform' to standard
| educational expectations early in life, not really how 'able to
| succeed' you are, but that's a different conversation).
| tester756 wrote:
| >The problem is that standardized tests are more a
| measurement of access to resources and parental support than
| raw knowledge or future success. It does feel nice to say
| that everyone is equal, but not everyone has an equal chance.
|
| Feel free to figure out better system.
|
| Tests while not perfect, are in my opinion at least fair and
| relatively transparent.
|
| >High school GPA and class rank are a more accurate indicator
| of success in postsecondary
|
| jesus christ - GPA. I honestly don't know any more biased
| metric than GPA.
|
| Even if GPA is better predictor of how hardworking you are,
| then I still don't care, there's too much bias in this
| metric.
|
| Standarized tests are "pure", they aren't your average not
| 100% emotionally stable teacher
| HDThoreaun wrote:
| > Feel free to figure out better system.
|
| Harvard has. It involves making students write essays and
| considering all of their accomplishments. Harvard isn't
| just looking for the smartest people. They're not looking
| for the most academically successful. They are looking for
| people who will be powerful and wealthy. Is it fair that
| harvard admits people just because their parents have money
| and power? I guess not, but they're not trying to be fair.
| They're trying to admit people who will have money and
| power.
| tester756 wrote:
| education system should have different objectives than
| "get already powerful and wealthy people and make them
| more wealthy and powerful",
|
| so I don't think that Harvard "figured it out"
| HDThoreaun wrote:
| Harvard is a private institution. You don't get to set
| their priorities.
| tester756 wrote:
| I'm not saying Harvard needs to change.
|
| I've been arguing that standardized tests are best
| available method (at scale) because they're at least fair
| and transparent.
| HDThoreaun wrote:
| What does fair mean? I'm pretty sure that harvard is
| fairly putting together the student body must likely to
| become rich and powerful. Standardized tests have very
| little impact on ones likeliness to have a successful
| business or political career.
|
| Just accepting the fastest people might be the fairest
| way to win NCAA track meets, but that isn't their goal,
| so it's not how they run admissions.
| tester756 wrote:
| >What does fair mean?
|
| For example with 0 or as little human factor as possible,
| without biases.
|
| >Standardized tests have very little impact on ones
| likeliness to have a successful business or political
| career.
|
| I'm not saying standardized tests are good proxy for
| being businessman or politician.
|
| They're fair and transparent way that allows people to
| bootstrap themselves.
|
| Even if you're poor ass, then you have access to Internet
| and can learn all those things good enough to get to the
| top schools.
| HDThoreaun wrote:
| Ok but if you're just looking for fair and transparent
| why not take the 2000 fastest 40 yard dash times in
| world? Certainly a fair and transparent way for poor
| people to bootstrap themselves into top schools.
| tester756 wrote:
| Because this is educational institution
|
| So I'm using fair and transparent metrics proxying for
| learning capabilities, knowledge (in topics related to
| degrees) , etc, etc?
| HDThoreaun wrote:
| Ah so you see my point. Using fair and transparent
| metrics that don't measure the right thing isn't useful.
| Harvard isn't looking for learning capabilities,
| knowledge (in topics related to degrees). They're looking
| for people that will be successful and accrue
| money/power.
| tester756 wrote:
| Hmm, but I've already said that
|
| >I'm not saying Harvard needs to change.
|
| >I've been arguing that standardized tests are best
| available method (at scale) because they're at least fair
| and transparent.
|
| The discussion started in this context - I replied to
| this.
|
| >The problem is that standardized tests are more a
| measurement of access to resources and parental support
| than raw knowledge or future success. It does feel nice
| to say that everyone is equal, but not everyone has an
| equal chance.
|
| I'm speaking more broadly - about the whole edu. sys.
| alistairSH wrote:
| _standardized tests are best available method (at scale)
| because they 're at least fair and transparent._
|
| Transparent, maybe. Fair? As noted above, test success is
| largely a measure of a student's access to resources and
| parental support. And the usual retort to that assertion
| is that study books are free at the library, to which I'd
| respond "if it's that easy, what is the test really
| measuring?"
|
| Anyways, the main discussion was the insane number of
| admin staff on campus. Admissions staff is only a small
| slice of that.
| tester756 wrote:
| > And the usual retort to that assertion is that study
| books are free at the library, to which I'd respond "if
| it's that easy, what is the test really measuring?"
|
| Internet and that's not very high bar. I've personally
| mostly used it when preparing for math exams.
|
| >to which I'd respond "if it's that easy, what is the
| test really measuring?"
|
| Access to informations at the level of those tests isn't
| difficult.
|
| What's being measured? how proficient you are at tested
| topics, how good your knowledge is.
|
| >Transparent, maybe. Fair? As noted above, test success
| is largely a measure of a student's access
|
| What's more fair then?
|
| Those tests are as possibly fair as we can get.
| Stephen0xFF wrote:
| Statistically speaking, GPA given how long it takes to
| accumulate, is a great metric. Also given the type of work
| you have to do from extra credit, pop quizzes, standardize
| tests, projects, group work and more, it may be a more
| rounded metric than a single test -- more in tune with
| life.
|
| Though I agree GPA is not better than standardized tests.
| It still is a very useful metric.
| jimbokun wrote:
| > The problem is that standardized tests are more a
| measurement of access to resources and parental support than
| raw knowledge or future success.
|
| But they do have predictive power for how well you'll do in
| college, independent of high school GPA and class rank.
|
| https://freddiedeboer.substack.com/p/you-arent-actually-
| mad-...
| adolph wrote:
| The latter statement leads with "But" indicating
| contradiction but does not contradict the previous
| statement. A contributing factor for college well-doing may
| also be determined by "access to resources and parental
| support." "Predictive power" sounds cool but may just be a
| statistical artifact, a tautological measure.
| paxys wrote:
| Standardized testing is the reason why India - despite its
| billion strong population and heavy cultural emphasis on
| science and engineering - is unable to produce a single ounce
| of innovation. Students are only taught rote memorization from
| primary school onwards. They spend their formative years in
| before-school and after-school coaching doing more of the same,
| all to crack that single test which will determine their future
| (and a large number are driven to suicide because of it). No
| curiosity, no outside interests, no social skills, no
| independent thought. All of these are discouraged in favor of
| memorizing equations.
|
| Institutions like Harvard, Yale, MIT, Stanford produce leaders
| and entrepreneurs. India's top engineering colleges (IITs) are
| meanwhile ranked nowhere globally, and its top graduates dream
| of getting a cushy job at Google, nothing more.
|
| There are a lot of problems with American universities, but the
| lack of entrance exams is a feature, not a bug.
| bombcar wrote:
| Schools like Stanford et al produce things like Sam Bankman-
| Fried who I cannot deny is an innovator of something.
|
| I'm not sure it's a _good_ thing, mind you.
| gautamdivgi wrote:
| You missed the Theranos founder :)
| scifibestfi wrote:
| They produce MBAs, but some of the most successful founder
| entrepreneurs drop out from those institutions. What does
| that tell you?
| vecter wrote:
| The trope about successful dropout founders just isn't
| really true. Most successful founders finished college.
| That's not to say that college is the end-all and be-all of
| life (it's barely just beginning), but let's not pretend
| that a small handful of famous dropouts makes the trend.
| mrguyorama wrote:
| Or much more importantly, most of those business founder
| dropouts had strong support systems in upper class
| families.
| [deleted]
| paxys wrote:
| It tells me that these universities have an environment
| that supports students setting up and running companies
| while still enrolled. Students being successful enough to
| drop out before graduating is a badge of honor for these
| universities. Flexibility with schedules, reduced work
| load, taking semesters off - none of these are allowed by
| Indian colleges (believe me, I went through it myself). You
| can't even pick your own subjects or class schedule. Tell
| me, what was the last success story to come out of the IIT
| entrepreneurs' club?
| eli_gottlieb wrote:
| >Standardized testing is the reason why India - despite its
| billion strong population and heavy cultural emphasis on
| science and engineering - is unable to produce a single ounce
| of innovation.
|
| Says someone whose country brain-drains Indian innovators to
| do the actual work for which nepotistic grifters from Harvard
| take the credit!
| Khelavaster wrote:
| A less insulting version of this might be accurate..
| tester756 wrote:
| I'd argue that this is money
|
| btw. did you have an opportunity to study using those two
| "approaches"?
| eklavya wrote:
| You should research a bit before you say there isn't an ounce
| of innovation from India. Very mainstream and simple example
| is UPI (google it). Tell me any system in the whole world
| which comes close in scale, ease of use and security.
|
| You are discounting Indian institutions, take a look at the
| Fortune 500 c suite list and tell me how many of them studied
| at IIT/IIM.
|
| Investment is a key requirement for enterprise. You will be
| surprised to see the startup ecosystem now since the
| investment is flowing in.
|
| I 100% agree with the asinine focus on cracking the exam and
| not anything else. But then the ROI is too good.
