8 ms·

US universities need to stop elitist discrimination that Europe abandoned

42 points by xqcgrek2 3y ago

injb 3y ago
>>> For America to regain its social mobility, its top universities need to follow the data and stop practicing the kind of elitist discrimination that much of Europe has abandoned. This is the only part I can read before the paywall kicks in. But I wonder why they think that top universities are the drivers of social mobility.
- oneplane 3y ago
  I would guess this is not an emerging driver but rather an artificial driver because that is their primary value proposition.
- alephnerd 3y ago
  Legacy Admissions in the US happen at most Private Universities and a decent number of Public Universities as well. This isn't just an Ivy League problem - this is a problem that has an effect on the entire college admissions pipeline in the US (plenty of Ivy/UMich/UVA caliber students took seats at top public+private programs, students meant for top public+private programs ended up at regional flagships, etc). As the number of seats is finite, this leads to a massive misallocation across the board. That said, the same kind of elitist sorting still happens in Europe - it's just done at the grade school level instead
  - dmpk2k 3y ago
    Could you elaborate about the sorting in grade school?
    - mih 3y ago
      This is e.g. in Germany - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Education_in_Germany#Secondary_education https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Education_in_Germany#Secondary.... Children of well educated parents almost always end up at a Gymnasium from which their career path ends up leading them to a university degree. Those in others types of schools have a tougher path leading to university education and will most likely end up in the equivalent of community colleges, vocational training or apprenticeship. Since recommendation by teachers counts for admission to a Gymnasium and this is often subjective, children of parents from less privileged backgrounds (blue collar workers, immigrants etc.) often end up in other schools. Sometimes this is an example of how society is stratified - a place for everyone and everyone in their place. Apart from the public schooling there are also private schools which are almost entirely for children of very well to do types since they come with a significant fee.
      - alephnerd 3y ago
        Yep. And it's the exact same in France with Lycée admissions (the ones that send the most students to Grandes écoles as well as the children of the elite tend attend either Private or extremely selective Lycées) and the UK with Independent Schools (eg. Eton, Harrow, Winchester).
        vladvasiliu 3y ago
        I'm not very familiar with the German system, but I'd argue in France it's different. Yes, you need to go to a "general" high-school to hope to get into a prep-school. But no-one forces you to go to a technical or professional one. Teachers may recommend it, but the choice is with the pupil and the family. Where it does get selective is at the prep-school level. But AFAIK this is based on the high-school grades, and it would seem that being very good in a "bad" high-school nets you better chances of being picked than being average in an "elite" high-school.
        alephnerd 3y ago
        It's orthogonal. Classmates of Sarkozy's and Lagardère's kids at École Jeannine Manuel will continue to leverage their network from there no matter if they attended a Grande école or a random generic university. And there are plenty of schools like those to this day in France. This is the exact kind of network that Americans complain about with regards to legacy. Most HNers did well enough on their SATs and ACTs to attend a target public school or non-legacy private like UC Berkeley or MIT respectively, and around 75% of students at Harvard didn't get in via Legacy admissions yet we (rightfully) still complain about that 25% who leveraged their network and class background to get in.
        vladvasiliu 3y ago
        But then the issue is the networking, not the school itself. And all the circus around school admissions is just that. I doubt that if they were somehow forbidden to put their kids in the same school, Sarkozy's and Lagardère's kids would be total strangers and completely unlikely to "network". Just as there are cliques in all schools, even if their kids went to the same school as younger me, an immigrant, we would probably not have been friends, just like I was friends with kids whose "social level" was close to mine.
- garyfirestorm 3y ago
  It’s wishful thinking
- cafard 3y ago
  What part of Europe? Don't most of the Tory leadership in the UK come from the same few schools? What is the status of the grands écoles in France?
  - namdnay 3y ago
    FWIW, entry to grandes ecoles is correlated far more strongly with parents being teachers than with them being rich.
    - jjgreen 3y ago
      I do like that those preparing for entry are taupin, after taupe, mole, due to their lack of exposure to sunlight.
  - ben_w 3y ago
    > few schools Schools, plural? I got the impression that Eton alone was more than half of them?
    - arethuza 3y ago
      It might be that thing of using "schools" to refer to tertiary education? In that case both universities have an even higher proportion of PMs... ;-)
  - arethuza 3y ago
    It's hardly surprising that most PMs have gone to Oxbridge - but its interesting to see how many studied PPE: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_prime_ministers_of_the_United_Kingdom_by_education https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_prime_ministers_of_the...
    - afavour 3y ago
      IMO it’s not that surprising: PPE is widely seen as the degree to do if you want to get into politics. So it’s not that people do PPE then find themselves drawn to the political world, it’s the reverse. I studied politics and quickly realised there was a huge divide between those of us who wanted to study a broken system from the outside and those who coveted being one of the jeering boors in the House of Commons. Helped me lose whatever faith I had left in the political system.
- phone8675309 3y ago
  [flagged]
  - dang 3y ago
    > liquidating Yikes. Posting like this will get you banned here. No more of this please. In addition, I need to ask you to stop posting unsubstantive and/or flamebait comments generally, because your account has unfortunately been doing a lot of that. It's not what this site is for, and destroys what it is for. If you wouldn't mind reviewing https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html and taking the intended spirit of the site more to heart, we'd be grateful.
