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I don’t know why this is a problem or even surprising. There are few academic positions. Getting in and making it through the top schools is competitive and dif

I don’t know why this is a problem or even surprising. There are few academic positions. Getting in and making it through the top schools is competitive and difficult. So why wouldn’t the best and brightest and most motivated and best networked beat everyone else out? I’ve been to every kind of level of school (public, private, non-elite, elite). Whenever I’ve had someone from an elite background teaching at a non-elite place has made me feel better about the education I received, and was grateful for it! Relatedly, the expectations in the elite environments were substantially higher, which ended up producing better work from myself because of my peers, culture, and pressure than when I was lacking those in non-elite environments… despite the fact that I’m the same person. I hate this trend perusing equality by lowering to the common denominator. That’s how you lose competitive edge in the world and end up with a mushy disinterested public. Talent is non-uniformly distributed… we should encourage and have ample mechanisms for the cream to rise to the top regardless of background. Finding ways to identify and prop up talent is what’s culturally lacking. I’ve seen it first hand countless times, and it’s saddened me each time because it’s so wasteful for society and the individuals. We need access to more elite institutions not less!

peteradio 4y ago
> best networked I think if this part ends up too high of a weight you'll end up with a lack of diversity of ideas and ultimately a decay into nepotism.
- azinman2 4y ago
  No system is perfect. There will always be certain ideas that remain in favor versus others, and a minority of them will be misallocated. Time eventually sorts this out. Having the opposite approach (aka lowest common denominator) will almost certainly be much worse off. We’ve seen this in places like China and Cambodia where cultural revolutions have eliminated the smartest people, and society/progress has suffered greatly from it.
  - peteradio 4y ago
    I'm certainly not advocating for lowest common denominator. It is problematic though if for instance in a field the academic tree flows from only 3 grandfathers.
epolanski 4y ago
I have worked as a researcher in one of the most prestigious labs in Switzerland and the world, and I have not seen any correlation at all between how bright are people and where they studied. We had visiting researchers from anywhere and I failed to see any correlation between the two things in years. I can tell you none of the brightest came from cambridge uk or harvard us but universities you never heard of in southern italy or india. Your entire argument that follows is delusional. Nothing about going to Harvard makes you more qualified in maths, e.g. than going to any European public university you have not heard of. Education depends on the quality of teaching and learning, and most great professors in important universities excel at funding, not teaching. Even when it comes to learning, especially in stem, you will likely learn more on books and internet and your course mates than your lectures. Hell, internet is filled with all the lectures you want from Harvard, MIT and more elite universities. As for any university in the world there are good and bad courses.
- baggygenes 4y ago
  Yes, but let's also not conflate the idea of "brightness" and the qualities of a productive university professor.After all, it's much harder to get into Stanford as an undergrad than it is to get in as a post-doc. What makes someone excel in academia is a genuine passion for knew knowledge, creative problem solving / experimental design, and (yes) the ability to drum up finding to make those discoveries. Rarely is the "smartest" person in the room most capable of being a great researcher. Curiosity, familiarity with the state-of-the-art, and the ability to forge genuine collaborations are far more important than one's ability to do the actual work, I'm afraid (that is, after all, what graduate students are for :)
  - epolanski 4y ago
    Being a good researcher does not imply being a good professor. As for science it is more about hard work, and long unpaid overwork than being smart. My previous lab has more than half the staff from asia e.g. https://www.epfl.ch/labs/lpi/people/ https://www.epfl.ch/labs/lpi/people/ Academia is a tough pyramid and at the end of the day the only thing that matters for a faculty position is politics and money not even your publications or ability to teach. Those are valued at much less prestigious places (that still produce amazing people)
yucky 4y ago
Something something...those who can, do; those who can't, teach. The fact is, the best and brightest typically enter the private sector, not academia. Agree about lowering the common denominator, but I don't think that has anything to do with the way tenure is handed out if we're being honest. For instance, diversity of thought is your enemy in academia. Research universities seem to reward parrots.
longtimegoogler 4y ago
Strong disagree. Getting into a top University is hard but once you are there matriculating isn't. In fact many of these institutions suffer from grade inflation.
goldenManatee 4y ago
This is all based on personal emotions and faux logical assumptions. There’s very little concrete or scientific evidence being presented to back up any of the anecdotes. There’s mention of avoiding mushiness, but ironically that’s precisely what the comforting cognitive miserliness does.
- azinman2 4y ago
  What a strange comment. The article itself gives you the trend. It doesn’t answer the why. I’m giving an insiders perspective to my experience, which is what the best HN comments typically contain. Should all comments here only be pointers to research? That’s not the community that I’m interested in, as that’s what’s easily accessible already via google.