| geodel wrote:
| > You will be surprised to see the startup ecosystem now
| since the investment is flowing in.
|
| Do you mean copycat chumps getting bloated on Softbank
| money as example of startup innovation?
| baandam wrote:
| baandam wrote:
| gautamdivgi wrote:
| I would differ on this. It's access to capital and
| connections. For the longest time access to capital in India
| has been limited and children are expected to support parents
| in their old age. Hence, the heavy move towards the cushy job
| at google. To be fair a large cohort of IIT & IISc grads come
| to top American universities.
|
| I actually think standardized tests create more equality than
| other methods. The whole recommendation
| letter/essay/interview is an eyewash.
| paxys wrote:
| > I actually think standardized tests create more equality
| than other methods
|
| If that was actually the case then India wouldn't have a
| quota system where >50% of seats are reserved for certain
| castes and religions.
| eklavya wrote:
| To uphold equality I need to be punished for the sins of
| my fathers at least 2 generations before me. I have
| stopped complaining and my children and grandchildren
| will learn as well.
| gautamdivgi wrote:
| Those are mostly political freebies. If you have someone
| using the reservation to gain admission there is no way
| they will be able to go through with recommendation
| letters/writing essays/interviews, etc.
|
| Edit: In a way, the standardized testing made that
| inequality apparent and harder to wave your with a very
| ambiguous policy on inclusion.
| mensetmanusman wrote:
| Connections is key and related to EQ. You can memorize all
| the works of physics and be horrible at making connections
| to get stuff done in the real world.
| geodel wrote:
| > To be fair a large cohort of IIT & IISc grads come to top
| American universities.
|
| Why are they coming to American universities when IITs and
| IISC have GATE exam for post graduate courses and none of
| the ridiculous process for admission?
| gautamdivgi wrote:
| Connections and access to capital. Isn't that why people
| move or get a job, etc.? And the fact that they can
| tolerate the ridiculously low PHD stipends.
| oefrha wrote:
| Must be because they love ridiculous admission processes,
| not because American income is higher.
| idontpost wrote:
| elgar1212 wrote:
| > Students are only taught rote memorization from primary
| school onwards. They spend their formative years in before-
| school and after-school coaching doing more of the same, all
| to crack that single test which will determine their future
| (and a large number are driven to suicide because of it). No
| curiosity, no outside interests, no social skills, no
| independent thought. All of these are discouraged in favor of
| memorizing equations.
|
| You do realize that this is the same language that
| universities like Harvard use to discriminate against Asian
| Americans (and historically against Jewish people)?
|
| Reading this and knowing that you're talking about South
| Asians in particular, this comment just comes off as
| stereotypical and racist
| bachmeier wrote:
| I believe the plan is to finish the sufficiently smart compiler
| before starting on the sufficiently useful standardized test.
| slt2021 wrote:
| Why cant harvard make all administrators contractors?
|
| Surely there could be a outstaffing vendor who can provide
| contractors and move all admin staff off of payroll.
| arkj wrote:
| I was wondering what the title was alluding to, a little
| _ducking_ pointed to this,
| https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Caedite_eos._Novit_enim_Domi....
| UIUC_06 wrote:
| I had a modest proposal, and then decided to fact-check myself.
| The proposal was "Charity Navigator should do a health check on
| Harvard."
|
| Then I found they already had!
| https://www.charitynavigator.org/ein/042103580
|
| Harvard gets a 100% rating. I didn't see right off a way to
| distinguish "cost of all those administrators." Maybe they
| allocate it to the various "programs" so it's hidden?
|
| Here's their IRS 990 form for 2021, all 373 pages of it:
|
| https://apps.irs.gov/pub/epostcard/cor/042103580_202106_990_...
|
| If anyone wants to dig through all this, have a big time.
| manv1 wrote:
| There seem to be at least three universal laws of bureaucracy:
|
| 1. it's easier to hire people than to fire people
|
| 2. more budget is better than less budget
|
| 3. performance is, for the most part, irrelevant as long as the
| process is followed
|
| These three simple laws can account for pretty much all the
| issues with bureaucracies in general.
| bombcar wrote:
| "The bureaucracy is expanding to meet the needs of the
| expanding bureaucracy."
|
| You need some sort of external pressure to keep it down,
| otherwise companies and organizations end up obese.
| paxys wrote:
| 4. if you don't use up your budget you will lose it next year
| RajT88 wrote:
| I wonder what sort of structural change we'd see if there was
| executive level bounties for cost savings?
|
| For example: You get a bonus of 10% of whatever budget you
| manage to trim.
|
| You'd have to balance your greed against your desire to
| continue to have your organization function well.
| Analemma_ wrote:
| That would be a disaster. People would earn those bonuses
| with things like cutting R&D, making people work more hours
| for the same pay, and neglecting maintenance/repair, which
| all show cost savings in the short term and run the
| organization into the ground in the long run.
|
| As attractive as it is to think there's a quick-and-easy
| solution here, there is not. It requires constant vigilance
| from quality leadership to fall into neither the trap of
| bloat nor the one of foolish cost-cutting.
| margalabargala wrote:
| That would look like the mass layoffs of the sorts of
| people whose job is general preventative maintenance, or
| who are employed at higher cost due to their knowledge.
| Generally the sorts of things that reduce short term costs
| immediately, while causing much larger pain in some not-
| right-now future.
|
| For real-life examples of this, see many private equity
| buyouts.
| tester756 wrote:
| laws or observations?
| chihuahua wrote:
| Harvard keeps begging for donations from me. My policy is that as
| soon as my net worth (currently rounds to $0) is greater than
| theirs (currently > $50,000,000,000), I will start giving them
| money. But not before then.
| japaloko wrote:
| Senha
| scrubs wrote:
| Let me summarize the article another way: consumers are ill
| informed and don't have the power to leverage their spend like we
| do buying cars or groceries or tech. American healthcare is
| another one.
|
| If I was a US president I'd have five guys work full time to
| produce a consumer report on health and education so students and
| their families could assess:
|
| * Can I get a job to pay for my major at it's cost?
|
| * What am I really paying for?
|
| * What's right and wrong about the US news and report magazine
| report on university ranking which has seen several negative
| stories and notable quits lately.
|
| The first question isn't about money in the absolute sense. If
| you think you've got a Nobel prize story in you, hey, do a lit
| major and go for it. Nobody said corporate America or tech is for
| everyone.
|
| Just don't be played.
| gchallen wrote:
| I suspect headcount actually makes the situation look better than
| it actually is. A lot of administrators also get paid a pretty
| large amount--more than many faculty, sometimes a lot more. So
| administrative spend may be at ratios even higher than the 3:1
| administrator-to-faculty ratio quoted in the article.
|
| FWIW, if you're interested in doing some data analysis of
| salaries from a large public R1 institution, I've parsed and
| published publicly-available academic professional salary data
| for the University of Illinois going back 15 years:
| https://github.com/gchallen/graybooker
| cushychicken wrote:
| Byline soon to read: "Brooks B. Anderson '25 (Yale)"
| sklargh wrote:
| Don't fire them all, but coming close probably wouldn't hurt. As
| evidence I offer the below.
|
| My rural college and surroundings depended on a student-staffed
| fire department to for emergency medical services, fire-
| prevention and protection.
|
| - Because many emergencies need a quick response, volunteering
| students lived behind the fire-department in a dilapidated
| college-owned building. ~30 meters door-to-door.
|
| - Housing on-campus attached us to an administrative process.
| Volunteers registered as a special interest group focused on
| community service. This was an administrative formality to _house
| firefighters next to their fire station to protect life and
| property._
|
| - The special interest process occurred before the lottery to
| allocate block housing. I was confident that volunteers' 1K+
| hours of combined community service and recent suppression of a
| small dorm fire served as proof positive that we were a bona fide
| community service organization.
|
| - According to the student housing administrator we were not! We
| did not adequately perform (paraphrasing) on-campus education
| related to our community service and were to be housed together
| in a building several minutes instead of seconds from the fire
| station. All attempts at rational resolution were
| pointless/ineffectual.
|
| - This standoff persisted for weeks until the mayor and a trustee
| got wind of it, putting the matter to bed.
|
| Net, a campus administrator wanted to endanger thousands of
| people by arbitrarily increasing a fire department's response
| times over a (deliberately?) misguided interpretation of our
| inadequate provision of on-campus services a few weeks after we
| put out a fire in a dorm. We also started burning a mock dorm
| room on the central quad's lawn after this to amply demonstrate
| our on-campus education efforts.
| elgar1212 wrote:
| > Harvard has instead filled its halls with administrators.
| Across the University, for every academic employee there are
| approximately 1.45 administrators. When only considering faculty,
| this ratio jumps to 3.09. Harvard employs 7,024 total full-time
| administrators, only slightly fewer than the undergraduate
| population. What do they all do?
|
| Why aren't people angry about this? Why hasn't this been
| regulated away by now?
