[endisneigh]

It's a shame that we're here in 2021 and the best we can do is basically just "selection bias." Basically all universities have no statistical proof that they can educate people beyond this. This is not to say that the schools are bad, but most of the education is simply due to the types of peers you have, not really due to the school itself.

Princeton and Harvard admit, for the most part, people who already excelled significantly in high school. Such excellence is already indicative of ability.

Ideally our fixation would be on a hypothetical institution that admits people entirely at random, and through some means (whether authoritarian, or montessori, waldorf, immersion, etc.) shows that beyond a reasonable doubt the school itself has improved the persons educational prospects.

You'd think by now, some sort of Google-like data driven school would've emerged by now for K-12 and higher ed.

[beforeolives]

> beyond a reasonable doubt the school itself has improved the persons educational prospects.

How many people do genuinely care about this? People go to top schools in order to improve their life prospects, not necessarily to get the best education (but they get that too anyway).

[bumby]

I believe there’s research that shows elite schools do not improve ones life prospects, with the exception of those from lower income households. They looked at those who were accepted to elite schools and went to “lesser” schools. Those people did not have worse outcomes, indicating the elite schools are selecting those who would have done well regardless. I do think this makes an interesting case for admitting more lower income students for the networking effect.

(I’ll see if I can dig up the research later when I have more time and link to it).

Edit:

"we find that students who attended more selective colleges earned about the same as students of seemingly comparable ability who attended less selective schools. Children from low-income families, however, earned more if they attended selective colleges."

https://academic.oup.com/qje/article-abstract/117/4/1491/187...

[bko]

It appears the opposite may be true

> But it turns out that the proportional increase for those who grew up poor is much less than for those who did not. College graduates from families with an income below 185 percent of the federal poverty level (the eligibility threshold for the federal assisted lunch program) earn 91 percent more over their careers than high school graduates from the same income group. By comparison, college graduates from families with incomes above 185 percent of the FPL earned 162 percent more over their careers (between the ages of 25 and 62) than those with just a high school diploma:

https://www.brookings.edu/blog/social-mobility-memos/2016/02...

[candybar]

This isn't measuring the same thing though - a college degree vs a high-school degree is a very different question than a college degree from an elite school vs a college degree from a slightly less elite, but still very good school.

This also appears to lack any kind of control, whereas the other study tried to control for the student's abilities.

[andy9775]

Are you accounting for family connections? High income families tend to have connections which can help. If your parents are good friends with a lawyer at a top law firm you no longer have to apply on your own merit. Poor families lack these connections and students have to apply on their own. Something to consider.

[dmarchand90]

It's behind a soft paywall but this article describes what you're saying very nicely. https://www.theatlantic.com/ideas/archive/2018/12/does-it-ma...

Apparently college is almost useless for rich white guys but it's progressively more useful if you're not rich, white, or a guy.

[endisneigh]

I agree with you. I went to a top school in order to improve my life prospects as well.

However as a civilization it's important that a school like the one I'm hypothesizing exists because selection bias is not really sustainable, nor does it help those who genuinely want to improve but are otherwise not particularly able.

I also imagine if a "performance school" actually existed its influence would extend far beyond traditional education. It would prove that there's some means in which people can learn optimally. Presumably that mechanism would spread to all industries and we all would be better for it.

[jfengel]

I'm not sure what kind of data you would use to drive it. A lot of the most important aspects of education aren't readily measurable: the ability to write, the network connections you make (to fellow students, professors, alumni, donors, etc), capacity to work in teams, and so on. You risk the same things you get with tech firms using leetcode and puzzles to select... well, to select those who are good at leetcode and puzzles.

You can measure it in terms of career success, but even there it's very hard to deal with the selection bias. Those who succeed are those who succeed.

I'm a big fan of Signum University, which is an online-only university dedicated to the soft skills that have to be taught personally, rather than a MOOC. It can't develop connections like Harvard and Stanford but it can develop those skills that make the hard-to-measure differences between those who succeed and those who are merely very good at taking tests. It remains, however, impossible to factor out those connections, which seem to make the biggest difference.

[endisneigh]

I’m not sure what having a network has to do with being educated.

[jfengel]

I'm saying I'm not sure how you'd measure "educated". Many subjects aren't well suited to testing, and even for those that are, the tests don't often correlate all that well to problem-solving ability, insight, or other valuable skills.

You can measure wealth, but I'm suggesting that wealth outcomes has more to do with your life circumstances than with how much knowledge you acquire in school (by whatever mechanism you would measure that).

[bumby]

A network can have significant impact on your "life prospects" though, which is what you indicated in your previous post was one of your considerations for choosing a school.

[analog31]

I think what people have a generic desire for education and life prospects -- the two are not mutually exclusive -- and then choose the school that does both for them within parameters such as acceptance, prestige, and cost.

[tw8345]

Yeah the best schools education wise are not the best schools for like prospects. Thats just how it is and most folks dont care about the education bit

[slibhb]

> Princeton and Harvard admit, for the most part, people who already excelled significantly in high school. Such excellence is already indicative of ability.

> Ideally our fixation would be on a hypothetical institution that admits people entirely at random, and through some means (whether authoritarian, or montessori, waldorf, immersion, etc.) shows that beyond a reasonable doubt the school itself has improved the persons educational prospects.

This view of higher education as training students or increasing the socioeconomic prospects of students is fairly new and it's not working. The former view is better. College should be for academically gifted high school graduates.

At the same time, a college degree should not be required to get a good entry-level job.

[montecarl]

You may not have meant it this way, but "College should be for academically gifted high school graduates" is not what I would have in mind for who should attend college. I think college should be for those who want to learn.

For example, I had very poor grades in high school (would not have been described as academically gifted) and used state funds to go to undergrad to study science. Ended up just being a late bloomer, graduated summa cum laude with a degree in chemistry and went on to get a PhD in theoretical chemistry. Higher education shouldn't be restricted to just students who appear gifted, but should be available to anyone who wants to put in the work.

