tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-9430835.post7020638399549758878..comments2024-03-15T20:52:26.967-07:00Comments on Steve Sailer: iSteve: Academic InertiaUnknownnoreply@blogger.comBlogger74125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-9430835.post-7642667741472063962012-07-10T12:52:42.988-07:002012-07-10T12:52:42.988-07:00Anon on 7/9/12 @ 451pm asks “Harvard and Yale not ...Anon on 7/9/12 @ 451pm asks “Harvard and Yale not only produces science and business giants but POLITICAL giants. Any president come out of Stanford?”<br />I’m not sure I’d brag about producing winners of an ‘industry’ in which the market leaders in the past decade include George “I’m a fan of the country known as It-Lee” Bush and Barry “Don’t Call me Urkel” Obama, but yes, Stanford produced Hoover. Before anyone corrects me and points out W went to Harvard B School, I am referring to undergraduate degrees in the following: Harvard has five (both Adams, both Roosevelts, JFK), Yale has three (Taft, both Bush’s), while William & Mary has four (Washington [sort of, he studied surveying], Jefferson, Monroe, and Tyler). Granted W&M has been in a bit of a slump lately but I’d rank stopping with Tyler well above producing a disaster like GWB or either Roosevelt. Princeton is a wash with Madison being offset by World War Woodrow. <br />Anon on 7/9/12 @1122pm says “The latest US News and World Report Best Colleges ranking has Harvard and Princeton at #1, Yale at #3, Columbia at #4, and Caltech, MIT, Stanford, U Chicago, and Penn at #5.”<br />I won’t argue with the rankings but do wonder why people pay attention to ratings from a 3rd rate magazine that as far as I know NOBODY actually reads such as USN&WR . Think how hard you have to suck as a news magazine to be below comic books such as Newsweek or Time.Otis McWrongnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-9430835.post-47538259418099210392012-07-10T12:48:25.837-07:002012-07-10T12:48:25.837-07:00UCLA was great during Nixon era. Nixon tried to ru...UCLA was great during Nixon era. Nixon tried to run America with people from UCLA.<br /><br />And the result was Watergate.<br /><br />Before Nixon UCLA was good at basketball and little else. After him, it is no longer that good, even at basketball.<br /><br />It is probably the most overrated school in Asia; I rank it slightly below Norte Dame.Anonymousnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-9430835.post-42281200999217733462012-07-10T09:57:08.434-07:002012-07-10T09:57:08.434-07:00A school's endowment might be the most objecti...A school's endowment might be the most objective view of how much graduates "like" their school, as well as an indication of how much those graduates ultimately earn (and can donate). While the $32B at Harvard is impressive, they also had a 255-year head start over Stanford ($16.5B). Pretty pathetic when one does the math.<br /><br />You also get the John Elway, Tiger Woods, John McEnroe, Andrew Luck, Kerri Walsh, Summer Sanders athlete that rarely shows up in the Ivies. In fact, if you back out the recruited athletes from Stanford (10% of the undergrad population), one might argue that the others who matriculate had an even greater admissions hurdle to clear than at other schools....Anonymousnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-9430835.post-28204397875589968442012-07-10T09:20:13.155-07:002012-07-10T09:20:13.155-07:00"The new trinity is Stanford, MIT, and Berkel..."The new trinity is Stanford, MIT, and Berkeley"<br /><br />You must be Asian. <br /><br />On the East coast, HYP are the most prestigious. In that order (though Y and P are interchangeable). After that it gets hard. New Yorkers would say Columbia is next. Many others would say Stanford. STEM types would argue MIT and CalTech. Some might even argue Duke or Georgetown.<br /><br />Stanford on the East Coast is not really any better than like 10 other non HYP schools. Part of the problem is it is on the West Coast, part of the problem is it does not produce Wall Street titans or Presidents, and part of the problem is that it needs to drop to 1000 or so SAT for some of its athletes, while HYP generally requires at least 1200.<br /><br />Berkeley, on the East Coast, is no better than UVA/UNC/Michigan. It's not part of the equation.East Coasternoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-9430835.post-41439553884208901502012-07-10T08:06:53.892-07:002012-07-10T08:06:53.892-07:00Anonymous:"Steve already mentioned Hoover, bu...Anonymous:"Steve already mentioned Hoover, but JFK was there when Pearl Harbor was bombed and he had to bail out Daddy Joe by signing up. Rehnquist came out of Stanford. And Mitt attended too."<br /><br />JFK did his undergraduate degree at Harvard. He went to Stanford for a graduate degree in Business.