Comment by bluegatty | Hacker News Reader

Comment by bluegatty | Hacker News Reader

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Maybe a bit that - but it's far more the change of elite 'class' institutions - to elite 'competitive' institutions.

'Grades Did Not Matter' 100 years ago so much.

It was where 'the only educated people sent their kids to be educated'.

Or maybe the nouveau riche bourgois did.

Now it's a 'Giant International Competition'.

You can see this where students are competitive with grades elsewhere in the world.

They're competing for jobs at OpenAI among a million others.

I'm shamed to admit I can't remember the quote from someone who lamented the fact that traditionally people 'knew their place' and there was on some level a quietude in that, a zen - but when 'anyone can be anything' it creates hyper competition, anxiety, sense of failure for most people who can never live up to being the 'most exceptional at whatever', and the constant stress of 'keeping up with the Jones's'.

See: Instagram - it's not pictures of family and friends - it's almost entirely 'social competition through lifestyle narration' ... which that includes University's as 'brand'.

Hence the competition.

This is exactly right. Gone are the days when you could get a C+ average at Harvard and still land a good job or a spot in a prestigious law program – purely by virtue of having gone to Harvard.

Everyone is in competition now. Everyone has to prove their worth, all the time. It's more egalitarian but it also creates a lot of stress.

I'm skeptical that it is really more egalitarian in practice, anyways.

There is still a lot of bias and in -group preferences present in hiring. Not to mention that most places will weight candidates who are recommended by employees higher than unconnected external applicants. That might be a reasonable filter but it unquestionably is not egalitarian

It's vastly more egalitarian than it was before- - that said, it's still a bit closed, but the manner in which it is closed is more related to 'hyper competition' than anything.

Admissions for elite schools is just crazy - they can't go purely by 'scores', they have gender/national/racial issues which are actual quite real, even if it becomes unfair - there is just no way to do it in the ultra egalitarian way in which some would want.

It's a very scarce resource and that's it.

If it were a 'common' thing - like local state college, then it takes a different form. But the acute nature of the situation really brings out some ugly dynamics.

Egalitarian?

Let me explain healthcare right now.

To get into a radiation tech program, there are 260 applicants, almost all with all As, for 20 slots at my local community college.

Maybe in the very first instant you’d think it’s merit based. But, EVERYONE is playing the game. Getting homework and tests from friends who already took the class, taking classes at several different schools to get the easier teachers, paying multiple times the tuition cost on tutors and other study aides (eg $2k+ for all the anatomy models), every demographic is using paid ChatGPT. We all know which teachers to take. We spend much of class strategizing like this.

Every single student. It’s just another game to play or you lose.

Real question: If people are that good at grinding (it is a legit skill), why don't they go for something better, like a 4-year university degree in STEM or medicine? They can make much more money.

Also, how do they decide which students to pick? And I would love to know the gender ratio.

One reason is rad tech and similar are all over Tik Tok.

Another reason is these people know how to grind, but can’t afford a 4 year program.

    > but can’t afford a 4 year program

I thought there has been a huge increase in need-based scholarships for US university fees in the last 15 years. More than just rich schools. Many state universities also offer quite good need-based scholarships based upon your own income + net worth and that of your parents.

Yes state schools are. That’s why it’s so competitive as well. $4-$6k at the state school vs $50K+ at private.

There’s one state school for my program within 100 miles of me (physical therapy assistant)

And a four year program is still 2 extra years of tuition even at the subsidized amount, and most would work fewer hours if at all because they need high GPAs.

Even among trades where you can move up the initial ranks simply by showing up sober and working once you get to the point where you want to level up by striking out on your own it's all the same shit. Instead of paying a tutor you're paying a consultant and/or an accountant to tell you the answer. Instead of the school or licensing board asking you questions where wrong answers will have an opportunity cost of many dollars it's the government.

This is basically the 'extreme version' aka 'extreme scarcity'.

At that point, it has almost nothing to do with regular education and institutions.

It's cray cray land

Just out of curiosity, where do all those hyper-competitive 260 applicants expect to work after graduating "radiation tech program" in a community college? And how much approximately do they expect to get paid for it?

Rad tech is like $130k+ per year in the Bay Area. And if you specialize even more. I know one in a hospital in Marin making $150k+.

That much pay for a 2 year program is very hard to beat.

That’s a really good point. I do think the old ruling elite was in some ways more honest within the particular framework of their morality. But maybe that was easier when getting into Harvard meant being smart-ish from a prestigious family, instead of grinding to compete against not only everyone in America, but the biggest grinders and geniuses in India and China too.

It's wonderful that the American elite has broadened as much as it has in the past 70 years or so. With it though there was some load bearing social infrastructure that got demolished.

When it was a little club, you had to think of your family's reputation in the club, and like you say there was a particular framework of their morality.

When the elite franchise was expanded, one problem was that everyone in the elite then had different ideas of morality. When they got into business, the only thing that really united everyone was that they all liked money.

One thing that used to help that we've lost is a moral code in the universities that elites have to attend to get into the club now.

Another thing, after it became illegal to teach the bible in public schools, was "secular bible stories." You had secular saints, like George Washington, Abraham Lincoln, and Ben Franklin. They each had a characteristic story, like George Washington and the cherry tree, Abraham Lincoln walking 10 miles to return 2 cents, and Ben Franklin flying a kite and discovering that lightning was electricity. Later on, MLK was added to the canon for a whole bunch of stories of courage in defense of justice. All of the stories had a moral lesson about what it meant to be a Good American.

Lately we've cancelled most of our secular saints, and my guess is that the few that are left are on borrowed time. That's not to say that these guys never did anything wrong by any means, but the point of teaching the story wasn't even necessarily even that the story actually happened exactly as it was told, the point was the moral lesson. We've basically just given up on moral education, and all we have left are things like Social Emotional Learning, but it is thin gruel.

The NYT had a through provoking article on this: https://www.nytimes.com/2018/12/05/opinion/george-bush-wasps...

Not sure of the quote you have in mind, but the idea of equality causing status anxiety goes back to Tocqueville.

That's probably the reference I meant.

> but when 'anyone can be anything' it creates hyper competition, anxiety

Not sure if you intended this but this is basically exactly Byung-Chul Han's point in The Burnout Society.

What you're talking about is often called elite overproduction: https://www.noahpinion.blog/p/the-elite-overproduction-hypot...

There's a rather technical but not too dry book about how elite overproduction tends to cycle, with comparisons of past cycles: https://press.princeton.edu/books/hardcover/9780691232607/we...

>They're competing for jobs at OpenAI among a million others.

Really? Reading the comments here on HN I was left with the impression that everyone would prefer to compete for the gold in butt naked giant porcupine rodeo than to work for any company helmed by Altman, Musk, Zuckeberg or Thiel.

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