[40yearoldman]

> That's a much worse outcome from an equity lens

Bingo, that is the issue, everybody is worried about equity.

You can't have it, we need meritocracy, equity is just cruel and unusual punishment to future. It is a recipe for driving society to the lowest common denominator.

You should demand proper education or your money back.

(Side note, this is what we will get 10x with free college, and the guaranteed loans have already driven it this way a bit more)

[com2kid]

Growing up in Seattle in the 90s, the school district was obviously racist and classist. Advanced programs were in the richer (whiter) neighborhoods and poor kids got to go to schools with police wagons out front.

The district charter use to have a line in it saying they had to offer each kid the best education possible. My mother used that line to force the school district to send a taxi to every day to take me up to a richer part of the city with better schools. That line of the charter has since been removed as from what I can tell kids now are at the mercy of their circumstances.

There is some fair arguments to make that mixing kids of different backgrounds together improves outcomes, if you take 1 kid from a poor background and surround that kid with a culture of success, there is a very large chance the kid will pick up on that culture of success and start doing better.

So, kernel of truth behind some of these policies.

IMHO the problem is, this plan only works if the vast majority of students are high achievers. If you have 10% of the students who are high achievers and you mix everyone together, after a few years you end up with no high achievers.

America in general needs to seriously look at how we as a culture approach education, until we fix that, there isn't much the schools can do to actually improve outcomes for underprivileged students en masse.

[brianwawok]

> There is some fair arguments to make that mixing kids of different backgrounds together improves outcomes, if you take 1 kid from a poor background and surround that kid with a culture of success, there is a very large chance the kid will pick up on that culture of success and start doing better.

My understanding is research shows this "evens" outcomes. The worst students do better (Teacher has more time to pay attention to them), the best students do worse (can not get into the really hard stuff, get bored).

If you are in the bottom 25%, you WANT integrated classrooms of all levels.

If you are in the top 25%, you WANT an elite classroom with ramped up work and less distractions.

[upsidesinclude]

>culture of success

There is the crux.

Bad cultures exist and we dont need to celebrate them. Bad culture drags everyone down and makes society worse.

[com2kid]

> Bad cultures exist and we dont need to celebrate them. Bad culture drags everyone down and makes society worse.

We need to ask why those bad cultures exist and take steps to remediate the underlying problems.

In Seattle, one of the richest cities in one of the richest countries in all of human history, some of the public schools still have leaded drinking pipes that "may be safe" for kids to drink from.

For the vast majority of working adults in America, a job means unreliable shifts, being treated with outright cruelty by management, and pay that isn't enough to cover health insurance premiums.

Given that, why is anyone surprised that kids don't "apply themselves"? What are their parents going to say? "Work hard and you to can be in debt and barely afford to pay rent!"

[v0idzer0]

People generally do what is expected of them. If you’re dropped into a class with higher expectations, you perform better. Lower expectations and you perform worse. We are all optimized to do what’s required of us and conserve excess energy.

[phonon]

Or you find the difficulty is too high, and you drop out.

[IIsi50MHz]

Or too low, and you mentally check out.

[gnicholas]

> Growing up in Seattle in the 90s, the school district was obviously racist and classist. Advanced programs were in the richer (whiter) neighborhoods and poor kids got to go to schools with police wagons out front.

I grew up in Sacramento in the 80's/90's, and the best schools were not in the rich/white areas. The top-performing schools were in so-so neighborhoods, and the schools were very diverse. Best of all, you could test in and enroll from anywhere. We literally had a kid in HS who drove down halfway from Tahoe each morning. It wasn't perfect, but it was much, much better than what we have now, as this article shows.

[adrr]

Wasn't Garfield the school that had the advanced classes and the smartest kids in the district that were bused in? Its in central district of Seattle which has the highest population of minorities of any other district.

[kridsdale1]

I live close to it, but don’t yet have school age kids and haven’t researched its reputation. This is good to hear.