peteradio 4y ago

> best networked I think if this part ends up too high of a weight you'll end up with a lack of diversity of ideas and ultimately a decay into nepotism.

azinman2 4y ago
No system is perfect. There will always be certain ideas that remain in favor versus others, and a minority of them will be misallocated. Time eventually sorts this out. Having the opposite approach (aka lowest common denominator) will almost certainly be much worse off. We’ve seen this in places like China and Cambodia where cultural revolutions have eliminated the smartest people, and society/progress has suffered greatly from it.
- peteradio 4y ago
  I'm certainly not advocating for lowest common denominator. It is problematic though if for instance in a field the academic tree flows from only 3 grandfathers.

epolanski 4y ago

I have worked as a researcher in one of the most prestigious labs in Switzerland and the world, and I have not seen any correlation at all between how bright are people and where they studied. We had visiting researchers from anywhere and I failed to see any correlation between the two things in years. I can tell you none of the brightest came from cambridge uk or harvard us but universities you never heard of in southern italy or india. Your entire argument that follows is delusional. Nothing about going to Harvard makes you more qualified in maths, e.g. than going to any European public university you have not heard of. Education depends on the quality of teaching and learning, and most great professors in important universities excel at funding, not teaching. Even when it comes to learning, especially in stem, you will likely learn more on books and internet and your course mates than your lectures. Hell, internet is filled with all the lectures you want from Harvard, MIT and more elite universities. As for any university in the world there are good and bad courses.

baggygenes 4y ago
Yes, but let's also not conflate the idea of "brightness" and the qualities of a productive university professor.After all, it's much harder to get into Stanford as an undergrad than it is to get in as a post-doc. What makes someone excel in academia is a genuine passion for knew knowledge, creative problem solving / experimental design, and (yes) the ability to drum up finding to make those discoveries. Rarely is the "smartest" person in the room most capable of being a great researcher. Curiosity, familiarity with the state-of-the-art, and the ability to forge genuine collaborations are far more important than one's ability to do the actual work, I'm afraid (that is, after all, what graduate students are for :)
- epolanski 4y ago
  Being a good researcher does not imply being a good professor. As for science it is more about hard work, and long unpaid overwork than being smart. My previous lab has more than half the staff from asia e.g. https://www.epfl.ch/labs/lpi/people/ https://www.epfl.ch/labs/lpi/people/ Academia is a tough pyramid and at the end of the day the only thing that matters for a faculty position is politics and money not even your publications or ability to teach. Those are valued at much less prestigious places (that still produce amazing people)

yucky 4y ago

Something something...those who can, do; those who can't, teach. The fact is, the best and brightest typically enter the private sector, not academia. Agree about lowering the common denominator, but I don't think that has anything to do with the way tenure is handed out if we're being honest. For instance, diversity of thought is your enemy in academia. Research universities seem to reward parrots.

longtimegoogler 4y ago

Strong disagree. Getting into a top University is hard but once you are there matriculating isn't. In fact many of these institutions suffer from grade inflation.

goldenManatee 4y ago

This is all based on personal emotions and faux logical assumptions. There’s very little concrete or scientific evidence being presented to back up any of the anecdotes. There’s mention of avoiding mushiness, but ironically that’s precisely what the comforting cognitive miserliness does.

azinman2 4y ago
What a strange comment. The article itself gives you the trend. It doesn’t answer the why. I’m giving an insiders perspective to my experience, which is what the best HN comments typically contain. Should all comments here only be pointers to research? That’s not the community that I’m interested in, as that’s what’s easily accessible already via google.