**** Elections thread *****

[Poopadoop]

I'm very interested in some examples.

For my part, I would say it's not realising there's a diminishing return with increased effort, to the point where the effort would better be expended elsewhere.

Making sure every little thing is just right in an essay like there's not a single typo or the references are formatted perfectly, or putting pretty designs on the cover page. Memorizing a textbook word for word instead of just getting a solid grasp of the material. Shit like that.

In my view, the smartest ones are still diligent in their approach to their schoolwork, but they also understand what really matters and focus on getting that right. A lot of overachievers actually manage to be both diligent and attentive to irrelevant detail. They still get a top mark but it's kind of like 'fuck me, here's your 95, get a life'.

[wufwugy]

For my part, I would say it's not realising there's a diminishing return with increased effort, to the point where the effort would better be expended elsewhere.

Making sure every little thing is just right in an essay like there's not a single typo or the references are formatted perfectly, or putting pretty designs on the cover page. Memorizing a textbook word for word instead of just getting a solid grasp of the material. Shit like that.

In my view, the smartest ones are still diligent in their approach to their schoolwork, but they also understand what really matters and focus on getting that right. A lot of overachievers actually manage to be both diligent and attentive to irrelevant detail. They still get a top mark but it's kind of like 'fuck me, here's your 95, get a life'.

Interesting. I tend to do the really nitty things you describe, and here's my explanation for why: I hate being graded down. It just feels bad. Like real bad. A 100 on an essay can make my day and a 92 will have me agitated for a while and questioning the Professor's understanding of how to teach/grade.

[Poopadoop]

Interesting. I tend to do the really nitty things you describe, and here's my explanation for why: I hate being graded down. It just feels bad. Like real bad. A 100 on an essay can make my day and a 92 will have me agitated for a while and questioning the Professor's understanding of how to teach/grade.

Well I don't think there's anything wrong with doing that, but it's not like it sways me one way or the other if I see a typo. That said, different markers are sensitive to different things and some of the stuff that makes me see red doesn't seem to bother others and vice-versa. I can imagine there being someone out there who sees a reference formatted wrong and thinks 'minus 5 for that'. But I think (hope) they're pretty rare, cause honestly, what does it have to do with how strong your paper is?

[MadMojoMonkey]

A 100 on an essay can make my day and a 92 will have me agitated for a while and questioning the Professor's understanding of how to teach/grade.

If this is true, then why are you paying for it?

I mean, if everything you write on the subject is worth 100%, then why do you need to take the class?
Shouldn't / Couldn't you be teaching that class?

[wufwugy]

If this is true, then why are you paying for it?

I mean, if everything you write on the subject is worth 100%, then why do you need to take the class?
Shouldn't / Couldn't you be teaching that class?

I know, right?

Perhaps a way to explain it is that some incentives in the university are distorted. An example is how so many students are not there to learn but there to get an official piece of paper and to put a desired GPA value on the resume.

If you'll indulge me for a minute, here's more or less what has happened to the system: as the government began subsidizing college more and more, the demand for degrees has been increasing and the supply of graduates has been increasing. These have increased to the point that white-collar employers have the incentive to discard resumes void of a bachelor's degree, which puts even more upward pressure on the demand for college degrees. I am in this spot. I am not necessarily college material (even though I do well) and I would prefer to not be in college, but my incentive to get a degree is high enough because that opens doors to so many jobs that once were open to those who didn't have degrees. Government subsidization has turned the university into "13th-16th grade". Just like how kids in high school don't necessarily want to be there or learn, college students are converging onto the same territory.

This subsidization has caused a dilution of standards. The stories older professors tell of their exams show that the exams today are meager in comparison. There is an irony in that faculty tend toward favoring the very subsidization that is turning the university into the very things the faculty is not proud of: reduced diligence in students, lowered syllabus standards, increased control by administration, and overall lots of graduates that are ill-prepared for the job market and often even the next class in a series.


Tangent aside, to try to answer your question, because I live in a construct that incentivizes me to get a diploma and a favorable GPA, that's more or less what I'm paying for. I recognize that this is a totally screwed up system. But beyond that, my personal feelings towards my GPA is because honestly my education is secondary to my GPA. I'd rather be working instead, developing the industry-specific skills more efficiently. Every friend I have with a bachelor's degree does not credit what they learned in college with teaching them much of what they do now for work (even though they're working in their major's field). I hope that my experience will end up differently, but I know I shouldn't necessarily expect it to.

On top of that, if it is true that the intention of a college degree is to demonstrate education and skills, GPA is a poor metric. As economist Bryan Caplan has put it, the university doesn't measure talent, skill, or education so much as it measures conformity. This is at least in part due to the GPA creating a dynamic where students don't learn as much as they should. If the institution was truly about displaying education of its graduates, it would make the exams repeatable and graded pass/fail. This would allow the exams to be much harder (like the exams given by private organizations) and it would designate that more or less all graduates understand the material. This is getting into a different topic, though, so I'll stop.

I'll just end on this: I've learned some stuff outside of school and I've noticed that the learning process is nothing like studying for an exam then taking the exam and moving past it to the next exam. When people learn things outside the university system, there's trial and error and they don't move on until they get it right and the final result replaces the antecedents. GPA is like saying "this student learned only this much of the material and then we moved to other material." It should not be that way. It should be "this student learned all the material required to move on." It looks like I'm about to get back into the weeds I said I would avoid; it's basically my version of what I think the education system would look like if it was totally private instead of the subsidized pseudo-daycare it is now. That's for another day, I guess.