[seanmcdirmid]

Now its sort of the opposite? We'd love to send our kid to Seattle's Chinese immersion program, but they only offer it in poorer South Seattle while we live in richer North Seattle. There was an effort to make elementary kids go to school before 8AM just to make some more bussing feasible, bussing that only applies to non-neighborhood kids attending the schools from poorer parts of the city.

[smaudet]

> equity is just cruel and unusual punishment to future

Equality of outcome can be an undesired outcome, equality of opportunity is completely different.

The only trouble is getting the opportunities to be equal - there must be no advantage that can be unfairly given to one more deserving student than another, being able or willing to send your children to summer bootcamps must be an option for all children (who qualify), not whether you pay for it with time or money, e.g.

Free college is fantastic, but once again you confuse opportunity with outcome, and not even for the same individuals - parents are unburdened by cost, but in fact the opportunities are far from equal - money does not a quality education make, yet the majority or colleges are run as for profit institutions, not places that accept students based on their merits or potentials, nor do they actually try to actively shed students who are undeserving. Party culture does not need or require an expensive room and board situation, yet it pervades nearly every 'higher' education institution, only somewhat subsiding when graduate/doctorate programs become involved, and academics are once again taken seriously.

I.e. your meritocracy does not exist precisely because universities are busy making profits not teaching students.

[ALittleLight]

No, equality of opportunity is cruel and counter productive for exactly the reasons you mention. You cannot realistically achieve equality by elevating everyone, which means you need to focus on taking away from people.

The moral and practical thing to do would be focusing on improving objective outcomes. Focusing on equality degrades objective outcomes in favor of moral perversion - taking away from some to make others feel better.

Imagine the child of two millionaire college professors. What will you do to equalize this child's opportunity with a child in the inner city of (pick a bad city)?

[Cymrukicks]

To answer your question first you make sure that child has the same education resources available that the professors child does throughout all aspects of their life. You also make the professors available to children from those inner city areas widening the networking effects that the children of the professor gets. they won't be as good but you open them up.

Improving objective outcomes is some Krypton level shit, "Your a black doctor and were trained to be one from birth due to the outcome we wanted." "I wanted to be an artist."

[mlrtime]

"throughout all aspects of their life".

You meant at t0, the movement the baby is born to a parent optimizes education vs a baby that is born to a parent that cares much less. Impossible for government to "make sure" this happens.

[smaudet]

That is where the problem lies, yes, the inequality is as they "systemic", rooted in practical reality.

There is no real way to perfect this - but if an effort is made a good result can be achieved nonetheless. The fallacy with the professor example is that they will have the time to teach their child, and that their child must necessarily be receptive to their limited tuition.

Unless they quit their job, and thus are no longer professors, a majority of their time will be spent teaching multiple students, and while one on one coaching has it's merits there is also value in classroom peer experiences. If an effort is made to provide tutoring to all the kids, it may even be in the parents interest not to provide tutoring services, if the quality is good, because that takes away from their own time spent being able to provide the most effective teaching experience they can offer.

We can't build perfect bridges, but we can sure as hell mandate they are good enough, it's some nonsense to say we shouldn't try because we can't get it perfect.

[pandaman]

The child of the professors has the parents who are supposedly smart and teach him or her all the time at home, how exactly do you make this available to children from those inner city areas?

[Cymrukicks]

It's called a teacher you find them in schools. If you pay them properly and give them adequate resources they can achieve these goals. You also add in libraries and other places where kids can learn independently.

[pandaman]

I am not sure how does this answer my question. "Paying properly" a teacher will make one's parents millionaire professors or as interested and capable in their children education how?

Or do you simply deny that parents educate their children? Do you believe that as long as they have the same teachers at school, who are 'paid properly', say, a farmer's son and a son of a musician will have the same knowledge and skills in animal husbandry and musical theory?

