4 ms·

I believe the gap between private schools and public schools, because I've seen it (a good friend of mine had to repeat a grade coming from his rich-area public

I believe the gap between private schools and public schools, because I've seen it (a good friend of mine had to repeat a grade coming from his rich-area public school to our private school). But is there any evidence of a gap in instructional quality between (eg) Eton and upper-middle-class private schools? I don't know a ton about the topic, but this would be pretty surprising given my current low-confidence understanding. I believe that there's a success gap, but that's plausibly down to the inescapable networking advantages of concentrating elites, and isn't relevant to the specific claim you're making.

derbOac 5y ago
Even here on HN I've seen "looking to hire" posts where they basically come out and say they will only consider people from elite colleges and universities. It's hard to see stuff like that, so blatant, and not conclude there's a signaling-networking phenomenon going on. It comes up in other things I've seen too, where I know some idea has been floated over and over again by various groups, and then some deal is announced in the news where some institution (university or corporation) is given the grant or funding or whatever, for the same thing as all the other proposals, and it's obvious it's a rich get richer phenomenon. These issues are always so complicated because they don't operate in any of the ways that people assume stereotypically. One person will be hit by circumstance positively or negatively in a way that's idiosyncratic to them, and privilege operates in subtle ways sometimes. As for your question, a few years ago there was a blog post making the rounds showing that across colleges, students improve across their undergrad years on standardized testing, but it's pretty much uniform across colleges. More selective colleges have higher means (and in some studies lower variance) but the rate of learning isn't any different, and there's huge overlaps in distributions between institutions. I've tried to find it but haven't been able to from where I'm at at the moment.
- 8note 5y ago
  Those posts give me the sense that those companies are looking for investors (the rich parents) rather than somebody to do work
  - rkk3 5y ago
    Google famously only hired people with elite education credentials in the beginning. "We also didn't want to hire anyone from what were considered lesser universities" Eric Schmidt https://youtu.be/hcRxFRgNpns?t=1756 https://youtu.be/hcRxFRgNpns?t=1756
    - deleted 5y ago
      [deleted]
    - derbOac 5y ago
      Stuff like that is so soul crushing to me. It's caste systems in another guise.
      - esyir 5y ago
        And, with the push against objective metrics for entering, the castes get ever more solid.
      - rkk3 5y ago
        It's good to remember that Primogeniture and hereditary monarchy are only recently out of fashion in the west.

derbOac 5y ago

Even here on HN I've seen "looking to hire" posts where they basically come out and say they will only consider people from elite colleges and universities. It's hard to see stuff like that, so blatant, and not conclude there's a signaling-networking phenomenon going on. It comes up in other things I've seen too, where I know some idea has been floated over and over again by various groups, and then some deal is announced in the news where some institution (university or corporation) is given the grant or funding or whatever, for the same thing as all the other proposals, and it's obvious it's a rich get richer phenomenon. These issues are always so complicated because they don't operate in any of the ways that people assume stereotypically. One person will be hit by circumstance positively or negatively in a way that's idiosyncratic to them, and privilege operates in subtle ways sometimes. As for your question, a few years ago there was a blog post making the rounds showing that across colleges, students improve across their undergrad years on standardized testing, but it's pretty much uniform across colleges. More selective colleges have higher means (and in some studies lower variance) but the rate of learning isn't any different, and there's huge overlaps in distributions between institutions. I've tried to find it but haven't been able to from where I'm at at the moment.

8note 5y ago
Those posts give me the sense that those companies are looking for investors (the rich parents) rather than somebody to do work
- rkk3 5y ago
  Google famously only hired people with elite education credentials in the beginning. "We also didn't want to hire anyone from what were considered lesser universities" Eric Schmidt https://youtu.be/hcRxFRgNpns?t=1756 https://youtu.be/hcRxFRgNpns?t=1756
  - deleted 5y ago
    [deleted]
  - derbOac 5y ago
    Stuff like that is so soul crushing to me. It's caste systems in another guise.
    - esyir 5y ago
      And, with the push against objective metrics for entering, the castes get ever more solid.
    - rkk3 5y ago
      It's good to remember that Primogeniture and hereditary monarchy are only recently out of fashion in the west.