Colleges Want Students with Character, but Can’t Measure It (2014)
nautil.us
nautil.us
"There are clever, diligent, stupid, and lazy officers. Usually two characteristics are combined. Some are clever and diligent -- their place is the General Staff. The next lot are stupid and lazy -- they make up 90 percent of every army and are suited to routine duties. Anyone who is both clever and lazy is qualified for the highest leadership duties, because he possesses the intellectual clarity and the composure necessary for difficult decisions. One must beware of anyone who is stupid and diligent -- he must not be entrusted with any responsibility because he will always cause only mischief. "
The qualities of a student and an engineer vs. say, a good hacker or product manager are wildly different. For a large organization, you need reliable and focused people to keep it running, where for a startup, you need to find and actualize outlier potential.
The problem is that it's hard to stay lazy when everyone wants you to make more decisions and you're not clever enough to event an AI to do it for you.
If you want to raise a generation of mathematicians, scientists, and engineers, then "higher education" is for continuing the education they have already received and adding to it. Parents from different classes give their children different opportunities and levels of education, fact of life, higher education is for research and extending human knowledge beyond what normal institutions do, some classes may not be at that level, and that is okay, they should receive as much education as possible, but not at the expense of driving the state of the art. If you want to find those who are prodigies at mathematics, test their skill at that and hone their gift, regardless of what class they are.
> students who ... were constantly let down by their environment
The problem is that the effects of talent are usually masked to obscurity by more powerful effects of environment.
We ought to focus on not causing these students to fall behind at the start, rather than thinking we're doing something virtuous by graciously uplifting them alongside those who weren't artificially held back.
What I disagree with is what is already happening in California colleges where "Student Success" classes promote writing about what "makes you angry" with your position in society or your gender. I believe _that_ is promoting anger, hatred, lack of co-operation, and oppression. It is difficult to think clearly when you are always being told to be angry about something, and it is difficult to have a co-operative society with that kind of division.
I don't think this is true, at least they way you've worded it. Typically the only parents that have any control over their child's "opportunities and levels of education..." are those in the uppermost classes.
I'm not in "the uppermost classes". I'm probably at the 80% of household income and went to a state school.
I put my son in a fantastic school in a well-off neighborhood rather than the default assigned school (my mom drives him there and I pay a babysitter/nanny to drive him back). Most of the kids that can read a little bit before entering kindergarten.
He goes to various sports camps and activities classes. His babysitter (more like a part-time nanny) helps teach him to read. We'll probably pay for music lessons and various tutoring later. I also taught my son addition and subtraction of small numbers before entering kindergarten. And we've done a variety of activities to help him learn about science, money, and more.
Plenty of opportunities and education without being sent to a private school. IIRC there was a study on kids and race and found that black kids and white kids did the same through most of elementary school, but the white kids get sent to summer camp, have an easier time scoring par-time jobs, are around people with broader vocabularies, and family and friends in different places which can score educational or employment opportunities down the line.
I didn't grow up particularly well off, but my dad had a subscription to The Economist, Time, and the local big-city newspaper. He'd read us articles at dinner and then we'd discuss, or just let us read them later -- which definitely had an impact. Grandma bought me a chemistry kit one year in middle school, which helped my science grades later.
None of this stuff was super expensive, certainly no where near private school costs, but it can absolutely make a difference.
HR is almost always the failure in hiring and I am sure the recruiting/admissions will fight against whatever 'grit' factors and measurement is figured out as they still feel good personally about good grades and test scores.
When people setup departments that definitely dont have each other's best interests in mind, its not surprise that fight.
Here's one article that summarizes some of the problems: https://digest.bps.org.uk/2017/09/15/lets-dial-down-the-hype...
Colleges want students that would pay the most money which is why they are heavily recruiting out of state and international students -- out of state paying out of state fees but potentially qualifying for some scholarships while international students paying a total rack rate for tuition + housing + meal plan with no scholarships.
The rest is sprinkles.
Right now, the drive is for Hispanic students from the southern and western states, because that demographic is where the growth in college students will be domestically.
Merit scholarships issued to international students are akin to mattress stores discounts - increase list price via fees and discount those fees not to mention that as a condition of college scholarship one agrees that all additional money he or she gets as scholarships obtained separately from a university or a college that money goes back into repaying the scholarship that was offered by a college.