I agree that college should not be a requirement for good entry-level jobs, however, I don't think that college admission in general (there will always be elite private institutions) should be heavily restricted based on my personal experience.

Edit due to sibling comment: I did poorly on the math placement test for college as well and had to take remedial math courses. I ended up minoring in math and taking some graduate level courses in numerical analysis during undergrad. So the idea that colleges shouldn't have remedial classes is ridiculous.

[honkycat]

No, montecarl, higher education should only be for kids who get the most obedience points in child jail.

Please ignore the vast gulf of quality between child jails, if they were gifted students they would have risen to the top anyway.

[slibhb]

If there's some way to figure out "those who are willing and able to learn" better than "those who excelled in high school," then fine, use that.

But it's clear to me that the current system is not for "those who want to learn". College is just what you do after high school because an undergraduate degree is a requirement for some bizarre reason.

[Kevin_S]

Just to extend your point, some of my stats:

3.0 high school GPA 3.0 undergraduate GPA

Now in year 3 of a PhD program. I wasn't even considered academically gifted in undergrad! Yet I think I am a pretty good researcher.

[disgruntledphd2]

I finished at near the bottom of my undergrad. Got a PhD and a job that uses those skills, which puts me in the top 10% of graduates in my field.

So yeah, study and research are very different.

[whimsicalism]

What the hell are you all getting PhDs in where it is a doable path if you are near the bottom of your undergrad?

I've explored a PhD in CS, and reading what people write I've gotten the impression that it is extremely difficult to get into programs.

[disgruntledphd2]

Well, I did by dint of being incredibly lazy throughout my undergrad, but clearly smart (engaging with the material, but not doing enough work).

I was pretty lazy in my UG, and (for the first time in my life) competing against people just as smart as me. So I did pretty badly.

I did demonstrate strong research aptitude in my project, as well as a bunch of other classes. I kinda skipped a bunch of stuff in second year, and second year was 33% of the final grade, so I did pretty crap.

To be fair, I came to the department with a proposal, found my own supervisors and got my own funding (through a government scholarship), so I didn't really cost them much.

[bumby]

It can be doable if you deliberately select jobs that can demonstrate research aptitude as a way of getting into a PhD program. In my case, it’s also awfully helpful if you have an employer willing to foot the bill, as it means you won’t have to scrap and compete for limited funding positions.

[Kevin_S]

Sorry late reply, but I am in accounting.

[throwawayboise]

Exactly. As I said in another reply, remediating a poor K-12 education is not the point of going to college.

[bumby]

>This view of higher education as training students or increasing the socioeconomic prospects of students is fairly new

I’d argue the idea of college being vocational is not very new. The Morrill Land Grant Act of 1862 was, in part, a way for training people to better integrate into a more industrialized economy.

“to teach such branches of learning as are related to agriculture and the mechanic arts, in such manner as the legislatures of the States may respectively prescribe, in order to promote the liberal and practical education of the industrial classes in the several pursuits and professions in life.”

https://www.law.cornell.edu/uscode/text/7/304

[mancerayder]

>This view of higher education as training students or increasing the socioeconomic prospects of students is fairly new and it's not working. The former view is better. College should be for academically gifted high school graduates.

I had a low GPA in high school and a high one in college.

It's not a challenge intellectually, it's a challenge to your work ethic and discipline as well as (very important) social skills, none of which I had in high school.

So, what you're saying is false. Because when you say academically gifted, I picture fast learners or creative minds, not the hardest of the hard workers.

[endisneigh]

I didn't mention anything about increasing socioeconomic prospects of students.

The things you're saying are contradictory. If all the good people go to college then college will always be required to get a good entry level job by definition. Why would any employer give someone a "good" job if they didn't go to a "good" college that has all of the "good" students?

[slibhb]

It's not contradictory at all.

> If all the good people go to college then college will always be required to get a good entry level job by definition. Why would any employer give someone a "good" job if they didn't go to a "good" college that has all of the "good" students?

I did not equate "academically gifted high school graduates" with "good people". You did! What an insane idea. It's very clear to me that most jobs do not require a 4 year degree. The fact that we only give good entry-level positions (that aren't manual labor) to college graduates is an absurdity.

College should be for the most promising, academically interested students. Students who have a good shot at a career in academia. Employers won't be able to only hire from that pool because it will be a very small pool.

[endisneigh]

Why would an employer hire someone for their "good" job that wasn't a "good" student? No matter what criteria you use to define a good job, all things being equal the better students would go to college and therefore employers are incentivized to only select those who went to college to begin with.

Why do you think college is a requirement now to begin with? Is it some sort of conspiracy? What I'm describing has already occurred. Sorry, but you're living in a fantasy - the vast majority of people who go to college couldn't care less about working in academia nor would there be room for all of them to be academics to begin with.

[slibhb]

> Why would an employer hire someone for their "good" job that wasn't a "good" student? No matter what criteria you use to define a good job, all things being equal the better students would go to college and therefore employers are incentivized to only select those who went to college to begin with.

The number of good jobs is not a function of the number of college grads. If there are fewer college grads, employers will have to broaden the search. Let high school graduates apply to entry level positions that aren't manual labor.

> Why do you think college is a requirement now to begin with? Is it some sort of conspiracy? What I'm describing has already occurred. Sorry, but you're living in a fantasy - the vast majority of people who go to college couldn't care less about working in academia nor would there be room for all of them to be academics to begin with.

I'm saying that people who are going to college to get a degree so they can get an entry level job should not be in college. They should just be able to apply to those jobs out of high school.

The people left over, the people who actually want to go to college for the sake of knowledge, will be academically talented (or at least interested).

[endisneigh]

> The number of good jobs is not a function of the number of college grads. If there are fewer college grads, employers will have to broaden the search. Let high school graduates apply to entry level positions that aren't manual labor.

