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Respectfully, this is not the crux of the article. The article is an examination of American cultural beliefs about meritocracy, our systems of meritocracy, an

Respectfully, this is not the crux of the article. The article is an examination of American cultural beliefs about meritocracy, our systems of meritocracy, and relevant societal effects. In my opinion this quote is more representative of the “crux” of this particular piece, “A social and economic order based on the immense labor incomes of extravagantly educated workers traps high-achieving students in a pitiless competition to attain meaningless superiority. The more completely people embrace education’s competitive face, the further they retreat from its deeper place in human self-actualization; no matter how skilled they get at capturing status, they never acquire a deep self-knowledge. And in this sense they remain forever uneducated.” But I actually think that there’s quite a bit here and in Markovits’s other work. If you have a chance to take a break from your compiler work, I recommend a lecture he does called “The Meritocracy Trap” and perhaps also his conversation with Glenn Loury.

WalterBright 5y ago
I admit to being biased against articles about higher education that are dismissive of Science and Engineering majors. They don't understand the contributions of such to modern society. They talk about art, but isn't a cell phone a work of art? Isn't a Saturn V a work of art? Isn't knowledge of how stars work amazing? What could be more beautiful than Yosemite? I recall a quote (can't remember where it came from): "A scientist would fearlessly peer into the Gates of Hell if he thought it would advance his knowledge." I felt I was learning the keys to the universe in college. And besides, I don't see much elitism in S&E professions based on the college. Employers don't care if you hail from MIT or UW if you can get s*t done.
- GPerson 5y ago
  “I felt I was learning the keys to the universe in college.” I am currently pursuing a PhD in mathematics and studied computer science and mathematics in college, so I certainly don’t intend to disparage science majors, but I have a vague sense that attitudes about engineering degrees are different nowadays. Out of interest I recently sat in on a graduate class which was supposed to be about complexity theory. On the first day the professor, who is an expert in the field, essentially told us “Complexity theory is trivial, you have a problem and you reduce it to another problem with an algorithm. Now, let me tell you what you have to do to get a software job at Amazon... You have to submit a paper every other semester to such and such conference etc...” Whereas I wanted to read through the Knuth books, and learn compiler theory, and learn category theory and algebraic geometry etc..., but the climate didn’t seem to support that; outside of a small group of friends I found (and the math graduate students). The climate felt like what this guy’s YouTube channel projects: https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=27C-TuJceeI https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=27C-TuJceeI My friends at a different major public technical university bragged about attending career fairs and studying for coding interviews. It just feels almost devoid of what I imagined the academic spirit to be.
  - WalterBright 5y ago
    I know what you mean. It seems that STEM these days is loaded up with people who are in it only for the money. Back when I went to college, there was no such thing as billionaire engineers and scientists. STEM people were "nerds" and did not have nearly the status that doctors and lawyers did. People who went into STEM went into it with full knowledge that it was a low status profession. There were jokes about moms being bitterly disappointed that their progeny wanted to be nerds rather than doctors or lawyers. I remember once a young lady trying to pick me up. She got around eventually asking me what I did for a living, and I said programming. Her interest evaporated the moment as that word left my mouth. (Her face and posture fell and she turned away.) "Almost Live" relentlessly mocked engineers as being nerds and unable to get dates. This all underwent a titanic shift once tech people suddenly started being billionaires and media darlings.

WalterBright 5y ago

I admit to being biased against articles about higher education that are dismissive of Science and Engineering majors. They don't understand the contributions of such to modern society. They talk about art, but isn't a cell phone a work of art? Isn't a Saturn V a work of art? Isn't knowledge of how stars work amazing? What could be more beautiful than Yosemite? I recall a quote (can't remember where it came from): "A scientist would fearlessly peer into the Gates of Hell if he thought it would advance his knowledge." I felt I was learning the keys to the universe in college. And besides, I don't see much elitism in S&E professions based on the college. Employers don't care if you hail from MIT or UW if you can get s*t done.

GPerson 5y ago
“I felt I was learning the keys to the universe in college.” I am currently pursuing a PhD in mathematics and studied computer science and mathematics in college, so I certainly don’t intend to disparage science majors, but I have a vague sense that attitudes about engineering degrees are different nowadays. Out of interest I recently sat in on a graduate class which was supposed to be about complexity theory. On the first day the professor, who is an expert in the field, essentially told us “Complexity theory is trivial, you have a problem and you reduce it to another problem with an algorithm. Now, let me tell you what you have to do to get a software job at Amazon... You have to submit a paper every other semester to such and such conference etc...” Whereas I wanted to read through the Knuth books, and learn compiler theory, and learn category theory and algebraic geometry etc..., but the climate didn’t seem to support that; outside of a small group of friends I found (and the math graduate students). The climate felt like what this guy’s YouTube channel projects: https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=27C-TuJceeI https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=27C-TuJceeI My friends at a different major public technical university bragged about attending career fairs and studying for coding interviews. It just feels almost devoid of what I imagined the academic spirit to be.
- WalterBright 5y ago
  I know what you mean. It seems that STEM these days is loaded up with people who are in it only for the money. Back when I went to college, there was no such thing as billionaire engineers and scientists. STEM people were "nerds" and did not have nearly the status that doctors and lawyers did. People who went into STEM went into it with full knowledge that it was a low status profession. There were jokes about moms being bitterly disappointed that their progeny wanted to be nerds rather than doctors or lawyers. I remember once a young lady trying to pick me up. She got around eventually asking me what I did for a living, and I said programming. Her interest evaporated the moment as that word left my mouth. (Her face and posture fell and she turned away.) "Almost Live" relentlessly mocked engineers as being nerds and unable to get dates. This all underwent a titanic shift once tech people suddenly started being billionaires and media darlings.