<br /><br />SyonAnonymousnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-9430835.post-4020592274733954302012-07-10T06:16:52.382-07:002012-07-10T06:16:52.382-07:00"This is pretty unpersuasive because the floo..."This is pretty unpersuasive because the floor traders were NEVER good at managing risk. Sometimes, if you were lucky, they'd take a derivative in the right direction to their trades but I remember reading that they mostly used outrights. Options traders (ironically) being the worst."<br /><br />I'm not sure what you are basing this on but it doesn't really matter. The largest trades never took place on the floor anyway. The bottom line is all the fancy models like VaR turned out to be worse than useless and a few trillion in bailouts later, the world still teeters on the edge of financial meltdown. Which is coming no matter what software they happen to use. The original anonymous poster called what is coming in finance, health care and government disruptions. We've had plenty of those. Improvements would be nice for a change. A good place to start would be putting people like John Corzine in jail and allowing the many insolvent banks to collapse and disappear.John Doenoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-9430835.post-88303763580332983592012-07-10T05:11:03.682-07:002012-07-10T05:11:03.682-07:00"Im doing a thought experiment; I'm closi..."Im doing a thought experiment; I'm closing my eyes and imagining a distance learner profile: thirty-six years old, female, pudgy, mother of two, smart, witty, daughter of upper blue collar family, bookkeeper, works for a small company with no tuition reimbursement, white, just pays the bills, seeking an accounting degree, medium energy, neat, doesn't need two commutes per day, computer user- but not savvy, drives a four year old - accord/camry/sentra, little savings, parents getting old."<br /><br />These people are important, they will be in the work force for probably another close to 40 years. Maybe distance learning won't replace college, but a cheap respectable alternative is needed if they are to remain productive.<br /><br />I think your mental exercise conjured up a reasonably accurate picture. Good for their talent for something useful like accounting; better than an art/language major such as myself, who believed in academia and worked my way through. My sister learned computer programming on the job in the 70s, when such things still happened, and makes six digits despite working for an Indian owned firm that hires mostly Indians. She just hopes to stay on until retirement. Sister, by her own admission, never did have much imagination, but she was always good in math. Very linear thinker who dropped out of high school and got a GED. I graduated, but she makes much more. Many would have been more grossly paranoid when arsonists (probably aiming for the people next door) burned down her house on Thanksgiving eve, killing her little dog and almost killing her small children. She and her husband and two babies just got out alive. The perils of living in an area filled with meth addicts perhaps, though it seemed nice enough on the surface. She was never too "upwardly mobile", or "frou frou" as one friend calls it. I think if she had it to do over again, she'd do the same profession, but by correspondence, and live in the same area. Like I said, no imagination.<br />Two of my brothers did the engineering/ physics route at universities, and they are doing much better, but not vastly better--well, one of them might be. The parents getting old and needing care phrase -- been there done that -- is chilling, and will be haunting the corridors of American homes and institutions in the century now unfolding.Charlottenoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-9430835.post-18728011454207675002012-07-10T02:27:27.739-07:002012-07-10T02:27:27.739-07:00PayPal and Facebook haven't advanced "com...<i>PayPal and Facebook haven't advanced "computer science". Google really hasn't much either beyond its original search engine.</i><br /><br />And what, really, was so great about the search engine anyway? They didnt invent the search engine, they didnt even build the best one.Anonymousnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-9430835.post-71348969008333977502012-07-10T02:22:47.392-07:002012-07-10T02:22:47.392-07:00For the most part employers aren't asking &quo...<i>For the most part employers aren't asking "did this applicant pass _Heteronormative Oppression and American Society_? I need me some of that in my employees."</i><br /><br />Lol!<br /><br />Made me think though. If we take this idea of online certification to its conclusion its these BS subjects that will suffer the most.