- afavour 3y ago
  > 10 years after starting college, the typical Ivy League grad earns more than twice as much as the typical graduate of other colleges https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/wonk/wp/2015/09/14/this-chart-shows-why-parents-push-their-kids-so-hard-to-get-into-ivy-league-schools/ https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/wonk/wp/2015/09/14/this-... Do feel like there’s a chicken and egg problem here, e.g. legacy admissions are more likely to land a plum job at their family’s business/through family connections so there isn’t a guarantee that those higher earnings are solely because of Ivy League attendance. But the pattern is there.
  - cxr 3y ago
    Sure, but the article, backed by a study[1], is rather trying to make the opposite point—that attendance (or really admittance, i.e., permission to attend) is often directly attributable to higher earnings by the family of the admitted: > By comparing two groups of waitlisted students — those who are admitted to Ivy-Plus universities and those who are rejected — they note that the successful are much more likely to reach the top 1% of the income distribution, attend an elite graduate school and work for a prestigious firm[...] One in six students at Ivy League schools has parents in the top 1% of the income distribution. This is not just because the children of the rich are more likely to apply to elite colleges. Nor is it because the children of the rich have higher academic scores than middle class applicants: Children from the top 1% of the income distribution (more than $611,000) are 55% more likely to secure admission than a typical middle-class applicant with the same SAT or ACT scores, and children from the top 0.1 percent are more than twice as likely to get in. It is because elite colleges deliberately discriminate in favor of the rich. Neither chickens nor eggs need be harmed to see that this prima facie has something wrong with it. 1. <https://opportunityinsights.org/wp-content/uploads/2023/07/CollegeAdmissions_Paper.pdf https://opportunityinsights.org/wp-content/uploads/2023/07/C...>
  - serial_dev 3y ago
    The kind of people who can get into an Ivy League university would probably outperform the other group even without ever actually going to the university: statistically (stereotypically?), they come from a rich and stable background, have strong network of rich and influential friends and acquaintances already, have access to capital, they don't color outside the lines, and when they do, they know how to cover their a.. legally speaking, and of course, they are probably not dumb, either. Yes, going to these universities probably makes some difference, but it probably doesn't explain all the difference, so if you take poor but talented kids and have them go to these universities, I expect the salary difference is much smaller.
- fatnoah 3y ago
  I'm not sure that we can remove "elitist" without also removing the concept of "top universities" too. Of course, that requires employers to not use university acceptance as a measure of the worth of an applicant rather than developing a more useful measure. I get it, it's hard for someone without experience, but I've also hired many, many people in my life as a software manager, ranging from entry level to grizzled veteran.
- jfengel 3y ago
  Top universities are more about making connections than about education. The education is of course excellent, but what you really get is access to previous graduates who trust you and treat you as part of their in group. The same goes for your classmates, who will be your first pick of business partners because you know them. Legacies are just one aspect of this, though it is particularly visible. Being able to break into that is a huge leg up, not just for you but for people around you in society. And being kept out reinforces that your group isn't suited to that kind of wealth production, even though it has nothing to do with either your skills or the quality of education you received.
laurensr 3y ago
Full article without login wall: https://archive.is/7JxMZ https://archive.is/7JxMZ
RubyRidgeRandy 3y ago
If you use ublock origin or brave, you can turn on the bypass payways clean filter within brave or you can subscribe to the list on filterlists.com
- suslik 3y ago
  or: https://gitlab.com/magnolia1234/bypass-paywalls-chrome-clean https://gitlab.com/magnolia1234/bypass-paywalls-chrome-clean https://gitlab.com/magnolia1234/bypass-paywalls-firefox-clean https://gitlab.com/magnolia1234/bypass-paywalls-firefox-clea...
mkoubaa 3y ago
Tldr The article is arguing against legacy college admissions.
throwaway33381 3y ago
Europe never abandoned it's "Elitist Discrimination" instead they build it into the foundations of the education system. It's a different model that instead relies on the fact that for most Europeans their lives are often decided when they born. While most Europeans receive some form secondary education they are pipelined at a young age into roles based on various factors that they are in no control of. It's not better than our existing system but it's not exactly the same. Instead in the European model while Alumni is not considered, those Alumni have a generational advantage that often makes it so that these children end up in the same place as they were born. In the same way it can be very difficult for children born into lower class families escape from the preset paths in life that they are given.
- sunbum 3y ago
  No.[1] [1] - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Global_Social_Mobility_Index https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Global_Social_Mobility_Index
  - throwaway33381 3y ago
    This doesn't really show much besides the fact that for many European Countries they don't suffer from the same form of income inequality as we do. Note that Japan is ranked 15 yet is one of the worst examples of this. The Social Index tells nothing of the lives of the people in these countries. In Japan you have to be admitted into a high school program and from their the trajectory of your life starts. All the way into the College process. It's not a fair system yet it's ranked 15.
    - robertlagrant 3y ago