Again most if not all good jobs require skills - skills that must be taught. What is this hypothetical "good job" that requires no training? You're seriously not living in reality, this is 2021, not 1950.

No matter what, if the people with more skills are going to college, employers will make college a requirement, even if a college education is not strictly necessary to do the job. This isn't some hypothetical, it's already happened.

No one is forced to go to college, they do so because the opportunities are there and employers want college educated employees. Conversely, employers need not hire exclusively college graduates, but it turns out that people who don't go to college generally do not perform (of course there are exceptions).

> I'm saying that people who are going to college to get a degree so they can get an entry level job should not be in college. They should just be able to apply to those jobs out of high school.

They already can, they will just likely be rejected.

[hooande]

Academia isn't financially self sustaining. Rich parents pay for the prestige of sending their children to certain schools. If college is only for future academics, they'll quickly run out of money.

The general pursuit of academic science could be funded by other means. but it will be hard to match the amount of revenue generated from wealthy parents and alumni

[slibhb]

Colleges are obscenely bloated mini-empires. They have grown their own legal systems and police forces. They should have far, far less money.

[dolni]

It makes sense to group people for education based on ability. If a low performer is in a class of high performers, one of two things will likely happen:

* the low performer will be left behind, because the course moves too quickly or sets the bar beyond their abilities

* the class will have to be dumbed down so that the low performer can participate, which means that the high performers haven't realized their full potential

That said, I take your general point about Ivy Leagues and I am curious to know if we can come up with an objective way of comparing them to other schools. As a prerequisite, you would need a way to measure someone's ability before and after admission.

[adamhp]

> It makes sense to group people for education based on ability

Ability to do what exactly? Your premise is based on this idea of "performance" as if it that is easily measurable or is some innate quality of a person. Performance is a function of the system itself though.

Speaking from the perspective of someone in the United States: I didn't "perform well enough" in middle school and so got ignored by staff and counselors in high school, so then "underperformed" there as well.

I got lucky and had a peer mentor me and help me figure out the importance of education. I went to community college and transferred to a top tier public university and went on to get a Master's degree, and now I am a high earning, tax paying, productive member of society. Could just be another "underperformer", but I lucked out and received someone else's empathy.

We should be seeking to build a system that works for a variety of learner's, a variety of life situations, and a variety of subjects. We certainly have the technology and we understand that it isn't as simple as "high performers" and "low performers".

[thatfrenchguy]

Same here. It sounds to me like every test trying to measure "ability" ends up testing for a specific kind of ability instead of the presence of ability in general.

US college admissions today are basically a joke though, given universities mostly admit upper-middle class kids with perfect grades who can write an essay where they pretend that their life was hard.

[dolni]

I think we shouldn't let perfect be the enemy of good, here. Yes, ability measurement is sort of fuzzy and it's not perfect. It at least gives you a starting point.

There would be no doubt in anybody's mind that we shouldn't take a kid whose mathematical abilities are counting to 10, and adding and subtracting one digit numbers, and toss them into a calculus course.

So given that there is some boundary, that ability is meaningful in _some_ way, we can start to narrow it down. We can think about methods for measuring ability. What knowledge and understanding is required before you can tackle algebra II?

Again, not perfect, but certainly necessary and better than nothing.

[the_only_law]

> US college admissions today are basically a joke though, given universities mostly admit upper-middle class kids with perfect grades who can write an essay where they pretend that their life was hard.

I didn’t pursue a bachelors after high school. For a couple reasons I regret this now and tried to apply to a handful of state schools.

One thing that felt very clear to me was that if you don’t fit that archetype, they don’t really want you. I have a feeling they cared more about my high school discipline record than my industry and open source experience.

[nine_k]

Ability (not innate, but current) to learn a particular set of things. How well you are prepared, motivated, and maybe even have some innate bonus points.

This ability may vary wildly across subjects (maths vs biology vs history), and with time (acute cases of interest / commitment, or distracting factors like romance or gaming).

In any case, batching people by the level of current ability is helpful. This is a complete opposition to typical public schools, which batch kids by age and zip code. No wonder many of them dislike it and underachieve.

[adamhp]

> Ability (not innate, but current) to learn a particular set of things. How well you are prepared, motivated, and maybe even have some innate bonus points.

Again, you have kind of a chicken-and-egg problem here. Ability is typically measured by standardized testing, which is a poor proxy. The same way engineering interviews are a poor proxy for actually measuring engineering ability or ability to add value as an SDE.

Unfortunately, measuring ability this way also captures your socioeconomic status, family stability, medical conditions, and many other things that adversely impact your "ability" to perform well on a standardized test.

We could argue it's not on Princeton or other institutions to account for that, but as a society I think we could probably do better in that regard, by offering a variety of solutions to this complex problem.

[tomp]

Noone said that you need to forcefully segregate people based on ability. You don't even need to measure it!

Just offer different classes, with different difficulties. Some people will be bored and go to more advanced classes, others will struggle and move to less advanced classes.

There's actually a well-organised system that almost does this - primary school! Except that there, people are forcefully grouped by age, when there's really no need for that. That's (one of the reasons) why I advocate for mixed-age education.

[rajin444]

How do you know you wouldn't have ended up where you are without a mentor? There's no control here. AFAIK twin studies provide the best insight we can get within ethical means.

[adamhp]

That's true, and it's a fair question to be asking, generally speaking. It is certainly possible, but I sincerely doubt it was more likely than the alternative.

Intuitively, I would wager those who receive support from others typically fare better in most ways—whether that is familial relationships, mentorship, or peers. I did a quick search, and depending on how we're defining "success", there are a number of studies.

[endisneigh]

I'll have to find the research, but this generally is not true (at least with K-12).

From my recollection in general what happens is that there's a certain ratio in which low performers and high performers interact. If the ratio is stacked towards high performers in general the low performers end up doing significantly better than they would've if they were in a group consisting of people entirely like them.

