5 ms·

Status is zero sum, so it’s not even possible to create an arbitrary amount of elite schools to begin with.

darawk 4y ago
This is what these discussions always miss. Harvard isn't conferring value, its recognizing it. It's not a value add, its a filter. People think you can create value by creating more elite universities, but it's exactly the opposite. All you're going to do is destroy the signal they provide. You can learn just as much at a non-elite university as an elite one. Attending an elite university just means you were in the top x% of your age cohort. By definition, the top x% is not a group who's membership you can expand.
- willnonya 4y ago
  Your assertion about increasing the top x% is only true in absolute terms. If we're talking top x% of college admissions then that changes the picture. There's a big difference between that top x% being 1,000 and that same percentage being 50,000 students.
  - darawk 4y ago
    Ya, it's certainly possible that we have too few elite universities given the population, or that there's a mismatch there for the absolute numbers. I don't mean to suggest the current arrangement is exactly right. I just meant to argue against the naive view that we can expand eliteness by letting more people into Ivys, or make more Ivy schools.
- stale2002 4y ago
  > All you're going to do is destroy the signal they provide. I don't really see what the problem is here. Spending hundreds of thousands of dollars to have a signal recognized sounds like a bad thing to me. Destroying such a signal sound like a benefit.
- quadrifoliate 4y ago
  > Attending an elite university just means you were in the top x% of your age cohort. By definition, the top x% is not a group who's membership you can expand. This would all be very well if you decided the top x% via an objective and reasonable standardized test. However, the mention of standardized tests to determine top x% objectively usually sends people running for the hills [1], and they quickly start talking about "holistic criteria" for admission and how they benefit the students. If the criteria are holistic, i.e. subjective anyway, I don't see why we can't have more elite universities. They will just be holistic along different dimensions. To some degree you already see this in the Ivy League – Cornell is considered, broadly speaking, nerdier than Harvard. So just create 10 nerdier Cornells and 10 preppier Harvards, problem solved. It will just be harder to automatically rank people based on what school they went to. Good! ---------------------------------------- [1] As someone who has seen and felt the downsides of a standardized testing regimen which objectively decides whether you go to a certain college or not, I sympathize with them.
  - BurningFrog 4y ago
    > This would all be very well if you decided the top x% via an objective and reasonable standardized test. I interpret OP's point to be more cynical: The arbitrary selection is the point. Harvard, somehow, through a secret process, selects those who are likely to form a good portion of "the ruling class" for the next 3-4 decades. Past performance so far indicates that they do a good job of it, so Harvard remains very prestigious.
  - geodel 4y ago
    > I don't see why we can't have more elite universities. Pretty simple really. Why wouldn't existing non-elite universities become elite university. I don't think there is some federal ban on creating elite universities. Come to think of it University of Phoenix can be elite university as it offers world class online education to students who couldn't get admission elsewhere.
- paulryanrogers 4y ago
  This presumes the prestigious schools grow in proportion with the society.
  - geodel 4y ago
    Yeah right. Just like a village of hundred people had one chief, now a village of ten thousand people can have hundred chiefs with same level of power/prestige.
- chrischen 4y ago
  They operate a filter to bring in quality people for the benefit of the other legacy students who pay to get in. It’s like how Google shows and gathers organic results… so they can get eyeballs on their paid results. In fact google doesn’t even need to improve their organic results past a certain point as long as it’s good enough to bring eyeballs. Elite institutions thus only need to get a good enough sample of extraordinary individuals to bolster their status, but they do not live necessarily to bring an exceptional education to those who deserve an exceptional education.
  - geodel 4y ago
    So why would those who deserve exceptional education go elite universities if there is no value to it?
    - chrischen 4y ago
      Because the value is in the education?
      - geodel 4y ago
        Even more value in exceptional education. So why go to elite university if its not providing that?
        chrischen 4y ago