So say that tuition is $30k a year, room and board is $20k a year and fees are $3k a year for a student from Poland ( for in state the rate is $20k/$12k/$3k - room and board is $12k because the school wants in state students to live on campus and it knows that the dorms are 400% more expensive than the off campus housing that the parents of the student would be able to easily find out). Merit scholarship ( 5, for all 679 international students but with that 5 the school says it offers merit scholarships across the board ) is 50% discount on tuition. So the international student now has to pay $15k+$20k+$3k to come to the school vs in state student with no merit scholarship paying $20+$12+$3k. Oh, look, we diversified and we got more money per student! And we also got the student to sign that should he or she get a scholarship from some other organization, the first 15k of it would go back to replenish the merit scholarship fund of the school.
Source: personal experience.
P.S. I cannot wait until the college system in the US collapses. It would be glorious to watch everyone who participated in a financial rape of 17-18 year olds and their families being financially ruined in their 40-60s.
P.P.S. Next time during the college administration all hands make administration answer why the college has different tuition rates for in state, out of state and international students and why it does not offer scholarships/grants/discounts uniformly to everyone.
Because if it is a public state university then the in-state tuition rates are subsidized by the state. The state legislature can also adjust these rates, set caps or minimums for in-state students, and enforce other rules as they see fit -- they're paying the bills, after all.
> why it does not offer scholarships/grants/discounts uniformly to everyone
My state did offer a grant to everyone -- a small one, but one nonetheless.
Outside of that, why would you offer grants or scholarships to folks who a) aren't eligible, and b) who aren't residents of your state or country? Why would Texas give money to someone who is going to go back to PA, or WA, or China after college? They have subsidized Unis in their state, and if they don't want to go there they can help subsidize the schools in a different state by paying the non-resident rate.
Why would you get access to a scholarship for, say, black students if you're not black?
That out-of-state and international tuition is higher than in-state isn't new, and arguably isn't the issue. The issue is that costs, for all parties, ramping up dramatically while the benefit of the degree (salaries) in the work place are diminishing.
GP's claim was that it is all recruiting is in the name of the diversity of the student body and future student demographics. That's trivially observably false.
Colleges and universities are concentrating their recruitment offers on the most profitable students, which are the international and out of state students because for every non-state student they get to charge more money.
That's why the TX university is interested in recruiting AZ students, rather than TX students: student with the same demographic from AZ will bring more revenue to TX university vs the TX student.
>Colleges and universities are concentrating their recruitment offers on the most profitable students, which are the international and out of state students because for every non-state student they get to charge more money.
I work at a private university, our tuition is the same regardless where you come from. Nevertheless, we recruit heavily from domestic students and international students, each of which have special populations we incentivize to make a class more diverse, whether it be economically or ethnically.
You're welcome to believe what you want, and, certainly, in the divestment of the public interest in funding higher education, public schools are feeling the financial pinch and may be seeking out more students who pay the full rate, but private (not-for-profit) colleges and universities for the most part do not engage in such tactics.
The question is: can you develop grit, or is it natural? Did you respond to the new pressures in college, or were you uncovering a latent skill the remaining 40 did not have?
I genuinely don’t know.
Based on my experience, and that of my peer group, I've decided it's important to try to make sure children have some experience with things that are hard, so they can start developing skills to handle it. For some (most?), this may not require anything extra; for others, it requires extra effort to provide activities that are actually a challenge, but also engaging.
The next step is to find a way to measure the grit of someone you don’t know. You don’t have the opportunity to wait for grit proving moments to arrive naturally, you have to figure out a way to force that test artificially.
The next step is make that test consistent, free from cultural biases, and easy to administer.
https://www.draysbay.com/2018/8/13/17678388/tampa-bay-ray-jo...
P.S. Headline should read, "Colleges Say They Want Students with Character..."
In regards to 2) many of these educational places have decided for the past few decades that test criteria makes some sense. However, they have recently discovered that the testing metrics have been gamed. Therefore, as the metrics have become the goals unto themselves, their ability to accomplish 1) has been diminished to the point of uselessness. They are back at square one (or at least they were in 2014 when the article was written).
We all know that you really can't predict the future, that black swan events override all the metrics you could ever come up with. So, the article is talking about 'grit' as a metric that they could use instead, as it seems to predict the future a bit better than the SAT. Of course, we all know that the 'grit' metric will be gamed as well. There's a neuron firing somewhere in my head that is saying: Godel's Incompleteness Theorem, but I think it's a bit more base than that. The issue is that these higher ed places would LOVE to really dig deep into a person, but they've not the time or money to do that at scale.
