I Stopped Hiring Ivy League Graduates | Hacker News Reader

I Stopped Hiring Ivy League Graduates

wsj.com

29 pointsjp5724 comments

> Large state universities and their satellite schools are also good sources. In my experience, top-performing students at Rutgers are as talented but less self-important than Ivy Leaguers. They’re more likely to accept the authority of those more experienced. This allows for better mentoring, which in turn produces better results over time.

This article echos Malcolm Gladwell’s David & Goliath theory.

> Second-rate schools can promote first-rate achievement, whereas more-selective environments can squelch it. For example, Gladwell cites a study showing that, in the first six years after receiving their doctorate, research economists published more, and in more-prestigious journals, if they had been standouts at a bottom-tier school than if they had been not-quite-stars at the best schools.

> https://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2013/10/the-und...

> Student activists don’t represent the majority of students. But I find myself wondering about the silent acquiescence of most students.

“Not my circus; not my monkeys” explains a lot I think (and is itself a valuable real-life skill). I’m here to learn, not to get drawn into their drama. If the best place for me to learn happens to be the best place (or the place they chose) for their drama, so be it and I hope they end up happy with their choices.

Bingo, I think the author forgot how university is, but it's not like you are confronted with the toxic wokeness everyday (or ever really). It's similar to Twitter, you have a fringe of students that like to host "marches" and are legitimate narcissist and you learn about it in the news like everyone else.

Someone who remains silent can be seen as giving consent. Symbolic degrees encapsulate the positive and negative parts of an institution's reputation.

Indeed. All kinds and manners of logical fallacies and non-sequiturs are present in the world.

You can try to live your life in a way that attempts to prevent or minimize these in others' minds, but it quickly converges on being a denial of service attack on your own capacity and the root of the error isn't your responsibility (and probably not in your capability) to address.

Pursuing self-improvement regardless of what others might think would probably lead one to avoid university altogether.

or they don't want to become activists themselves because they are there to learn, activist wars are eternal and college a limited time

Getting a degree is not the same as being "there to learn".

A symbolic performance includes the meaning of the symbols.

This is a little like The Nation saying that it has given up on graduates of Hillandale and Baylor.

But I guess it's comforting to the readers of the WSJ. Will it keep them from sending their kids to Harvard, Yale, and Wharton, though?

Non-paywalled link: https://archive.is/yF2MF

FYI, in three different browsers on two different platforms, this link never renders.

Works on firefox mobile with my extensions

Maybe your adblocker is blocking recaptcha?

TL;DR: An ecumenical and conservative religious journal has stopped hiring Ivy League graduates as they "[can] make inflammatory accusations at the drop of a hat".

I had never heard of this journal before, but I can't say that I'm quite surprised by this statement given the unprecedented left/right schism in the US. Not arguing for/against it, I just don't think it's newsworthy enough to make HN front page.

You never heard of the Wall Street Journal? Not saying it's always high quality but it's definitely considered a legitimate news source.

EDIT: Parent meant the writer affiliated journal and not WSJ.

I think the GP is referring to whatever organization the writer actually works for, as opposed the WSJ where this article happens to be

> They would seem ideal for my organization, which aims to speak for religious and social conservatives

> Mr. Reno is editor of First Things.

The article is written by an editor at some publications called "First Things" that is put out by the Institute on Religion and Public Life. Personally I've never heard of either of them.

It is not the WSJ saying these things.

Yeah agreed, I wasn't being clear there.

This maybe a clickbait "outrage" piece pandering to reactions and offending the audience for profit.

While it is true that many forms of extremism (woke, QAnon, Trumpism, neofascism, neocommunism, neoliberalism) have turned large swaths of society into liabilities, but I fail to see how closing-off opportunities to everyone arising out of one particular educational channel creates a "safe bet." It seems more like some sort of tribal virtue-signaling aligning towards anti-intellectual sentiments.

The lack of leadership and mentorship is a structural, societal signal of overworked parents across-the-board. If you want better-behaved people entering society, then they need their parents around more and more interdependent in the neighborhoods they live in (community) rather than everyone alienated from each other (anti-community). I would put the blame squarely on the shoulders of a government drunk on the power of corporations to squeeze blood money out of people rather than pay them decently and let them have actual "work-life balance."

There is absolutely no reason not to hire from any good university if the individual got there through merit alone, without the benefit of legacy. They would likely work harder than most because they often suffer from overachiever syndrome (OAS); it's very contagious and may cause resentment in mediocre coworkers.

Edit: furthermore, when almost everyone's basic and material needs are over-met, there is a gradient of tendency for people to become pettier, more arrogant, myopic, hyper-individualistic, rude, and elitist because status becomes the most aspirational goal when there is nothing else for them to live for. It explains the genesis of why so many city people act Kafkaesquely-shallow and Seinfeldian. They have no real goals or purpose except maintaining and protecting their inflated egos.

Edit2: Is the "self-esteem" movement perhaps, at the core, a manufactured, self-indulgent spin on the lionization of narcissism?

"There is absolutely no reason not to hire from any good university if the individual got there through merit alone, without the benefit of legacy."

Why did you mention legacy as the only type of non-merit admissions? I think the Harvard admissions case found that racial preferences were larger boosts.

Who cares? It is unreasonable to list every possible example and case to make a point because that would be "wokeness" "andwaddaboutthis" bullshit. The point of the article is that somehow the elimination of elite (read: rich) university students leads to a "better" worker pool. And just maybe the universities find it's easier to tolerate "woke" if mommy and daddy bought their way in with a new library, rather than putting their foot down and telling students to knock-off their petty, distracting dramas still wanting for an actual "victim" of microaggressions.

It should be apparent that students who buy their homework and their tests will be unsuitable for doing hard, real work. The overachievers are usually the ones selling the homework. There are coursework dealers at all universities, guaranteed. Hire those, not the clueless buffoons trying to get their upper-crust entry-tickets stamped so they can try on clothes for their Instagram influencing "business."

This site is full of resources to help navigate this turbulent time in higher education https://www.thecoddling.com/. It has helped me articulate what concerns me so much.

This word "coddling" implies weakness, and presumes authority. Both are mistakes.

"They have no skills! They don't know how to work for a living! All they know how to do is..."

...raise an army.

Coddle: treat in an indulgent or overprotective way. That is exactly the point the authors are making, that students are overprotecting each other and themselves, and in turn putting pressure on administrators and professors to participate in the coddling. They do not dismiss the very real traumas and pain students (or anyone) has experienced, but that this overprotection is not the answer.

From the website:

> Something has been going wrong on many college campuses in the last few years. Speakers are shouted down. Students and professors say they are walking on eggshells and are afraid to speak honestly. Rates of anxiety, depression, and suicide are rising. How did this happen?

> First Amendment expert Greg Lukianoff and social psychologist Jonathan Haidt show how the new problems on campus have their origins in three terrible ideas that have become increasingly woven into American childhood and education: What doesn’t kill you makes you weaker; always trust your feelings; and life is a battle between good people and evil people. These three Great Untruths contradict basic psychological principles about well-being and ancient wisdom from many cultures. Embracing these untruths—and the resulting culture of safetyism—interferes with young people’s social, emotional, and intellectual development. It makes it harder for them to become autonomous adults who are able to navigate the bumpy road of life.

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