This would suggest that societally there's some ratio that's optimal such that we intentionally put in "low performers" as a mechanism to raise their performance. As long as this is done very carefully it simultaneously increases the performance of low performers and maintains the potential of high performers.

Conversely if you have too many low performers and put in a high performer, not only is their potential not met, but it's generally detrimental.

In other words there's a sort of "force" pulling everyone to the mean. The "dilution" that results from adding high or low performers to an otherwise low or high performing group depends on how high or low they are and the group itself. With data this can be optimized such that low performers exceed their potential. Given the rate of change for low performers vastly exceeds high performers inherently, this is the societally optimal outcome.

That being said K-12 education isn't like higher ed is that it's lower level (intellectually).

[dolni]

Good K-12 schools _do_ batch people by ability, though. The inner city schools -- the ones that are struggling, they do a poor job putting underperforming students into remedial courses. They similarly do a poor job putting high performing students into honors and AP/IB courses.

Measuring ability is tricky, which is why schools rely on grades for prerequisite courses. As a simple, contrived example: you can't really learn how to add if you don't even know your numbers yet.

I think you're right on about K-12 being lower level is also a massive factor. I coasted through K-12, personally. I know a lot of people who did. But college kicked my ass in a lot of ways. I would argue that for higher education, matching courses to ability is _even more_ important because what you're studying is that much more difficult.

[endisneigh]

Which good schools are you thinking of? Most schools don't really do any analysis to show that they're good or not. The others are either exam schools or schools in areas that are expensive. Given the correlation between socioeconomic status and school performance, that's also just selection bias.

I'm not necessarily against tracking (which is what we're describing) - but when you have a fixed number of resources and a mentality that the best should get more resources all you really end up with is a situation where the poor students are setup to fail.

Grades pretty much exist because we decided that they need to be out of the traditional school system by 20 or so (in most school systems you can only be held back a couple of times). I disagree with grades in general but that's another discussion.

[dolni]

> Which good schools are you thinking of? Most schools don't really do any analysis to show that they're good or not. The others are either exam schools or schools in areas that are expensive. Given the correlation between socioeconomic status and school performance, that's also just selection bias.

This isn't really a scientific analysis, just basing that on my own lived experience and what I've learned from other people over the years.

I went to an inner city school. Inner city schools here offer fewer honors courses as compared to their suburban counterparts. My experience generally is that people who went to suburban schools are better educated. Suburban schools have higher graduation rates and kids get into college with more college credits than their urban peers.

> I'm not necessarily against tracking (which is what we're describing) - but when you have a fixed number of resources and a mentality that the best should get more resources all you really end up with is a situation where the poor students are setup to fail.

Well yeah, I think we're in complete agreement that some schools just don't have enough resources to do what they need to do. The goal should be for every child to realize their full potential. For some kids, that means you need to move a little slower. For others, that means you need to challenge them.

> Grades pretty much exist because we decided that they need to be out of the traditional school system by 20 or so (in most school systems you can only be held back a couple of times). I disagree with grades in general but that's another discussion.

I dunno, I think they are a useful metric for gauging ability in general terms. Not perfect. But I've yet to really see anything better.

[gugagore]

I think it's more interesting not to take for granted that this grouping (often called "tracking" in K-12) makes obvious sense.

http://www.ascd.org/publications/books/108013/chapters/What-...

> Do students differ in talents and achievement? They do. But when those observed differences are reinforced by track placement and grouping practices, and children then internalize those differences, learning opportunities become limited for all but the elite student. The talents of late bloomers go undiscovered, and the rewards of hard work and diligent study are never realized.

> As our school district began its detracking reform, we began to pay attention to our language. Language shapes our thinking and our beliefs. We began with the word "ability" and made a conscious effort to replace it with "achievement." Thus, we write about, study, and talk about students who are lower achievers or higher achievers. Achievement is a measurable construct that describes what a student knows at a given point in time; ability implies an innate quality that cannot change and that limits success. As we made this commitment personally, we shared it with our faculty. Our language began to change, and so did the way we viewed students. Discussions about the labels placed on students and the beliefs they represent can help a faculty that is embarking on a detracking reform question constructs and practices that they have taken for granted. Being conscious of our own language can help us understand how deeply ingrained the culture of student sorting is. Language awareness is also likely to help uncover other justifications for tracking.

> Both students and adults mistake labels such as "gifted," "honors student," "average," "remedial," "LD" and "MMR" for certification of overall ability or worth. These labels teach students that if the school does not identify them as capable in earlier grades, they should not expect to do well later. Everyone without the "gifted" label has the de facto label of "not gifted." The resource classroom is a low status place and students who go there are low status students. The result of all this is that most students have needlessly low self-concepts and schools have low expectations. Few students or teachers can defy those identities and expectations. These labeling effects permeate the entire school and social culture.

[dolni]

To be blunt, this sounds like a lot of flowery-language bullshit that isn't backed by anything.

Anybody who has been through education has observed that there are the people who "get it" and the people who struggle. And similarly, if you take an expert in some field and have them start explaining concepts to a random person that are at the very edge of the expert's knowledge, said person will be completely lost. This is a real thing we all can relate to.

The idea that "we all can do it" because "we're all equals" is doing a disservice to the kids who struggle. You better prepare them by putting them in courses that are matched to their level and challenge them appropriately.

You can't take someone who weighs 600 lbs, say "okay, go run a marathon" and expect success. Even if that person really wants to suceed. What you can do is train them in a way that is tailored to them, and eventually they may be able to run that marathon.

One idea I agree with is that we should evaluate kids more regularly to see how their abilities change over time. If they show improvement, their coursework should be adjusted accordingly. But all this "not sorting" kids stuff? That's just nonsense.

[gugagore]

> Anybody who has been through education has observed that there are the people who "get it" and the people who struggle.

I've been through education, and my take-away is that it's quite a bit more nuanced than that dichotomy. Get what? Struggle with what?

