The reply to you in Noah's comments is interesting. With the government being 50% of GDP, the idea that most of our technological discoveries wouldn't in some way involve some government funding is ludicrous. But this is taken as evidence that the innovation wouldn't happen without government.
Anyway, I think its easier for government to fund a prize for a discovery then it is to build a heavy industry that requires practically zero error rate.
I am reminded of a comment someone made some time ago to the effect of "If we mandated children attend public daycare starting at 6 months old, within two generations no one would believe children could learn to walk without schooling." As you say, just because something is involved in a process doesn't mean it is necessary or sufficient. I am lucky enough that my seven year old daughter wants to put together every stick of furniture with me, but skilled as she has become she isn't exactly critical to the process :D
I will posit that faculty, while maybe not the main issue, are indeed contributing to the re-engineering of college education. Barton points out that grade inflation has students "scaling back academic effort." To be sure, the article also tells of other factors (e.g.,"transactional attitude" by students), but why work hard if you can count on your prof handing out good grades like candy?
I think a bit part of issue too is that learning the material is instrumental only, not the end goal. The only thing that matters to most students (and probably rightly so) is getting the grade so they can get the degree, with no interest or expectation of using the skills. Some will be genuinely interested and curious, but most are just there to finish the degree. Combined with many professors who will fail you if you disagree with them on politics or implications (which absolutely exist and infest many fields) most students have a "just say what you need to say to get it done and get out" attitude. Then layer the massive influx of really non-academics oriented students being admitted into colleges which drives some of the grade inflation (you aren't generally allowed to fail half your class) smarter kids hardly have to do anything while the other students drag the bar lower and lower.
The biggest problem I think is that the certification of knowledge function is married to the teaching of knowledge function. So if students fail their exams the question is open as to whether it was the professor/grad student that failed to teach or the student who failed to learn. As the students are the customers the answer invariably turns to the teacher failing.
Appreciate your perspective on this. I hate the idea that teachers are automatically blamed for student failure to learn when it seems apparent that students take every shortcut to get the grade, diploma, etc. No doubt there are lousy teachers, too, but students bear responsibility as well.
Yea, it is a two way street, and even decent students with decent teachers will sometimes just not click with them and won't learn a lot. For whatever reason though our modern system is based on a system that does not allow for identifying where the weak points are.
I suspect that at the limit the best option would be to allow students to work with different teachers to learn the material until they get it (presumably by passing a test to demonstrate mastery) and let students take as long as it takes to get there. If it takes 3 different teachers and Khan Academy before you figure it out, that's fine, so long as you can demonstrate mastery. Instead of now where we lock teachers and students together and failure on one side or the other or both are all observationally equivalent.
Perhaps my favorite passage that Arnold didn't cite:
"In the final class, each student was asked to cite their favorite readings, and the professor was surprised that so many chose readings from the first few units. That wasn’t because the students happened to be most interested in those classes’ material; rather, that was the brief period of the course when everyone actually did some of the readings.
Despite having barely engaged with the course material, we all received A’s."
I think the idea is that professors are being pressured to hand out those good grades behind the scenes, though, by deans and other administrators of one strip or another.
Yeah, but those evaluations may matter less than other factors. For example, harsh grading policies will cause more students to drop out or transfer. This can hurt the university in various rankings like US News or Princeton, because a higher dropout rate is usually bad. That's going to matter more to the university administrators than student evaluations saying "Prof. X is a big meanie because he didn't give me an 'A'."
That's true except I'm pretty sure USNews also includes student ratings. And while maybe it's not a direct factor in grading, students have increased power to get their profs in trouble or fired. Good reason to avoid friction.
Good links. Liked the Harvard story, but the student is incorrect to think the “recent” shift to meritocratic admissions had anything to do with it. Admissions were largely meritocratic and based on grades and scores back in the 70’s and 80’s, when there was little grade inflation and kids were much more non-conformist and focused more on classes.
I call the problem the “valedictorian mindset”. There was a study I saw decades ago that tracked high school valedictorians to see what they did in their careers. The hypothesis was that these kids would have gone on to become famous writers, scientists, prize winners, business founders, etc. Instead what they found was that these kids became doctors, lawyers and accountants (note that McKinsey, Google and Goldmans didn’t really exist, or not as broad career paths, back then).
In other words, most of these valedictorians were highly conformist and systematic and focused on outcome (job security, comfort, perhaps high status employment for its own sake) rather than on learning per se. They figured out what was required to be top of the heap and get the “A”, and they did it.
This valedictorian mindset (probably driven by parents as well as elite competition for limited slots) has permeated a much bigger slice of the student body than it used to. Certainly schools in much of upper middle class suburbia as well as elite urban schools are consumed by it. There are still non-confirmists and creators and inventors and frightfully intuitive ADD kids that can’t do (or won’t do) the work to get all A’s, and the top universities do admit some of these kids, but it is hard to admits many when your application readers are awash with too many “easy admits”- conformist kids who have ticked all the boxes in high school.
I worked in financial markets/investment banking for many decades and recruited from top schools in the US and Europe. On the markets side, our HR department did two studies. One looked at graduates five years out and tried to determine what factors looked at in recruiting determined success. Turns out that neither the school nor the major nor the GPA (or 1st vs second degree) were strongly correlated with job success. Intangible factors (and probably the luck of ending up in the right department during the right cycle) seemed to be at play,
not academics. In the US, the one factor with a significant correlation to success was playing sports at university, particularly being captain of a team. The one graduate I ever did recruit from Harvard (ground zero of the valedictorian mindset, so to be avoided) was the captain of their basketball team. He’s done pretty well.