[seanmcdirmid]

Teachers can only do so much, it is really hard for them to make up for deficiencies at home. Kids have to learn to learn independently, again, an advantage that kids with a better home life have over those that don't.

[staunton]

> this is what we will get 10x with free college

That seems quite different. First, lots of countries have free higher education and seem to do just fine. Second, lowering price of entry is orthogonal to lowering expected performance. Your argument does not apply.

[ElFitz]

Some countries even pay students to attend their highest ranking engineering schools.

[upsidesinclude]

>highest ranking engineering

By defintion some of the highest performing students who must compete for entry.

These are not apples alike.

[ElFitz]

This is what I was answering to:

> (Side note, this is what we will get 10x with free college, and the guaranteed loans have already driven it this way a bit more)

But perhaps good colleges in the US just accept anyone that walks through the door and can pay the tuition?

[upsidesinclude]

Effectively. US universities work on a growth model, expanding their student body and capital investment for tax purposes and to increase profits. There is always some school that will accept a student for the sake of those unforgivable government supplied student loans

[SideQuark]

Every free college country sends less of their people through college than the US. Is that the outcome we want? Fewer educated?

[leoedin]

Maybe? The idea that "more formal education is better" is kind of silly when you dig into it. What value does it give society to have a huge percentage of people spend some of their most important years learning things which are completely perpendicular to whatever career they might do?

Education at this point feels like exploitation. We tell people that they can achieve greatness, they just have to pay huge amounts to a college to be educated, when the truth is that most of the value of college is networking and status signalling, and the value of those is pretty much directly related to how prestigious the institution is.

Yes, we should set up a system that allows all people, whatever their background, to pursue a liberal arts education if they're passionate about it. But a system that makes a pretty useless and very expensive degree a barrier for entry for completely unrelated jobs is just exploitative.

[SideQuark]

> Maybe? The idea that "more formal education is better" is kind of silly when you dig into it

If you believe that is true, then why would a country want to pay for it? After all, the world isn't limited to your strawmen.

The reason it's valuable to countries the world over, why so many want to pay for it, and why most all of them provide some level of public paid education, is it demonstrably results in a population that ends up with a higher standard of living.

Dont believe it? Simply check Google scholar.

[ElFitz]

> Every free college country sends less of their people through college than the US.

Really? Says who? Because the OECD certainly doesn’t seem to think there’s any significant difference.

https://data.oecd.org/eduatt/population-with-tertiary-educat...

https://data.oecd.org/eduatt/adult-education-level.htm

[SideQuark]

From your data, median and mean among OECD with state paid tertiary education is 42% and 43%. US is 51.2%.

So the mean and median is around 20% less people with tertiary educations.

When you say no significant difference, what is your threshold? 50% less people educated? 20% is a huge difference.

[ElFitz]

Yes, but most countries in general have lower tertiary education rates.

If I too were to play the data cherry picking game, I could point out that Norway is at 55%.

How does that prove anything?

It just disproves your unfounded assertion:

> Every free college country sends less of their people through college than the US

I really fail to see how any of this proves any causality between free college and lower or higher education rates.

But it seems you enjoy shifting goalposts, so perhaps we should end it here?

[yakubin]

Lithuania and Poland say hello: <https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_tertiary_...>

[SideQuark]

That's 2014 data. Here's 2022 Poland data. https://data.oecd.org/eduatt/population-with-tertiary-educat...

Lithuania doesn't have free college https://worldpopulationreview.com/country-rankings/countries...

[yakubin]

> Lithuania doesn't have free college

My bad. I assumed free college is standard in that region.

[kahirsch]

> Every free college country sends less of their people through college than the US.

That used to be true.

[elashri]

Do you mean per-capita or over all? Because a very few countries with a bigger number of populations than US have free-education. If the former, can you provide a data source?

[revelio]

They mean per capita. Countries with very cheap or free university allow very few people to go on such terms, relative to the size of the population.