> The idea that "we all can do it" because "we're all equals" is doing a disservice to the kids who struggle. You better prepare them by putting them in courses that are matched to their level and challenge them appropriately.

Strawman. The idea isn't simply "everyone is equal". The literal first thing I quote mentions differences.

> To be blunt

> But all this "not sorting" kids stuff? That's just nonsense.

Careful not to confuse being blunt with being upset and stubborn! Or maybe you just really like the hat in Harry Potter!

[dolni]

> I've been through education, and my take-away is that it's quite a bit more nuanced than that dichotomy. Get what? Struggle with what?

Seems like a bit of a bad faith take here. Of course I didn't mean that there "are kids who are good at school and kids who suck" and that's it. Some kids are really strong in a particular subject. Some kids really struggle in a particular subject.

Growing up, we have all observed peers who are in say, math class, and kids seem to grasp every new concept that is taught intuitively. There are others who seem to struggle with everything. There is also the wide range in between.

> Strawman. The idea isn't simply "everyone is equal". The literal first thing I quote mentions differences.

It does mention differences, and then follows up with something to the effect of "well if we only didn't take note of their differences, and try to give them appropriately challenging coursework, they would do better!" As if to imply that really they're not that different. They are just as capable and the difference is mostly a result of reinforcing their ability by track placement.

It's flowery language. Some people are dumb, some people are geniuses, and most people are just mediocre. It's not fair, but that is the way life is.

> Careful not to confuse being blunt with being upset and stubborn! Or maybe you just really like the hat in Harry Potter!

No need to assume my emotional state here now. No ill-will was intended -- that text just rang my bullshit alarm and was woefully unconvincing to me, that's all. Sorry if I offended you.

Any time somebody writes things that presume to understand the myriad factors in someone's psyche, and how particular words are impacting them or not, need to show up with a mountain of evidence. There are way too many factors at play, and way too little evidence for such a bold claim to stand up to any scrutiny.

[gugagore]

> It's flowery language. Some people are dumb, some people are geniuses, and most people are just mediocre. It's not fair, but that is the way life is.

What you are dismissing as "flowery language" appears to be a different epistemology from yours. I cannot reconcile "there is a wide range in between" with these concrete categories you are giving.

If you believe in these categories wholeheartedly, then it makes sense to figure out the true category a person is in. It is wholly consistent to believe that you cannot ever know with complete certainty the true category someone is in, but that there is some underlying truth. You can imagine measurements that provide information about those categories (no one seriously believes a test could directly detect such a thing, however).

I am confident that I understand the appeal of that worldview. It certainly is tidy (maybe this is the bluntness you speak of)! But I have a different take on education, and the purpose of education. I do not see myself arguing in bad faith. If you can express your worldview without so heavily relying on [ad hoc] dichotomies and categories, then I will respond to that.

[kiba]

The higher classes are probably where the best resources and teachers are available.

Winners tend to win more.

[dolni]

Indeed. That's a legitimate, actionable concern.

I don't think this is something that is trivially solvable. I suspect (though don't know) that teachers are happier when they have gifted students than not. You'd feel like a success, even if you didn't really need to do much. I imagine teaching spots in honors courses would be coveted.

[decafninja]

Considering that there are legacy admissions, sports admissions, and students that get in because daddy & mommy donated a new wing to the library, etc. does it really matter? There are also students that are smart and capable, but just unmotivated, or going through life issues, etc.

Some people are there to just get a piece of paper that shows they graduated from a top school, regardless if their GPA was a A or a C; and that school name on that piece of paper could still open doors a lesser school might not.

It's kind of like FAANG. You could have an engineer with FAANG on their resume who otherwise did relatively unremarkable work. Another person has only no-name companies but has accomplished a lot. Yet the FAANG alumni is the one who will have recruiters and employers groveling to hire them, not the other guy.

[jjk166]

I don't think that assumption is valid if you look more closely at what is actually happening in a school.

Typically kids are learning a series of loosely related concepts that require different skillsets to process. If for one person integrals are intuitive but vectors are not, while for another vectors are intuitive while integrals are not, both would average roughly the same rate of learning, but you are still faced with the same dilemma - either you're slowing down to make sure the one student gets the concept they struggle with at the expense of the one who wasn't struggling or you move ahead quickly at the expense of the straggler. Both students would appear to be equal performers but that doesn't mean it made sense to group them together. While perhaps classes could be designed to have good correlation between concepts, you certainly couldn't do so for a well rounded education - there is absolutely no reason to believe someone who learns mathematical concepts quickly would also pick up literary concepts quickly. There may be small populations who do learn everything quickly and others that learn everything slowly, but certainly the overwhelming majority of the population would fall in-between.

[dolni]

Point taken and I agree with the examples you provided.

I would argue this is not quite the problem you make it out to be, because generally speaking, people tend to be strong or weak in a subject overall.

If you're generally good at math, getting tripped up by vectors is not a death knell for pursuing coursework at that level. But there is a massive divide between the ability of someone "generally good" at math and "generally bad" at math. Tests do a really good job of capturing that, actually.

[jjk166]

Yeah, the problem is more with the schools. At least until post-secondary education, you don't go to school for just a narrow range of subjects. You might be excellent at math but does that mean you can keep up with people who are excellent at history? Unless we expect people to hyperspecialize from a young age (which would have disastrous consequences), we need schools to be able to deal with people at various different levels of proficiency.

[dolni]

That does exist, but I think we could do a better job pre-high school. At least at the high school I went to (which wasn't highly regarded, or anything) there were remedial classes for kids who were behind, and honors classes for kids who excelled. You could opt-in to honors courses on a per-subject basis.

I think K-6 are where we struggle. At least that's my experience.