A second study looked at our team leaders and department heads. Many of them came from non-Ivies or even second tier schools and more had “B” averages rather than “A” (though that wasn’t uncommon back when they graduated). Back when they came up through the system, formal recruiting was supplemented by nepotism and people moving up from operations/back office, as well. In the UK we even hired people who worked for bookies.
Yet a decade or two later, all of these department heads were now recruiting only top students from top schools. The odds of any one of these recruits becoming a phenom is very low (not any greater than the savvy back office kid).
Why these kids are attractive is precisely because they are so conformist and so hard working (when it is required). If getting a promotion means working 80 hours a week, they will work 80 hours a week and won’t grouse. And their work is more accurate than than the old mishmash of graduates we had. What they are missing is the spark of creativity and entrepreneurship. At a certain point in your career there is no “system” that tells you when to choose a new strategy or close an old business or invent a new product and nothing that can replace a true love for and deep knowledge of your industry. These kids with the valedictorian mindset make excellent drones and analysts and middle managers but most of them are not risk takers or decision-makers nor passionate about industry. Given that only 1 in 20 graduates of any sort will really become a phenomenal performer (as opposed to a decent but replaceable one, milking a business cycle), why not hire the people that make the best grunt workers during their junior years?
I know it has changed now, but 20-30 years ago not every candidate from every school had that valedictorian mindset and had ticked all the boxes and parroted all the right answers. It had permeated the top US and UK schools but less so on the continent or Ireland. I remember one week where I did a drinks reception at LSE and then one in Dublin for Trinity and UC. The LSE event was stifling and dull. Dublin was so refreshing. They hadn’t gotten the message. Two students came up and asked “so how many hours a week do you have to work, then”? When we told them they replied “Oh- don’t know if I could do that”.
That is exactly what my 21 year old self would have been thinking way back when.
I think you are putting your finger right on it, too. I would add that the selection criteria for getting into good schools is not just grades now but also a pile of extracurriculars and volunteer activity in accepted fields. You need 100 hours of acceptable service to get into schools, and so kids do that. I wouldn't be surprised to find that those students who found that sort of thing acceptable in high school keep that trend in college, spending time on stuff outside of school being what they are used to doing to achieve success.
They’ve had to raise the bar because there are so many good students plus there are less good students they want to find a way to admit - all the extracurriculars are also a way to ensure the “right” students are admitted. Volunteering for Biden campaign or left wing NGO, good. Volunteering for Trump campaign or church group doesn’t get you the bonus points.
You know how once in awhile you'll encounter a stack of old (decades-old) magazines ... and you realize - people used to sound (be?) smarter. Texts were denser. Similarly with old books, even when they've been superceded. Writers used to command greater detail, traffic *less* in banalities. Less in endless restatements of generalities, however poeticized. I don't mean to overstate, it's a matter of degree, but palpable.
I think this is why it's perfect timing for AI-generated texts - they would have been much less "convincing" in the past.
In a way, it's a great time to be a reader* - if you are old enough to have been "trained" on old texts. It makes it so much easier to spot quality, whether style or substance. (I believe both have their place, and clearly, the gold standard is the rare union of the two.)
As for misinformation: I'd prefer to say that the internet has simply filled our heads with more trivia.
Amid the dross, obviously, are going to be the people who by virtue of *not* being in the inner ring, will be more likely to utter things that are closer to the truth, than will the captured media.
The dross remains a problem, because those occasional shocking truth-tellers are lost in it; not many will hear of them, even if we on our little fora think their names are bywords. And the dross crowds out so much, and makes most of us so much stupider.**
When I was a little kid, I eagerly read the Sunday "Parade" magazine. I would read the latest tidbit about Zsa-Zsa Gabor or Burt Reynolds or whomever. I was terrifically interested in all of it. Had I been asked, I wouldn't have been able to say why. Many women love gossip, and I suppose I was a little proto-woman.
So: that was five minutes a week spent irrationally. Would have been more had there been more ...
The past few days I have spent probably a cumulative two hours *just* on the subject of Kate Middleton, her mystery ailment, her penchant for dressing her children in blue, and why she wasn't wearing her ring in the picture, &etc.. [I was wondering if maybe when you are the wife of the king-to-be, it might be that your wedding ring cost some 100X what other people's rings cost, if it wasn't in fact a priceless heirloom, and perhaps you don't wear it all the time at home, while gardening or cooking or whatnot.] I guess I fall in with the tweeter who wondered how any of us could be expected to get any "work" done when we don't even know where the hell she is ;-).
*To clarify: I don't read any new fiction, ever.
**It makes me stupider, sure - that side of me that inclined toward the Personality Parade, and royal gossip. But it makes me smarter, too. I have a much wider, if an inch-deep, idea of many things than I ever would have without the internet. I cannot say what is the effect on a more typical woman. Even if it's just a mixed bag, as all writing has always been - it will not be the answer to anything.
-the Supreme Court getting ready to open up vast new vistas of billable hours with some highly partisan three part test on whether or not the federal government can stifle public discourse with impunity (https://www.c-span.org/video/?534283-1/murthy-v-missouri-supreme-court-oral-argument ) which will produce an infinitude of arbitrary rulings across the country and the first amendment will be effectively swallowed;
-the Tik Tok bill in the Senate now that will give the President absolute power to pick and choose which social media platforms are allowed to operate, not, of course, without gazillions in billable hours being flushed down the litigation toilet first; and,
-the infamous Mark Steyn verdict now under appeal.
