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Frankly, Thiel's rhetorical "Why aren't there 100 Harvard franchises?" question is a reasonable one to ask. By its own admission, Harvard turns down hundreds --

Frankly, Thiel's rhetorical "Why aren't there 100 Harvard franchises?" question is a reasonable one to ask. By its own admission, Harvard turns down hundreds -- maybe even thousands -- of students each year who are qualified to attend Harvard. There simply isn't enough space, and at the highest tiers, it becomes a crapshoot. Kid A and Kid B could be equally qualified, and both could have made it through the gauntlet and down to the wire, but Kid B wins out in the end through a process verging on picking straws. For the rest of his life, Kid B is "Harvard-educated," while Kid A is deemed by many folks in society to be Kid B's intellectual inferior. But what if Harvard had enough capacity to admit everyone who met its admissions standards? It's a question worth asking. Would Harvard cease to be "Harvard" if that were the case? Thiel's point is that it would -- which is indicative of a problem with our valuation of Harvard. Be that as it may, your overall point is sound. Harvard may have some mystique baked into its valuation, but most of us still hold the valuation -- mystique and all -- in high esteem. We accept it at face value. So long as we continue to do so, the bubble stays afloat. In order to test Thiel's thesis, we'd have to go a step further and ask ourselves: what would, in theory, cause the bubble to pop? What would it take? Given that this bubble (for lack of a better word) has been propped up for hundreds of years, and is still going strong, what straw would break the camel's back? I'd argue that it's Stanford. Or, rather, everything the proverbial Stanford represents: Silicon Valley, something approaching new-money meritocracy, and so forth. If enough Stanfords emerge across the world, suddenly the time-honored value of the Harvard degree seems less shiny than it once was. [Interestingly enough, Harvard does a pretty darned good job at being a Stanford, too. But, for the set of Harvard attendees who are there to collect the credential and not to start up a company, the value of that credential-qua-credential would decrease in a bubble-deflating scenario].