        Yes they do provide that, but also restrict it because they have no incentive to really expand access to those resources. But part of their value offering is also in the selection process (for the merit based part at least). So they select, provide them with resources, and they really only have to do this enough to maintain their position and status to to sell their product: get an education with the best and brightest in our country. Their product is sold to the 1% of legacy admissions and donors who literally buy their way in. Legacy literally means intergenerational wealth preservation here. But my point is they only have to maintain their core product well enough to serve that purpose of letting the old money rub elbows with the actual best and brightest. Their goal isn’t to help the second, or third, or fourth best and brightest get the education they deserve. As someone who hires my goal would be to use these elite college filters, but then try to filter out the legacy admits… but that would be unfair to the truly talented legacy admits. It would be disruptive if somehow that high quality education was scaled so anyone could access it, and that stamp of approval from being associated with the elite colleges was also scaled out and handed to only those that are actually exceptional. For the most part the current system serves the exceptional decently well. Where it fails is with the rest of the population. Given two people of equal 50th percentile exceptional abilities, the one that is really wealthy can buy their way into fake exceptionality and get treated by society as if they were actually smarter.
- gautamdivgi 4y ago
  It's a filter. Most importantly it's a network. You cannot replicate elite universities because the network effects cannot be replicated.
- deleted 4y ago
  [deleted]
tomcat27 4y ago
The US population increased 100 times since 1800s from 5M to 500M. Harvard enrollment increased 4 times since 1800s from 1.5K to 20K. The number of universities in the US did grew greatly during these 200 years, but the funding distribution to these universities is as skewed as the income inequality in the US. For instance, 60% of NIH funds go to <10 institutes in the country. The scholarly work at these elite universities might not appear deserving of the preferential treatment from the funding agencies, if we start poking around reproducibility crisis, data hacking etc. It seems fair to assume doubling elite universities would not be catastrophic to elitism.
- mlyle 4y ago
  > Harvard enrollment increased 4 times since 1800s from 1.5K to 20K. ? You might mean 4 "doublings", but then the other number doesn't make sense. Or 14 times? > It seems fair to assume doubling elite universities would not be catastrophic to elitism. How do you double elite universities? It's more like we have an eliteness gradient (T10, T20, etc...) and the masses together decide what's "elite enough". Is WUSTL elite? Is Cornell? Is UCLA?
  - tomcat27 4y ago
    > You might mean 4 "doublings" Rate of change: Enrollment increased by 4 times. Population increased by 100 times. > How do you double elite universities? Doubling elite universities: I mean more outreach from let's say T10 with next 10-20. This doesn't happen. Ex: Top 5 won't cite papers written by someone in the middle. It happens but that's quite rare. Ex: Faculty recruitment does not propagates from bottom ranking institution to top ranking institution. It's super rare. Ex: Research collaborations are very clubby. > It's more like we have an eliteness gradient (T10, T20, etc...) and the masses together decide what's "elite enough". Masses opinion doesn't count. Eliteness is determined by elite. Consider an elite club exists at the beginning. Every 5 years new members are inducted into the elite club. Their opinion matters way more than everyone's simply because they are elite. In most departments, the state of the art is a qualitative measurement. Something is great because a bunch of great people think it's great. There isn't a better approach anyway. But that comes with bad biases. Ex: It's rare to have a Supreme Court justice coming from outside Harvard and Yale. Ex: Some departments in Harvard would never hire someone as faculty just because they aren't from Harvard, Yale or a couple of other places.
dqpb 4y ago
> Status is zero sum Nobody really likes status. Everybody likes competence. Competence increases the pie for everybody.
- alecbz 4y ago
  People definitely do seem to like status. I think part of it is that competence is much harder to check for than status. Status is inherently very "legible", which can make it useful even if it only kind of correlates with competence.
  - dqpb 4y ago
    > competence is much harder to check for than status Is it? I've always thought that competence is much harder to cheat than status. The way I see it, the whole point of status is to decouple authority from competence.
    - alecbz 4y ago
      It's contextual for sure, but one example: it's way easier to see "Harvard" on a resume than to conduct an interview that accurately assesses for skill, which is why you end up with things like resume screens ahead of interviews.
- jbn 4y ago
  don't "legacy" students like status?