Cynical hyperbole? Maybe, I am not sure. One does wonder how much longer we will be able to distinguish speech rights in the US versus China. The EU is already probably worse than China. But I am more sure that it is much more realistic than Williams' conjuring of a world of sweetness and light in which "it is also understandable that scientists, journalists, politicians, and institutions like the European Union, United Nations, World Health Organization, and World Economic Forum are motivated to debunk dangerous lies and empower citizens to resist their influence." Let me edit that for him: "motivated to debunk dangerous lies OTHER THAN THEIR OWN and empower citizens to resist their influence WHEN IT SO SUITS THEM."
Williams is so over the top in his whitewashing of the establishment, I have to question myself on why I agree with so much else that is in the column. Perhaps the exclusive focus on addressing the allegations of evil in social media feels misleading compared to a robust celebration of the many times ordinary citizens have achieved great outcomes by speaking truth to power through social media. I for one would argue that the latter is the more important story and greatly outweighs the costs of disinformation but it might well be lost through the inhibition of speech that accompanies anti-disinformation crusading.
It would seem that your comment, "I don't think that our government is capable of running this type of program in a way that ends up achieving (or even working toward) its goals and not becoming utterly corrupt" would be true of every federal government program, especially given the rate at which the US is increasing its government debt and unfunded liabilities. It is hard to think of any federal program that is not corrupt, that is, that does not impede the development of civic virtue in the Confucian sense, or that would even pass an honest cost-benefit analysis compared that included realistic alternatives.
That said, others have pointed out that the industrial policy was essential to the 19th century economic transformation of the United States with New York state funding the construction of the Erie Canal and the federal government's massive land subsidies to the railroads.
But one wonders why the US is so singularly inept at industrial policy in recent decades, as compared to East Asian nations that seem to have flourished under industrial policy regimes. I have yet to make up my mind as to whether Joe Studwell's How Asia Works got everything right or not, but there does appear to be at least a plausible argument that the fault is not necessarily with the nature of industrial policy itself. From a substack book review that reminded me of Studwell this morning:
'Friedrich List’s “The National System of Political Economy” contains the following lines:
"It is a very common clever device that when anyone has attained the summit of greatness, he kicks away the ladder by which he has climbed up, in order to deprive others of the means of climbing up after him. In this lies the secret of the cosmopolitical doctrine of Adam Smith...
Any nation which by means of protective duties and restrictions on navigation has raised her manufacturing power and her navigation to such a degree of development that no other nation can sustain free competition with her, can do nothing wiser than to throw away these ladders of her greatness, to preach to other nations the benefits of free trade, and to declare in penitent tones that she has hitherto wandered in the paths of error, and has now for the first time succeeded in discovering the truth.'
If you've never heard of Friedrich List, you aren’t alone. He was until recently almost completely unknown in the Anglosphere. The library of the MIT economics department does not contain a single complete set of his major works. Who is he? Only the architect of Prussian industrialization: the man whose theories guided Germany from economic backwater to one of the richest and mightiest nations on earth. You may never have heard of him, but the bureaucrats and dictators who managed the most successful Asian economic transformations — Meiji Japan, Taiwan under the Kuomintang, and South Korea under General Park Chung-hee — were obsessed with List and studied him religiously.
This book is the meticulously-researched story of what they did with his ideas. The central thesis is that what separates the successful Asian nations listed above from the failures (Indonesia, Malaysia, the Philippines), is that the failures listened to well-meaning White people and their NGOs who preached free trade, free markets, and deregulation. The winners, on the other hand, smiled and nodded when the World Bank came a-calling, then did the exact opposite (or, given that they were all under American military occupation at various points, as close to the opposite as they could get away with). Contrarian doesn’t begin to describe it; it is difficult to imagine a book that is more offensive to our ruling class and to the wonkocracy than this one. I wouldn’t believe every word of it uncritically, but it’s a useful corrective to some widespread myths about how advanced economies really work."
Perhaps a foundational inquiry for understanding the great wealth and prosperity once enjoyed by the United States is the proper attribution of that wealth to governance, cultural or other sociological factors (i.e. Protestant work ethic), or simply having control of a vast continent full of tillable soil and exploitable resources. One might be forgiven for suspecting that the third accounts for about 99% of the prosperity of the country.
A second, perhaps related, inquiry might be into the possible consequences for economies as the share of intangibles increases in their gross domestic product. I seem to recall reading recently that over 90% of the assets of S&P 500 listed companies are intangibles. With so much of the apparent wealth of the nation residing in intangibles (Corporate goodwill? patents?) what chance would a goods & services oriented industrial policy really have? Economics might be able to foster productive inquiry by generating measures like intangible share of GDP. Some intangibles are apparently included in GDP but I have yet to find a clear explanation of that accounting. One might suspect that the "paper wealth" that Dr. Kling has previously described might be a factor. My gut instinct is that an economy that is heavily dependent on intangibles is not a free economy in which new patterns of specialization and trade can easily arise in response to disruptions or even to produce sustainable increases in standards of living.
IMO the "golden age of objectivity" was a direct result of WWII pool reporting and censorship largely obliterating the previous obviously partisan stances of print media.