|
| Anyone who's been through the university system knows about all
| the trash emails that these people sit around writing. It's like
| that's all they do (visibly): they either sit on their asses
| writing emails or they stand on the stage for graduation day.
|
| What are these people for? Just writing emails? Why don't we just
| automate their jobs away and slice the cost of tuition?
|
| Here's what we need: legislation to cap the percentage of
| administrative staff and cap their salaries to be no higher than
| the average salary of a professor at that university
| LeifCarrotson wrote:
| > What are these people for?
|
| I consider it unsurprising that a bureaucracy gets taken over
| by bureaucrats. The rest of the faculty is too busy doing
| research and teaching classes to bother with office politics,
| climbing the ladder, and increasing staff counts at levels of
| the ladder beneath themselves. The professors consider the
| importance of their research and teaching efforts to be self-
| evident, so there's no need to waste time justifying them,
| trying to convince people that they're important or that their
| department budget should be increased.
|
| You see a similar effect in tech companies, where engineers
| building the company's product get relegated to the sidelines
| after the technology is proven or the market is captured, and
| MBAs, management, and sales become the dominant forces within
| the organization...engineering is still focused on the product,
| with their careers an issue that they assume will resolve
| itself, while the MBAs are entirely focused on their careers.
| evanelias wrote:
| As a former administrative staff member at Harvard (web
| developer in the IT department) for several years, I can't
| think of a single coworker who spent their days "just writing
| emails". This is complete and utter nonsense.
|
| The administration is responsible for the entire operation of
| the university, outside of teaching. And it's a relatively
| large university with a lot of different divisions/schools.
| There's a LOT more to "administration" than writing emails and
| standing on stage at graduation!
| AcerbicZero wrote:
| I think the bureaucracy of high education (and education in
| general) mirrors the ever growing government bureaucracy bloat.
| If the government adds 500 new regulations and a new agency to
| manage certifications for your underwater basket weaving class,
| you'll probably need some extra admin staff to handle it.
|
| Not a huge problem by itself, but do that for ~100+ years without
| cleaning things up and having a mini internal-cold war between
| the decision making populations in your country. A great recipe
| for a kafkaesque nightmare, which usually will continue to get
| worse, as each new layer of bureaucrat exists to insulate the
| layers of bureaucracy around them - not to actually deliver on a
| specific organizational goal.
| goatcode wrote:
| After having spent far too long in an academic institution, whose
| administration was the most riddled with errors, incompetence,
| and bloat that I've ever encountered, this article makes me feel
| happy. It's not an easy problem, but at least someone notices.
| anotheracctfo wrote:
| I'm in a public university IT department on the administrative
| side.
|
| If the professors would like to do admissions, then I encourage
| them to do so.
|
| If the professors would like to do budgeting, then I encourage
| them to do so.
|
| If the professors would like to do HR, then I encourage them to
| do so.
|
| If the professors would like to run the ERP, then I encourage
| them to do so.
|
| If the professors would like to run the Learning Management
| System, then I encourage them to do so.
|
| etc etc
|
| Fortunately all of the profs I've spoken to have a brain and
| understand division of labour. Which is great because I love
| working with them to build fun IT solutions that make their
| lives, and the educational experience better! If I wanted to make
| professor level money I'd work literally anywhere else.
| mbesto wrote:
| None of which is the problem the author is characterizing. FTA:
|
| _For example, last December, all Faculty of Arts and Sciences
| affiliates received an email from Dean Claudine Gay announcing
| the final report of the FAS Task Force on Visual Culture and
| Signage, a task force itself created by recommendation of the
| Presidential Task Force on Inclusion and Belonging. This task
| force was composed of 24 members: six students, nine faculty
| members, and nine administrators. The task force produced a
| 26-page report divided into seven sections, based upon a
| survey, focus groups, and 15 separate meetings with over 500
| people total. The report dedicated seven pages to its
| recommendations, which ranged from "Clarify institutional
| authority over FAS visual culture and signage" to "Create a
| dynamic program of public art in the FAS." In response to these
| recommendations, Dean Gay announced the creation of a new
| administrative post, the "FAS campus curator," and a new
| committee, the "FAS Standing Committee on Visual Culture and
| Signage."_
|
| It's about the creation of administrative positions such as the
| "Presidential Task Force on Inclusion and Belonging"
| readenough wrote:
| The author brings up some important information that is not
| always easily noticed. The university should definitely setup
| a task force to look into the matter and give the author a
| paid position on the task force.
| bArray wrote:
| I cannot speak for Harvard, but I can speak for other academic
| institutions. The bloat is very real.
|
| The weirdest thing is that lecturers are paid _only_ in terms of
| teaching students, but not for any time doing any administration
| (which there is a lot). Meanwhile, you have buildings filled with
| administrative staff, whom are hidden away, hard to contact and
| get annoyed when a form they invented is not filled out
| correctly.
|
| I think generally, as long as things are working, there is no
| real incentive to reduce bloat. My hope is that during the
| recession these institutions look to reduce the operations
| overheads from the correct places.
| ausbah wrote:
| IIRC correctly college enrollment usually increases during
| economic downturn, so bloat will at worst just go up
| runako wrote:
| > In 1986, Harvard's tuition was $10,266 ($27,914 adjusted for
| inflation). Today, Harvard's tuition is $52,659, representing an
| 89 percent increase in real cost.
|
| I'm assuming this calculation was run using a standard inflation
| adjustment. However, Harvard is in the Boston metro, which has
| experienced significantly more housing inflation than the country
| as a whole. (This matters because housing costs filter through
| the entire local economy.)
|
| Would be interesting to tease out how much of the price increase
| is a direct result of the increase in housing costs driven by the
| failure of housing policy.
|
| Edit: The St. Louis Fed has the Boston housing index increasing
| from 86.15 in January 1986 to 426.44 in July 2022. BLS's
| inflation calculator puts $86.15 of buying power in 1986 being
| equivalent to $232.88 in July 2022. So it would appear that
| housing alone could be responsible for roughly half of the
| increase. Given the increase in healthcare costs over the period,
| it would also be interesting to do a similar analysis around
| those numbers.
| projectazorian wrote:
| These arguments would have a lot less traction if more people
| were aware of the mind-numbing levels of paperwork involved in
| applying for and managing federal research grants. Not to mention
| running a hedge fund...excuse me, endowment the size of
| Harvard's.
|
| And a lot of those diversity and student affairs jobs these
| writers especially love to hate on handle things like compliance
| and risk management. Kind of important when you're running a
| highly visible and deep-pocketed organization like Harvard!
| spencerflem wrote:
| This is exactly the point! Though I agree the article misses it
| slightly.
|
| A university shouldn't be a hedge fund with professors being
| essentially PR.
|
| Writing and being denied for grants is a huge waste of time and
| resources and is a problem.
|
| The solution proposed (add a tax???) doesn't make a ton of
| sense to me, but these administratiors _are_ problematic on a
| societal level even if they make sense for the university.
| OkayPhysicist wrote:
| I disagree with the comment about endowments, to an extent.
| Endowments are critical in allowing non-profits to pursue
| their purpose. Without them, there is no level of
| independence between the non-profit and their benefactors,
| turning them into a puppet which is tied to the whims of
| external forces. With an endowment, non-profits are able to
| reject "gifts" with too many strings attached, or at the very
| least possess sufficient leverage to not be yanked around.
| Now, whether a non-profit chooses to pursue their purpose (or
| if the purpose is even a good one to begin with) is another
| matter entirely, but it's largely orthogonal.
| spencerflem wrote:
| Endowments are fine, but the purpose of the university is
| not hedge fund finance. When it comes to tough decisions,
| imo. donors should not win but neither should financial
| people. The faculty should have the final say.
| proee wrote:
| Whenever my EE professor needed to draw a wire to a "current
| sink" he would refer to it as the "Administrator's Building" and
| then proceed with a long rant about all sorts of negative things
| they burden him with.
|
| Not sure how an institution can go about cleaning up such
| inefficiencies besides going out of business, which is usually
| not an option.
| jgalt212 wrote:
| Not just Harvard...
|
| > Over the last two decades, the _number of managerial and
| professional staff that Yale employs has risen three times faster
| than the undergraduate student body_ , according to University
| financial reports.
|
| https://yaledailynews.com/blog/2021/11/10/reluctance-on-the-...
| Cupertino95014 wrote:
| https://www.youtube.com/shorts/FwVfZAZZVhk
|
| This ends in Gov. Dutton saying "You're all fired."
|
| As the Crimson says: Harvard would keep running if all the
| administrators were fired and then 10% of those now-closed jobs
| were reopened to qualified applicants: the jobs that are actually
| needed.
| noelsusman wrote:
| Cute headline, though the author quickly concedes that the
| proposal in the headline is absurd so at least there's that.
