Hacker News Reader

Comment by summm | Hacker News Reader

How about having lots of decent, desirable universities instead of a few elite ones and many weak ones? Furthermore, one could abolish tuition and provide students with living expenses, either all or those who need them. Furthermore, reverse grade inflation in school such that the final grade is a better predictor for learning aptitude. That would solve the stupid admissions problem once and for all. Btw we had all that here in Germany, but since about 20 years they are trying to shift finances to artificially create few "elite" unis and lots of crap unis in order to emulate the American system.

View on HN

As someone who went to Harvard, I'm pretty sure there are a lot of extremely decent universities that all basically provide the same quality of instruction. People just get unreasonably hung up over the 'best' schools, but there are easily at least like 100+, if not several hundred, that provide easily roughly the same educational experience as far as I'm aware.

The peer group may definitely dramatically different from what I can tell, but if you're a serious student and there for the learning above all, very straightforward to get into a school that will teach you just about anything you could learn at Harvard or any other Ivy League or similarly 'elite' school.

The thing is what makes a university good has more to do with the quality of the recruitment of its students than the teaching. In fact much of the teaching in ellite US colleges is done by researchers that are not particularly good at it.

Yep, this is true. Graduating HS senior here, and people don't seem to look past prestige.

Most of us are aware that Harvard/Stanford isn't the end-all, but still chase those institutions anyways.

The thing that still bothers me is the cognitive dissonance of being told by people orders of magnitude smarter than me that institution doesn’t matter. Yeah, if it didn’t you wouldn’t have gone to a HYPSM or out of state public ivy.

+1. A new member in our team has PHD from a top university and an MBA from Columbia business school.I don't how he got there but it was definitely not for the intelligence or smartness. First time I've understood that CBS graduates can be with zero knowledge or smartness.

Maybe affirmative action at work?

MBA has zero to do with “smartness” as you probably conceive of it. Look at the GMAT if you don’t believe me.

Oof. This is a very out-of-touch comment. This isn't about the difference between Harvard and a good state school.

Except it is. Education in the US is relatively cheap and easy to get if you don't aim for private or top schools.

There's still a massive difference between schools that don't fall into the private/top-tier bin. Sorry.

I am from a family of 10 kids and we all went to and were accepted to different schools (all non-private/non-top tier)...there is a massive difference in education levels between schools (maybe it won't affect your career trajectory, but I didn't go to college for a career, I went to learn and be surrounded by others of my caliber).

While I agree with you, as someone that is inherently inferior to someone like you (on the basis of not getting into any elite school, much less Harvard) currently that inferiority has a cascading effect throughout life. I think the goal should be to equalize opportunities for everyone instead of just people who might be borderline elites at 18.

The dramatic difference between Harvard and an average university is that at Harvard you're probably going to bump into half a dozen people who will either inherit a business, or a fortune to start a business, or just start a business on their own. Guess what, knowing the CEO of companies is a bloody good way of getting a nice job in that company.

The connections you make are what the elite institutions really do to differentiate themselves.

>How about having lots of decent, desirable universities instead of a few elite ones and many weak ones?

In practice, this is pretty much the case. State schools (e.g. the University of Virginia, University of California-Berkeley, Georgia Tech, etc.) are often quite good in terms of the education provided, and offer lower tuition rates to in-state residents. Forbes and U.S. News & World Report maintain rankings of the top 100 or so colleges in the United States; my school was ranked in the 60-70 range for computer science. Having spent a number of years at big (and small) companies in the Bay Area, I feel it more than adequately prepared me for the workplace.

Maybe the sense of “a few elite schools, and lots of bad ones” is reinforced by the popular media? Hollywood tends to focus on just the Ivies and MIT.

They'll have to convince employers who are generally from the elite schools that the state schools are actually good and their graduates are worth hiring.

Yes, I agree that this is the tough part, especially in the Bay Area. Once you’ve been working a few years, though, your degree matters much less to potential employers.

One way “second-tier” universities can get around this problem is through mandatory co-op and internship programs. Push students to explore the job market early on, and they’ll start their post-grad job search with confidence, a stronger resume, and a network of contacts from previous co-ops and internships. This network may even include students from “elite” universities, who funnily enough often end up in the same internships and entry-level roles as their less-pedigreed counterparts.

> This network may even include students from “elite” universities, who funnily enough often end up in the same internships and entry-level roles as their less-pedigreed counterparts

I did more internships than average at my school (the norm is 1, I did 4) and while I did cultivate contacts with “elites” I’d disagree that they end up in the same entry level roles as people like me. If anything there’s a bigger difference!

The schools you listed-Berkeley, UVA, and GA Tech-are comparable in acceptance rates and in quality to Ivy League schools. Still doesn't solve the problem of having a few elite schools and many weak ones.

These schools are equally, if not harder, to get into as a first-year freshman.

I listed just a few strong non-Ivies off the top of my head. A list of other strong, non-“elite” CS schools might include the likes of GMU, WPI, RPI, RIT, or UMBC. I have friends and co-workers from each of these schools who are all fine engineers. Conversely, I’ve worked with Ivy Leaguers who couldn’t code their way out of a wet paper bag.

Also, schools with higher acceptance rates do not necessarily offer lower-quality educations, or have lower standards for graduation. One metric to consider is the four- or five-year graduation rate. For financial reasons, second-tier schools may initially admit more freshmen but ultimately wash more of them out. While this can turn out poorly for the student who takes out student loans only to wash out sophomore year, it can be a boon to strong students who, for one reason or another, didn’t have a standout high school experience.

The point is that many state colleges provide ample education. Some provide very good education depending on what areas they specialize in.

USC (South Carolina) is #1 for international business, for example. As I recall we also had good engineering programs. I can't speak for the CS department, but I do know some very smart professors are there, since some of my friends did research there.

USC was the only college I applied to, and I had zero doubts that I'd ever get in (since I didn't go in for IB/business).

Now, networking is a totally different animal. Of course a lot of universities can't match the kind of networking that happens at Ivy leagues. For most people I don't think this is really an issue though as long as you go to a "good"ish university.

> having lots of decent, desirable universities instead of a few elite ones and many weak ones?

it's not about the curriculum, it's about who you meet there and what can you make of those connections. you can't avoid the elite to bunch up in few places, because they intimately know that the game is about whom you know and how you can leverage family ties well before the smart kid from middle class background learn that the world outside academia isn't a meritocracy.

even if universities were all equally performant in teaching, people who managed to connect with the elite frequenting key places would still get a jump start in the life outside.

> How about having lots of decent, desirable universities instead of a few elite ones and many weak ones?

Bell curve

> Lots of [...] desirable universities

You are aware that it is their small number that makes them desirable right? If you make them all the same level, they will be equally undesirable.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com