11 ms·
The real joke is that we as a society still give weight to institutions like Harvard. We as a whole are much more educated now and the idea that legacy institut
by lunaru 4y ago
The real joke is that we as a society still give weight to institutions like Harvard. We as a whole are much more educated now and the idea that legacy institutions should serve as gatekeepers of education or validation thereof based on reputation alone seems outdated. These schools should be judged by the rigor and quality of their curriculum rather than the reputations of their past. And I say this as someone who graduated from one of these top schools.
- golemotron 4y agoIt remains a Schelling Point. That's what keeps many institutions going.
- Overtonwindow 4y agoIn game theory, a focal point (or Schelling point) is a solution that people tend to choose by default in the absence of communication.
- uejfiweun 4y agoIt's not going away, because school choice continues to be a valuable signal of how capable someone is, and graduates of "top" schools continue to have disproportionately higher impacts on society.
- dmreedy 4y agoI would posit you might be conflating "capability" and "impact" in a manner that elides the many distinctions.
- uejfiweun 4y agoYou're right, I definitely could have worded this one better in hindsight. I guess the downvotes are my lesson.
- giantg2 4y ago"and graduates of "top" schools continue to have disproportionately higher impacts on society." Source? There are many individuals who went to state schools or didn't go to college at all that have turned into billionaires, Nobel prize winners, etc. Not to mention there's no evidence that the people who went to an elite school would have less of an impact if elite schools didn't exist.
- uejfiweun 4y agoIt's common sense, it's just a numbers game. Harvard has like 8000 undergrads or whatever, while your typical state school has ~60000. All I'm saying is that if you take a random student from both these populations, the Harvard student is statistically more likely to be some uber-successful wunderkind. In no way am I trying to say that people from non-elite schools are inherently less capable.
- boeingUH60 4y agoA higher number of those billionaires, Nobel prize winners, and political leaders in the US went to elite schools like Harvard and Yale. They undoubtedly have higher impacts on society, not because they are the smartest, but because having an elite school degree unlocks opportunities that are not available to average person…for all our talks about meritocracy, humans still pay more attention to signaling, branding, and marketing…and the elite schools know how to milk that for money and power.
- giantg2 4y ago"A higher number of those billionaires, Nobel prize winners, and political leaders in the US went to elite schools like Harvard and Yale." Again, any numbers on that? "not because they are the smartest, but because having an elite school degree unlocks opportunities" Or did they go to an elite school because they already came from money, which is the true source of those opportunities.
- listenallyall 4y ago> any numbers on that? Current US Supreme Court: Alito - Yale Coney Barrett - Notre Dame Brown Jackson - Harvard Gorsuch - Harvard Kavanaugh - Yale Kagan - Harvard Roberts - Harvard Sotomayor - Yale Thomas - Yale Noticing anything?
- PaulDavisThe1st 4y ago> graduates of "top" schools continue to have disproportionately higher impacts on society. you offer no data to differentiate between this being caused by their abilities, or their greater access to the networks that place people in high impact positions.
- paxys 4y agoAt some point it just becomes a self fulfilling prophecy. The smartest people in the world want the Harvard brand. They graduate and do great things. Their success gets attributed back to Harvard. So how does one measure what specifically the university is bringing to the table?
- gregw2 4y agoYou look at who got accepted to Harvard but didn’t go.
- throwaway1777 4y agoI thought the theory was people are dumber than ever thanks to smartphones, social media, decreased attention spans, etc. I would take a bet that the average person is not even close to as smart as the average Harvard grad.
- Shatnerz 4y agoSomething like 35% of the US has graduated university[1]. I suppose the average university graduate is smarter than the average person regardless of the school they attended. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Educational_attainment_in_the_United_States https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Educational_attainment_in_the_...
- eigenvalue 4y agoFunny, I constantly think how much more educated the educated people were in the past than today. The minimum IQ required to graduate college (and even some masters degrees) with decent grades can’t be much more than 100 at this point, but was certainly more like 115 or even 120 in the 1950s. I would argue that the vast majority of graduating college students are almost entirely unable to write a half decent essay. I’m not saying that it’s a bad thing that more people get to go to college, but let’s not delude ourselves into thinking the average person is so highly educated!