      Rather than criticise this information source, would you mind providing your own that makes you think Europeans' lives were decided from birth? I'm hoping to invest in the company that knew I'd be working on Python long before it was created.
  - rat9988 3y ago
    Your link proves that european countries are close to US. Some better, some worse.
cxr 3y ago
For some appropriate context, a quick check of the attitudes of the past concerning society in North America versus Europe is helpful, and it doesn't require you to go read Democracy in America. Here's a passage from Benjamin Franklin's "Information to Those Who Would Remove to America" (which is itself very short on its own—only five or six pages—but here's a few slices): > The Truth is, that tho' there are in that Country few People so miserable as the Poor of Europe, there are also very few that in Europe would be called rich: it is rather a general happy Mediocrity that prevails[...] It is true that Letters and mathematical Knowledge are in Esteem there, but they are at the same time more common than is apprehended; there being already existing nine Colleges or Universities, viz. four in New-England, and one in each of the Provinces of New-York, New-Jersey, Pensilvania, Maryland and Virginia, all furnish'd with learned Professors; besides a number of smaller Academies: These educate many of their Youth in the Languages and those Sciences that qualify Men for the Professions of Divinity, Law or Physick. Strangers indeed are by no means excluded from exercising those Professions[...] Much less is it adviseable for a Person to go thither who has no other Quality to recommend him but his Birth. In Europe it has indeed its Value, but it is a Commodity that cannot be carried to a worse Market than to that of America, where People do not enquire concerning a Stranger, What IS he? but What can he DO? I re-read this recently, and was strongly reminded of it with the recent submission here of a blog post about the "New American University" at ASU. <https://nadia.xyz/asu https://nadia.xyz/asu>
Eumenes 3y ago
now that race based admissions is off the table (or hopefully) and legacy admissions is on the chopping block (hopefully), how about stop forcing students to take BS filler prereqs (costs thousands in $$ and credit hours), eliminating useless majors and departments, eviscerating the bloated administrative staff, etc. I have a friend who is a nurse in a state that allows them to practice with an associates degree. some workplaces, mostly hospitals, require them to start the process of getting a bachelors within 2 years of joining the company. the bachelor program, has absolutely zero to do with the job. its literally humanities BS. we have a nursing shortage and the schools, in partnership with corrupt hospitals, need to bleed students dry of their money and time. many jobs could do w/o the university/college system, and simply just be vocational programs at fractions of the cost and become way more accessible.
- zer8k 3y ago
  The goal of a university degree is not to get a job. It's to create a person who is well rounded enough to drop into almost any field but very specialized in one field. Universities becoming trade schools is the reason bloated administrative staff exists. As for your particular example that is also what I've heard. Except that the BSc is more business-oriented (not humanities). That being said, if you think something like nursing could be a vocation degree I don't think you understand how much even nursing relies on Chemistry, Biology, and Math. My nurse friends are regularly in charge of compounding drugs before administration for example. Loosening requirements will not stop the nursing shortage because it's caused by the same thing the doctor shortage is caused by. Long, thankless hours, low pay, high stress, and the nurses unions keeping headcounts in check. On one hand dumping the nurses union will likely see pay rise. On the other hand the unions are often the only reason nurse/patient ratios are kept inside of safe bounds. The division you're talking about is why in CS they offer an ASc, BA, and BSc. You can pick just how deep you wish to go. Most people get a BSc because it's the most flexible. What people do not understand is pedigree matters very little. I paid ~$25,000 all-in for my CS degree from a decent (top 50) school. I am just as good as the MIT kids I work with through the magic of ABET accreditation enforcing a standard. Standards are good for everyone and people should be excluded from just calling themselves something.
slibhb 3y ago
This nonstop talk about getting rid of legacy admissions is funny. The subtext is that legacy admissions were acceptable as long as racial preferences were acceptable. Apparently, only now that we've gotten rid of the latter do we need to address the former.
- jayess 3y ago
  It's no secret that racial preferences were a cover for legacy admissions.
  - Pet_Ant 3y ago
    I legitimately don't buy that. Legacy seems like really a mechanism for nepotism and reinforcing elite networks. While due to their origin they probably have racial skews, but I really don't buy that is their driving force. After all, legacy are such a small percentage overall they can't sway the overall campus demographics much. Not saying they should or shouldn't be dismantled, just bothers me to see likely misattributed motivations.
    - monocasa 3y ago
      At Harvard, legacy admissions was about a third total of all admissions each year.
      - Pet_Ant 3y ago
        Okay, that’s interesting. I didn’t look for Harvard, but the numbers I found before posting was 14% in general.
- mancerayder 3y ago
  It's as if the racial preferences issue/controversy shielded the legacy preferences injustice. It was always well-known that the children of connected, rich people got preference. But focus on the pros and cons of affirmative action, and the arguments about historical racism, and no one pays attention. It's a debate or policy distraction that I think extends outside of the university and throughout the United States. It's as if the conversation around class inequality takes a back seat to the racial ones, and that the privileged take a very strong stance that it is the singular most important topic to address.
light_hue_1 3y ago