This is what these discussions always miss. Harvard isn't conferring value, its recognizing it. It's not a value add, its a filter. People think you can create value by creating more elite universities, but it's exactly the opposite. All you're going to do is destroy the signal they provide. You can learn just as much at a non-elite university as an elite one. Attending an elite university just means you were in the top x% of your age cohort. By definition, the top x% is not a group who's membership you can expand.

willnonya 4y ago
Your assertion about increasing the top x% is only true in absolute terms. If we're talking top x% of college admissions then that changes the picture. There's a big difference between that top x% being 1,000 and that same percentage being 50,000 students.
- darawk 4y ago
  Ya, it's certainly possible that we have too few elite universities given the population, or that there's a mismatch there for the absolute numbers. I don't mean to suggest the current arrangement is exactly right. I just meant to argue against the naive view that we can expand eliteness by letting more people into Ivys, or make more Ivy schools.
stale2002 4y ago
> All you're going to do is destroy the signal they provide. I don't really see what the problem is here. Spending hundreds of thousands of dollars to have a signal recognized sounds like a bad thing to me. Destroying such a signal sound like a benefit.
quadrifoliate 4y ago
> Attending an elite university just means you were in the top x% of your age cohort. By definition, the top x% is not a group who's membership you can expand. This would all be very well if you decided the top x% via an objective and reasonable standardized test. However, the mention of standardized tests to determine top x% objectively usually sends people running for the hills [1], and they quickly start talking about "holistic criteria" for admission and how they benefit the students. If the criteria are holistic, i.e. subjective anyway, I don't see why we can't have more elite universities. They will just be holistic along different dimensions. To some degree you already see this in the Ivy League – Cornell is considered, broadly speaking, nerdier than Harvard. So just create 10 nerdier Cornells and 10 preppier Harvards, problem solved. It will just be harder to automatically rank people based on what school they went to. Good! ---------------------------------------- [1] As someone who has seen and felt the downsides of a standardized testing regimen which objectively decides whether you go to a certain college or not, I sympathize with them.
- BurningFrog 4y ago
  > This would all be very well if you decided the top x% via an objective and reasonable standardized test. I interpret OP's point to be more cynical: The arbitrary selection is the point. Harvard, somehow, through a secret process, selects those who are likely to form a good portion of "the ruling class" for the next 3-4 decades. Past performance so far indicates that they do a good job of it, so Harvard remains very prestigious.
- geodel 4y ago
  > I don't see why we can't have more elite universities. Pretty simple really. Why wouldn't existing non-elite universities become elite university. I don't think there is some federal ban on creating elite universities. Come to think of it University of Phoenix can be elite university as it offers world class online education to students who couldn't get admission elsewhere.
paulryanrogers 4y ago
This presumes the prestigious schools grow in proportion with the society.
- geodel 4y ago
  Yeah right. Just like a village of hundred people had one chief, now a village of ten thousand people can have hundred chiefs with same level of power/prestige.
chrischen 4y ago
They operate a filter to bring in quality people for the benefit of the other legacy students who pay to get in. It’s like how Google shows and gathers organic results… so they can get eyeballs on their paid results. In fact google doesn’t even need to improve their organic results past a certain point as long as it’s good enough to bring eyeballs. Elite institutions thus only need to get a good enough sample of extraordinary individuals to bolster their status, but they do not live necessarily to bring an exceptional education to those who deserve an exceptional education.
- geodel 4y ago
  So why would those who deserve exceptional education go elite universities if there is no value to it?
  - chrischen 4y ago
    Because the value is in the education?
    - geodel 4y ago
      Even more value in exceptional education. So why go to elite university if its not providing that?
      - chrischen 4y ago
        Yes they do provide that, but also restrict it because they have no incentive to really expand access to those resources. But part of their value offering is also in the selection process (for the merit based part at least). So they select, provide them with resources, and they really only have to do this enough to maintain their position and status to to sell their product: get an education with the best and brightest in our country. Their product is sold to the 1% of legacy admissions and donors who literally buy their way in. Legacy literally means intergenerational wealth preservation here. But my point is they only have to maintain their core product well enough to serve that purpose of letting the old money rub elbows with the actual best and brightest. Their goal isn’t to help the second, or third, or fourth best and brightest get the education they deserve. As someone who hires my goal would be to use these elite college filters, but then try to filter out the legacy admits… but that would be unfair to the truly talented legacy admits. It would be disruptive if somehow that high quality education was scaled so anyone could access it, and that stamp of approval from being associated with the elite colleges was also scaled out and handed to only those that are actually exceptional. For the most part the current system serves the exceptional decently well. Where it fails is with the rest of the population. Given two people of equal 50th percentile exceptional abilities, the one that is really wealthy can buy their way into fake exceptionality and get treated by society as if they were actually smarter.
gautamdivgi 4y ago
It's a filter. Most importantly it's a network. You cannot replicate elite universities because the network effects cannot be replicated.
deleted 4y ago
[deleted]