RE: Harvard college students 'phoning it in' for grades and superficial learning:
Is this also true for their applied sciences?
I also wonder if this is limited to elite universities and/or Humanities.
All three of my college-age children have chosen to pursue courses of study that DO require some level of measurable skill/knowledge: forensic science, computer science and aviation (commercial airline pilot).
- I see my daughter (freshman) starting on her physics and chemistry university course material over spring break before classes have even started, as she knows they are foundational to her future career. So far, most hard science classes are graded on a curve. (University of California)
- My son's serious about his computer science courses, as faking knowledge doesn't get you far in the real world, which wants to see your code, can test you, can review your projects. But he reports on many student peers who really don't care, leave project work until the last day, spend little time. (CalState University)
- My other daughter has foregone college for the moment to focus on flying, as there's a shortage of pilots now. Knowledge has to be embedded into your body and brain, if you're going to be a pilot and pass written, oral tests - and not crash. No bare minimum for her when it comes to flying. [She'll get the necessary degree later, once she's to the point in her career that she needs it to advance. I can imagine her doing the bare minimum in her non-flying-related academics and doing enough to graduate with a degree].
Dan Williams coined the hugely important, and explanatory phrase "Market for Rationalizations".
He's half right that social media has not been a huge source of dis-, or mis-information.
It's been the government, and academia, that's been lying., with lies repeated by the Dem media, in what Trump has accurately called Fake News.
From the 2016 media repeating Obama's lie that he's NOT Spying on Trump (his FBI/CIA intel agencies WERE spying), thru the Russia Hoax and 2 years of Dem media collusion hoax, plus tax/ business convictions of Trump guys, this campaign of lies did affect the 2018 election so fewer voted Rep, more voted Dem.
In Oct. 2020, before the election, H. Biden's computer containing many selfies & emails indicating massive criminal behavior (still with little justice) -- 51 Dem govt folk lied about it being Russian disinformation. So it was censored, at govt direction, by most most major media.
When govt censors the truth about a candidate to help that candidate win -- the election is not fair; it's rigged. It's stolen.
Most college educated Americans don't want to believe that a US election can be stolen, despite many agreeing that Chicago's Mayor Daley stole the 1960 election for JFK.
Dan's column partially feeds the desire to rationalize the idea that the election was not stolen.
After the J6 protest to Stop The Steal, the Dems covered up the truth that Trump had asked for more National Guards, but it was refused (by who?? Pelosi? Capitol Police?). At 6:30 am, video shows some men illegally constructing a small gallows, which was not taken down (as policy demanded) -- who set up the gallows? 2 years of (Fake) "insurrection" libels resulted in a 2022 election where Dems did better than expected (* abortion was also a major issue, after Roe v Wade was overturned).
All of the last 3 US elections were affected by govt disinformation.
However, Dan's claim is that social media is not the driver, and the examples above, which he doesn't use, do support his claim: "the idea that mainstream media is or ever was characterised by a high degree of objectivity is absurd."
He also disses Trump: "Trump is undoubtedly a prolific liar. I also think he’s an unusually bad person and a threat to American democracy, and that the Republican Party more broadly is uniquely dysfunctional among major parties in Western countries. ...
It is mostly because so many people support Trump and despise liberal elites and the establishment that they accept his lies, not vice versa. "
The paying market for Williams' analysis is mostly folk who dislike, if not hate, Trump.
As usual with Trump critics, Dan doesn't specify what lies of his are so bad -- after J6 many now claim, maybe also Kling, that Trump's refusal to accept the (false) idea that the election was Free and Fair is a lie. Those claiming it was not stolen put the burden of proof on Trump -- but mostly have denied his campaign the 65 million envelopes & chains of custody documentation which are needed to show the mail-in ballots were all non-fraudulent.
The presumption of innocence is important in criminal cases, so there are far fewer innocents wrongly found guilty, but instead more guilty who are wrongly found not guilty. In the same way, the election integrity rules and court cases strongly presume Not Stolen, so that there are few fair elections wrongly found stolen -- but more stolen elections wrongly found not stolen. As 1960. Many Dems think 2000. Hillary claimed for years 2016 was stolen/ Trump was illegitimate.
Trump didn't prove the election was stolen. Nobody was charged with insurrection -- it's despicable persecution to prosecute for inciting something that didn't happen. (None were prosecuted for BLM violence in 2020, where there was far more violence and rioter caused deaths.)
I'm genuinely interested in what lies of Trump Williams, or Kling, think are so terrible. But supporting a populist liar against lying and despicable elites doesn't mean one literally believes the lie, more in accepting emotional speech and exaggerations as being more authentic.
Most often, the media create a "lie" by misquoting him. Like the recent "Bloodbath" comment.
(Media reports as if he's threatening violence, rather than describing what happens in the auto industry for workers.)
It's common for students to start the semester doing the reading and then do less and less. There are always exceptions - these are the best students. But the median expectation is that lectures and review sessions should include everything that will be on the test. In smaller classes you can encourage reading with written assignments, etc. But the basic expectation is unchanged. Failure to meet the median expectation can lower your scores on teaching evaluations, which determine raises and promotions. Anything less than close to perfect (>4 on a 5-point scale) will get you dinged. That's how grade inflation works.
The reply to you in Noah's comments is interesting. With the government being 50% of GDP, the idea that most of our technological discoveries wouldn't in some way involve some government funding is ludicrous. But this is taken as evidence that the innovation wouldn't happen without government.