[tyingq]

I remain stunned by the level of incompetence in university administration. The covid epidemic really shined some light on it for me. I have one child still in university, and the school still has no plan for what to do about the foreign study and foreign internship requirements for his degree program. Everyone is just on-hold and unable to graduate. We also continue to run into silly requirements to appear in-person, which requires flying him out and back. Basic stuff that seems obvious to me seems unsolvable to them. And they won't even admit it. The answer for everything is just that they "understand" and "are working on it".

[klmadfejno]

I went to a middle tier undergrad and a top tier grad school. The difference was night and day in terms of rigor and general academic interest. I don't know that the profs were particularly better or worse at one school, but the student body was very, very different in terms of interest and ability, and that has a huge impact on the way you learn. I took a single writing class in undergrad. Most students were not capable of writing an argument and supporting it with evidence. No hyperbole, the basic reasoning and writing ability of the average student is appalling. I would strongly favor environments that cluster only demonstrated high ability students.

[jnwatson]

In my experience the largest difference in rigor was the department. My macroeconomics class was laughably trivial ( spent a week on point/slope), but all my engineering and science classes had high expectations.

[nvarsj]

This is the single most important issue imo in modern higher education. It is fundamental to the success of our society that we can provide high quality education to all who want it.

If you talk to the admissions department of every top school, they will all admit that they reject a large number of perfectly capable students.

So why don't they try to expand their programs and increase their acceptance numbers? I can only guess. Scared of change. Politics as well, I imagine. Afraid of not appearing selective, pissing off alumni, that sort of thing. [1]

It's depressing to me how hard it is to get into a top school these days. I bet many of us who went to an amazing school 10-20 years ago would be unable to afford or get into that school today. If you wanted to get into MIT 40-50 years ago, and you were capable, you were pretty much guaranteed a space.

Something has to change, or extreme class divides will just keep on growing, and meritocracy will become a distant memory.

[1]: A notable exception being Georgia Tech's OMSCS program. They basically admit anyone who wants to get in, and offer the program at cost, so 7k for the entire thing. Graduating is another matter entirely - it's very difficult. The goal of the program is specifically to offer a high quality education to anyone who wants it. It's been an interesting experiment, and shows what is possible.

[labby5]

Does it?

I've been to college, and while there is value there, it's mostly not in the education. Virtually everything important I've learned that is directly applicable to my life and career I either learned in elementary school, learned through experience, or learned myself.

The value in college, at least for me, was its environment, social network, and opportunity network. People underestimate how valuable these things are, and similarly fail to realize just how bad the internet is at all three. Online education is stunningly comprehensive, but the internet is a terrible learning environment, just as it is a terrible social and opportunity environment.

The goal of modern society should be to realize that the qualities which make colleges so good at these things are not fundamentally connected to their curriculum, and can be incorporated into society at large. There is no reason why we couldn't create districts in cities which have the same learning, social, and professional qualities for young people as a university. For certain professions we arguably already do, and that is with literally no coordinated effort to create them.

Imagine if we actually tried.

[sosborn]

For a school to increase admittance numbers, they generally need to a) increase fac/staff and b) create more classroom space. Those two things can be very complicated depending on a school's situation.

I work at a school and we are pretty much tapped out for space, so we wouldn't really be able to add more classrooms even if we wanted to.

[Aunche]

At my selective university, the vast majority of the value came from the students paying to attend rather than college itself. Some professors were brilliant, but others were completely useless and you basically had to learn by yourself or from your peers. Meanwhile, a large chunk of tuition dollars was going towards the construction of new buildings that end up being very underutilized.

Princeton spends roughly $270,000 per student (see footnote). I'm sure some of that goes into research as well, but it's a relatively small fraction, since Princeton prides itself as being a teaching university. I suspect that you can build a more successful university by paying students $100,000 a year, hiring grad students to teach, and paying for modest facilities.

(742,123,000/.33)/ 8,374 = 268552 https://profile.princeton.edu/finances https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Princeton_University

[lthornberry]

Princeton prides themselves on being a top-tier research university where teaching is taken seriously. That's different from being a teaching university. They spend a ton of money on research, and faculty have much lighter teaching loads than almost anywhere else.

They do take undergraduate teaching much more seriously than most of their peer institutions--much less instruction is relegated to graduate students. But they hire and promote for research, at least in the departments I'm familiar with.

[brightball]

The way to get there, IMO, is a lot more freedom to experiment. Not just charters, but something closer to a startup culture.

A) Innovative teacher decides to go out on his own

B) 20 parents like what he has to say and want to enroll their kids

C) Existing tax money pay the per-student rate for the 20 enrolled to participate

D) Program is successful, more parents and students want to enroll. New teachers are hired and trained on the approach, bigger building is leased.

E) Schools that see students departing start to wonder what's going on and hire the teacher to train their staff on his methods so they can see if it can be adopted into the program.

This is how everything should work, but the nature of our mostly centrally controlled schools simply doesn't allow for it.

[InitialLastName]

It only takes looking at the responses to the common core to see how resistant parents can be to any innovation in education.

"Move fast and break things" is great when your worst-case scenario is your parents letting you move in while you clean up after your failed startup. It's got a lot more downside when it's an experiment with the development of real humans.

[brightball]

It's entirely different when the teachers and the parents "choose" something like common core.

My kids went to a private school for elementary in the middle of the common core dust up in public schools, so before we enrolled them the one of the first questions we asked about was common core.

They told us they were also adopting the approach but that their teachers had been discussing it for years, had a complete transition plan for how to introduce it at each grade level, transition kids based on what they'd been taught at previous grade levels and how to inform parents about what to expect.

The key was that the teachers and admins, through their own professional expertise, were able to research options to improve how they taught and implement them with the blessing of the parents who choose to send their kids to the school. And it went great.

All of the common core horror stories that I've heard, especially around math, were due to horrible execution after the program was essentially forced on everyone. It's a completely different experience when everyone involved decides, "this is the best way and here's how we're going to do it well" vs "everybody has to do it this way now."