These people have no idea what they're talking about. They think the UK and France are meritocracies when it comes to attending Oxbridge or the Grande Ecoles? This doesn't stand up to even the most basic scrutiny. Cambridge doesn't even keep data on its students by income group. That's how embarrassing the numbers are. (Cambridge even actively punishes poor students by forbidding them to work at all while enrolled.) All Oxford will admit to is that 90% of the students come from above the UK's median income. The Grand Ecoles in France are far worse. People talk about the opening of the Grand Ecoles to other social classes, but this is barely happening. They only started to open up in the 2000s and the opening has been extremely underwhelming. https://shs.hal.science/halshs-03119054/document https://shs.hal.science/halshs-03119054/document If Harvard, Princeton, MIT, Stanford were as unequal as the schools this article is promoting people would lose their minds! The only difference between the US and Europe: in the US people were upfront about the system. You got extra points for being a legacy. In Europe, they discriminate in exactly the same way but they don't make it so overt. I'd rather have a transparent system that we can understand and where we can set clear goals, instead of an opaque system that fights even the most basic data collection and reforms.
- karaterobot 3y ago
  Thank you, this article had me thinking I'd gone insane. The idea that elite universities anywhere are a meritocracy is a pretty silly idea on its face. And sure enough, there is nothing presented in this article which supports the claim that this practice had stopped in Europe, which means it's either so obvious that everyone with half a brain knows it already, or it's just a spurious claim they threw in there without anything to back it up.
- jltsiren 3y ago
  I'm not familiar with the system in the UK, but most countries in the Continental Europe practice meritocratic discrimination. Admissions are primarily based on academic achievements, which correlate highly with family background. The same meritocratic discrimination also exists in the US. Legacy admissions do not replace it but add another layer of inequality on top of that. Meritocracy is fundamentally unfair, especially for young people. Success largely depends on things beyond your control, such as talent, personality, and interests; genetics, family background and random chance. I was somewhat involved in educational policy in Finland in the 2000s. Back then, one of the major issues was that meritocratic practices had started to decrease social mobility instead of increasing it. When higher education was expanding rapidly, most admissions were from working class / rural families. But once that generation started having children, their kids had a significant advantage in meritocratic admissions over those from less educated families. The culture had also changed to make the meritocratic discrimination worse. Old-school socialists and rural liberals strongly believed that education was the key to success, both for the individual and the society. But over the decades, the working class started rejecting education. Their children, who were already academically disadvantaged, became less interested in higher education.
Slava_Propanei 3y ago
[dead]
aaron695 3y ago
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stakhanov 3y ago
Both systems have their respective problems. For private universities, it is the influence that money will buy. For universities that are basically an outgrowth of the public administration apparatus, it is lack of accountability, lack of meritocracy-inducing regulative forces (cultural and otherwise), politics, perverse incentives, etc. etc.
kypro 3y ago
I genuinely believe there is no solution here which will make everyone happy. Even you were to have a fully meritocratic system it would still be massively biased to towards rich students and against African-Americans. Rich parents simply have more resources to ensure their kids get whatever educational resources they need to get the grades needed for admission to elite universities. We still don't know why African-Americans underperform other ethnic groups academically, but this is a reality and while this reality exists any fully meritocratic system will work against them. Our unwillingness to ask why African-Americans underperform is a huge part of the problem here. And I'll note this isn't just a US thing, it's similar here in Europe. There really is no solution here – at least not at the level of university admissions. The problem is deeper... At least one of the issues is that the quality of ones education depends a lot on the neighbourhood they grow up in. And African-Americans generally grow up in less affluent neighbourhoods. Minimising that difference and ensuring kids from all backgrounds have decent shot at getting the grades they need for university in my opinion should be the primary focus.
- lapcat 3y ago
  > I genuinely believe there is no solution here which will make everyone happy. This is true of every social problem. The goal is never to make everyone happy. We can't give up making progress just because "perfection" is unobtainable.
  - kypro 3y ago
    I agree. I wasn't very clear. When I said, "make everyone happy" I guess I meant something closer to, "be satisfactory". People are extremely divided on this, and I think part of the issue is that it's just the wrong problem to solve so all you have is bad solutions.
- bjourne 3y ago
  > And I'll note this isn't just a US thing, it's similar here in Europe. Really? In which European countries are under-performing African-Americans a big issue? Can you cite some statistics?
stakhanov 3y ago
(1) The children of Harvard-educated people are more likely to get a Harvard education themselves. True. (2) The children of prison inmates are more likely to become prison inmates themselves. Also true. If you want to do something about social mobility, you should presumably prioritize doing something about (2) over doing something about (1), because it affects a much larger number of people in a much deeper way. Yet, somehow, issues similar to (1) are the ones that receive a lot more air time in the media. That's because most people's underlying motivations are a hatred for those at the top, which they then hypocritically paraphrase as a concern for those at the bottom.
zhengiszen 3y ago
University or how the community (poor included) subsidized the rich. In Europe it's different system but the same result, you have rich and/or educated families that could afford and support their children at the back of the community as a whole. If a small percentage of the poor classes end up with a diploma it will be a bonus, but it will not amount to a majority.

