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The "foundation" of Harvard is institutional power. Academic excellence is at best a consequence of that. I can guarantee that Harvard's many powerful alumni ar
by p-e-w 3y ago
The "foundation" of Harvard is institutional power. Academic excellence is at best a consequence of that. I can guarantee that Harvard's many powerful alumni aren't going to let that institutional power be eroded, regardless of how bad academic standards ever become. And they control sufficiently many other institutions to ensure that Harvard retains its shine, at least to the outside world.
- ryandrake 3y agoWhat’s the end state? Harvard eventually doesn’t even have to provide an education. It’s role is as a manufacturer of prestige. It selects N people a year, deems those people “elite,” and those people end up employed in elite investment banks and consulting companies because they were deemed elite by an institution with that power. Those elites then go on to recruit the next year worth of elites. I mean, this already is happening in name brand education institutions. The value is all in the name and network of fellow elites, and the education itself is largely irrelevant. I’d name schools, but I bet a lot of HN readership got their first lucrative FAANG jobs based entirely on their attendance at one of these institutions…
- jackcosgrove 3y agoThe end state is very close to the starting state, unfortunately. Bureaucracies that select their own incoming ranks are very, very hard to reform from the outside. The liberal reforms of the 18th and 19th centuries such as checks and balances were devised to counteract this tendency. Many universities predate these reforms.