numeromancer 16y ago
There simply isn't enough space, and at the highest tiers, it becomes a crapshoot... ...to which the rich bring weighted dice.
- jonnathanson 16y ago
  Interestingly, I would argue that we've got two oppositional forces at play in today's admissions game: 1) Seldom before in recent American history has it been easier for a well-qualified, but SES-disadvantaged student to gain admission to Harvard. 2) Seldom before in recent American history has it been harder for an SES-disadvantated student to become well-qualified to gain admission to Harvard. Once you've reached the admissions gates, so to speak, your merit is a better calling card today than it ever has been. But getting there is becoming tougher and tougher, thanks to a chronically deteriorating public education system and increasingly costly college-preparatory mechanisms. It is commonly assumed that the rich receive advantages at the gate. Rather, they've been receiving advantages throughout their lives that increase their likelihood of getting to the gate in the first place. It's a subtle, but important distinction.
  - gammarator 16y ago
    1) Right. Harvard is effectively free for families making <$60k/year (http://www.fao.fas.harvard.edu/icb/icb.do http://www.fao.fas.harvard.edu/icb/icb.do)
random42 16y ago
> But what if Harvard had enough capacity to admit everyone who met its admissions standards? What if the admission criteria is top n candidates? (not top n % of the candidates, mind you), which is very likely (and valid criteria for Top Schools, with legacy/brand to defend, limited/finite resources/talent pool, which would not scale lineary, IMO)
- jonnathanson 16y ago
  Such a system would actually work out to be more exclusionary if the size of the application pool increases year over year (which, in praxis, it has been). At least a percentage-based system scales up with the size of the application group. A fixed class size does not. For what it's worth, as well, I'm pretty sure that your system is the one actually being used. I would imagine -- but do not know for certain -- that schools like Harvard try to keep class sizes relatively fixed. It's not that their policy is to admit n% of all applicants, but rather, that their policy is to admit n students, and the size of the pool feeding into n keeps going up. Indices, rankings, and people commonly report only the percentage. But the percentage is an output of the system and not an input.
- michaelochurch 16y ago
  Harvard's minimal admissions standards are very low compared to the actual difficulty of getting in. Harvard invented the SAT with the idea in mind that 550 meant "probably sufficient to be admitted to Harvard" and 600 meant "conclusively good enough". Re-centering changed the numbers a bit: it's a difference of about 80 points on the verbal (i.e. a 700 now would have been 620 then). So, 1280 (or 1920 on the 2400 scale) is conclusively smart enough to attend Harvard. And the average student with a 1280, while he's not going to be an academic star, is good enough to pass through Harvard with acceptable grades. However, if Harvard dropped its admissions criteria to that level, it'd be forced to take in several times as many students as it does. Consequently, you're not getting in with a 1250-1400 unless your parents are very well-established. I don't think it's worth it for people to get bent out of shape about the difficulty of getting into elite colleges. It's just supply and demand. There's nothing personal about it, and the idea that bleary-eyed admissions officers making quick judgments at 7:45 pm after a string of 14-hour days can make meaningfully "holisitic" assessments of a person's character and future prospects for success, well... that's just laughable. Besides, an elite degree may have made a person set for life at one time, but that era ended a long time ago.
kami8845 16y ago
>"Why aren't there 100 Harvard franchises?" Demand and supply. If you flood the market with Harvard graduates their perceived value goes down. The same reason why limited editions exist.
aothman 16y ago
"Proverbial Stanford" coincides a great deal with "Proverbial Harvard" - both are wealthy private schools that admit the very best students and have society's bias towards the well-to-do sons of well-to-do fathers. If you're looking for a school to contrast with Harvard, Stanford is a poor choice. Furthermore, actual Stanford isn't doing any damage to actual Harvard. The data I've found suggest that 70+ or 80+% of undergrads admitted to both Harvard and Stanford pick Harvard. Sources: http://college.mychances.net/college/tools/college-cross-admit-comparison.php?compare=Harvard+University&with=Stanford http://college.mychances.net/college/tools/college-cross-adm... http://mathacle.blogspot.com/2008/06/harvard-yale-princeton-and-stanford.html http://mathacle.blogspot.com/2008/06/harvard-yale-princeton-...
- jonnathanson 16y ago
  All analogies are imperfect, but I chose Stanford for the specific reason that it's been at the forefront of perhaps the greatest semi-meritocratic* drive in modern American history: the high-tech industry. I very much meant the "proverbial" Stanford when I used Stanford in this example. I meant the Stanford of the movement Stanford has helped to shepherd -- the Stanford that exists in popular consciousness, regardless of how removed that perception may be from the reality of the school. *I must use the "semi-" qualifier here because, as we all seem to agree, there's no such thing as a true meritocracy. The wealthy have advantages throughout life that maximize the chances of generating a meritorious CV.
- deleted 16y ago
  [deleted]
freshfunk 16y ago
I don't see this bubble popping any time soon (the next 10 years) but I do think the availability of knowledge will have a lifting-of-all-boats effect. While the latter may happen, I believe the level of increased knowledge will happen at the entry/lower levels and not have an immediate effect on the top-end.
Goladus 16y ago
"Why aren't there 100 Harvard franchises?" is reasonable to ask, but is also largely a red herring, irrelevant as an indicator of a bubble. The total market impact of the tuition paid by Harvard College students might number in the tens of millions, while student loan debt in the US is measured in billions. The answer to the question is that what makes Harvard Harvard cannot be franchised. You can't franchise the interpersonal interaction with dozens of the highest quality professors and postdocs in the world. You can't franchise Cambridge and Harvard Square. You can't franchise the interaction with the other students. To the extent that the education and experience can be imitated, they already are, at hundreds of Universities in the US and around the world. But again, the whole question is a diversion. The core question is whether the higher education purchased by millions of students every year is worth the investment, not whether Harvard or any of a select few Ivy League schools is worth it.

numeromancer 16y ago

There simply isn't enough space, and at the highest tiers, it becomes a crapshoot... ...to which the rich bring weighted dice.

jonnathanson 16y ago
Interestingly, I would argue that we've got two oppositional forces at play in today's admissions game: 1) Seldom before in recent American history has it been easier for a well-qualified, but SES-disadvantaged student to gain admission to Harvard. 2) Seldom before in recent American history has it been harder for an SES-disadvantated student to become well-qualified to gain admission to Harvard. Once you've reached the admissions gates, so to speak, your merit is a better calling card today than it ever has been. But getting there is becoming tougher and tougher, thanks to a chronically deteriorating public education system and increasingly costly college-preparatory mechanisms. It is commonly assumed that the rich receive advantages at the gate. Rather, they've been receiving advantages throughout their lives that increase their likelihood of getting to the gate in the first place. It's a subtle, but important distinction.
- gammarator 16y ago
  1) Right. Harvard is effectively free for families making <$60k/year (http://www.fao.fas.harvard.edu/icb/icb.do http://www.fao.fas.harvard.edu/icb/icb.do)

random42 16y ago

> But what if Harvard had enough capacity to admit everyone who met its admissions standards? What if the admission criteria is top n candidates? (not top n % of the candidates, mind you), which is very likely (and valid criteria for Top Schools, with legacy/brand to defend, limited/finite resources/talent pool, which would not scale lineary, IMO)