42 points by xqcgrek2 3y ago

injb 3y ago

>>> For America to regain its social mobility, its top universities need to follow the data and stop practicing the kind of elitist discrimination that much of Europe has abandoned. This is the only part I can read before the paywall kicks in. But I wonder why they think that top universities are the drivers of social mobility.

oneplane 3y ago
I would guess this is not an emerging driver but rather an artificial driver because that is their primary value proposition.
alephnerd 3y ago
Legacy Admissions in the US happen at most Private Universities and a decent number of Public Universities as well. This isn't just an Ivy League problem - this is a problem that has an effect on the entire college admissions pipeline in the US (plenty of Ivy/UMich/UVA caliber students took seats at top public+private programs, students meant for top public+private programs ended up at regional flagships, etc). As the number of seats is finite, this leads to a massive misallocation across the board. That said, the same kind of elitist sorting still happens in Europe - it's just done at the grade school level instead
- dmpk2k 3y ago
  Could you elaborate about the sorting in grade school?
  - mih 3y ago
    This is e.g. in Germany - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Education_in_Germany#Secondary_education https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Education_in_Germany#Secondary.... Children of well educated parents almost always end up at a Gymnasium from which their career path ends up leading them to a university degree. Those in others types of schools have a tougher path leading to university education and will most likely end up in the equivalent of community colleges, vocational training or apprenticeship. Since recommendation by teachers counts for admission to a Gymnasium and this is often subjective, children of parents from less privileged backgrounds (blue collar workers, immigrants etc.) often end up in other schools. Sometimes this is an example of how society is stratified - a place for everyone and everyone in their place. Apart from the public schooling there are also private schools which are almost entirely for children of very well to do types since they come with a significant fee.
    - alephnerd 3y ago
      Yep. And it's the exact same in France with Lycée admissions (the ones that send the most students to Grandes écoles as well as the children of the elite tend attend either Private or extremely selective Lycées) and the UK with Independent Schools (eg. Eton, Harrow, Winchester).
      - vladvasiliu 3y ago
        I'm not very familiar with the German system, but I'd argue in France it's different. Yes, you need to go to a "general" high-school to hope to get into a prep-school. But no-one forces you to go to a technical or professional one. Teachers may recommend it, but the choice is with the pupil and the family. Where it does get selective is at the prep-school level. But AFAIK this is based on the high-school grades, and it would seem that being very good in a "bad" high-school nets you better chances of being picked than being average in an "elite" high-school.
        alephnerd 3y ago
        It's orthogonal. Classmates of Sarkozy's and Lagardère's kids at École Jeannine Manuel will continue to leverage their network from there no matter if they attended a Grande école or a random generic university. And there are plenty of schools like those to this day in France. This is the exact kind of network that Americans complain about with regards to legacy. Most HNers did well enough on their SATs and ACTs to attend a target public school or non-legacy private like UC Berkeley or MIT respectively, and around 75% of students at Harvard didn't get in via Legacy admissions yet we (rightfully) still complain about that 25% who leveraged their network and class background to get in.
        vladvasiliu 3y ago
        But then the issue is the networking, not the school itself. And all the circus around school admissions is just that. I doubt that if they were somehow forbidden to put their kids in the same school, Sarkozy's and Lagardère's kids would be total strangers and completely unlikely to "network". Just as there are cliques in all schools, even if their kids went to the same school as younger me, an immigrant, we would probably not have been friends, just like I was friends with kids whose "social level" was close to mine.
garyfirestorm 3y ago
It’s wishful thinking
cafard 3y ago
What part of Europe? Don't most of the Tory leadership in the UK come from the same few schools? What is the status of the grands écoles in France?
- namdnay 3y ago
  FWIW, entry to grandes ecoles is correlated far more strongly with parents being teachers than with them being rich.
  - jjgreen 3y ago
    I do like that those preparing for entry are taupin, after taupe, mole, due to their lack of exposure to sunlight.
- ben_w 3y ago
  > few schools Schools, plural? I got the impression that Eton alone was more than half of them?
  - arethuza 3y ago
    It might be that thing of using "schools" to refer to tertiary education? In that case both universities have an even higher proportion of PMs... ;-)
- arethuza 3y ago
  It's hardly surprising that most PMs have gone to Oxbridge - but its interesting to see how many studied PPE: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_prime_ministers_of_the_United_Kingdom_by_education https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_prime_ministers_of_the...
  - afavour 3y ago
    IMO it’s not that surprising: PPE is widely seen as the degree to do if you want to get into politics. So it’s not that people do PPE then find themselves drawn to the political world, it’s the reverse. I studied politics and quickly realised there was a huge divide between those of us who wanted to study a broken system from the outside and those who coveted being one of the jeering boors in the House of Commons. Helped me lose whatever faith I had left in the political system.
phone8675309 3y ago
[flagged]
- dang 3y ago
  > liquidating Yikes. Posting like this will get you banned here. No more of this please. In addition, I need to ask you to stop posting unsubstantive and/or flamebait comments generally, because your account has unfortunately been doing a lot of that. It's not what this site is for, and destroys what it is for. If you wouldn't mind reviewing https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html and taking the intended spirit of the site more to heart, we'd be grateful.
afavour 3y ago
> 10 years after starting college, the typical Ivy League grad earns more than twice as much as the typical graduate of other colleges https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/wonk/wp/2015/09/14/this-chart-shows-why-parents-push-their-kids-so-hard-to-get-into-ivy-league-schools/ https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/wonk/wp/2015/09/14/this-... Do feel like there’s a chicken and egg problem here, e.g. legacy admissions are more likely to land a plum job at their family’s business/through family connections so there isn’t a guarantee that those higher earnings are solely because of Ivy League attendance. But the pattern is there.
- cxr 3y ago
  Sure, but the article, backed by a study[1], is rather trying to make the opposite point—that attendance (or really admittance, i.e., permission to attend) is often directly attributable to higher earnings by the family of the admitted: > By comparing two groups of waitlisted students — those who are admitted to Ivy-Plus universities and those who are rejected — they note that the successful are much more likely to reach the top 1% of the income distribution, attend an elite graduate school and work for a prestigious firm[...] One in six students at Ivy League schools has parents in the top 1% of the income distribution. This is not just because the children of the rich are more likely to apply to elite colleges. Nor is it because the children of the rich have higher academic scores than middle class applicants: Children from the top 1% of the income distribution (more than $611,000) are 55% more likely to secure admission than a typical middle-class applicant with the same SAT or ACT scores, and children from the top 0.1 percent are more than twice as likely to get in. It is because elite colleges deliberately discriminate in favor of the rich. Neither chickens nor eggs need be harmed to see that this prima facie has something wrong with it. 1. <https://opportunityinsights.org/wp-content/uploads/2023/07/CollegeAdmissions_Paper.pdf https://opportunityinsights.org/wp-content/uploads/2023/07/C...>
- serial_dev 3y ago
  The kind of people who can get into an Ivy League university would probably outperform the other group even without ever actually going to the university: statistically (stereotypically?), they come from a rich and stable background, have strong network of rich and influential friends and acquaintances already, have access to capital, they don't color outside the lines, and when they do, they know how to cover their a.. legally speaking, and of course, they are probably not dumb, either. Yes, going to these universities probably makes some difference, but it probably doesn't explain all the difference, so if you take poor but talented kids and have them go to these universities, I expect the salary difference is much smaller.
fatnoah 3y ago
I'm not sure that we can remove "elitist" without also removing the concept of "top universities" too. Of course, that requires employers to not use university acceptance as a measure of the worth of an applicant rather than developing a more useful measure. I get it, it's hard for someone without experience, but I've also hired many, many people in my life as a software manager, ranging from entry level to grizzled veteran.
jfengel 3y ago
Top universities are more about making connections than about education. The education is of course excellent, but what you really get is access to previous graduates who trust you and treat you as part of their in group. The same goes for your classmates, who will be your first pick of business partners because you know them. Legacies are just one aspect of this, though it is particularly visible. Being able to break into that is a huge leg up, not just for you but for people around you in society. And being kept out reinforces that your group isn't suited to that kind of wealth production, even though it has nothing to do with either your skills or the quality of education you received.