Anyway, I think its easier for government to fund a prize for a discovery then it is to build a heavy industry that requires practically zero error rate.
I am reminded of a comment someone made some time ago to the effect of "If we mandated children attend public daycare starting at 6 months old, within two generations no one would believe children could learn to walk without schooling." As you say, just because something is involved in a process doesn't mean it is necessary or sufficient. I am lucky enough that my seven year old daughter wants to put together every stick of furniture with me, but skilled as she has become she isn't exactly critical to the process :D
I will posit that faculty, while maybe not the main issue, are indeed contributing to the re-engineering of college education. Barton points out that grade inflation has students "scaling back academic effort." To be sure, the article also tells of other factors (e.g.,"transactional attitude" by students), but why work hard if you can count on your prof handing out good grades like candy?
I think a bit part of issue too is that learning the material is instrumental only, not the end goal. The only thing that matters to most students (and probably rightly so) is getting the grade so they can get the degree, with no interest or expectation of using the skills. Some will be genuinely interested and curious, but most are just there to finish the degree. Combined with many professors who will fail you if you disagree with them on politics or implications (which absolutely exist and infest many fields) most students have a "just say what you need to say to get it done and get out" attitude. Then layer the massive influx of really non-academics oriented students being admitted into colleges which drives some of the grade inflation (you aren't generally allowed to fail half your class) smarter kids hardly have to do anything while the other students drag the bar lower and lower.
The biggest problem I think is that the certification of knowledge function is married to the teaching of knowledge function. So if students fail their exams the question is open as to whether it was the professor/grad student that failed to teach or the student who failed to learn. As the students are the customers the answer invariably turns to the teacher failing.
Appreciate your perspective on this. I hate the idea that teachers are automatically blamed for student failure to learn when it seems apparent that students take every shortcut to get the grade, diploma, etc. No doubt there are lousy teachers, too, but students bear responsibility as well.
Yea, it is a two way street, and even decent students with decent teachers will sometimes just not click with them and won't learn a lot. For whatever reason though our modern system is based on a system that does not allow for identifying where the weak points are.
I suspect that at the limit the best option would be to allow students to work with different teachers to learn the material until they get it (presumably by passing a test to demonstrate mastery) and let students take as long as it takes to get there. If it takes 3 different teachers and Khan Academy before you figure it out, that's fine, so long as you can demonstrate mastery. Instead of now where we lock teachers and students together and failure on one side or the other or both are all observationally equivalent.
Perhaps my favorite passage that Arnold didn't cite:
"In the final class, each student was asked to cite their favorite readings, and the professor was surprised that so many chose readings from the first few units. That wasn’t because the students happened to be most interested in those classes’ material; rather, that was the brief period of the course when everyone actually did some of the readings.
Despite having barely engaged with the course material, we all received A’s."
I think the idea is that professors are being pressured to hand out those good grades behind the scenes, though, by deans and other administrators of one strip or another.
Teachers get evaluated by the students.
Yeah, but those evaluations may matter less than other factors. For example, harsh grading policies will cause more students to drop out or transfer. This can hurt the university in various rankings like US News or Princeton, because a higher dropout rate is usually bad. That's going to matter more to the university administrators than student evaluations saying "Prof. X is a big meanie because he didn't give me an 'A'."
That's true except I'm pretty sure USNews also includes student ratings. And while maybe it's not a direct factor in grading, students have increased power to get their profs in trouble or fired. Good reason to avoid friction.
Good links. Liked the Harvard story, but the student is incorrect to think the “recent” shift to meritocratic admissions had anything to do with it. Admissions were largely meritocratic and based on grades and scores back in the 70’s and 80’s, when there was little grade inflation and kids were much more non-conformist and focused more on classes.
I call the problem the “valedictorian mindset”. There was a study I saw decades ago that tracked high school valedictorians to see what they did in their careers. The hypothesis was that these kids would have gone on to become famous writers, scientists, prize winners, business founders, etc. Instead what they found was that these kids became doctors, lawyers and accountants (note that McKinsey, Google and Goldmans didn’t really exist, or not as broad career paths, back then).
In other words, most of these valedictorians were highly conformist and systematic and focused on outcome (job security, comfort, perhaps high status employment for its own sake) rather than on learning per se. They figured out what was required to be top of the heap and get the “A”, and they did it.
This valedictorian mindset (probably driven by parents as well as elite competition for limited slots) has permeated a much bigger slice of the student body than it used to. Certainly schools in much of upper middle class suburbia as well as elite urban schools are consumed by it. There are still non-confirmists and creators and inventors and frightfully intuitive ADD kids that can’t do (or won’t do) the work to get all A’s, and the top universities do admit some of these kids, but it is hard to admits many when your application readers are awash with too many “easy admits”- conformist kids who have ticked all the boxes in high school.
I worked in financial markets/investment banking for many decades and recruited from top schools in the US and Europe. On the markets side, our HR department did two studies. One looked at graduates five years out and tried to determine what factors looked at in recruiting determined success. Turns out that neither the school nor the major nor the GPA (or 1st vs second degree) were strongly correlated with job success. Intangible factors (and probably the luck of ending up in the right department during the right cycle) seemed to be at play,
not academics. In the US, the one factor with a significant correlation to success was playing sports at university, particularly being captain of a team. The one graduate I ever did recruit from Harvard (ground zero of the valedictorian mindset, so to be avoided) was the captain of their basketball team. He’s done pretty well.