|
| The intense focus on administrative employees in universities
| mostly comes from young people confronting old, large
| institutions for the first time in their lives. They're not
| really wrong, but it's important to note that very little of the
| bloat people complain about is unique to academia, at least in a
| broad sense. Large organizations waste a lot of money. If I were
| feeling cheeky I could even argue that university bloat is a
| feature since it better prepares students for dealing with
| institutions in the real world. A lean, mean, educating machine
| wouldn't provide students the opportunity to work out their angst
| about this in a relatively consequence-free environment.
|
| >I propose that we cut the bloat. Knock on every office door and
| fire anyone who does not provide significant utility to the
| institution.
|
| It's that easy!
| spencerflem wrote:
| Bullshit Jobs by anthropology professor Graeber talks about this
| a lot, but comes to a different conclusion - that leadership for
| universities should be from Professors and that we should have a
| universal basic income so that useless administration will not be
| forced to spend 8 hours a day pretending to be useful.
| evanelias wrote:
| In my direct experience, Harvard's faculty (professors) are a
| lot more involved in the leadership of the university than at
| most universities. There's a reason Harvard's arts & sciences
| school, including the undergraduate College, is called the
| Faculty of Arts & Sciences (FAS) -- the Faculty really do have
| a lot of power there.
|
| I worked in the FAS IT department for several years in the mid-
| to-late 00's. A huge chunk of my team's projects were custom
| software solutions, necessitated by top professors being
| _extremely_ picky about random things, which prevented use of
| off-the-shelf software.
|
| Pretty much nothing in this Crimson article lines up with my
| experience. Maybe things have changed a lot since I worked
| there, but I'm skeptical.
| rhino369 wrote:
| >and that we should have a universal basic income so that
| useless administration will not be forced to spend 8 hours a
| day pretending to be useful.
|
| Or you could make able bodied people work to support
| themselves.
|
| It takes a ton of work to keep people alive and well. Society
| will find something useful for them to do.
| spencerflem wrote:
| Graeber's book talks about this in a much more interesting
| way that I can, and is very explicit about _not_ trying to be
| a book about basic income. So me adding that was a little
| editorial.
|
| But the point is that for a large variety of cultural,
| political, and economic reasons there are a lot of jobs like
| university administrators that are simply not useful but get
| paid nonetheless, in many cases much better than the people
| doing the actual work. In both public and private spaces (eg.
| Harvard, a private university).
|
| Even in tech circles we see this argument, like, why does it
| take 10,000 developers to run a website etc.
|
| I think most people want to be useful to society and have a
| meaningful job but a lot of jobs that pay well are not that.
| With UBI those admins would be able to volunteer, teach
| children, make culture, or all the other useful things that
| pay terribly.
|
| Note that these admins are already working to support
| themselves but society is still failing to find something
| useful for them.
|
| I'm happy to talk abt this more of ya think it would be
| useful to you :) Got more to say but comments are hard to fit
| nuance into
| etempleton wrote:
| The truth is, and this will be hard for a lot of people to hear
| because it goes against their preconceived ideas and this
| authors claim, is both professors and the average arm-chair
| commentator have no idea what it takes to run a university.
| They have no idea the amount of work and logistics and
| everything else that goes into the day-to-day.
| spencerflem wrote:
| The book covers this by interviewing people working those
| roles - and by and large they consider their own jobs to be
| useless.
|
| Graeber is not making these claims as an armchair expert,
| decreeing whose jobs are useless. It's an anthropological
| study of the people who themselves think they have a bullshit
| job.
|
| I'd highly recommend reading the book! It's much more nuanced
| and reasonable than any 5 sentence comment can be
| amluto wrote:
| This is not a good idea. Let people who are qualified to manage
| do the managing. There is very little about having a PhD or
| being tenured that makes one qualified to run a large
| institution.
| core-utility wrote:
| Who says that any significant portion of these administrators
| are "running a large institution?" I'd be willing to be that
| the average professor manages more people than 99% of these
| administrators.
|
| This isn't about running an institution, these administrators
| are employees through and through. They are simply employees
| sharing 1 meaningless task with several other team members
| and taking eons to complete anything.
| zdragnar wrote:
| Most administrators aren't in leadership positions, which
| is what the recommendation from bullshit jobs was about-
| not general administration positions.
| m000 wrote:
| To add to the siblings, academic leadership != management.
|
| An academic leader can easily be a bad manager. A manager
| cannot provide academic leadership.
| caned wrote:
| Professors need not administrate themselves, but school
| administration should, above all else, serve the needs of
| educators and those being educated.
| spencerflem wrote:
| exactly this, thank you
| spencerflem wrote:
| I was maybe too pithy, the book unsurprisingly goes into more
| depth (and is a good read!) - but if administration has all
| the control, they will unsurprising favor administration
| problems. Professors could hire good management if that was
| useful while keeping the goal in line with education and
| research and not administration and finance
| QuadmasterXLII wrote:
| I would like to introduce as evidence this email I just
| recieved:
|
| Dear Carolina Community:
|
| I am excited to announce that Michael Andreasen, senior vice
| president for university advancement at the University of
| Oregon, has been selected as Carolina's next vice chancellor
| for development, beginning Jan. 23. A seasoned leader,
| Andreasen believes strongly in the mission of public
| universities, and I am confident he will continue to engage
| supporters and alumni and build on our recent fundraising
| success. He will succeed David Routh, who announced in April
| he would step down at the end of the year.
|
| For the past nine years, Andreasen has overseen all aspects
| of advancement at UO, including development; state, community
| and federal affairs; advancement operations; stewardship and
| public events and alumni relations. During his tenure, he
| consistently increased annual fundraising totals and secured
| some of the largest donations to any public flagship
| university.
|
| Among his accomplishments, Andreasen helped complete a $3
| billion campaign at Oregon, raising $3.24 billion, including
| a final fiscal year fundraising performance of $867 million
| and maintained fundraising momentum through the transition of
| five university presidents. He worked in collaboration with
| campus leaders and a small team of faculty to secure two $500
| million gifts to establish and build the Knight Campus for
| Accelerating Scientific Impact and helped garner a
| transformational $425 million gift to establish the Ballmer
| Institute for Children's Behavioral Health.
|
| Andreasen began his time at UO as the vice president for
| development, leading efforts to establish campaign
| priorities, setting a working goal of $1.2 billion and
| developing a communications plan for the public launch in
| collaboration with the president, executive leadership and
| school deans. Over 12 years, he has served as a member of the
| University of Oregon Foundation Board, the Alumni Association
| Board, the Portland Business Alliance Board and the Greater
| Portland Chamber of Commerce.
|
| Prior to joining UO, Andreasen was at the University of
| Michigan for seven years - first as executive director and
| assistant dean for advancement for development and alumni
| relations and then as executive director and assistant dean
| for advancement at the Stephen M. Ross School of Business.
| His more than 32 years of fundraising experience includes
| roles in major gifts and campaign leadership at the
| University of California, Santa Barbara and the American Film
| Institute. He began his career as the director of the annual
| fund for the University of California, Irvine, where he also
| earned a Bachelor of Arts in political science.
|
| I want to thank the search committee, chaired by Rachelle
| Feldman, vice provost for enrollment, and John Montgomery,
| executive director for The Rams Club, for the time and effort
| they have devoted to this search. I'm appreciative for their
| work in identifying multiple leading candidates for this
| important role.
|
| Andreasen joins University Development at an exciting time as
| the Campaign for Carolina comes to a close, and we look to
| what's next in Carolina's future. I'm grateful to David Routh
| for serving as an incredible leader and ambassador for
| Carolina throughout his tenure. Please join me in thanking
| David and offering your congratulations to Mike as we welcome
| him to Carolina.
|
| Sincerely,
|
| Kevin M. Guskiewicz Chancellor
|
| Tell me with a straight face that that's not a God of Grift
| among Gods of Grift
| amluto wrote:
| > Tell me with a straight face that that's not a God of
| Grift among Gods of Grift
|
| What's the problem here? This person has an apparently
| excellent track record of raising money. This isn't grift!
| There would be a problem if donors got excessive benefits
| from their donations, and there appears to be a problem
| that the money is largely being spent on useless staffing,
| but at least the latter is not the vice chancellor of
| development's fault. The VC of development pulls their own
| weight.
| spencerflem wrote:
| The problem is not that the VPs don't make money (clearly
| they do, that's their point), it's that they are taking
| money and using it to make more money and the actual
| purpose of being an institution for research and
| education is lost.
|
| Having this type of person on the team isn't bad but if
| they're calling all the shots then the whole mission of
| the (non profit) university is destroyed.
| michaelhoffman wrote:
| I don't understand this comment. Are you saying that the
| university doesn't benefit from a development operation?
| That this person's listed accomplishments are not relevant
| to being hired for this role?
| 8f2ab37a-ed6c wrote:
| In tech we have the saying "we take our best engineers and
| turn them into our worst managers"
| a4a4a4a4 wrote:
| Idk about you, but the worst managers I've had were _not_
| engineers. They had no idea what the actual day-to-day of
| the projects looked like, would blindly promise deadlines,
| etc.