laurensr 3y ago

Full article without login wall: https://archive.is/7JxMZ https://archive.is/7JxMZ

RubyRidgeRandy 3y ago

If you use ublock origin or brave, you can turn on the bypass payways clean filter within brave or you can subscribe to the list on filterlists.com

suslik 3y ago
or: https://gitlab.com/magnolia1234/bypass-paywalls-chrome-clean https://gitlab.com/magnolia1234/bypass-paywalls-chrome-clean https://gitlab.com/magnolia1234/bypass-paywalls-firefox-clean https://gitlab.com/magnolia1234/bypass-paywalls-firefox-clea...

mkoubaa 3y ago

Tldr The article is arguing against legacy college admissions.

throwaway33381 3y ago

Europe never abandoned it's "Elitist Discrimination" instead they build it into the foundations of the education system. It's a different model that instead relies on the fact that for most Europeans their lives are often decided when they born. While most Europeans receive some form secondary education they are pipelined at a young age into roles based on various factors that they are in no control of. It's not better than our existing system but it's not exactly the same. Instead in the European model while Alumni is not considered, those Alumni have a generational advantage that often makes it so that these children end up in the same place as they were born. In the same way it can be very difficult for children born into lower class families escape from the preset paths in life that they are given.

sunbum 3y ago
No.[1] [1] - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Global_Social_Mobility_Index https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Global_Social_Mobility_Index
- throwaway33381 3y ago
  This doesn't really show much besides the fact that for many European Countries they don't suffer from the same form of income inequality as we do. Note that Japan is ranked 15 yet is one of the worst examples of this. The Social Index tells nothing of the lives of the people in these countries. In Japan you have to be admitted into a high school program and from their the trajectory of your life starts. All the way into the College process. It's not a fair system yet it's ranked 15.
  - robertlagrant 3y ago
    Rather than criticise this information source, would you mind providing your own that makes you think Europeans' lives were decided from birth? I'm hoping to invest in the company that knew I'd be working on Python long before it was created.
- rat9988 3y ago
  Your link proves that european countries are close to US. Some better, some worse.

