How the Ivy League Broke America

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:Perhaps the below take by David Brooks will make some of you rethink your Ivy obsession, especially after the election outcome we witnessed:

https://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2024/12/meritocracy-college-admissions-social-economic-segregation/680392/

Trump won because of uneducated white voters. You sound like one of them.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:
That's how every developed country functions: they have evolved a small number of elite schools from whence they pick their governing elite. It happens in the UK, France, Germany, Japan, South Korea, etc.

It's not deliberate. It's a natural evolution that springs from a very understandable human desire to cut through the noise and streamline the job application process.

Or you can do what China started two thousand years ago and have the civil service exams. They lasted until the turn of the 20th century. People studied for years. 1% made the cut.
Now India has a similar system.

This was my point above about accepting the class system. You can try to take money out of it, but you won't fully succeed. Ex: if you have civil service exams, the UMC will have the most resources to study for them (and the UC will find some way to circumvent them).

[Anonymous]

Oh for the love. When you are status-obsessed, you have such a different view. Most people don't care about the Ivy League. They go to colleges in their general region and are just fine. They aren't constantly looking to the Ivy League or working at a select few companies (which the author can't even name).

[Anonymous]

OP, that article doesn’t say what you want it to say. Lol

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:The critique is fine; the proposed solution is insipid. Brooks is pretty good when it comes to summarizing things that other people have been thinking and writing about for years. He isn’t much of an original thinker.

Yes. He’s proposing to rearrange the deck chairs. The fundamental problem is that the Ivies are too small for the social role they are trying to fill, and they refuse to grow. It doesn’t really matter how they fill their classes: their role as gatekeepers, and the ever-growing number of people locked out, will continue to fuel an ever-expanding populist backlash.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:They have the best financial aid for the poor. Free

+1

In recent decades the Ivies have made a practice of pulling very smart but poor kids out of environments where their abilities can't be put to good use. Also, has anyone else noticed there is a DCUM regular posting article links and then soon thereafter posting a gift link? Many people are accused of being paid trolls however this looks undeniable to I

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:The critique is fine; the proposed solution is insipid. Brooks is pretty good when it comes to summarizing things that other people have been thinking and writing about for years. He isn’t much of an original thinker.

Yes. He’s proposing to rearrange the deck chairs. The fundamental problem is that the Ivies are too small for the social role they are trying to fill, and they refuse to grow. It doesn’t really matter how they fill their classes: their role as gatekeepers, and the ever-growing number of people locked out, will continue to fuel an ever-expanding populist backlash.

Please prove the bolded. There are only so many spots at the kind of employers who prefer to hire from the 3 same Ivy and Ivy-adjacent schools.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:The critique is fine; the proposed solution is insipid. Brooks is pretty good when it comes to summarizing things that other people have been thinking and writing about for years. He isn’t much of an original thinker.

Yes. He’s proposing to rearrange the deck chairs. The fundamental problem is that the Ivies are too small for the social role they are trying to fill, and they refuse to grow. It doesn’t really matter how they fill their classes: their role as gatekeepers, and the ever-growing number of people locked out, will continue to fuel an ever-expanding populist backlash.

Please prove the bolded. There are only so many spots at the kind of employers who prefer to hire from the 3 same Ivy and Ivy-adjacent schools.

The Ivies aspire to be more than an HR department.

[Anonymous]

This is a big rant about how replacing a hereditary hierarchy is no better than a cognitive hierarchy because the cognitive elites will invest so much money into their kids that there will be a hereditary element to it.

It is still a lot easier for the common born man to get into Harvard than to crawl out of the womb of a boston brahmin matron.

Merit based technocracy is still better than an hereditary oligarchy.