jonnathanson 16y ago
Such a system would actually work out to be more exclusionary if the size of the application pool increases year over year (which, in praxis, it has been). At least a percentage-based system scales up with the size of the application group. A fixed class size does not. For what it's worth, as well, I'm pretty sure that your system is the one actually being used. I would imagine -- but do not know for certain -- that schools like Harvard try to keep class sizes relatively fixed. It's not that their policy is to admit n% of all applicants, but rather, that their policy is to admit n students, and the size of the pool feeding into n keeps going up. Indices, rankings, and people commonly report only the percentage. But the percentage is an output of the system and not an input.
michaelochurch 16y ago
Harvard's minimal admissions standards are very low compared to the actual difficulty of getting in. Harvard invented the SAT with the idea in mind that 550 meant "probably sufficient to be admitted to Harvard" and 600 meant "conclusively good enough". Re-centering changed the numbers a bit: it's a difference of about 80 points on the verbal (i.e. a 700 now would have been 620 then). So, 1280 (or 1920 on the 2400 scale) is conclusively smart enough to attend Harvard. And the average student with a 1280, while he's not going to be an academic star, is good enough to pass through Harvard with acceptable grades. However, if Harvard dropped its admissions criteria to that level, it'd be forced to take in several times as many students as it does. Consequently, you're not getting in with a 1250-1400 unless your parents are very well-established. I don't think it's worth it for people to get bent out of shape about the difficulty of getting into elite colleges. It's just supply and demand. There's nothing personal about it, and the idea that bleary-eyed admissions officers making quick judgments at 7:45 pm after a string of 14-hour days can make meaningfully "holisitic" assessments of a person's character and future prospects for success, well... that's just laughable. Besides, an elite degree may have made a person set for life at one time, but that era ended a long time ago.

kami8845 16y ago

>"Why aren't there 100 Harvard franchises?" Demand and supply. If you flood the market with Harvard graduates their perceived value goes down. The same reason why limited editions exist.

aothman 16y ago

"Proverbial Stanford" coincides a great deal with "Proverbial Harvard" - both are wealthy private schools that admit the very best students and have society's bias towards the well-to-do sons of well-to-do fathers. If you're looking for a school to contrast with Harvard, Stanford is a poor choice. Furthermore, actual Stanford isn't doing any damage to actual Harvard. The data I've found suggest that 70+ or 80+% of undergrads admitted to both Harvard and Stanford pick Harvard. Sources: http://college.mychances.net/college/tools/college-cross-admit-comparison.php?compare=Harvard+University&with=Stanford http://college.mychances.net/college/tools/college-cross-adm... http://mathacle.blogspot.com/2008/06/harvard-yale-princeton-and-stanford.html http://mathacle.blogspot.com/2008/06/harvard-yale-princeton-...

jonnathanson 16y ago
All analogies are imperfect, but I chose Stanford for the specific reason that it's been at the forefront of perhaps the greatest semi-meritocratic* drive in modern American history: the high-tech industry. I very much meant the "proverbial" Stanford when I used Stanford in this example. I meant the Stanford of the movement Stanford has helped to shepherd -- the Stanford that exists in popular consciousness, regardless of how removed that perception may be from the reality of the school. *I must use the "semi-" qualifier here because, as we all seem to agree, there's no such thing as a true meritocracy. The wealthy have advantages throughout life that maximize the chances of generating a meritorious CV.
deleted 16y ago
[deleted]

freshfunk 16y ago

I don't see this bubble popping any time soon (the next 10 years) but I do think the availability of knowledge will have a lifting-of-all-boats effect. While the latter may happen, I believe the level of increased knowledge will happen at the entry/lower levels and not have an immediate effect on the top-end.

Goladus 16y ago

"Why aren't there 100 Harvard franchises?" is reasonable to ask, but is also largely a red herring, irrelevant as an indicator of a bubble. The total market impact of the tuition paid by Harvard College students might number in the tens of millions, while student loan debt in the US is measured in billions. The answer to the question is that what makes Harvard Harvard cannot be franchised. You can't franchise the interpersonal interaction with dozens of the highest quality professors and postdocs in the world. You can't franchise Cambridge and Harvard Square. You can't franchise the interaction with the other students. To the extent that the education and experience can be imitated, they already are, at hundreds of Universities in the US and around the world. But again, the whole question is a diversion. The core question is whether the higher education purchased by millions of students every year is worth the investment, not whether Harvard or any of a select few Ivy League schools is worth it.