cxr 3y ago

For some appropriate context, a quick check of the attitudes of the past concerning society in North America versus Europe is helpful, and it doesn't require you to go read Democracy in America. Here's a passage from Benjamin Franklin's "Information to Those Who Would Remove to America" (which is itself very short on its own—only five or six pages—but here's a few slices): > The Truth is, that tho' there are in that Country few People so miserable as the Poor of Europe, there are also very few that in Europe would be called rich: it is rather a general happy Mediocrity that prevails[...] It is true that Letters and mathematical Knowledge are in Esteem there, but they are at the same time more common than is apprehended; there being already existing nine Colleges or Universities, viz. four in New-England, and one in each of the Provinces of New-York, New-Jersey, Pensilvania, Maryland and Virginia, all furnish'd with learned Professors; besides a number of smaller Academies: These educate many of their Youth in the Languages and those Sciences that qualify Men for the Professions of Divinity, Law or Physick. Strangers indeed are by no means excluded from exercising those Professions[...] Much less is it adviseable for a Person to go thither who has no other Quality to recommend him but his Birth. In Europe it has indeed its Value, but it is a Commodity that cannot be carried to a worse Market than to that of America, where People do not enquire concerning a Stranger, What IS he? but What can he DO? I re-read this recently, and was strongly reminded of it with the recent submission here of a blog post about the "New American University" at ASU. <https://nadia.xyz/asu https://nadia.xyz/asu>

Eumenes 3y ago

now that race based admissions is off the table (or hopefully) and legacy admissions is on the chopping block (hopefully), how about stop forcing students to take BS filler prereqs (costs thousands in $$ and credit hours), eliminating useless majors and departments, eviscerating the bloated administrative staff, etc. I have a friend who is a nurse in a state that allows them to practice with an associates degree. some workplaces, mostly hospitals, require them to start the process of getting a bachelors within 2 years of joining the company. the bachelor program, has absolutely zero to do with the job. its literally humanities BS. we have a nursing shortage and the schools, in partnership with corrupt hospitals, need to bleed students dry of their money and time. many jobs could do w/o the university/college system, and simply just be vocational programs at fractions of the cost and become way more accessible.

zer8k 3y ago
The goal of a university degree is not to get a job. It's to create a person who is well rounded enough to drop into almost any field but very specialized in one field. Universities becoming trade schools is the reason bloated administrative staff exists. As for your particular example that is also what I've heard. Except that the BSc is more business-oriented (not humanities). That being said, if you think something like nursing could be a vocation degree I don't think you understand how much even nursing relies on Chemistry, Biology, and Math. My nurse friends are regularly in charge of compounding drugs before administration for example. Loosening requirements will not stop the nursing shortage because it's caused by the same thing the doctor shortage is caused by. Long, thankless hours, low pay, high stress, and the nurses unions keeping headcounts in check. On one hand dumping the nurses union will likely see pay rise. On the other hand the unions are often the only reason nurse/patient ratios are kept inside of safe bounds. The division you're talking about is why in CS they offer an ASc, BA, and BSc. You can pick just how deep you wish to go. Most people get a BSc because it's the most flexible. What people do not understand is pedigree matters very little. I paid ~$25,000 all-in for my CS degree from a decent (top 50) school. I am just as good as the MIT kids I work with through the magic of ABET accreditation enforcing a standard. Standards are good for everyone and people should be excluded from just calling themselves something.

slibhb 3y ago

This nonstop talk about getting rid of legacy admissions is funny. The subtext is that legacy admissions were acceptable as long as racial preferences were acceptable. Apparently, only now that we've gotten rid of the latter do we need to address the former.

jayess 3y ago
It's no secret that racial preferences were a cover for legacy admissions.
- Pet_Ant 3y ago
  I legitimately don't buy that. Legacy seems like really a mechanism for nepotism and reinforcing elite networks. While due to their origin they probably have racial skews, but I really don't buy that is their driving force. After all, legacy are such a small percentage overall they can't sway the overall campus demographics much. Not saying they should or shouldn't be dismantled, just bothers me to see likely misattributed motivations.
  - monocasa 3y ago
    At Harvard, legacy admissions was about a third total of all admissions each year.
    - Pet_Ant 3y ago
      Okay, that’s interesting. I didn’t look for Harvard, but the numbers I found before posting was 14% in general.
mancerayder 3y ago
It's as if the racial preferences issue/controversy shielded the legacy preferences injustice. It was always well-known that the children of connected, rich people got preference. But focus on the pros and cons of affirmative action, and the arguments about historical racism, and no one pays attention. It's a debate or policy distraction that I think extends outside of the university and throughout the United States. It's as if the conversation around class inequality takes a back seat to the racial ones, and that the privileged take a very strong stance that it is the singular most important topic to address.