<br /><br />Surely any value they have is being lumped together with real stuff in an institution? If the institution largely disappears these nonsense goes with it because you are just someone with a worthless certificate, you didnt go to Harvard or wherever.Anonymousnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-9430835.post-83000819491605338342012-07-10T02:10:19.742-07:002012-07-10T02:10:19.742-07:00The comments here are significantly underemphasizi...The comments here are significantly underemphasizing the importance of the specific degree. Connoisseurs of higher-ed status know exactly what is signified by each degree. For a BA, MBA, JD, MD, etc., the status of each university's degree is quite clear. Trying to aggregate all of these degrees into the overall status of the university, by assigning some weight to each one, is arbitrary and imprecise.<br /><br />Ask yourself: is a degree from Harvard's Kennedy School of Government or Graduate School of Education more valuable, in any sense, than a STEM BS from Berkeley? No, of course not. That's so obvious that no one here has even brought up the point. <br /><br />What really matters is the difference between #1 and everything else. Everyone knows who's number one. I'm not even in any of these fields, and I can tell you who's number one, because I went to Harvard, and that's the kind of thing we care about there.<br /><br /><br />BA in verbalist fields: Harvard<br /><br />JD: Harvard and Yale<br /><br />MBA: Harvard and Stanford<br />Finance: Harvard, Wharton, Columbia<br /><br />Engineering: Stanford and MIT<br /><br />MD: Harvard<br /><br />BS in STEM: Harvard, Stanford, MIT, Princeton, Caltech<br /><br />MFA in arts: Yale<br /><br />Masters in Education: Harvard, Columbia<br /><br />Masters of Divinity: Harvard, Yale<br /><br />PhD in Economics: Harvard, MIT, Chicago, Princeton<br /><br />I'm probably wrong about these, but that's the conventional wisdom, anyway.Anonymousnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-9430835.post-85215278754455604182012-07-10T01:01:25.355-07:002012-07-10T01:01:25.355-07:00"The Hoover anecdote is great. I had never he..."The Hoover anecdote is great. I had never heard that." Don't worry, you're an American. Nobody expects you to know any history.deariemenoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-9430835.post-35260995007634698482012-07-10T00:48:20.794-07:002012-07-10T00:48:20.794-07:00"Floor trading began dying roughly a decade a..."Floor trading began dying roughly a decade ago. There are now a smaller number of traders pretending to manage huge amounts of risk. Mostly unsuccessfully. It is not a technical achievement to replace people that were useless in the first place with software that helps produce even worse results."<br /><br />This is pretty unpersuasive because the floor traders were NEVER good at managing risk. Sometimes, if you were lucky, they'd take a derivative in the right direction to their trades but I remember reading that they mostly used outrights. Options traders (ironically) being the worst.Anonymousnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-9430835.post-69490279975751504722012-07-10T00:31:26.984-07:002012-07-10T00:31:26.984-07:00Consider the three classes in Charles Murray's...Consider the three classes in Charles Murray's Coming Apart.<br /><br />The education bubble isn't that much of a problem for the upper class who send their kids to HYPS. However, a radical correction in the pricing of college degrees will have a negative effect on the finances of HYPS.<br /><br />On the other extreme, the lower classes do not go to college and can't get much benefit from a typical college education. Overall, they are unlikely to benefit much to the education bubble popping or from online education, at least directly.<br /><br />The middle class is where the real action is. For this group, HYPS is largely out of reach anyway. But they are spending nearly as much to send their kids to lower tier schools with significantly social signaling and networking value than HYPS. This is where the remaking of undergraduate education is going to happen.Anonymousnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-9430835.post-78507698966190554632012-07-09T23:44:08.493-07:002012-07-09T23:44:08.493-07:00There is to this day very little grade inflation a...<i>There is to this day very little grade inflation at Berkeley, especially in lower division (frosh-soph) classes, because state education policy requires all UC campuses to take in a set amount of community college transfers as juniors and the way Berkeley clears the space is by flunking out a lot of kids.