THEDONKEYOFDOOM
THEDONKEYOFDOOM on Hacker News
I think that if Harvard started admitting 10x, 100x the amount of students, the issue of unequal opportunity would not go away
I like to picture universities as a 4 year recruiting and networking firm with courses slipped into the mix. It makes sense for ivies to have small admittance numbers; for better and for worse. They have the network and connections to some of the best companies out there. Your googles and goldman sachs. It's really that simple; want a "proxy" to hire someone into a highly, highly competitive investment banking role that requires intermediate financial skill but the rest of the skillset is fairly general? If you want a proxy for people with the "best" performance and to mitigate risk of hiring a bad employee, why not hire fresh grads out of the school that is the "hardest" to get into?
If you admit 100x more students to Harvard, new "proxies" to hire the "best" people would arise. In my armchair economist opinion
Plus they would lose out on the endowment money successful students would bring in. The average expected earnings of students would dilute down. I'd be the first one to advocate they should be public in order to mandate and increase in size, but as a private university, why should they change at all? It's literally a terrible business decision
Maybe I've got my priorities backwards. But as I see it, the only way to a more prosperous population is to increase the availability of desirable job roles within a country. Not increase education numbers of top schools. Increasing industry supply for high paying jobs that require education will level out the opportunity gap issue between schools
How does that get accomplished? Tough to say. A problem for someone smarter than me
EDIT:
Politics aside, Jeb Bush recently published a pretty good op ed on how to try to kickstart an increase in skilled job opportunities in America through coordinated education planning. Linked below. He has some great points
The method involving Tennessee seems like a great idea. Seems to mirror how Germany approaches education (from my understanding)
https://www.cnn.com/2021/04/08/perspectives/jeb-bush-america...
"You have emotional difficulty with personal intimacy but demonstrate significant professional success."
As a personal anecdote, I have been finding much more fulfillment ignoring any plans I have of a perfect project and just focus on the "first actionable step" I can take in front of me
Want to work on a side project? Just open my notebook first. Have the book open? See what I have to do on a list, and tackle the one I can do right away. Challenge myself to not think ahead
Want to get more physically fit? Rather than focusing on the long term goal, focus on what I do TODAY. Don't focus on how I missed a workout or ate a huge burger yesterday. Focus on what I can do today to keep up with that goal
Want to build more social peers? I have to meet people to do that. Find something where I can do where I will meet new clusters of people. Worry about the details later
The quote from Theodore Roosevelt really kickstarted me to think this way. "Keep your eyes on the stars but your feet on the ground"
It seems people on that side want "america first". Throw all political shenanigans used to try to implement that and party leaders outside of the window; that idea is not absurd
I'm sure if we found a macguffin that instantly catapulted us into a true post-scaricty economy, lots of that rhetoric would subside. Over a few generations
Others bashing people you like is always inevitable
But, I like to read it from the perspective of not where CURRENT public positions lie, but where they are going. Not a point on the graph, but the vector of how it is changing
I found it has made me empathize much more with those who I normally would not. Understanding current events discussing their position, but going deeper to find that "root cause" of why they hold that
Regardless of where you lie politically, everyone wants the same things in life. It transcends politics and different world cultures. We disagree HOW we get there, but normally we all agree on what are baseline values. We want to live in a world that is fair, we want the highest quality of life for all capable to everyone's abilities (ignoring initial allocation of resources to get there), safety, a sense of community and security. I may be missing some points, but I bonded getting to that root cause with many
Yes, Trump was a bit of a trainwreck, or at least how I see it from Canada
But, echoing the comments of David Brooks, I believe the Republican party may be in one of the best positions ever to center their core values and policy about protecting the working class
With the GOP still having a stronghold in uneducated people, this election it has had gains in other minorities (male and female latinos, male african americans)
Hopefully they can realize that they have this opportunity before next election cycle. Elect candidates that can resonate with the working class. If they could have an impressive platform for them, I'm sure they could engender more support within that base, let alone make major gains with women
I'm a mech eng with little to no software knowledge. I only understand concepts from a high level
Even though HN can have a distinct "pro-privacy, pro-free market, SV centered" bent and people getting pedantic about technical detail, I find it has one of the most egalitarian, informative, collaborative and non toxic comment sections on the internet I have found. Expecially considering its size
With the upvote system and user base, I find it filters out the comments to bring the relevant, informative and humble responses to the top
I frequent the site to read the articles relevant to my interests and almost always lurk the discussion in the comments