[Poopadoop]

You make some good points here, Wuf, and mostly I agree. There's a couple of things I'd like to add, however.

Because I live in a construct that incentivizes me to get a diploma and a favorable GPA, that's more or less what I'm paying for. I recognize that this is a totally screwed up system. But beyond that, my personal feelings towards my GPA is because honestly my education is secondary to my GPA. I'd rather be working instead, developing the industry-specific skills more efficiently. Every friend I have with a bachelor's degree does not credit what they learned in college with teaching them much of what they do now for work (even though they're working in their major's field). I hope that my experience will end up differently, but I know I shouldn't necessarily expect it to.

Although a degree doesn't necessarily directly contribute knowledge related to a specific job, that's at least partly because of diversity in the job market. If you think of all the things a group of students with a BSc. in subject X could go on to do, it would be impossible to impart all of them with the practical skills they'll need without having a separate course for each job. And if you do that, it's a vocational school you're running, not a university.

What the degree does do is teach the skills of learning, such as acquiring and retaining information, evaluating different ideas, critical analysis, etc.. This is pretty much universally applicable in any job that requires some degree of intelligent thought. The reason employers favor someone with a degree over someone without a degree is that the former person has shown that they've developed these skills at least well enough to finish their degree, and certainly more than they would have had by spending four years flipping burgers. We're not directly teaching people how to be a banker or a clerk, we're teaching them how to use their heads and think, so they can be a better banker or clerk (or whatever).

On top of that, if it is true that the intention of a college degree is to demonstrate education and skills, GPA is a poor metric. As economist Bryan Caplan has put it, the university doesn't measure talent, skill, or education so much as it measures conformity. This is at least in part due to the GPA creating a dynamic where students don't learn as much as they should.

I haven't read Kaplan but he may be exaggerating to make a point. A university certainly does evaluate it's students based on talent, education and skill. I know a lot of students who work very hard in uni and don't get top mark - not everyone has an IQ > 120. I also know students who are very bright but don't put in the effort - they also don't get a top mark because they haven't put in the effort required to get an education.

Before I comment further on this, I want to be clear on what Kaplan means by 'conformity', cause i can think of several different applications of that word. Can you elaborate here?

[wufwugy]

Before I comment further on this, I want to be clear on what Kaplan means by 'conformity', cause i can think of several different applications of that word. Can you elaborate here?

Caplan is writing a book on education and his points are scattered throughout his blog posts. This is the least wordy thing I can find:

Like most economists, Noah needs to be more sociological. In a cultural vacuum, working four years might be a great signal of work ethic. But no human being lives in a cultural vacuum. We live in societies thick with norms and expectations. And in our society, people with strong work ethics go to college and people with bad work ethics don't.

Disagree? Just picture how your parents would react if you told them, "I'm not going to college. I'm just going to get a job." In our society, your parents definitely wouldn't respond, "That makes sense, because you're such a hard worker." Why not? Because in our society, most hard-workers choose college. If a hard-working kid refuses to copy their behavior, people - including employers - understandably treat him as if he's lazy. Because lazy is how he looks.

Noah overlooks another key trait that education signals: sheer conformity to social norms. In our society, you're supposed to go to college, and you're supposed to finish. If you don't, the labor market sensibly questions your willingness to be a submissive worker bee.

From here: http://econlog.econlib.org/archives/...nal_sig_1.html

If you're interested in more, he links to relevant stuff.

[Poopadoop]

Noah overlooks another key trait that education signals: sheer conformity to social norms. In our society, you're supposed to go to college, and you're supposed to finish. If you don't, the labor market sensibly questions your willingness to be a submissive worker bee.

I think he's probably right about what he says here. But it isn't clear how he (or you?) gets from that to this:

the university doesn't measure talent, skill, or education so much as it measures conformity.

...unless he/you means that the university degree doesn't signify talent or education so much as it signifies conformity. Which would seem more plausible (but still wrong, or at least overly simplistic). Is that what you meant?

[Poopadoop]

Caplan is writing a book on education and his points are scattered throughout his blog posts. This is the least wordy thing I can find:

Noah overlooks another key trait that education signals: sheer conformity to social norms. In our society, you're supposed to go to college, and you're supposed to finish. If you don't, the labor market sensibly questions your willingness to be a submissive worker bee.

... and this sounds weak to me for two reasons: First, the labor market has a strong incentive to hire people with university degrees that has to do with the advantages i listed earlier, such as acquiring and retaining information, critical thinking skills, etc.. Second, it's not at all clear that people who go to university are more submissive than people who don't. On the contrary. I think that if anything, four years of university generally makes people more likely to think for themselves, and as a consequence, less likely to be the submissive worker bees that Caplan argues the market covets.

And saying people choose university mainly to conform to society's expectations regarding what good workers do also seems a bit contrived. It's analogous to saying sick people go to the doctor to conform to society's expectations about what sick people will do, or that people who go to a bank machine to withdraw cash do so to conform to society's expectations about what a person who needs cash will do. All of these things signal 'conformity' in the sense that it's what people tend to do in a particular situation. That doesn't mean conforming with society's expectations was any part of the motivation for doing these things.

I think people go to university because 1) they can get an education which is a positive thing in and of itself; and 2) because it gives them more options in terms of jobs further down the road due to 1) above. Maybe some of them (or even a lot of them) are only doing it for the second reason, and some of them are probably doing it for different reasons altogether (e.g., to party, to find a mate), but that doesn't mean the education they get is therefore useless.