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PaperclipPerfector  10mo ago (text post)   31449 thread views

Culture War Roundup for the week of July 10, 2023

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In my ideal world Harvard wouldnt exist. Every university would be like Georgia Tech. Easy to get into, hard to stay in. Yes, I think university should be for teaching technical skills that actually increase humam capital. Yes I do think STEM is more useful for mankind.

Many European universities are like this (especially in Italy, Germany, France to some extent outside the Grandes Ecoles). I see no evidence it produces any particularly better talent than the American system.

They are angry at America for that same reason you love it. They are angry that it is a place of chaos without social distinction, a place where you could lose a life of savings on the poker table, and where the markers of social position provide less insulation against the market.

You can believe in this system, but then you can’t be mad when it imports a cavalcade of global elites to sustain itself and they walk right on over you.

Many European universities are like this (especially in Italy, Germany, France to some extent outside the Grandes Ecoles). I see no evidence it produces any particularly better talent than the American system.

Something to keep in mind is that part of the American system's "production" of talent is brain-draining the rest of the world...

I would wager America is only "producing" talent in Computer Science. Rest of the sciences ~70% (guesstimate) of the faculty/researchers in US Universities are foreign.

Ironically enough selection into CS programs is relatively much more meritocratic.

That’s around the right percentage for grad students.

Foreign-born workers are about 50% of PhD engineers and computer scientists, and the fractions are lower for other sectors or with less education. They’re around 18% of the broader category of technical workers. Of course, some of these people are foreign born but naturalized. So I can’t give an exact number, but 50% is an upper bound.

I’ll also note that foreigners are concentrated in engineering/compsci relative to other fields. Including medicine. So we are quite probably producing significant fractions of skilled doctors, lawyers, and other prestige careers.

You can believe in this system, but then you can’t be mad when it imports a cavalcade of global elites to sustain itself and they walk right on over you.

I live in a place that has this 10x more than America.

I see no evidence it produces any particularly better talent than the American system.

Does it produce a better elite class in society? Maybe on STEM, it doesn’t produce anything noticeably better than we do. But I also don’t see any clear indication that it produces anything worse than we do either.

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