tomcat27 4y ago

The US population increased 100 times since 1800s from 5M to 500M. Harvard enrollment increased 4 times since 1800s from 1.5K to 20K. The number of universities in the US did grew greatly during these 200 years, but the funding distribution to these universities is as skewed as the income inequality in the US. For instance, 60% of NIH funds go to <10 institutes in the country. The scholarly work at these elite universities might not appear deserving of the preferential treatment from the funding agencies, if we start poking around reproducibility crisis, data hacking etc. It seems fair to assume doubling elite universities would not be catastrophic to elitism.

mlyle 4y ago
> Harvard enrollment increased 4 times since 1800s from 1.5K to 20K. ? You might mean 4 "doublings", but then the other number doesn't make sense. Or 14 times? > It seems fair to assume doubling elite universities would not be catastrophic to elitism. How do you double elite universities? It's more like we have an eliteness gradient (T10, T20, etc...) and the masses together decide what's "elite enough". Is WUSTL elite? Is Cornell? Is UCLA?
- tomcat27 4y ago
  > You might mean 4 "doublings" Rate of change: Enrollment increased by 4 times. Population increased by 100 times. > How do you double elite universities? Doubling elite universities: I mean more outreach from let's say T10 with next 10-20. This doesn't happen. Ex: Top 5 won't cite papers written by someone in the middle. It happens but that's quite rare. Ex: Faculty recruitment does not propagates from bottom ranking institution to top ranking institution. It's super rare. Ex: Research collaborations are very clubby. > It's more like we have an eliteness gradient (T10, T20, etc...) and the masses together decide what's "elite enough". Masses opinion doesn't count. Eliteness is determined by elite. Consider an elite club exists at the beginning. Every 5 years new members are inducted into the elite club. Their opinion matters way more than everyone's simply because they are elite. In most departments, the state of the art is a qualitative measurement. Something is great because a bunch of great people think it's great. There isn't a better approach anyway. But that comes with bad biases. Ex: It's rare to have a Supreme Court justice coming from outside Harvard and Yale. Ex: Some departments in Harvard would never hire someone as faculty just because they aren't from Harvard, Yale or a couple of other places.

dqpb 4y ago

> Status is zero sum Nobody really likes status. Everybody likes competence. Competence increases the pie for everybody.

alecbz 4y ago
People definitely do seem to like status. I think part of it is that competence is much harder to check for than status. Status is inherently very "legible", which can make it useful even if it only kind of correlates with competence.
- dqpb 4y ago
  > competence is much harder to check for than status Is it? I've always thought that competence is much harder to cheat than status. The way I see it, the whole point of status is to decouple authority from competence.
  - alecbz 4y ago
    It's contextual for sure, but one example: it's way easier to see "Harvard" on a resume than to conduct an interview that accurately assesses for skill, which is why you end up with things like resume screens ahead of interviews.
jbn 4y ago
don't "legacy" students like status?