light_hue_1 3y ago

These people have no idea what they're talking about. They think the UK and France are meritocracies when it comes to attending Oxbridge or the Grande Ecoles? This doesn't stand up to even the most basic scrutiny. Cambridge doesn't even keep data on its students by income group. That's how embarrassing the numbers are. (Cambridge even actively punishes poor students by forbidding them to work at all while enrolled.) All Oxford will admit to is that 90% of the students come from above the UK's median income. The Grand Ecoles in France are far worse. People talk about the opening of the Grand Ecoles to other social classes, but this is barely happening. They only started to open up in the 2000s and the opening has been extremely underwhelming. https://shs.hal.science/halshs-03119054/document https://shs.hal.science/halshs-03119054/document If Harvard, Princeton, MIT, Stanford were as unequal as the schools this article is promoting people would lose their minds! The only difference between the US and Europe: in the US people were upfront about the system. You got extra points for being a legacy. In Europe, they discriminate in exactly the same way but they don't make it so overt. I'd rather have a transparent system that we can understand and where we can set clear goals, instead of an opaque system that fights even the most basic data collection and reforms.

karaterobot 3y ago
Thank you, this article had me thinking I'd gone insane. The idea that elite universities anywhere are a meritocracy is a pretty silly idea on its face. And sure enough, there is nothing presented in this article which supports the claim that this practice had stopped in Europe, which means it's either so obvious that everyone with half a brain knows it already, or it's just a spurious claim they threw in there without anything to back it up.
jltsiren 3y ago
I'm not familiar with the system in the UK, but most countries in the Continental Europe practice meritocratic discrimination. Admissions are primarily based on academic achievements, which correlate highly with family background. The same meritocratic discrimination also exists in the US. Legacy admissions do not replace it but add another layer of inequality on top of that. Meritocracy is fundamentally unfair, especially for young people. Success largely depends on things beyond your control, such as talent, personality, and interests; genetics, family background and random chance. I was somewhat involved in educational policy in Finland in the 2000s. Back then, one of the major issues was that meritocratic practices had started to decrease social mobility instead of increasing it. When higher education was expanding rapidly, most admissions were from working class / rural families. But once that generation started having children, their kids had a significant advantage in meritocratic admissions over those from less educated families. The culture had also changed to make the meritocratic discrimination worse. Old-school socialists and rural liberals strongly believed that education was the key to success, both for the individual and the society. But over the decades, the working class started rejecting education. Their children, who were already academically disadvantaged, became less interested in higher education.

Slava_Propanei 3y ago

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aaron695 3y ago

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stakhanov 3y ago

Both systems have their respective problems. For private universities, it is the influence that money will buy. For universities that are basically an outgrowth of the public administration apparatus, it is lack of accountability, lack of meritocracy-inducing regulative forces (cultural and otherwise), politics, perverse incentives, etc. etc.

kypro 3y ago

I genuinely believe there is no solution here which will make everyone happy. Even you were to have a fully meritocratic system it would still be massively biased to towards rich students and against African-Americans. Rich parents simply have more resources to ensure their kids get whatever educational resources they need to get the grades needed for admission to elite universities. We still don't know why African-Americans underperform other ethnic groups academically, but this is a reality and while this reality exists any fully meritocratic system will work against them. Our unwillingness to ask why African-Americans underperform is a huge part of the problem here. And I'll note this isn't just a US thing, it's similar here in Europe. There really is no solution here – at least not at the level of university admissions. The problem is deeper... At least one of the issues is that the quality of ones education depends a lot on the neighbourhood they grow up in. And African-Americans generally grow up in less affluent neighbourhoods. Minimising that difference and ensuring kids from all backgrounds have decent shot at getting the grades they need for university in my opinion should be the primary focus.

lapcat 3y ago
> I genuinely believe there is no solution here which will make everyone happy. This is true of every social problem. The goal is never to make everyone happy. We can't give up making progress just because "perfection" is unobtainable.
- kypro 3y ago
  I agree. I wasn't very clear. When I said, "make everyone happy" I guess I meant something closer to, "be satisfactory". People are extremely divided on this, and I think part of the issue is that it's just the wrong problem to solve so all you have is bad solutions.
bjourne 3y ago
> And I'll note this isn't just a US thing, it's similar here in Europe. Really? In which European countries are under-performing African-Americans a big issue? Can you cite some statistics?

stakhanov 3y ago

(1) The children of Harvard-educated people are more likely to get a Harvard education themselves. True. (2) The children of prison inmates are more likely to become prison inmates themselves. Also true. If you want to do something about social mobility, you should presumably prioritize doing something about (2) over doing something about (1), because it affects a much larger number of people in a much deeper way. Yet, somehow, issues similar to (1) are the ones that receive a lot more air time in the media. That's because most people's underlying motivations are a hatred for those at the top, which they then hypocritically paraphrase as a concern for those at the bottom.

zhengiszen 3y ago

University or how the community (poor included) subsidized the rich. In Europe it's different system but the same result, you have rich and/or educated families that could afford and support their children at the back of the community as a whole. If a small percentage of the poor classes end up with a diploma it will be a bonus, but it will not amount to a majority.