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>>> 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

• 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.