Comment by hardwaregeek | Hacker News Reader

Comment by hardwaregeek | Hacker News Reader

Man, higher education just doesn't make sense. Colleges charge insane amounts in tuition and are still losing money. While the richer schools prostrate themselves to donors and beg for more cash.

Admissions is becoming a game of who can work themselves weary in high school between grades and extracurriculars and test scores and essays. Colleges perpetuate the myth that their admission is "holistic" with some magic all seeing formula, when in reality Harvard probably can't read 40k applications in 5 months without some mass culling, probably via metrics (5 months is approx 150 days, divided by 40,000/150 is 267 applications a day, assuming no weekends or vacations). Unless you have connections or the right scores, you're not even going to be considered. Maybe, just maybe you'll get really lucky like Angel and have someone chance upon your app. But applications have increased in the last 10-20 years so probably not.

Either schools are being horribly mismanaged or higher education just isn't a profitable business. Probably both.

Colleges charge insane amounts in tuition and are still losing money

Either schools are being horribly mismanaged or higher education just isn't a profitable business

There's a third option- the profit is carefully erased. See "non-profits" that divert millions of dollars to an owner, relative, or other.

"Never ascribe to malice what is adequately explained by incompetence." - variously attributed

Of course, there's no reason it can't be both.

I'm a fan of Hanlon's Razor, but in certain cases (such as when many millions of dollars are involved) I feel it needs to be inverted if only out of caution.

People learn to game systems. Hanlon's razor is an initial condition.

I always picture the "variously attributed" as some kindly old gent, like Ralph Bellamy in Trading Places, whom, after telling some outraged protestor this bit of wisdom heads back into the private club, to the innermost sanctum where the other conspirators sit around a long table, grabs up a golden goblet brimming with what is hopefully wine, and announces cheerfully "Gentlemen, to Evil!"

Education in general is not a profitable business.

Except for a few ultra elite institutions, colleges mostly resemble high schools -- they rely on some combination of public funding and donations, take most applicants, and are happy to just keep the lights on.

There are 5,300 colleges in the USA. Most of those take nearly all comers, don't look anything like the ivies, and would have to shut down without somewhat regular infusions from donors. Most of those 5300 have 70+% acceptance rates, and a 70% acceptance rate basically means you're admitting everyone who could reasonably be expected to make it through the first semester of watered down 100 level courses.

The alternatives that are profitable aren't much better. E.g. the coding boot camps tech folks like to champion charge for 3-6 months of very narrow instruction what their public branch campus counterparts charge for several years of instruction. And, when it gets down to it, are mostly a way for VC firms to vertically integrate worker training programs for the rest of their portfolio.

Educating people is expensive and the people who need the education almost by definition do not have the means to pay for it.

To be clear, schools like Trinity are a few tiers below schools like Harvard. Harvard almost definitely does have mass culling (ex: remove everyone with < 1550/1600 unless X, Y, Z) and then do holistic review for the remainder.

Its difficult to even put Trinity in the same bucket as places like the Ivies, MIT, Caltech, Duke, and Stanford.

Here's the question - who cares? As someone that never got into any, I was told elite schools don't matter! Unless everyone is lying to me for the sake of political correctness of course...

I think it's great that institutions can select their student body however they want. They have that right as private organizations, and it's why I oppose the Asian affirmative action lawsuits. But lets not pretend this social engineering is good for America or laudable. Giving a lottery ticket to 500 more people or 500 different people does nothing to benefit society.

Actually they can't select their student body however they want. When private institutions accept public funding then they are legally required to play by certain rules. That's why Asian applicants who feel they were unfairly discriminated against have grounds to sue.

Some colleges — particularly religious schools — forego all government funding as a matter of principle. This gives them almost complete freedom of action in setting their admission policies.

When JFK was trying to get into college he wrote that he wanted the status of having attended Harvard. Their blessing combined with the networking of knowing other people with that blessing may be the most important component of "education." Youre paying for who you grow to know.

https://www.theatlantic.com/education/archive/2013/11/jfks-v...

It really isn't insane when you think about it. It costs 80k to educate someone at Harvard.

What does 80k get you on the free market in Boston? Certainly not a Harvard education and lifestyle.

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