I think, that like in many militaries and corporations, the issue is not the selection process, but the construction process. Given the right resources and support, you can actually turn lead into gold. It's that these institutions need to support, mentor, and trust their students. However, that is very expensive and takes a long timeline to measure if it works at all. Let alone what to fix or improve upon. Inherently, it does not scale either. It's messy, personal, and complex. It's real and not well reflected in charts and tables, hence the bureaucrats dislike it as it has a null/negative effect on their careers.
Some good examples of such a process that actually does produce results are the Free Democratic Schools [0] though they tend to be very liberal arts focused. Specifically, I'd love to call out Deep Springs College [1] as a prime example. St. John's College [2] is also structured well in the 'nurture' aspect.
[0]https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_democratic_schools#Uni...
[1]https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Deep_Springs_College
[2]https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/St._John%27s_College_(Annapoli...
e.g. to determine whether the monkey or the fish has more 'grit', ask the monkey how deep it can dive into the ocean depths, and ask the fish how high a tree can it climb.
Some of the best tech workers I've known have been... pretty out of shape.
I personally think that's a lot like saying anyone who studies hard enough can become a great programmer. I mean, sure, in both cases, someone who doesn't try hard isn't going to make it, but most of us aren't going to become SEALs or Donald Knuth no matter how hard we train.
Really "someone who doesn't try hard enough isn't going to make it" is true of both and pretty important. From that perspective, if you know some of it is effort and some of it is innate, but you cant properly measure the innate part, you are best off telling everyone whatever it is that makes them try hardest.
(this, of course, is only true if you don't have to pay the cost of failure. Both businesses and sports coaches are really only concerned about picking out the very best. the washouts are on their own. An externality)
I think that’s orthogonal. The SAS aren’t looking for Olympic level athletes in any given sport. They’re looking for people who will keep going in the face of exhaustion beyond anything any athlete will ever experience. That’s a test of will and character more then anything physical.
Like, Usain Bolt and Meb Keflezighi are amazing athletes, but neither of them do anything like Test Week or Hell Week in training.
You should talk to some ultramarathon runners. A woman I know did a 100K and slept for seven minutes en route. She didn’t win. The people who do go faster and sleep less.
The 100 milers are the ones that tend to be 24 hour+ endeavors for non-winning runners (even though some of the elites run it much, much faster).
However, ultra runners are insane and now they're launching 200+ mile races where the winers only sleep a few hours.
Source: am an ultra runner.
I know and train with plenty of ultra-endurance athletes in our MilFit group, and they’ll tell you the same thing - not least because several are ex-SF ;-)
I’ve done the Fan Dance (with weight) and the last thing I’d want to do is a similar event the next day and the next and the next, culminating in the Long Drag. I almost certainly physically could do one more - but I can’t face it. The mind breaks before the body. That’s what separates endurance dilettantes like me from those what have what it takes to just keep going, which is what they are filtering for. Fitness per se is necessary but not sufficient.
Imagine what a BUD/S training might look like for programming. It would make struggling with SICP or the Dragon book look like a walk in a park.
SEALs represent about 1% of active duty Navy. That's elite but not singular level. Think about the vast swaths of terrible workers you find in any field, including ours. Whether they're poorly trained, lazy, just going through the motions, doing just enough to not get fired, I think you'll find it's easy to beat the bottom half of any cohort with a tiny amount of talent and modest amount of dedication.
I believe that when we come across the 1 in a million outlier (Knuth, Carmack, Gosling, Ritchie, et al) that those people combined a lot of raw talent with a lot of hard work.
But just getting to the 1 in 100 level? Hard work will take you a long, long way down that road, because most people simply aren't willing to put in that work.
nearly anyone of average intelligence or better and a
sincere drive to become great can become an excellent
programmer.
1. Having the interest to, on average, enjoy putting in the hours needed to achieve the goal.
2. Having the grit/dedication to push through the non-enjoyable hours and downsides.
3. Getting the results that make a rational person with an accurate view of their progress believe their goal can realistically be achieved.
Tell me, do you have a 1 in 100 income? if it's all effort, why not?
which kinda blows my point up; I know a bunch of married couples who do better than that in software, (I think it's a per-capita number) and even a few single earners (though in my circle, that's pretty rare) It's just not that much money compared to here and now.
Of course, I also think that you can't be a software developer at that level without an IQ approaching two standard deviations above average, but I recognize that's a pretty controversial view and I don't have supporting evidence.
This is a problem with Navy SEAL training. They've had a substantial number of people injured for life in BUD/S training because they wouldn't quit.[1] This may be worth it for the elite military, but it's not appropriate for people who are just going to be working in ordinary businesses.
