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The comments below raise some good points, I'm not going to argue against that. Still, it is remarkable the difference in the Ivy and Public reading lists no? T

by podiki 6y ago

The comments below raise some good points, I'm not going to argue against that. Still, it is remarkable the difference in the Ivy and Public reading lists no? The structure of most societies and power hierarchy I think is still very much in that Hobbesian legacy. As a note, I didn't read Imagined Communities, I will have to take a look. We read the classic counterpoint, Rousseau. I didn't mean this to sound anti-elitist (after all, I went to those very same institutions and still run in that world), but nonetheless there is a huge disparity in the opportunities available and where students end up coming out of these places. That their reading lists differ so much from the majority of college students is something worth investigating, at the very least to see what can be improved in any educational trajectory.

allturtles 6y ago
I think the distinction between public and ivy here may be data noise. If you scroll down to the chart that compares ivies and public by subject, you'll see that in political science courses, Leviathan is the most assigned book in both public and elite colleges, but there are ~250 instances for ivy and < 100 for public. So for some reason there are lots more political science syllabi in the Ivy data set than the public one, which would skew the overall results. TBH, though, I can't really make any sense of this data. The overall result says that Leviathan appears just over 200 times overall at Ivies (i.e. fewer times than in Ivy poli sci syllabi). And for most assigned business books, "Asking the Right Questions" appears 450 times, which should put it at the top overall, but it doesn't appear in the top 10.
- podiki 6y ago
  Hmm...interesting. I'm not sure how the data reflects things like a core curriculum (where I read a lot of these) which is a general requirement...or maybe looks at the classes themselves which may be in one department or another. This could be further confused with common requirements being taught by professors in different fields, and so their syllabi might be classified differently? Curious. Edit: the best way to investigate would be if it is all weighted by number of students or something, though that might be tough to do.

by podiki 6y ago

allturtles 6y ago

I think the distinction between public and ivy here may be data noise. If you scroll down to the chart that compares ivies and public by subject, you'll see that in political science courses, Leviathan is the most assigned book in both public and elite colleges, but there are ~250 instances for ivy and < 100 for public. So for some reason there are lots more political science syllabi in the Ivy data set than the public one, which would skew the overall results. TBH, though, I can't really make any sense of this data. The overall result says that Leviathan appears just over 200 times overall at Ivies (i.e. fewer times than in Ivy poli sci syllabi). And for most assigned business books, "Asking the Right Questions" appears 450 times, which should put it at the top overall, but it doesn't appear in the top 10.

podiki 6y ago
Hmm...interesting. I'm not sure how the data reflects things like a core curriculum (where I read a lot of these) which is a general requirement...or maybe looks at the classes themselves which may be in one department or another. This could be further confused with common requirements being taught by professors in different fields, and so their syllabi might be classified differently? Curious. Edit: the best way to investigate would be if it is all weighted by number of students or something, though that might be tough to do.