3 ms·

Yes, this. To add to that, say hypothetically, I'm an employer and I want to grow my company by building some software. I decide to shoot for the moon and hire

Yes, this. To add to that, say hypothetically, I'm an employer and I want to grow my company by building some software. I decide to shoot for the moon and hire a Stanford grad. I happen to get one of the "paid for," ones and they're just like the many, many other not great programmers. Through that experience the Stanford grad I hired isn't any better than the many, many other not great programmers I can hire from any school. Why would I ever give preference to a Stanford degree over any other? All the great programmers with Stanford degrees who earned them through really hard work, smarts and discipline are devalued because that one guy who Stanford said was good enough by awarding him a (paid for) degree, wasn't good enough. If you can pay for admittance, most likely you can pay for grades too.

neilv 2y ago
> Why would I ever give preference to a Stanford degree over any other? For a software developer, you shouldn't.
pfannkuchen 2y ago
This comes off as a bit naive to me. The Stanford grad with parents who paid $25M for admission is not applying for a programming job, and certainly not cold just on the strength of their resume. They will move in their parents’ network, which now has a graph edge with the Stanford network and vice versa. This sort of thing is more about power networks than it is about education.
- FredPret 2y ago
  True but that kid is still running around sporting an unearned degree. He will meet many people from all walks of life over the course of his life. The smart kids can tell that this is a dumb kid with a Stanford degree. It does not look good. Also, there's a smart poor kid out there should've been in his place.
  - pfannkuchen 2y ago
    So I’m not 100% sure that the motives are pure all around. But! I think it’s very plausible that network-mixing with wealthy families, who collectively have some significant control over the economy because that’s what wealth fundamentally is in our society, may actually be critical to the value of attending elite universities for the merit-based-selection group.
musicale 2y ago
> If you can pay for admittance, most likely you can pay for grades too. Do you mean paying for tutoring (in which case you actually learn the material), or more devious shenanigans like faking your work, cheating or hiring lookalikes to sit for exams, bribing professors, etc.? Interestingly enough, Stanford does seem to be changing its honor code (after more than a century?) to permit exam proctoring. Now that we are in the chatGPT era, I suspect in-person exams will become more important for grading purposes.
- Clubber 2y ago
  >Do you mean paying for tutoring (in which case you actually learn the material), or more devious shenanigans like faking your work, cheating or hiring lookalikes to sit for exams, bribing professors, etc.? The latter of course. Academic integrity standards have been in place for centuries. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Academic_integrity https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Academic_integrity
  - musicale 2y ago
    Which forms of pay-for-grades are likely to be effective at Stanford?

neilv 2y ago

> Why would I ever give preference to a Stanford degree over any other? For a software developer, you shouldn't.

pfannkuchen 2y ago

This comes off as a bit naive to me. The Stanford grad with parents who paid $25M for admission is not applying for a programming job, and certainly not cold just on the strength of their resume. They will move in their parents’ network, which now has a graph edge with the Stanford network and vice versa. This sort of thing is more about power networks than it is about education.

FredPret 2y ago
True but that kid is still running around sporting an unearned degree. He will meet many people from all walks of life over the course of his life. The smart kids can tell that this is a dumb kid with a Stanford degree. It does not look good. Also, there's a smart poor kid out there should've been in his place.
- pfannkuchen 2y ago
  So I’m not 100% sure that the motives are pure all around. But! I think it’s very plausible that network-mixing with wealthy families, who collectively have some significant control over the economy because that’s what wealth fundamentally is in our society, may actually be critical to the value of attending elite universities for the merit-based-selection group.

musicale 2y ago

> If you can pay for admittance, most likely you can pay for grades too. Do you mean paying for tutoring (in which case you actually learn the material), or more devious shenanigans like faking your work, cheating or hiring lookalikes to sit for exams, bribing professors, etc.? Interestingly enough, Stanford does seem to be changing its honor code (after more than a century?) to permit exam proctoring. Now that we are in the chatGPT era, I suspect in-person exams will become more important for grading purposes.

Clubber 2y ago
>Do you mean paying for tutoring (in which case you actually learn the material), or more devious shenanigans like faking your work, cheating or hiring lookalikes to sit for exams, bribing professors, etc.? The latter of course. Academic integrity standards have been in place for centuries. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Academic_integrity https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Academic_integrity
- musicale 2y ago
  Which forms of pay-for-grades are likely to be effective at Stanford?