</i><br /><br /><br />It's the other way around. Back in my parents' day, it wasn't unusual for a department at Berkeley to flunk out half its undergrads. Nowadays, a student would really have to try hard to flunk out. Instead of flunking them out, the department gives them C-minuses. You still have to earn your A's, though.Anonymousnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-9430835.post-14253614645209770452012-07-09T23:36:05.565-07:002012-07-09T23:36:05.565-07:00"The hypothesis that more rapid execution of ..."The hypothesis that more rapid execution of moves the market was already going to make "bankrupted" the world is antithetical to a moment's thought. The revolution in software-finance is quite simple: software has already replaced the floor trader, the technical analyst (who had dubious prediction powers) and is slowly, but surely replacing the front-desk and fundamental analyst. That's the next software revolution."<br /><br />Floor trading began dying roughly a decade ago. There are now a smaller number of traders pretending to manage huge amounts of risk. Mostly unsuccessfully. It is not a technical achievement to replace people that were useless in the first place with software that helps produce even worse results.John Doenoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-9430835.post-56443074954375943702012-07-09T23:34:32.739-07:002012-07-09T23:34:32.739-07:00"What I don't get is how pretty much no C..."What I don't get is how pretty much no Continental universities really have that super brand name status. It's basically only Oxford, Cambridge, and American universities."<br /><br />Ask yourself: Who won The Big One? <br /><br />http://www.vdare.com/articles/the-college-paradox-not-everyone-gains-by-higher-educationSteve Sailerhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/11920109042402850214noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-9430835.post-35782328316810447482012-07-09T23:22:37.165-07:002012-07-09T23:22:37.165-07:00The latest US News and World Report Best Colleges ...The latest US News and World Report Best Colleges ranking has Harvard and Princeton at #1, Yale at #3, Columbia at #4, and Caltech, MIT, Stanford, U Chicago, and Penn at #5.<br /><br />http://colleges.usnews.rankingsandreviews.com/best-colleges/rankings/national-universities/data<br /><br />The ranking is a bit strange, however, because while the number ranking suggests a tie of sorts, each university is counted separately, and being counted ahead of other schools that share the same number ranking seems to imply that it's ahead despite the same ranking. The five universities ranked 5th are followed by Duke at #10.Anonymousnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-9430835.post-42779641127119902302012-07-09T23:21:08.258-07:002012-07-09T23:21:08.258-07:00Disappointing that Steve didn't mention the mi...Disappointing that Steve didn't mention the mid-century origin of the "Ivy League" (well after Stanford's foundation) which I'd think of as right in his wheelhouse. It's always charming to read old papers with sports columnists describing Syracuse or Rutgers as Ivies, and the tawdry history of how the "Elite 8" got picked is equally amusing: the all-male student bodies of Penn and Cornell were literally begging to be included; Columbia was a late add; and Providence R.I. adjoining Brown's site was--crazy but true--still a major industry/finance center and not yet descended into Mafia dysfunction.<br /><br />The Ivy + MIT antitrust case on financial aid is a fun byway of recent history too!iSteve.com oldboynoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-9430835.post-42473546253153720412012-07-09T23:14:29.681-07:002012-07-09T23:14:29.681-07:00Oxford might be the best brand name in the world, ...<i>Oxford might be the best brand name in the world, better than Cambridge, better than Harvard or Yale. Somebody will figure out a way to exploit that 800 years of branding.</i><br /><br />What I don't get is how pretty much no Continental universities really have that super brand name status. It's basically only Oxford, Cambridge, and American universities.Anonymousnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-9430835.post-82138314731892207232012-07-09T23:08:10.736-07:002012-07-09T23:08:10.736-07:00Went to a Southern Calif. prep school, one usually...Went to a Southern Calif. prep school, one usually sending more than a dozen up to Stanford. Among the sort who thought most about these things, Stanford was considered at least equivalent to Harvard, or even preferable for the reasons you list (I knew non-early admits at both who ended up picking Palo Alto; as well as Harvard admits turned down by Stanford, which reinforced the appearance of absurdity and randomness). Since the HS was in California it might be presumed to have a better relationship with the in-state Stanford--unless you heard the HS's name.<br /><br />So I think things have changed a bit since 1975, your declaration notwithstanding. Regionalism is still heavy and depending where you made your AP valedictorian CIF bones you may not hear so many casual references to "Penn," whatever that is (seriously, sounds like a Louis Auchincloss character talking). Of course my school also regularly supplied its share to USC, the undisputed local champ of social networking.Anonymousnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-9430835.post-23035553607751754552012-07-09T23:03:46.695-07:002012-07-09T23:03:46.695-07:00"Princeton faces the same problem."