A second study looked at our team leaders and department heads. Many of them came from non-Ivies or even second tier schools and more had “B” averages rather than “A” (though that wasn’t uncommon back when they graduated). Back when they came up through the system, formal recruiting was supplemented by nepotism and people moving up from operations/back office, as well. In the UK we even hired people who worked for bookies.
Yet a decade or two later, all of these department heads were now recruiting only top students from top schools. The odds of any one of these recruits becoming a phenom is very low (not any greater than the savvy back office kid).
Why these kids are attractive is precisely because they are so conformist and so hard working (when it is required). If getting a promotion means working 80 hours a week, they will work 80 hours a week and won’t grouse. And their work is more accurate than than the old mishmash of graduates we had. What they are missing is the spark of creativity and entrepreneurship. At a certain point in your career there is no “system” that tells you when to choose a new strategy or close an old business or invent a new product and nothing that can replace a true love for and deep knowledge of your industry. These kids with the valedictorian mindset make excellent drones and analysts and middle managers but most of them are not risk takers or decision-makers nor passionate about industry. Given that only 1 in 20 graduates of any sort will really become a phenomenal performer (as opposed to a decent but replaceable one, milking a business cycle), why not hire the people that make the best grunt workers during their junior years?
I know it has changed now, but 20-30 years ago not every candidate from every school had that valedictorian mindset and had ticked all the boxes and parroted all the right answers. It had permeated the top US and UK schools but less so on the continent or Ireland. I remember one week where I did a drinks reception at LSE and then one in Dublin for Trinity and UC. The LSE event was stifling and dull. Dublin was so refreshing. They hadn’t gotten the message. Two students came up and asked “so how many hours a week do you have to work, then”? When we told them they replied “Oh- don’t know if I could do that”.
That is exactly what my 21 year old self would have been thinking way back when.
I think you are putting your finger right on it, too. I would add that the selection criteria for getting into good schools is not just grades now but also a pile of extracurriculars and volunteer activity in accepted fields. You need 100 hours of acceptable service to get into schools, and so kids do that. I wouldn't be surprised to find that those students who found that sort of thing acceptable in high school keep that trend in college, spending time on stuff outside of school being what they are used to doing to achieve success.
They’ve had to raise the bar because there are so many good students plus there are less good students they want to find a way to admit - all the extracurriculars are also a way to ensure the “right” students are admitted. Volunteering for Biden campaign or left wing NGO, good. Volunteering for Trump campaign or church group doesn’t get you the bonus points.
You know how once in awhile you'll encounter a stack of old (decades-old) magazines ... and you realize - people used to sound (be?) smarter. Texts were denser. Similarly with old books, even when they've been superceded. Writers used to command greater detail, traffic *less* in banalities. Less in endless restatements of generalities, however poeticized. I don't mean to overstate, it's a matter of degree, but palpable.
I think this is why it's perfect timing for AI-generated texts - they would have been much less "convincing" in the past.
In a way, it's a great time to be a reader* - if you are old enough to have been "trained" on old texts. It makes it so much easier to spot quality, whether style or substance. (I believe both have their place, and clearly, the gold standard is the rare union of the two.)
As for misinformation: I'd prefer to say that the internet has simply filled our heads with more trivia.
Amid the dross, obviously, are going to be the people who by virtue of *not* being in the inner ring, will be more likely to utter things that are closer to the truth, than will the captured media.
The dross remains a problem, because those occasional shocking truth-tellers are lost in it; not many will hear of them, even if we on our little fora think their names are bywords. And the dross crowds out so much, and makes most of us so much stupider.**
When I was a little kid, I eagerly read the Sunday "Parade" magazine. I would read the latest tidbit about Zsa-Zsa Gabor or Burt Reynolds or whomever. I was terrifically interested in all of it. Had I been asked, I wouldn't have been able to say why. Many women love gossip, and I suppose I was a little proto-woman.
So: that was five minutes a week spent irrationally. Would have been more had there been more ...
The past few days I have spent probably a cumulative two hours *just* on the subject of Kate Middleton, her mystery ailment, her penchant for dressing her children in blue, and why she wasn't wearing her ring in the picture, &etc.. [I was wondering if maybe when you are the wife of the king-to-be, it might be that your wedding ring cost some 100X what other people's rings cost, if it wasn't in fact a priceless heirloom, and perhaps you don't wear it all the time at home, while gardening or cooking or whatnot.] I guess I fall in with the tweeter who wondered how any of us could be expected to get any "work" done when we don't even know where the hell she is ;-).
*To clarify: I don't read any new fiction, ever.
**It makes me stupider, sure - that side of me that inclined toward the Personality Parade, and royal gossip. But it makes me smarter, too. I have a much wider, if an inch-deep, idea of many things than I ever would have without the internet. I cannot say what is the effect on a more typical woman. Even if it's just a mixed bag, as all writing has always been - it will not be the answer to anything.
Not sure what to make of the Dan Williams substack in the context of this morning's world, what with: -the "bloodbath" kerfuffle (https://issuesinsights.com/2024/03/18/elon-musk-is-now-more-trustworthy-than-every-major-news-outlet/ )
-the Supreme Court getting ready to open up vast new vistas of billable hours with some highly partisan three part test on whether or not the federal government can stifle public discourse with impunity (https://www.c-span.org/video/?534283-1/murthy-v-missouri-supreme-court-oral-argument ) which will produce an infinitude of arbitrary rulings across the country and the first amendment will be effectively swallowed;
-the Tik Tok bill in the Senate now that will give the President absolute power to pick and choose which social media platforms are allowed to operate, not, of course, without gazillions in billable hours being flushed down the litigation toilet first; and,
-the infamous Mark Steyn verdict now under appeal.