|
| I'm not saying that the best engineers make the best
| managers, but I don't think someone can be the best manager
| (in tech) without being at least a good engineer.
| bluGill wrote:
| Sure, but the best manages I've had have not been
| engineers. Engineers generally don't make the worst
| mistakes manages can make, but they often don't make the
| best choices all the time.
| spencerflem wrote:
| theres also the positive saying about engineering / product
| driven companies vs finance / marketing driven companies.
|
| Hard to get all nuance in a comment, but meant that
| ultimate control of direction is from the people doing the
| work, not that they necessarily were involved in the
| minutia of management
| zajio1am wrote:
| Public universities here in Czechia have academic senate,
| body of representatives elected by academics and students
| (with 1:1 - 2:1 ratio), which elects university president /
| rector and votes on university bylaws.
| elgar1212 wrote:
| > people who are qualified to manage do the managing
|
| It's very convenient that those who are "qualified to manage"
| consistently come from the same stratum of society
| nisegami wrote:
| If they "Let people who are qualified to manage do the
| managing" then they wouldn't be in this position to begin
| with.
| Aunche wrote:
| > we should have a universal basic income so that useless
| administration will not be forced to spend 8 hours a day
| pretending to be useful
|
| If the problem is that some people are being paid too much to
| do nothing, the exact opposite solution is to pay everyone too
| much to do nothing. I'd be 100% supportive of UBI if that meant
| paying everyone in the world $2 a day, but what UBI actually
| means is giving exclusive in-groups more money than the median
| global income for free. We see exactly what happens in the gulf
| oil nations like Qatar. The citizens outsource all their real
| work to an out-group that doesn't receive free money, so they
| have absolutely no incentive to improve working conditions.
| UncleMeat wrote:
| There's a difference.
|
| If you have a bullshit job you are paid _to do nothing_. If
| you have UBI you are paid _no matter what you do_. Somebody
| who has to not get fired _cannot_ do anything other than sit
| in their chair and do their bullshit job. They are actively
| removed from the pool of useful laborers. But somebody who is
| paid regardless can choose what to do. Yes, they can watch TV
| all day. But they can also do something that _isn 't
| bullshit_.
| Aunche wrote:
| There is little difference between UBI and useless college
| administration jobs or useless gulf nation oil
| administration jobs. Both jobs have high autonomy and very
| little accountability, so they already have the option to
| not do bullshit if they really want to. Many Saudis got
| paid even if they didn't even bother to show up to work and
| protested when the higher ups demanded attendance.
| Demanding attendance is even worse than letting them do
| nothing, but it does go to show that they simply had no
| expectations to begin with, and that higher ups are also
| doing nothing all day.
|
| https://www.newarab.com/opinion/saudi-workers-enraged-
| five-t....
| spencerflem wrote:
| The book covers this much better than any comment can
| (and is a breezy read!)
|
| But there is absolutely a difference, which you already
| mentioned: Seat in chair for 8 hrs.
|
| They might be spending it watching YouTube but they can't
| volunteer or start a band or do whatever they want.
|
| With UBI there is no nominal expectations so nobody does
| anti-useful things like adding paperwork to justify their
| existence.
|
| The key part of the book for me is that people really
| truly want to work and be useful. Case in point why
| people accept teaching roles despite the bad pay. Even
| more useful things like firefighters or suicide hotline
| workers people will volunteer to do for free.
|
| Jobs that are useless can't get people to stay for any
| reason other than money. In essence, it pays well
| _because_ it is useless.
|
| One option (UBI) is to pay everyone and then they do what
| they feel is most useful. People doing jobs they love
| will happily continue doing them. More people will be
| teachers or craftsmen, or artists. Jobs that suck but
| really need to get done will pay more, because the
| workers will be comparing it to doing something else and
| not to starvation.
|
| But the incentives for doing useful work are not there,
| since enough people are willing to be paid in good
| feelings instead of salary. So if not UBI _something_
| needs to change to make real useful jobs worth it
| pgwhalen wrote:
| > what UBI actually means is giving exclusive in-groups more
| money than the median global income for free. We see exactly
| what happens in the gulf oil nations like Qatar.
|
| This is interesting to me and I wanted to dig in more. You
| seem to imply that Qatar has some form of UBI, but I can't
| find any source to that effect.
| Aunche wrote:
| Qatar doesn't have UBI, but I'd argue that what they
| haven't isn't very distinguishable from UBI. Qatari
| citizens are basically guaranteed a cushy government job
| where they are free to do whatever they want. 75% of
| Qataris are employed in the public sector [1], but they
| aren't actually doing the real work. For example, even
| though Qatar Airways is owned by the government, you'd most
| likely never see a flight crew member who's actually a
| citizen of Qatar. Similar jobs exist in Saudi Arabia, but
| recently they have been transitioning to a form of UBI [2].
|
| [1] https://www.psa.gov.qa/en/statistics/Statistical%20Rele
| ases/...
|
| [2] https://www.zawya.com/en/economy/gcc/saudi-citizen-
| account-p...
| torstenvl wrote:
| I sort of agree with you, except that the problem isn't "that
| some people are being paid too much to do nothing."
|
| The problem is that some people are being paid too much to
| _be meddlesome_.
| neilv wrote:
| This piece raises points we've heard before, but I can't tell
| whether this particular act of expressing them is some kind of
| shrewd grandstanding maneuver, or a political blunder.
|
| An undergrad (first year?) Government student, fortunate enough
| to be at Harvard, writes an opinion piece, in Harvard's
| newspaper, saying that many administrators at Harvard shouldn't
| be there.
|
| If, at any point in the next three years, the student finds they
| need the assistance of an administrator, that could be awkward-
| or-worse for the student.
|
| And maybe they're not planning on trying to get accepted to
| grad/law school anywhere with administrators.
|
| > _I propose that we cut the bloat. Knock on every office door
| and fire anyone who does not provide significant utility to the
| institution._
|
| I'd expect that this level of rhetoric wouldn't play well at
| Harvard, and I'm surprised if a student there thinks it would.
|
| Maybe it's not for Harvard consumption, but auditioning for a
| Conservative internship?
| killingtime74 wrote:
| Are you suggesting newspaper writers should self-censor for
| their own self-interest?
| projectazorian wrote:
| > Maybe it's not for Harvard consumption, but auditioning for a
| Conservative internship?
|
| This. Or they're planning to drop out and get a job in the
| Thiel universe.
| mc32 wrote:
| But the protester is not wrong.
|
| Now there are all kinds of non-core administrators very
| ancillary to education whose job is to keep busy having people
| do things that are again, not core to education/academics.
|
| Yes, they should cut the fat. Yes that will eliminate make-work
| jobs. That's the whole point.
|
| Look at all these jobs and compare against admin jobs in the
| 1980s: https://www.higheredjobs.com/admin/
| neilv wrote:
| I think these questions about growth of university
| administration are already familiar political talking points.
|
| I'm more interested in the intent of a Harvard Government
| major (and nominal editor), in saying this, and in how they
| said it.
| mc32 wrote:
| Maybe they are frustrated that everyone knows this is an
| issue but it continues to grow none the less so they are
| taking it upon themselves to speak truth to power. In other
| words they want someone to take notice and take steps to
| address the issue at this center of learning and better yet
| at all centers of learning.
| spencerflem wrote:
| Given their proposed solution, I suspect you're right
|
| With that said, this is definitely a problem even to people on
| the left.
|
| Universities are now run by administrators for the purposes of
| securing more funds and less for teaching and research.
| elgar1212 wrote:
| > Maybe it's not for Harvard consumption, but auditioning for a
| Conservative internship?
|
| Or maybe the author was genuinely disturbed by the inequalities
| and racism currently being perpetuated by said administrative
| bloat, similar to how Snowden was disturbed by the behavior of
| the US government?
|
| The fact that you see this situation only in terms of personal
| gain is disturbing
| not-my-account wrote:
| Ah yes, good ol' bureaucratic retribution for questioning the
| bureaucracy. If Harvard administrators give this student a
| harder time because of the piece they wrote, aren't they
| proving the students point, to a certain extent?
|
| Also, how would this be connected to conservative ideas?
| Theoretically, liberal ideas are the ideas that are critical of
| institutions. This all seems so backwards, no?
| [deleted]
| neilv wrote:
| Conservative is how I'd expect them to self-identify, and I
| capitalized it because that seemed more diplomatic than
| putting it in quotes.
| fnordpiglet wrote:
| This would be more interesting if it were a) a new position to
| take or in any way novel, b) free of overt right wing politics.
| The point is apolitical and paying homage to trump and desantis
| distracts from a meaningful point. Why has college administration
| become so enormous? And I think the issue extends well beyond
| private schools.
|
| Perhaps we need Elon to review the college administration staffs
| code.
| inthewoods wrote:
| I like the idea of there being some requirement on student
| spending for these educational institutions to maintain their
| tax-free status. Not dissimilar from requiring insurance plans to
| spend a set percentage (say 85%) on healthcare vs.