[Anonymous]

I found this interesting. I'm glad I chose to invest the money instead.
"According to the Yale Law professor Daniel Markovits, the author of The Meritocracy Trap, if the typical family in the top 1 percent of earners were to take that surplus—all the excess money they spend, beyond what a middle-class family spends, on their child’s education in the form of private-school tuition, extracurricular activities, SAT-prep courses, private tutors, and so forth—and simply invest it in the markets, it would be worth $10 million or more as a conventional inheritance."

[Anonymous]

Read like a long Ph.D. dissertation without saying much.

The fact that Brooks could get into the formation of standardized testing and "meritocracy" without mentioning Carl Bringham and eugenics is telling. Suppressing the truth.

[Anonymous]

Kind of a bit of aside that is mentioned in the article, is that how the rise of Generative AI will make traditional academic skills even less important.

Linked to a study at Harvard where someone used ChatGPT 4 (paid version) to write a bunch of papers on different topics and then told the Harvard professors grading, that some of the papers were written by ChatGPT and others by qualified humans.

In reality, they were all written by ChatGPT. Papers received mostly As. Basically, the person would have received a 3.6 for the semester just having Chat GPT crank out the papers.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:Kind of a bit of aside that is mentioned in the article, is that how the rise of Generative AI will make traditional academic skills even less important.

Linked to a study at Harvard where someone used ChatGPT 4 (paid version) to write a bunch of papers on different topics and then told the Harvard professors grading, that some of the papers were written by ChatGPT and others by qualified humans.

In reality, they were all written by ChatGPT. Papers received mostly As. Basically, the person would have received a 3.6 for the semester just having Chat GPT crank out the papers.

And that doesn’t happen at every college in the country? And most, the vast majority of T30-300 are test optional. Ha. At least you can’t use chatgpt to take your standardized test, for now. And studies show even extensive test prep will only raise test scores slightly. Your 22 ACT isn’t going to be a 35-36 ACt which you need to get into an Ivy. But a naturally smart poor kid could score that. My kid did no test prep and scored a 35 the end of sophomore year…

Oh and we are dumbing down standardized tests too…each new iteration .. shorter and easier because of all the no attention span dummies in the country

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Kind of a bit of aside that is mentioned in the article, is that how the rise of Generative AI will make traditional academic skills even less important.

Linked to a study at Harvard where someone used ChatGPT 4 (paid version) to write a bunch of papers on different topics and then told the Harvard professors grading, that some of the papers were written by ChatGPT and others by qualified humans.

In reality, they were all written by ChatGPT. Papers received mostly As. Basically, the person would have received a 3.6 for the semester just having Chat GPT crank out the papers.

And that doesn’t happen at every college in the country? And most, the vast majority of T30-300 are test optional. Ha. At least you can’t use chatgpt to take your standardized test, for now. And studies show even extensive test prep will only raise test scores slightly. Your 22 ACT isn’t going to be a 35-36 ACt which you need to get into an Ivy. But a naturally smart poor kid could score that. My kid did no test prep and scored a 35 the end of sophomore year…

Oh and we are dumbing down standardized tests too…each new iteration .. shorter and easier because of all the no attention span dummies in the country

I don't get what point you are trying to make.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:Kind of a bit of aside that is mentioned in the article, is that how the rise of Generative AI will make traditional academic skills even less important.

Linked to a study at Harvard where someone used ChatGPT 4 (paid version) to write a bunch of papers on different topics and then told the Harvard professors grading, that some of the papers were written by ChatGPT and others by qualified humans.

In reality, they were all written by ChatGPT. Papers received mostly As. Basically, the person would have received a 3.6 for the semester just having Chat GPT crank out the papers.

Are we sure that paper-writing skills is the actual thing writing papers is designed to teach?

I thought it was the ability to formulate a thesis and defend it. That's why many professors are now having students prepare for in-class paper writing with a pen and paper.

I think the reasoning behind writing a paper will remain valuable. And professors who care will rejigger their classes to test that skill in a way that ChatGPT cannot at least provide the final product (it will definitely be used for research purposes no matter what).