Pri..."Princeton faces the same problem."<br /><br />Princeton doesn't have graduate programs in medicine, law, or business...<br />In the field of business the University compensates by hiding business-type economists in the economics department. For instance, the thoroughly practical Burton Malkiel or Harvey Rosen would not be at home in the hypertechnical economics departments of MIT, Caltech, Berkeley or even NYU. There's probably no competing with Harvard's medical school at any rate, but Columbia, Penn, UChicago, MIT and UCBerkeley are all better in some but not all respects (the case study program that Harvard uses is quite limiting).Anonymousnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-9430835.post-51581678555679071482012-07-09T22:55:36.548-07:002012-07-09T22:55:36.548-07:00THOSE guys are profoundly threatened by certificat...<i> THOSE guys are profoundly threatened by certification offered by Stanford, MIT </i><br /><br />Maybe. There's the possibility of economies of scale appearing. Formerly there was a hard and fairly low limit to the number of students in one place at one time. If universities do start to scale then the strongest brand names may crush the mid-market actors. Even if, say, Harvard limits distance learning to maintain exclusivity the same effect occurs elsewhere when State U Online Certification competes with Local Community College.<br /><br />It will probably be a lumpy transition, with certain majors more likely to be targeted first. Accounting is a good test case. The humanities are mostly luxury goods these days and would be resistant to change. <br /><br />And in the end there are only so many smart people to be distributed among the various institutions. You can't have 50 million Americans taking the MIT math sequence because there aren't that many Americans who can handle it.<br /><br />And by the way, what are the actual skills, knowledge, and attitude employers are looking for? For the most part employers aren't asking "did this applicant pass _Heteronormative Oppression and American Society_? I need me some of that in my employees." What is it that the online schools are certifying their students are competent at? For the last couple decades a college degree was a good sign that the person was minimally competent and probably not a violent crack addict. Event that level of "certification" is starting to break down.Anonymousnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-9430835.post-17936062968432832182012-07-09T22:52:11.999-07:002012-07-09T22:52:11.999-07:00"What sort of revolution do you expect softwa..."What sort of revolution do you expect software to cause in finance? Program trading? Computerized real time risk monitoring? Uh sorry but you're a decade or two late on those. Those "advances" did a great job and in helping to bankrupt the world. "<br /><br />The hypothesis that more rapid execution of moves the market was already going to make "bankrupted" the world is antithetical to a moment's thought. The revolution in software-finance is quite simple: software has already replaced the floor trader, the technical analyst (who had dubious prediction powers) and is slowly, but surely replacing the front-desk and fundamental analyst. That's the next software revolution.Anonymousnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-9430835.post-85665327285881036642012-07-09T22:13:20.972-07:002012-07-09T22:13:20.972-07:00Steve, right on...the hierarchy is stagnant and wi...Steve, right on...the hierarchy is stagnant and will remain so. HYPS is how it is in this world.Anonymousnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-9430835.post-80640033951124092902012-07-09T22:11:35.271-07:002012-07-09T22:11:35.271-07:00"In every field that I can reasonably judge, ..."In every field that I can reasonably judge, Stanford is way better than Yale. Harvard still rules but that's because it, like a powerful vacuum, suck up everything in sight. In every field that I can reasonably judge, Princeton is a provincial university comparable in quality to any of the top 25 public schools. Columbia tops Princeton easily, for example."<br /><br />Anyone who is in University now knows how laughable this is. Princeton and Harvard are the only Universities in which it is possible to get an interview with a top 5 finance firm without majoring in math/econ/physics/comp sci/finance.Anonymousnoreply@blogger.com