| administration. Having said that, I'd want to game it out to see
| how the institutions would react and what it would do to prices.
|
| The other idea I like is that once an educational endowment
| reaches a certain size, all students should go for free (or it
| could be on a scale relative to endowment size) in order for the
| institution to maintain their tax-free status.
| amluto wrote:
| This does sound like a real problem, but what does taxation or a
| large endowment have to do with it? There isn't a group of
| pointy-haired trustees conspiring to waste as much money as
| possible for little benefit.
|
| The best I can come up with is that universities have enough
| money and little enough tuition price sensitivity that they
| aren't adequately pressured to cut costs.
|
| Alternatively: there is a split between universities and
| departments. Academic departments have their own budgets
| (combinations of whatever they can extract from the university,
| earmarked donations, and grants), and universities have become
| extremely adept at extracting money from grants. But the
| departments do most of the useful work! Your amazing math
| professor doesn't work for the university per se but is actually
| part of the mathematics department.
|
| So some of the problem may be a mismatch in where the money is
| and where it's needed.
| colpabar wrote:
| > There isn't a group of pointy-haired trustees conspiring to
| waste as much money as possible for little benefit.
|
| How do you know? It seems like they're "wasting" this money so
| they can point to the amount that they "had to spend" when it's
| time to collect donations, similar to what wikimedia does. To
| them, the value all these jobs provide is inflating the
| operating expenses, which means they can ask for more tax-free
| money.
| amluto wrote:
| This makes no sense to me.
|
| If I were ran a university and wanted a good story to tell my
| donors, I would tell them that I want to spend $X million
| dollars on hiring professors, improving undergraduate
| education, offering financial aid, reducing tuition, building
| genuinely useful buildings, etc. I would also want to
| optimize the actual bottom line, not the tax-free donation
| revenue earned for the hell of it.
|
| There would be absolutely no need to spend money on useless
| things just to say I spent it.
| [deleted]
| paxys wrote:
| I don't know why the public conversation is always around
| "Harvard is doing _xyz_ ". Yes it is one of the top educational
| institutions in the country, but it is also private. The number
| of administrators they have should not be your concern. Putting
| political pressure on a single elite university (or group of
| universities) admitting a thousand students per year isn't going
| to solve the country's problems with higher education.
|
| Instead redirect that anger towards your state's public
| university system. Ask your elected politicians why funding was
| cut down to zero during the 2008 recession and never restarted.
| Ask why football and basketball coaches are the highest paid
| public employees in the state and they continue to spend billions
| on stadiums, despite the fact that the sports has a negative
| return in all but the top ~5 NCAA division I programs. Ask why
| enrollment and graduation rates continue to decline while
| administration costs keep going up. Fighting the Harvard
| boogeyman isn't going to fix any of this.
|
| Your hard working kid isn't entitled to Harvard or MIT, but they
| _should_ be entitled to a seat at your local state school at a
| reasonable cost.
| schnable wrote:
| Harvard produces a big chunk of the elite that run other
| American and global institutions, and less prestigious
| universities often follow their lead. The culture there and the
| students that absorb it has disproportionate impact on the
| world.
| diydsp wrote:
| Having spent an extended time in the academic milieu in
| Cambridge, MA, another concern of mine is the extended use of
| stimulants. For personal choice, I don't much care, but in
| the context of those making the laws, I observed a definite
| tendency of students and researchers to expect Joe Random
| American to be able to output work at the same capacity as
| hopped-up administrators to be. And the end effect is
| observable: a meth epidemic among the disenfranchised. Is it
| any wonder a class of vulnerable people is created who have
| to take drugs to work the crappiest jobs because large equity
| and gaps in access to capital prevent them from ever owning a
| home? Curb stimulant use in the Ivy Leagues.
| dougmwne wrote:
| Yet they still have a tax free status so the public does have
| an interest.
| breischl wrote:
| To be fair, this article is by a Harvard student, in a Harvard
| paper. It's very much relevant in that context.
|
| But fair to ask why everyone on HN (including the two of us...)
| are reading and talking about it.
| paxys wrote:
| Yes I don't have a problem with the article itself, but more
| with everyone here sitting and debating it like they have any
| skin in the game. Harvard is a century+ older than the USA
| and has a larger endowment than the reserves of most
| countries. They will be just fine. Spend that energy towards
| your local public school instead and you may see some actual
| positive change.
| DiggyJohnson wrote:
| Because it's emblematic of an issue (or reality, if you
| prefer) that is happening at many universities.
| secabeen wrote:
| Perhaps, but co-mingling a perceived problem at Harvard
| (high nameplate tuition that few students actually pay)
| with an actual problem at public universities
| (disinvestment in higher education by state legislatures
| causing tuition increases) doesn't help the debate at all,
| it just muddies the waters.
|
| Even this article doesn't actually address the issue
| directly; it complains about excessive administrators, then
| tries to support that complaint with tuition data. Tuition
| is not the primary funding source of university
| administrators. Federal research dollars pay for a
| significant fraction (if not a majority) of them. The data
| that the author should be leveraging is expenditure data,
| not income data.
|
| This is the best aggregate dataset I have on university
| expenditures, showing a modest increase in spending on a
| per-student basis: https://nces.ed.gov/programs/digest/d20/
| tables/dt20_334.10.a...
| NovemberWhiskey wrote:
| But it's not - because, as is pointed out elsewhere, the
| amount that Harvard chooses to spend on its administration
| doesn't have much impact on how much it costs most students
| to attend, nor does it appear to compete out faculty or
| other funding.
|
| To that extent, Harvard is precisely non-emblematic of the
| issue.
| melling wrote:
| Why has college cost far outpaced inflation for the past
| 40 years?
|
| It's now at the point where people want debt forgiveness.
|
| Something is definitely wrong. And this isn't the first
| time administrative costs has come up.
|
| https://www.nationalreview.com/corner/administrative-
| bloat-i...
| bombcar wrote:
| Because one of the Prime Truths of HackerNews is "why does X
| have so many people? They could easily do it with Y instead".
| eli_gottlieb wrote:
| >Yes it is one of the top educational institutions in the
| country, but it is also private.
|
| If they're so private and immune from public feedback, why are
| they tasked with producing such an overwhelming portion of our
| political and judicial class, up to Supreme Court justices?
| NovemberWhiskey wrote:
| > _tasked_
|
| ... such a strange choice of words in this context. It 's not
| like the U.S. Government is sitting there, waiting for
| Harvard to fill its quota of Supreme Court Justices.
| MaysonL wrote:
| > Your hard working kid isn't entitled to Harvard
|
| Just remember that about 45% of Harvard's undergrads got to cut
| in line ahead of your hardworking kid because they were
| athletes, legacy admits, children of people the deans thought
| might kick in a few million, or children of Harvard faculty.
| chadash wrote:
| Because Harvard gets not-for-profit status and the associated
| tax breaks, despite having a $51B endowment that keeps growing.
| I think it's fair game to ask what our public policy should be
| for providing tax breaks to schools that horde huge amounts of
| money. On the other hand, if they didn't get tax breaks, then
| I'd agree with you that's it is none of the public's business.
| [deleted]
| lthornberry wrote:
| This is the important point. Anyone paying taxes in the US is
| subsidizing Harvard.
| rahimnathwani wrote:
| It also receives over $0.5bn per year in federal research
| grants.
| biomcgary wrote:
| Each university has a base rate that is tacked on to each
| grant (F&A) and Harvard has one of the highest overhead
| rates allowed. This means, relative to other research
| institutions, every research dollar spent at Harvard has
| more money "taxed" away for administration. What is the
| opposite for economies of scale?
| dmix wrote:
| Is this really a problem? People are obsessed with Harvard and
| not seeing the problem as general? Because I've seen these
| complaints come up tons of times without Harvard.
| HDThoreaun wrote:
| > why football and basketball coaches are the highest paid
| public employees in the state
|
| Because they're worth it. Many programs just straight up are
| profitable, but all of them contribute positively to the bottom
| line. Sports are the main way universites solicit donations
| from alumni. They make a university more popular to students by
| building school spirit. Football and basketball programs bring
| immeasurable benefits to universities.
| lumost wrote:
| University budgets are insanely complicated. I could make a
| case that the philosophy department is profitable given the
| minor grant sums it takes in if I ignore all other costs. The
| sports teams can easily hide the administrative/marketing
| costs of the program.
| ummonk wrote:
| They take in students who use taxpayer funding to pay some of
| their tuition, they get large grants for research from the
| taxpayers, and they have a massive endowment that they're able
| to invest tax-free while hardworking people are busy paying
| taxes on our investments. Wha they do is absolutely a legit
| concern for us taxpayers.
| passwordoops wrote:
| I think the focus is because as a leading institution, Harvard
| (and the rest of the Ivies) set the trend for how the rest of
| academia will organize themselves.
|
| If Harvard hired a vice-Provost of Higher Student
| Satisfactionality, well then surely Directional State U must
| have one too! So bloat in the private schools leads to bloat in
| the public as they try to keep up, with, as you mention,
| diminishing funding.
