[watwut]

> This gatekeeping is wrong, and is actually excluding a lot of good people and imposing a lot of arbitrary if not outright stupid requirements. In that case, there ought to be a huge market inefficiency. You should be able to build an elite university by finding all the smart people who didn't do a bunch of dumb signaling extracurriculars

The University you went to matter and the smart people know that. It would be dumb of them to go to your no-name, untested university. Smart people will do what is good for them and practically, doing those dumb signaling extracurriculars is better for their future then skip on them and bet on your new establishment.

[bradlys]

The issue with this is assuming all “smart people” value social status elements.

A lot of us “smart people” when we’re younger rebel against social status qualifiers and so on due to ideals and hopes that we can change the system. It’s only with vast experience that you realize that the system is so hopelessly fucked and you’ll never make a dent in anything. You can have incredible ambition and then watch it get drowned by a shit world.

I’m pretty sure everyone’s hopes for universal healthcare in the US died along with Bernie’s run for presidency. We haven’t talked about healthcare in politics for about eight years now. That should give you an idea of how optimistic people were and then saw the system completely fuck them over and realized there was never going to be a hope for change.

It’s also why most people are apathetic about most every societal issue right now. We all hoped we could change things but now we realize the capitalists own it all and we’ll never be able to do anything.

[watwut]

Being able to pay better healthcare, food and housing is not merely social status element. Having a choice in terms of which employer you will have is not merely social status element. The fact is, if you have a choice between no-name new university and elite school, you will have more control and agency over your own life if you pick the elite school.

Rebels are found on the whole spectrum of "smart" however you define smart and we are talking about statistics here.

[bradlys]

Strawman.

There is no reason to believe someone who is rebelling will do all the socially accepted status seeking norms to get into an elite college. They will not seek an elite college to begin with because they do not believe in the status of it.

[watwut]

> They will not seek an elite college to begin with because they do not believe in the status of it.

My claim is that smart will believe in advantages it gives them, because well it gives them better position in life.

Rebels can be both smart and dumb. But neither group has any reason to go to no-name university that was just created.

[ndriscoll]

Being smart doesn't mean you value optimizing for economic advantage in life. If you can coast through a stress-free life and have fun with friends while still being decently successful, you might opt to do that rather than grind at a status competition. And that's just when being analytical about it; people may also make irrational decisions due to things like depression where they just stop caring altogether.

The choices aren't elite or no-name. There are large institutions called state schools where tons of normal people go. They're not very picky (the one I went to has an 86% acceptance rate and a student body in the 10s of thousands), and if you're shooting for middle or upper-middle class they're probably fine.

The median engineering graduate for example makes $100k[0], and almost tautologically did not go to an elite school. They can afford food, housing, and healthcare just fine.

[0] https://www.bls.gov/ooh/field-of-degree/engineering/engineer...

[bradlys]

It also doesn’t mean that you need to sell your soul during your teenage years so you can “have your options open” later.

I went to a state school and still had a 7 fig income before I was 30. It’s by no means a requirement and I think most “smart” people would agree.