Cynical hyperbole? Maybe, I am not sure. One does wonder how much longer we will be able to distinguish speech rights in the US versus China. The EU is already probably worse than China. But I am more sure that it is much more realistic than Williams' conjuring of a world of sweetness and light in which "it is also understandable that scientists, journalists, politicians, and institutions like the European Union, United Nations, World Health Organization, and World Economic Forum are motivated to debunk dangerous lies and empower citizens to resist their influence." Let me edit that for him: "motivated to debunk dangerous lies OTHER THAN THEIR OWN and empower citizens to resist their influence WHEN IT SO SUITS THEM."
Williams is so over the top in his whitewashing of the establishment, I have to question myself on why I agree with so much else that is in the column. Perhaps the exclusive focus on addressing the allegations of evil in social media feels misleading compared to a robust celebration of the many times ordinary citizens have achieved great outcomes by speaking truth to power through social media. I for one would argue that the latter is the more important story and greatly outweighs the costs of disinformation but it might well be lost through the inhibition of speech that accompanies anti-disinformation crusading.
It would seem that your comment, "I don't think that our government is capable of running this type of program in a way that ends up achieving (or even working toward) its goals and not becoming utterly corrupt" would be true of every federal government program, especially given the rate at which the US is increasing its government debt and unfunded liabilities. It is hard to think of any federal program that is not corrupt, that is, that does not impede the development of civic virtue in the Confucian sense, or that would even pass an honest cost-benefit analysis compared that included realistic alternatives.
That said, others have pointed out that the industrial policy was essential to the 19th century economic transformation of the United States with New York state funding the construction of the Erie Canal and the federal government's massive land subsidies to the railroads.
But one wonders why the US is so singularly inept at industrial policy in recent decades, as compared to East Asian nations that seem to have flourished under industrial policy regimes. I have yet to make up my mind as to whether Joe Studwell's How Asia Works got everything right or not, but there does appear to be at least a plausible argument that the fault is not necessarily with the nature of industrial policy itself. From a substack book review that reminded me of Studwell this morning:
'Friedrich List’s “The National System of Political Economy” contains the following lines:
"It is a very common clever device that when anyone has attained the summit of greatness, he kicks away the ladder by which he has climbed up, in order to deprive others of the means of climbing up after him. In this lies the secret of the cosmopolitical doctrine of Adam Smith...
Any nation which by means of protective duties and restrictions on navigation has raised her manufacturing power and her navigation to such a degree of development that no other nation can sustain free competition with her, can do nothing wiser than to throw away these ladders of her greatness, to preach to other nations the benefits of free trade, and to declare in penitent tones that she has hitherto wandered in the paths of error, and has now for the first time succeeded in discovering the truth.'
If you've never heard of Friedrich List, you aren’t alone. He was until recently almost completely unknown in the Anglosphere. The library of the MIT economics department does not contain a single complete set of his major works. Who is he? Only the architect of Prussian industrialization: the man whose theories guided Germany from economic backwater to one of the richest and mightiest nations on earth. You may never have heard of him, but the bureaucrats and dictators who managed the most successful Asian economic transformations — Meiji Japan, Taiwan under the Kuomintang, and South Korea under General Park Chung-hee — were obsessed with List and studied him religiously.
This book is the meticulously-researched story of what they did with his ideas. The central thesis is that what separates the successful Asian nations listed above from the failures (Indonesia, Malaysia, the Philippines), is that the failures listened to well-meaning White people and their NGOs who preached free trade, free markets, and deregulation. The winners, on the other hand, smiled and nodded when the World Bank came a-calling, then did the exact opposite (or, given that they were all under American military occupation at various points, as close to the opposite as they could get away with). Contrarian doesn’t begin to describe it; it is difficult to imagine a book that is more offensive to our ruling class and to the wonkocracy than this one. I wouldn’t believe every word of it uncritically, but it’s a useful corrective to some widespread myths about how advanced economies really work."
(https://www.thepsmiths.com/p/briefly-noted-recommended-reading )
Perhaps a foundational inquiry for understanding the great wealth and prosperity once enjoyed by the United States is the proper attribution of that wealth to governance, cultural or other sociological factors (i.e. Protestant work ethic), or simply having control of a vast continent full of tillable soil and exploitable resources. One might be forgiven for suspecting that the third accounts for about 99% of the prosperity of the country.
A second, perhaps related, inquiry might be into the possible consequences for economies as the share of intangibles increases in their gross domestic product. I seem to recall reading recently that over 90% of the assets of S&P 500 listed companies are intangibles. With so much of the apparent wealth of the nation residing in intangibles (Corporate goodwill? patents?) what chance would a goods & services oriented industrial policy really have? Economics might be able to foster productive inquiry by generating measures like intangible share of GDP. Some intangibles are apparently included in GDP but I have yet to find a clear explanation of that accounting. One might suspect that the "paper wealth" that Dr. Kling has previously described might be a factor. My gut instinct is that an economy that is heavily dependent on intangibles is not a free economy in which new patterns of specialization and trade can easily arise in response to disruptions or even to produce sustainable increases in standards of living.