[jpgvm]

Yes but they also generally don't offer bullshit degrees that people obtain and then end up working at McDonalds.

Germany, Switzerland, Belgium all come to mind as countries with free or near-free education that while they don't graduate the same % of their population through tertiary eduction it's not for lack of available opportunity but rather many people choose not to pursue tertiary eduction.

This is actually a good thing because they are often choosing alternatives like vocational education that is more suited to their career choices.

Baristas with university degrees is the outcome of pushing everyone to get a degree and is common place in both the US, Canada and Australia as a result as all 3 have this same notion that you need a degree to get a job. Atleast in Australia and Canada you don't also get saddled with crippling debt.

[revelio]

Sure. I'm not saying their approach is bad or wrong, I'm supportive of it. I'm just observing that it results in far fewer people getting degrees. Agreed that this may be for the best.

[throwaway71271]

looking at how things are going, why would you want more educated people?

[2muchcoffeeman]

Making tertiary education free doesn’t mean you lower your standards like they have done here.

[praxulus]

If anything free education allows you to raise your standards. The group of applicants who are academically qualified should be strictly larger than the group that's both academically qualified and willing to pay tuition. With a larger pool of qualified applicants you can afford to reject more of them.

(Caveat: This doesn't work if the point of your university is mostly to signal that its graduates came from a family wealthy enough to send them to your university.)

[eternityforest]

Without some level of equity, what exactly is the point of meritocracy?

A pure meritocracy wouldn't prioritize curing rare diseases or ending poverty, and might not reduce suffering as much as a more equitable society, even if that equitable society has less raw talent and education, so obviously there's an optimal point.

That optimal point may be a function of the current state of tech, as more and more of the stuff people need education for is done by AI.

It's not like they're ever going to have zero high achievers, even without school at all there's always going to be a few genuises.

On the other hand, the better AI gets, the less anyone outside the top 1% actually needs math, because AI may be able to do most of what an average person could learn without unrealistic amount of effort way beyond their motivation.

[cptcobalt]

I think it's moreso effective co-optimization between equity and meritocracy.

I went to private schools, and even kids of parents with money can wind up very unintelligent—placing them in the same classes as overachievers is good for neither. Same concept as bright kids from underprivileged families, let's bend over backward to get them in the same classes as the overachievers too.

[Der_Einzige]

That term "meritocracy" was coined originally in a book that was highly critical of meritocratic societies.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Rise_of_the_Meritocracy

[revelio]

And "woke" originally was used in a positive sense, but does it matter? Lots of terms change their meaning or get adopted because they are useful. Meritocracy is a useful shorthand for a system in which individual skill, effort and achievement are what matters for outcomes. If we didn't use that word we'd need another but what would it be?

[shrimp_emoji]

And apparently everyone thought the book was satirical and embraced the word as a positive concept. :p

(But then, of course, you realize that you've merely shifted the game of haves and have-nots to other kinds of "have" and feel the hubristic urge to socially engineer your way to equal outcomes.)

[Psyladine]

People bought into the seductive lie of fairness is what happened, even when the sentiment was the opposite.

Compare "blood is thicker than water", which was rooted in the opposite conclusion, that the blood of the covenant is thicker than water of the womb, i.e. your relationships and social bonds outcompete genetic ties.

The failing of meritocracy is that it is tautological; those who succeed did so because they must have been successful. It can't bear scrutiny because, as it turns out, we can have neither fair nor equal grounds for competition (if we're measuring results as comparative, which is the case here), but people secretly desire unfairness as long as there's a chance they will benefit, even if they are not the beneficiary of a given instance or result. See monarchies, lotteries, CEO pay discrepancies, etc... what matters is there was an arbitrary chance you're dealt out at the top.

[GoblinSlayer]

I think the problem is created by strong connotations of the word "loser", otherwise being poor would be no worse than inability to draw.