|
| Same logic applies to business - everyone in Silicon Valley was
| copying Steve Jobs' best and worst characteristics after the
| iPhone.
|
| You're argument on the state school is also spot on
| stephencanon wrote:
| It is our concern because Harvard is subsidized by our tax
| money, in the form of explicit research and teaching grant,
| student loans, and charity tax status. It is every American's
| right to ask if that money might not be spent more effectively
| elsewhere.
| neonate wrote:
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Massacre_at_B%C3%A9ziers#%22Ki...
| Der_Einzige wrote:
| Reference for the title:
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Caedite_eos._Novit_enim_Dominu....
| lsy wrote:
| Is this article bringing any new perspective to the table? I
| suspect there is a quarterly Crimson tradition of superficial
| administration-bloat-decrying by Harvard sophomores with nearly-
| parodic bylines like (in this case) "Brooks B. Anderson,
| Government concentrator in Pforzheimer House". What's missing is
| a comparison to other schools, a comparison to corporate bloat or
| lack thereof, or any reflection on the causes of the cost
| increase beyond "bureaucracy is bad". I was actually quite
| surprised to learn that Harvard tuition costs have only doubled
| in real terms over 36 years. To me that doesn't seem like a lot
| when considering the increase in demand for college education (UC
| tuition has increased 4x in the same time period). Is 2x a lot
| compared to other things? The article doesn't say, choosing
| instead to quote Josh Hawley and deride easy targets like
| inclusive signage committees.
| burkaman wrote:
| I agree, I feel like I learned nothing from this.
|
| > As I made my way to the Parking Office, I had to ask myself:
| Where did all these people come from? And do we really need
| them here?
|
| Did you? Instead of yourself, couldn't you have asked someone
| who actually knows the answer to these questions, like the
| administrators themselves, or former college presidents or
| something? Do an actual investigation and write a real article,
| not a low effort opinion piece.
|
| This is not really specific to the Crimson though, I have this
| same issue with all opinion writing and I don't understand why
| newspapers do it. I've never met someone who pays for a
| publication but would stop if it didn't have op-eds. I don't
| think it's just about outrage clicks or something, editorials
| and op-eds have been around forever so there must be some
| population that loves them for some reason.
| [deleted]
| suchire wrote:
| In SF, a similar problem in the public school district (the
| majority of the budget goes to administration, not teachers or
| schools) is in part due to tort-happy parents and a huge amount
| of regulation and compliance needs. Unfortunately, it sort of
| snowballs, because vital functions like payroll get starved of
| funding (and thus competence), and that exposes the district to
| legal troubles and liability, which further costs the district
| and starves funding from vital functions...
| dehrmann wrote:
| > Today, Harvard's tuition is $52,659, representing an 89 percent
| increase in real cost. The Harvard education is certainly not 89
| percent better than it was 36 short years ago, nor is it 89
| percent more difficult to provide.
|
| The common refrain about higher education costs is state
| governments have cut back on subsidies, so it's interesting
| seeing this stat for Harvard since it doesn't get the same level
| of state support, has an endowment, and still saw tuition double.
| etempleton wrote:
| Harvard has a pretty steep discount rate these days. People
| love to point to tuition and compare it to 30 years ago. The
| way college is priced has changed. Very few people pay full
| sticker price at Harvard anymore.
| paxys wrote:
| Harvard is need-blind (like all other Ivy League schools). If
| you are admitted and can't pay the tuition they will cover it
| 100%. In that sense a higher tuition is a good thing, since the
| elite will pay it no problem and it will be used to subsidize
| those who cannot.
| robocat wrote:
| It looks like only 20% of Harvard income comes from tuition:
| https://finance.harvard.edu/financial-overview
|
| That puts a bit of a dent in your argument.
| thfuran wrote:
| How does that put a dent in their argument?
| n4r9 wrote:
| Why is the author focusing only on the supply aspect? I would
| guess that Harvard is charging the amount that they think will
| maximise their profit. Or at least factoring that in. Isn't
| that what happens in a free market?
| janalsncm wrote:
| In that case, wouldn't cutting administration only increase
| Harvard's profits?
| kjkjadksj wrote:
| The argument for high tuition private school is to not leave
| money on the table from rich people who can afford to pay full
| price. Middle class people pay a big discount, while working
| class people don't pay anything. For a state school, you can
| have a billionaire's kid enrolled but you are only getting the
| $14k in state tuition from them and therefore might not be able
| to support many students at the bottom since you are giving a
| discount to anyone in state.
| SQueeeeeL wrote:
| The notion that there is "money on the table" is
| fundamentally flawed. Why are we building every single system
| essentially to catch whales with a cacophony of bureaucratic
| stop gaps to help "the poor" navigate this hellscape process,
| it just leads to an endless cycle of more and more loopholes
| being topped onto each other. You're basically forcing anyone
| not rich to do a boatload of extra labor. A streamlined
| process that doesn't endless sticker shock people and force
| them to grind for scholarships and financial aid while
| charging a fair price is easier on the psychology of all
| involved
| NovemberWhiskey wrote:
| Again - a problem at places _other than Harvard_ , which
| operates a need-blind approach where students will all
| automatically receive 100% of their demonstrated financial
| aid requirements.
| alistairSH wrote:
| The thing is, Harvard could very likely fully-fund
| everybody's tuition from endowment, while continuing to
| allow the endowment to grow. I can't remember where I
| read that, I'll try to find a reference this evening.
| nverno wrote:
| Malcolm Gladwell wrote about it recently, showing
| Princeton had reached that point.
|
| https://malcolmgladwell.bulletin.com/princeton-
| university-is...
| alistairSH wrote:
| The sticker price for Harvard (or any top-tier, high-endowment
| uni) is not representative of what most students will pay.
|
| 70% have aid of some sort, those with parents earning less than
| $65k/yaer generally pay very little, and majority pay the same
| or less as they would have in-state.[1]
|
| 1 - https://www.cnbc.com/2019/04/05/it-costs-78200-to-go-to-
| harv...
| nverno wrote:
| > 70% have aid of some sort
|
| And this is real reason tuition has sky-rocketed. It takes
| all of 5 minutes to fill out and qualify for a government
| loan. There is very little downward pressure on tuition, and
| the subsequent proliferation of administrators.
| zdragnar wrote:
| Harvard's status as a premium product might be harder to
| maintain if they didn't inflate their prices to stay above
| their "standard" competitors (state schools).
|
| They can maintain their elite status while heavily discounting
| tuition to those with financial need, since the very image of
| "premium product" means that there will always be people
| willing to pay for it. It is essentially a self-fulfilling
| idea.
|
| I recall visiting Harvard during a high school debate
| tournament, and being utterly unimpressed with the facilities
| compared to what I had seen at non-ivy-league schools. The
| money you pay for tuition really isn't going into a better
| education, it's maintaining the illusion that draws big names
| as both students and professors, and all the networking
| opportunities that then manifest as better outcomes for
| graduates.
| noahtallen wrote:
| Yeah, and their financial aid goes pretty far. I remember
| when I applied maybe 10 years ago or so, it would have cost
| around $5k/yr or even less. Coming from a middle-class family
| in the Midwest.
|
| They seem to make it possible for anyone to afford to go
| there. (They're just very selective about who can.) So I
| would never say they're overpriced or expensive. Maybe it
| costs a lot if you come from a rich family, but for them, the
| price doesn't matter. And for those of us who aren't rich, it
| wouldn't be expensive.
|
| This is very abnormal for non-elite private schools. If I'd
| gotten in to any of the elite schools, I think they would
| have been the cheapest options by far... even compared to
| state schools.
| jandrese wrote:
| The flipside of this is that we are talking about goddamn
| Harvard. They don't need high prices to signal that they are
| an elite school, they have a reputation that literally goes
| back centuries.
|
| Besides, the reputation of a school isn't built on its
| tuition, it is built on the alumni. The only "positive"
| signal from a high tuition is that it is a filter to reduce
| the number of poor students that your child might have to
| interact with and increase their chances of falling in with
| some other elite rich kids to fast track their way up to the
| C suite or some lucrative board seats.
| setgree wrote:
| The flipside of _that_ is that if Harvard charged $1M a
| year, they 'd still have more applicants than spots.
|
| The sticker price of Harvard is not what the median
| applicant pays. Some applicants -- e.g. Jared Kushner --
| literally do pay millions [0]. Others pay a small fraction
| of that [1].
|
| My 2c: lowering the sticker price at elite schools would be
| great because it would lower the _perceived_ barrier to
| entry. Those perceptions matter, especially to folks who
| don 't come from the Professional Managerial class and
| don't have a clear understanding of how the system works.
|
| But I also see why they don't -- they do, after all, want
| to make sure that rich families pony up.
|
| [0] https://www.propublica.org/article/the-story-behind-
| jared-ku...
|
| [1] https://college.harvard.edu/admissions/why-
| harvard/affordabi...