IMO the "golden age of objectivity" was a direct result of WWII pool reporting and censorship largely obliterating the previous obviously partisan stances of print media.
RE: Harvard college students 'phoning it in' for grades and superficial learning:
Is this also true for their applied sciences?
I also wonder if this is limited to elite universities and/or Humanities.
All three of my college-age children have chosen to pursue courses of study that DO require some level of measurable skill/knowledge: forensic science, computer science and aviation (commercial airline pilot).
- I see my daughter (freshman) starting on her physics and chemistry university course material over spring break before classes have even started, as she knows they are foundational to her future career. So far, most hard science classes are graded on a curve. (University of California)
- My son's serious about his computer science courses, as faking knowledge doesn't get you far in the real world, which wants to see your code, can test you, can review your projects. But he reports on many student peers who really don't care, leave project work until the last day, spend little time. (CalState University)
- My other daughter has foregone college for the moment to focus on flying, as there's a shortage of pilots now. Knowledge has to be embedded into your body and brain, if you're going to be a pilot and pass written, oral tests - and not crash. No bare minimum for her when it comes to flying. [She'll get the necessary degree later, once she's to the point in her career that she needs it to advance. I can imagine her doing the bare minimum in her non-flying-related academics and doing enough to graduate with a degree].
Dan Williams coined the hugely important, and explanatory phrase "Market for Rationalizations".
He's half right that social media has not been a huge source of dis-, or mis-information.
It's been the government, and academia, that's been lying., with lies repeated by the Dem media, in what Trump has accurately called Fake News.
From the 2016 media repeating Obama's lie that he's NOT Spying on Trump (his FBI/CIA intel agencies WERE spying), thru the Russia Hoax and 2 years of Dem media collusion hoax, plus tax/ business convictions of Trump guys, this campaign of lies did affect the 2018 election so fewer voted Rep, more voted Dem.
In Oct. 2020, before the election, H. Biden's computer containing many selfies & emails indicating massive criminal behavior (still with little justice) -- 51 Dem govt folk lied about it being Russian disinformation. So it was censored, at govt direction, by most most major media.
When govt censors the truth about a candidate to help that candidate win -- the election is not fair; it's rigged. It's stolen.
Most college educated Americans don't want to believe that a US election can be stolen, despite many agreeing that Chicago's Mayor Daley stole the 1960 election for JFK.
Dan's column partially feeds the desire to rationalize the idea that the election was not stolen.
After the J6 protest to Stop The Steal, the Dems covered up the truth that Trump had asked for more National Guards, but it was refused (by who?? Pelosi? Capitol Police?). At 6:30 am, video shows some men illegally constructing a small gallows, which was not taken down (as policy demanded) -- who set up the gallows? 2 years of (Fake) "insurrection" libels resulted in a 2022 election where Dems did better than expected (* abortion was also a major issue, after Roe v Wade was overturned).
All of the last 3 US elections were affected by govt disinformation.
However, Dan's claim is that social media is not the driver, and the examples above, which he doesn't use, do support his claim: "the idea that mainstream media is or ever was characterised by a high degree of objectivity is absurd."
He also disses Trump: "Trump is undoubtedly a prolific liar. I also think he’s an unusually bad person and a threat to American democracy, and that the Republican Party more broadly is uniquely dysfunctional among major parties in Western countries. ...
It is mostly because so many people support Trump and despise liberal elites and the establishment that they accept his lies, not vice versa. "
The paying market for Williams' analysis is mostly folk who dislike, if not hate, Trump.
As usual with Trump critics, Dan doesn't specify what lies of his are so bad -- after J6 many now claim, maybe also Kling, that Trump's refusal to accept the (false) idea that the election was Free and Fair is a lie. Those claiming it was not stolen put the burden of proof on Trump -- but mostly have denied his campaign the 65 million envelopes & chains of custody documentation which are needed to show the mail-in ballots were all non-fraudulent.
The presumption of innocence is important in criminal cases, so there are far fewer innocents wrongly found guilty, but instead more guilty who are wrongly found not guilty. In the same way, the election integrity rules and court cases strongly presume Not Stolen, so that there are few fair elections wrongly found stolen -- but more stolen elections wrongly found not stolen. As 1960. Many Dems think 2000. Hillary claimed for years 2016 was stolen/ Trump was illegitimate.
Trump didn't prove the election was stolen. Nobody was charged with insurrection -- it's despicable persecution to prosecute for inciting something that didn't happen. (None were prosecuted for BLM violence in 2020, where there was far more violence and rioter caused deaths.)
I'm genuinely interested in what lies of Trump Williams, or Kling, think are so terrible. But supporting a populist liar against lying and despicable elites doesn't mean one literally believes the lie, more in accepting emotional speech and exaggerations as being more authentic.
Most often, the media create a "lie" by misquoting him. Like the recent "Bloodbath" comment.
(Media reports as if he's threatening violence, rather than describing what happens in the auto industry for workers.)
Grades: I wonder to what extent this is true in engineering, physics and math.
It's common for students to start the semester doing the reading and then do less and less. There are always exceptions - these are the best students. But the median expectation is that lectures and review sessions should include everything that will be on the test. In smaller classes you can encourage reading with written assignments, etc. But the basic expectation is unchanged. Failure to meet the median expectation can lower your scores on teaching evaluations, which determine raises and promotions. Anything less than close to perfect (>4 on a 5-point scale) will get you dinged. That's how grade inflation works.