Students at MIT who are like that are called "tools". Comments from MIT people would be appreciated. (Stanford was not as hard-core.)
[1] https://www.nbcnews.com/news/us-news/1-dead-4-nearly-drown-d...
Grit isn’t in doing a workout well, grit is in getting through a workout at all. Grit is pushing through when it’s all going to hell and you think you’re gonna just keel over and die.
(I’m about 5 minutes from leaving for my 6am class, can you tell?)
I’d argue that fit people have grit, because they can tough it through unpleasant workouts repeatedly. But un-fit people may or may not have grit, you just don’t know. It’s entirely possible for someone with a lot of grit to not value athleticism or health and be out of shape, while showing extreme resiliency in other aspects of their lives.
Are you young? this is all very different when you are young. I know I didn't have any trouble staying fit when I was college aged. For most people, there comes a point in your late 20s or early 30s where being not fat suddenly requires a lot of effort. (I am only now applying that effort in an effective way, a bit more than a decade after I should have.)
That, and excess fat is a problem, even if the rest of you is strong Over the last six months, I went from about 100kg to 90kg; (now I'm about as far as you are from my ideal weight, at least with the muscle mass that is historically realistic and a fat content goal that isn't.) We will see if I can keep up my calorie counting and make it to the goal or not.
Oddly, I can lift a lot more and run a lot less than you can. Running seems to be a lot harder on my knees than squats are. I could run forever and squat very little when I was young and skinny. I still bicycle, but running, if I really push myself, pretty reliably ends in minor injury, and I always attributed this to the extra weight I wasn't carrying around as a youngster.
my problem before calorie counting was that it didn't matter how much I worked out, working out makes me hungry, and I'd put on more fat to go with the new muscle, and... that gets to be a problem. I mean, I wasn't weak, sure, but I was also 30% body fat. That's... a lot more fat than is healthy for a guy. I started developing the medical problems you'd expect from someone who was on the low end of obese. After losing enough weight to put me reliably in the 'just overweight' classification, some of those problems seem to be receding.
I mean, I'm losing muscle, too, which is bad; I can't lift what I could three months ago; partly just 'cause I'm eating less and partly 'cause I switched to a new office and there's a lot more contention for the barbells than there was at the old office, so while I'm not doing a lot less cardio, I am doing a lot less lifting.
But I have a whole lot of confidence in my ability to build muscle; if I can prove that I can actually lose fat... well, that would be a new thing for me. That, and in spite of my neglect of the gym, I am feeling better, and like I said, objective measures like blood pressure are looking better, so that seems like a datapoint, for me at least, to say that excess fat matters and is a real problem that needs to be dealt with.
(on the other hand, those health metrics might be improving because I've treated the obesity-associated problems. Sleep apnea messes you up good, but is fairly straightforward to treat. So maybe that's why I'm doing better rather than the reduced excess fat. But, sleep apnea is very strongly correlated with excess fat. Still, it's possible that just treating the sleep apnea and then working out while continuing to be fat would result in the same sorts of improvement in overall health. If I'm being truthful, vanity is a big driver of me wanting to lose weight. I mean, the health benefits are also really important, but there's vanity in there too.)
Congratulations on your weight loss. If you’re around 1.83m our physique is very similar. I find intermittent fasting helpful, not eating at all, just drinking water or tea one day a week.
I started off trying to run and just gave myself shin splints over and over and hurting my knees. Squats fixed that for me and after a year of weightlifting I started running in the treadmill, 2k and gradually building up to 10k, all on the treadmill. Then one day I ran a half marathon distance and felt fine, calves a bit sore the next day is all. For me all I needed was to take it very slow increasing distance.
Keep up the sleep apnea treatment. It sounds awful. As for reducing body fat enough to look good on the beach those fork put downs are the hardest. My cursory reading of the medical literature suggests that the recommended BMI is too low for health benefits as measured by longevity. Mildly overweight people live longer than people in the healthy body weight range. But definitely look after your sleep. That’s almost certainly the best health investment you can make with your time.
Regardless, being overweight and out of shape was the result of choices I made, not my personality traits. It turns out I have plenty of grit, I just wasn’t valuing my health highly enough.
It's not really about grit, BUD/S measures the ability to be an Olympic athlete who doesn't know how to quit and can problem solve effectively and efficiently underwater and out of air.
It's really a very niche skillset.
Except that those things also measure biological variables like lung capacity and grip strength.