| jandrese wrote:
| It still raises the barrier to entry since the kids who
| can't technically afford the school now have to not only
| qualify to be accepted, but also qualify for the
| scholarship. The latter is not a guarantee.
| bombcar wrote:
| Some private schools (not sure Harvard is one) have a "if
| accepted you WILL go" rule - which boils down to pay as
| much as you can, take some (usually relatively low)
| loans, and the college will cover the rest. You may have
| to go on work-study.
|
| I think the "loans" part should be removed, myself.
| NovemberWhiskey wrote:
| I don't know about Harvard (EDIT: now I do, it's the
| same), but Yale's policy on this is that they do not
| expect students to take loans, and that the university
| will provide 100% of the demonstrated financial aid need
| for an admit.
|
| https://admissions.yale.edu/affordability-details
| mcguire wrote:
| How much weight is the word "demonstrated" carrying?
| bombcar wrote:
| Usually the hard part is the "expected FAFSA parent
| contribution". If you have children that may consider
| college, spending some time now to structure things can
| help (the FAFSA ignores some assets and counts others):
|
| https://www2.montgomeryschoolsmd.org/siteassets/schools/h
| igh...
|
| So it can be strangely worthwhile to sell all your non-
| retirement investments and buy the biggest house you can
| find.
| bombcar wrote:
| Yep, things like this is why I would counsel students to
| either aim _very high_ or affordable. The middle-ground
| is where you can get eaten alive.
| vineyardmike wrote:
| +1, I attended a relatively endowment-rich private "top
| school" (not Harvard) and every other student I knew said
| "it was by far the cheapest school i was accepted to!"
|
| Everyone I knew from high school that attended private
| schools, or "good schools" out of state paid out the nose
| (or their family did). I grew up in a relatively affluent
| area, so most people didn't get much aid. My family could
| afford to pay for my schooling too, but I had one of the
| lowest bill of anyone, excluding some in-state public
| schools, because private schools with big endowments
| heavily subsidize almost all students that aren't rich
| foreigners, 1%er kids, GI bill/someone-else-pays
| attendants.
|
| TLDR: Schools know who can write a blank check, and they
| set the sticker price based on those students. Everyone
| else is subsidized.
| chrisBob wrote:
| Princeton does the same thing. Ivy League schools are
| cheeper than state schools for some students.
|
| I think this is the correct route. I don't see anything
| wrong with wealthy families paying a high sticker price
| as long as admissions is mostly need-blind, and students
| with less resources get a break.
| bwestergard wrote:
| "The flipside of this is that we are talking about goddamn
| Harvard. They don't need high prices to signal that they
| are an elite school, they have a reputation that literally
| goes back centuries."
|
| Is this true? My understanding is that Harvard was a
| finishing school for much of its history. It only began to
| transform into a world class research university on the
| German model after WWI.
| bluGill wrote:
| Remember though that if you are a smart poor person (here
| poor means not filthy rich) Harvard will give you a
| discount on tuition. I'm not sure how much or how it works,
| but I'm under the impression that only a tiny minority
| actually pay the full price.
| dehrmann wrote:
| Some pay more than the full price. Look up the "Dean's
| Interest List."
| jandrese wrote:
| I'm not sure I'd spin this as a good thing. Smells a lot
| like "kid get surprisingly good grades after parents buy
| a new wing on the law building".
| OkayPhysicist wrote:
| It subsidizes everyone else's tuition, and is a critical
| piece of the value proposition for privates schools:
| access. By subsidizing the the poor-but-outstanding with
| money from the still-accepted rich-but-dumb, they
| maintain the opportunity for those two groups to
| intermingle, granting access to networks that that poorer
| students would be able to break into otherwise, which the
| rich also benefit from in the form of having known-
| competent individuals in their network.
|
| That's the primary reason to go to private school. That's
| what justifies the 2-4x price gap with public
| universities. All the niceties (not having to enter into
| a bi-yearly battle royal for seats in limited space
| classes, not having to put up with overly impacted class
| sizes, other little luxuries) are just there to maintain
| the appearance of prestige. The actual value comes from
| the admissions department.
| vineyardmike wrote:
| > they maintain the opportunity for those two groups to
| intermingle, granting access to networks that that poorer
| students would be able to break into otherwise, which the
| rich also benefit from in the form of having known-
| competent individuals in their network.
|
| I went to a private school and I saw a lot of friend
| groups and social structures that find ways to limit
| those networks to "rich and competent" instead of "just
| competent".
|
| Eg Fraternal organizations (bonus: also gender limited)
| like fraternities, finals clubs, or supper clubs with
| massive fees and tight cultures are one big common
| example. I was (embarrassingly) in such a club and there
| was definitely a riff between incomes ("wanna fly to New
| Orleans for Mardi Gras this week, we'll only miss a few
| days of class?")
|
| Obviously spring break trips or not having to work a
| campus job. Eg Yacht week.
|
| Also: expensive clubs with extra dues, equipment
|
| A big thing that I didn't expect, but is something that
| IMO schools don't do a good job to address is that many
| lower-income students just don't understand that sort of
| academic world because no one taught them. Eg I met a
| freshman student who thought professors _wanted him to
| fail_ and that there was an adversarial relationship.
| Furthermore, he thought _office hours are when the
| professors shouldn't be disturbed_. Once someone just
| explained that professors want you to succeed and hold
| office hours to help you succeed, he became more
| successful, less stressed, and spent less time studying
| alone. My parents taught me all this, and my high school
| held office hours... but many students never learn how
| this world works!
| perfecthjrjth wrote:
| There are people out there who don't mind paying $200k per
| annum to get admitted to Harvard (for undergrad, of course).
| So, it is not about their prices, but their exclusivity.
| People go to Harvard, because Harvard recruits kids of uber
| wealthy, kids of powerful politicians--basically kids of the
| power, of the uber wealth. It is a self-perpetuating machine,
| which creates misery of everyone, because this machine
| produces the elite and the secretaries for the elite--thereby
| colluding among each other to the detriment of everyone else.
| carom wrote:
| >The common refrain about higher education costs is state
| governments have cut back on subsidies
|
| I have only ever heard that it was the availability of non
| dismissible loans that inflated the price.
| BitwiseFool wrote:
| I'm struggling to find the article, mainly because Google is
| fixating on the generic terms of my search. But, university
| endowments are effectively hedge funds with a non-profit
| status. A lawsuit sometime either in the late 80's or early
| 90's challenged this, and the university successfully argued
| that because of how much scholarship money they issue they
| should continue to be considered a non-profit. In particular,
| the ratio of students on tuition assistance was cited as
| justification. That established a precedent where universities
| are incentivized to continually raise tuition while
| simultaneously appearing to give out more financial aid.
|
| Be warned, though, I may be misremembering. So please do
| correct me if I am wrong.
| cmh89 wrote:
| If you think that's bad, look into 'non-profit' hospitals.
| They make money like its going out of style and get amazing
| tax breaks
| alistairSH wrote:
| If we remove non-profit status for unis, can we do the same
| for religious enterprises?
| nemothekid wrote:
| I remember this article as well, it was probably on HN, and I
| can't find it. I think the university in question was MIT and
| the complaint that was even though MIT gave very generous
| scholarships due to this ruling they had to increase tuition
| every year to balance out the numbers. Funnily enough I've
| also been looking for that article for years now.
| nonameiguess wrote:
| As long as it is used to fund the school and individual
| people don't own the money and withdraw funds into their
| personal accounts, it _is_ a non-profit. Not all non-profits
| need to have a charitable purpose to qualify. PACs,
| campaigns, and political parties themselves are non-profits.
| University athletic departments are non-profits. The NCAA and
| all other amateur sports leagues are non-profits.
|
| I'm not at all arguing in favor of this or saying it is moral
| that these organizations should be tax-exempt, but this is
| the current status of American tax law.
|
| This is particularly bad when you consider that it is
| entirely legal for, say, a political campaign to spend most
| of its money buying a candidate's books that nobody else buys
| in order to hand them out for free at rallies, or a church to
| spend most of its money buying a mansion and private jet
| fleet for the pastor.
| jp57 wrote:
| But in fact, every student pays a different amount.
|
| The very high sticker price of tuition exists to let the
| schools charge each student a customized price by applying
| discounts (e.g. scholarships and aid) as they choose. They can
| compete for students this way. The most desirable students (by
| whatever criteria the school has chosen) are offered more
| discounts.
|
| This system operates at every level. A student of medium-high
| desirability, say a well-off white kid with good-but-not-great
| grades, might be offered discounts from a less well known
| regional school, but not from a nationally recognized school,
| even if her family can afford to pay full fare anywhere.
| adolph wrote:
| Wow, very similar to healthcare. Sounds like efficient price
| discrimination suitable for well educated consumers. It's a
| mystery student loan forgiveness was a thing if nobody pays
| sticker.
___________________________________________________________________
(page generated 2022-12-02 23:01 UTC)