- groestl 4y agoEducation does not equal intelligence though. I know educated people who are not half as intelligent as my uncle, who really is not that educated.
- Retric 4y agoPlenty of dumb people graduated collage in the 1950’s. The difference is we still value most of their skills while giving them a free pass for all the modern skills they don’t have. Take all that time you spent learning computers and apply it to other stuff and you would be more capable of that stuff. So yes people on average where better at say mental math back then, but plenty of people still sucked at math etc.
- ghaff 4y agoOf course, people did study engineering in 50s even though it mostly wasn't related to computers. (For that matter, I have an engineering degree from the late 70s and I barely touched--or mostly had access to--computers.)
- Retric 4y agoDefinitely, and many programs were highly selective, extremely rigorous, and had very high dropout rates. Some colleges just had vastly less demanding degrees and a reputation for wild parties, excessive drinking, etc. I am mostly referring to the idea people have become less capable because fewer people know how to say repair their cars. Ignoring the fact cars just don’t break down as much and are also vastly more complicated today. So, basic car repair is both more difficult and less necessary.
- bradleyjg 4y agoKeep this comment top of mind when you next are involved in hiring.
- lapcat 4y agoHarvard is private social club, a glorified country club posing as a school. The entire purpose of the institution is to perpetuate the disparity of wealth and power in society. The selectivity and exclusiveness is essential, the raison d'être of Harvard. This is the only thing we need to understand about it.
- koolba 4y agoMore importantly while there’s nothing wrong with operating a private social club, doing it with public tax dollars and claiming it’s anything but a private social club is ridiculous.
- deleted 4y ago[deleted]
- hnburnsy 4y agoAnd they like to keep the club exclusive... >In the 16 years since, although the number of applicants to the College has more than doubled, the size of Harvard’s undergraduate population has remained relatively constant. This year, the College admitted 2,037 students to the Class of 2020; in comparison, 2,035 students were admitted to the Class of 2004. IMO when your non taxable endowment gets large but your undergrad population stays the same maybe part of the endowment should become taxable.
- hnburnsy 4y agoAlso IMO stop taking Pell Grants, Federal aid, and pay taxes on their endowments and these schools can admit whoever they please.
- deleted 4y ago[deleted]
- mauvehaus 4y agoYou realize they're in the middle of Cambridge, MA, right? It's not like there's a bunch of empty land around the campus to just make the school bigger. Acquiring non-Harvard land in Allston met with some backlash owing to how they went about it (sneakily, to avoid getting put over a barrel on price). Building up rather than out would require knocking down buildings that range from historic to merely very old. Suggesting that Harvard should just take more students as the number of applicants grows sort of ignores the constraints they operate under. Non-affiliated former Boston resident.
- moomoo11 4y agoThose schools are also where most of cutting edge research happens. And that’s why the folks who go there have such strong networks and an in-crowd mentality. I am trying my hand at networking and I find that I get ghosted like 80% of the time when people I talk to from these backgrounds find out I’m not as qualified on paper.
- sounds 4y agoTo discriminate, whether by race or by alma mater, is innate; even if it is illegal it will still happen. Meritocracy is hard, and wounded when we characterize a flaw in a meritocracy as if that were judgment day. Should we all abandon Harvard now? Nah, this battle is everywhere.
- credit_guy 4y ago> The real joke is that we as a society still give weight to institutions like Harvard. Indeed. I don't understand the fascination with Harvard when you can go to MIT.
- ghaff 4y agoI generally agree :-) Though many of the same dynamics apply to MIT even if some of the specifics differ. MIT isn't admitting students purely on the basis of test scores. I knew a long ago admissions director at MIT. At least at the time, they basically had an x-y chart with quantitative on one axis and qualitative on the other. There was a quantitative lower-bound cutoff but, beyond that, the two factors could balance each other out. (e.g. decent but not not fantastic SATs could be balanced out by really eye-catching qualitative factors and vice versa.)
- dehrmann 4y agoAt least MIT says that if you can't do well on the SAT, you're not going to pass your calc final.
- stainablesteel 4y agoi'd rather they get judged by the students they output rather than using only an input, ie curriculum this better allows for competition to flourish imo