Common core was the main driver of choosing a private school for elementary up to at least 4th grade largely because we wanted a consistent learning experience for our kids in their early developmental years. I didn't want risk politics causing disruption in those early years (ideally ever, but early years are where I have my biggest concerns).

[InitialLastName]

That's fair, but I think it serves my point: you weren't interested in experimenting with your childrens' education.

[brightball]

I was. I wasn’t interested in other people experimenting with it. I selected the approach I was most comfortable with though.

[laverya]

> It only takes looking at the responses to the common core to see how resistant parents can be to any innovation in education.

This assumes that common core was a good thing, and that the resistance to it was thus incorrect. Which is controversial at best - retrospectives are not generally positive.

> A decade later, scant evidence exists that Common Core produced any significant benefit. One federally funded evaluation actually estimates that the standards had a negative effect on student achievement in both reading and math. Fortunately, the overall impact is quite small.

https://www.washingtonpost.com/education/2021/04/05/common-c...

> By 2017 — seven years after most states had adopted them — the standards appear to have led to modest declines in fourth-grade reading and eighth-grade math scores.

https://www.chalkbeat.org/2019/4/29/21121004/nearly-a-decade...

[kiba]

Program fails, and parents are mad/furious about their kids not learning anything and years wasted.

[titzer]

So, you think that top schools having top faculty and educators has zero effect on educational outcomes? And somehow they only produce good outcomes because they select good students and that "most of the education is simply due to the types of peers you have".

It's all "selection bias"? Now that's a hot take.

You seem to be laboring under the assumption that elite schools exist as some kind of public service to improve the prospects of average, or randomly selected students. They aren't. They are elite schools, in both good and bad senses. You might as well start comparing the luggage compartments of top fuel dragsters with sedans.

[gautamdivgi]

Do top faculty and top educator correlate well? They may when you do research but probably not at an undergraduate level. Top faculty is generally a top researcher with bundles of grant money. They could be horrible educators. The opposite is true as well.

[titzer]

As it turns out, schools hire faculty for more than just research. Not only are faculty usually required to teach, and evaluated on that, but there are faculty roles that are geared to teaching, as well as lecturer roles.

[mgh2]

What selection criteria would you recommend for early indicator of ability than high school?

I agree that everyone should get opportunities regardless of affordability (ex: international talent), but having non-intelligent agents in control by gaming the system is very dangerous (as seen in politics).

I think ethics matter more in the long run, maybe that should be a factor for university screening. We have too many intelligent people doing harm in the world (ex: ad business)

[silicon2401]

> Ideally our fixation would be on a hypothetical institution that admits people entirely at random

This is subjective and not a universal truth. I wouldn't want that at all, nor would I consider that ideal. My ideal is keep everything the way it is, just bring other institutions up to the level of ivy leagues (since we're talking ideals and not practical options).

[endisneigh]

What do you mean up to the level of ivy leagues? I think you missed my entire point.

[zkid18]

As a non-US citizen I was always surprised US universities doesn't require any examination test for the admission.

[dolni]

Most universities require either an ACT or SAT test score to prove your ability. These are not administered by universities, though.

[throwawayboise]

More and more are making these tests optional. The claim is that they are (unintentionally) culturally biased. My view is, if they think the SAT is culturally biased, they haven't looked very closely at the universities themselves.

Anyway, if applicants opt out of the SAT/ACT they have to submit other evidence of their qualifications.

[conradev]

Not this year…

https://www.nytimes.com/article/sat-act-test-optional-colleg...

[dheera]

They don't really prove anything though. For engineering degrees the math section is too easy; for arts degrees it's irrelevant. The English section is all about memorizing a bunch of words you'll never use.

It's not a good test.

[dolni]

Whether it is a good test depends on what you're trying to measure and what you want a college degree to convey. If a college degree in photography should state _only_ that a person has some knowledge and competence in photography, then I agree.

I think the conferral of a degree is supposed to symbolize more than that, though. An institution's degree asserts some minimum level of education broadly, with an emphasis in the field of study you chose.

[robertoandred]

There's no reason a standardized test's worth should hinge on what a student might focus on in college. There's no reason any college student shouldn't arrive without a basic grasp of English or math.

[dheera]

> basic grasp of English or math

I don't think the SAT measures a "basic grasp" of English, it measures memorization skill.

[nemothekid]

You may have received some incorrect information - US universities will require an SAT or ACT exam score and some programs will even require subject based exams (ex an SAT Math or Chemistry exam)

However at the differences at the top 5 or even 10% are marginal at best, and even the top 5% represent a more than magnitude of students than have slots at elite schools.

[perydell]

Many schools, including Princeton, did not require an SAT or ACT score last year. And they say they will not require it this year either.

[klmadfejno]

COVID is more of an exception that the rule.

I would be cautious about schools that do this. Unless its published that SAT score presence didn't affect chances to get in, I would assume its largely a play to get more applicants to reduce acceptance rate, with no scores counting against you heavily.

Anecdata of 1, but in my grad program, standardized test scores were used to sort students best to worst, and then they were evaluated one by one, given an accept/reject rating until all slots were filled. The score didn't affect your chance of being accepted given you were considered at all, but it did determine the chance of being considered.

[gnicholas]

Huh? In general they do — either the SAT or the ACT. Only a few big universities don't require them (though COVID has led many/most to change their policies at least temporarily).

[scarmig]

In other countries, though, the admissions exams are much more heavily weighted. Here they play a minor role. No one is getting into Harvard on the basis of a perfect SAT score, and plenty of people get in on more than a standard deviation below a perfect score.

[ghaff]

Minor role is unfair. It's more like a good score is necessary but not sufficient. Basically, you can have a perfect SAT score and GPA from high school but you have no hobbies or other interests than studying and your essays are unimaginative, you're probably not getting admitted.

But you do need to demonstrate some base level of academic ability.

[scarmig]

Well, you can also have a perfect SAT and GPA and lots of interesting hobbies and extracurricular successes, but then get rejected in favor of other applicants with significantly weaker applications simply because subjective evaluations, under the direction of admissions offices, tend to claim that people of your racial background are all unimaginative drones...

[gnicholas]

You're right that a perfect SAT isn't a guarantee of success, although anyone who nails the SAT will be admitted to a pretty good school (assuming their GPA is commensurate).

Part of the issue is that the SAT is not difficult enough to stratify the applicant population, which means that it's not a super useful tool for schools at the very top. The elite liberal arts college I attended liked to brag that they turned away half of the 1600s that applied — and their overall acceptance rate is much higher than H/Y/S.

It would be interesting to think about what would happen if the SAT were more rigorous (or if there were another test that students could take that offered this stratification). Some schools (think Caltech) would probably put a decent amount of weight on such a test. Other schools, who currently optimize for more variables, would presumably not pay much attention.

[NDizzle]

They do. Well, most do. Well, some do. With the modern day race quotas (harsh phase, but that's the reality) in place it turns out that suddenly admissions exams are racist. It's wrong think to believe that you have to pass an exam to be accepted to the highest of higher level learning.

[outlace]

Pros and cons like anything but one big pro of corralling all the most productive and intelligent people together is the network effect that can have. Big things can happen when you get a bunch of really smart people together that wouldn’t have happened if they were all dispersed.

[offtop5]

You could probably give a 23 year old a degree from a top school, without him or her actually attending it and still massively improve their life.

If you come from a lower income background such as myself college is needed since you need to surround yourself with better people.

[mgh2]

What selection mechanism would you recommend for early indicator of ability than high school? I agree that everyone should get opportunities regardless of affordability (ex: international talent)

[Bancakes]

That's assuming random people are driven to excel in highly competitive environments and that going to university is a mostly academic and self-improvement pursuit and not just a diploma.

[1980phipsi]

In the US, you can condition employment on the quality of the school someone went to, but it is much more difficult to condition it based on IQ or a standardized test of some kind.

[warkdarrior]

We do not need to find this randomized-admission institution for your analysis. Just take an Ivy and several state universities of different rankings, and pick students with similar high-school backgrounds (top grades, similar family net worth, etc.). Such students of similar capability must exist, unless we think top universities admit all the top students and there is no one left for lower-rank schools.

Then analyze their careers after college -- this should tell you whether the education of that specific university contributed or not to the student's prospects.

[ep103]

Better yet, solve two birds with one stone. Pass a law that caps the maximum percentage of a person's income that can be paid to college loan (minimum) payments. Just like that you would have stopped the primary source of collegiate tuition inflation (the fact that students believe they need college to enter the workplace, but cannot discharge loans due to bankruptcy, and loans are guaranteed by the gov). And you would have created a free-market solution tying actual college value added to collegiate tuition prices.

Its not a flawless proposition. But it does mean that those students who spend years and go heavily into debt pursuing higher education wouldn't then be force to compete only for the highest paying jobs that will cover their loans. Upset that the greatest minds in our generation work in advertising? Wondering why more highly education people aren't willing to take teaching positions or devote themselves to societal service? Here's your fix.

[dangerlibrary]

Your solution is called income based repayment, and already exists - the US has about a dozen different IBR / PAYE (Pay As You Earn) plans. Generally speaking, people with student loan debt can opt into them. Obama's version from his first term even has debt forgiveness for those who have made 120 monthly payments while working for a nonprofit / government (PSLF - public service loan forgiveness). Though the Devos Education department was running the show when those applications started coming in, and they rejected something like 98% of them out of some combination of malice and incompetence.

My favorite silver bullet solution for the mounting debt and affordability crisis is to allow student loans to be discharged in bankruptcy, and force colleges and universities to carry some substantial amount (20-30%) of the debt load they force their students to take on.

It has all kinds of negative consequences for admission of at-risk / low-income students at risk-averse institutions, but it does solve some of the game theoretical problems with rising tuition costs.

[unreal6]

This is also ignoring the significant credit that having a "brand" name school as well as alumni network, like those in the Ivy League, has on one's job prospects. A significant portion of the value of one's graduation from these institutions is an affiliation with their name, which is more valuable than those of various (especially mid-tier) state schools.

[endisneigh]

What you're describing wouldn't work because the interactions between the students would influence the things you're measuring. Students don't exist in a vacuum. It would only be possible if the school's students were entirely random.

Not to mention that as you go lower in rank, yes, there are fewer good students. This is pretty much inherently true (not to say that lower ranked schools don't have good students, which is not true at all, but as a percentage yes it will decrease drastically).

[insert_coin]

This is how it's supposed to work.

Basketball teams do not pick the shortest, weakest players just so they can prove random internet commenters they are the best at turning regular unfit humans into Michael Jordan. They can just pick Michael Jordan.

[option]

and this is why it is best to go to schools like Princeton and Harvard - because you know you’ll get to network with successful people.

[debacle]

We have too many smart people for capitalism in its current form to support. If you look for them, you will see artificial barriers erected throughout society to stymie real meritocracy.

[fullshark]

Agree, we have an abundance of capital and labor but a dearth of opportunities for both. At least compared to the Post WW2 era.

[debacle]

Well said. It's going to cause us to re-think the capital/labor relationship.

UBI will almost certainly be a necessity, but then the question is who will mop the floors and what is the impetus of progress.

[exyi]

Do you think there is not enough demand for software engineering? I find it more likely that these barriers are in place because of political incompetence (expensive US schools) or as a legacy (stupid high school system, no support and motivation for above average students).

[akvadrako]

Capitalism has lots of opportunities for smart people to create wealth. It's hard to just be a "worker" or "researcher", but if you are smart and determined you should be able to create a business that makes the whole world richer.

I do agree though there is a lot of wasted talent and effort.

[phobosanomaly]

That requires lots of risk that may not be feasible to students funding their education with debt, and with skills in spaces that have regulatory overhead.