<p>I was going to stay out of this one, but the topic is irresistible.</p>
<p>In order to compare students going to different schools, we must at least hold important variables such as SAT and family income constant. The only study I know that tried to look at it this way is the Krueger and Dale study. Until a better study comes along, I would have to say that in terms of earnings, only low-income students seems to get a boost. (It is certain interesting to note that an elite education is “wasted” on the rich, but the elites would not be the elites if not for the rich who attend).</p>
<p>A more fundamental question is this. Is there any evidence that education, not just elite education, makes a person “smarter”. Does having a smaller class, smarter profs and classmates, larger endowment makes a student better “educated” than if he were going to a “lesser” school. In short, does a superior education environment translate into a better educated student.</p>
<p>If the work of Nie and golde is any indication, then despite additional years of schooling over time, verbal ability which is highly correlated with education, remained pretty constant over time.</p>
<p>[Politics</a> Articles | Does Education Really Make You Smarter? | Miller-McCune Online Magazine](<a href=“miller-mccune.com”>miller-mccune.com)</p>
<p>To me, the conclusion is inescapable. Education serves as a signaling device and it does a good job of “rank ordering” students. For a plebeian, elite school admission signals to the power brokers that he/she is acceptable to the fraternity, and can be trusted as an underling. Nothing more. </p>
<p>We are what we are. That is why Hillary should be congratulated for playing the game brilliantly. She would have been accepted at anther top law school if not Yale. Quality, more often than not, will eventually shine through.</p>
<p>Hrm. Unsurprising, the authors are far from willing to make the conclusions you’re drawing, Canuckguy.</p>
<p>Furthermore,
</p>
<p>And they continue. It seems odd that you would extend their argument beyond where they are comfortable, especially since later on in this non-academic article they explain how they partially debunked their own metric. If changing lengths of education, not even quality, but years of added education doesn’t greatly change verbal ability it suggests that verbal attainment is something which is more innate and gained outside of education.</p>
<p>So I’m gonna call bunk on the one study that exists that doesn’t say what you want it to say.</p>
<p>In fact, they write:
EDIT:</p>
<p>I may have misinterpreted how you’re using the evidence… before I continue-- are you trying to say that because verbal ability an effect of education, that higher education itself is unimportant or something other than a signal to others?</p>
<p>That’s unfortunate that your state university doesn’t have a solid honors program. I get the feeling UGA may be a little different. The average SAT scores and GPA fo the HC students equals that of the Ivies. I know that SAT and GPA can only go so far to measure academic strength, but it’s interesting to note.</p>
<p>If you have any questions about honors programs or state unviersity education, I would be more than happy to help - I’m a big advocate (as you might have picked up on). ;)</p>
<p>Canuckguy, that’s an interesting contribution. I don’t have time to read it carefully right now but I think it’s important to note some important distinctions. The authors suggest, guardedly, that education does not appear to increase “innate intellectual traits or ability.” Nevertheless, education “may create and transmit many different kinds of skills and capabilities.” By analogy, athletic training cannot make you taller. It cannot make your lungs bigger beyond a certain limit. But it still can improve your performance. </p>
<p>Furthermore, even if education cannot improve ability, only filter and signal it, why should the “power brokers” be the only ones to receive and benefit from the signal? I should think self-discovery is an important outcome of the process. The learner can take charge of it. Get a filter/signal feed-back loop working in the process of improving your skills and finding your niche. And by all means, match the education to the needs of the learner.</p>
<p>This article seems to resonate with Charles Murray’s ideas but I’d be cautious about drawing any sweeping policy conclusions. As they state,</p>
I’m referring only to our public honors college, which is like a traditional New England liberal arts college. It’s a very nice school, really. We also have an HC program within the flagship state university. I’m not too familiar with the program though.</p>
<p>No, I don’t think it happens to UGA kids that often. Last year less than 5 students, perhaps none at all, committed to Michigan’s Law school. Even MIT sent more students than UGA to Michigan and Michigan gets extremely few of its students from engineering and science (four and three percent respectively) Do we need to go look at all the top law schools in the nation?</p>
<p>Well obviously I didn’t mean ONLY Michigan. UGA students and students from across the country get offers from top law schools without funding, and decide instead to attend other law schools, some really great, others not so great, for scholarship money.</p>
<p>Another thing you have neglected to take into account: For the in-state UGA students who get into the top law schools, UGA Law is nearly or is absolutely free. Not only do these students get to pay in-state tuition, but the top students get generous scholarship money as an incentive to stay at Georgia.</p>
<p>Social Sciences are not like the physical sciences. There are repercussions for coming up with unpopular conclusions. There are economists who saw the financial meltdown coming and said nothing for fear of ridicule or ostracism; there are psychometrists whose public position on intelligence is 180 degree different from their private one. Look at the data and not the conclusions, where researchers often use to “backpeddle” from their controversial data.</p>
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<p>Sure. They choose verbal attainment because they thought they are affirming the obvious, but reality has a way of intervening. They could have chosen math attainment, the other foundation of academic disciplines, but they know since average students avoid it like the plague, the result may show a decline which they do not want. Come to think of it, is there anything (math, music, sporting abilities etc.) that are not “innate and gained outside of education”?</p>
<p>Finally, I would like to leave you with this piece to illustrate my point:</p>
<p>Base on the data presented, don’t you find what the researchers and the Dean of Undergraduate Admission (particularly the Dean) has to say kind of “lame”? I know I do.</p>
<p>I’m confused still at what you’re saying, Canuckguy, and I read that IHE article when it came out with great interest. I don’t really see what this has to do with what we were talking about. That study basically confirmed that students who may be just as intelligent but not as literate in the dominating middle and upper class, white culture do not magically overcome their deficiency in communicating within that culture their first year at an elite institution teaching from a position which assumes that cultural knowledge. In fact, it’s kudos to Duke’s grading system-- students that are by-in-large less prepared to engage in that culture are not as successful on a level playing field (in a summative sense).</p>
<p>I would think that other than something like an HBCU, you would see the same effects at most places, although it may be more tempered where the demands on the students are lower and therefore deficiencies are less apparent.</p>
<p>What does this have to do with the value and total learning of going to a top school versus a middle of the road school? What does a 2.9 under challenge at Duke mean versus a 3.5 at a less challenging school? With all the research demonstrating increased success for students who are allowed to take higher level courses on an open door policy in high schools, why would we think that exposure to harder content would be bad for higher education students even if the grades are not there?</p>
<p>It’d be interesting if this was based on value-added and demonstrated that with students that are essentially the same, there was more value-added at some institutions versus others.</p>
<p>The article examines a very narrow range of educational effects. What do we really mean by ability anyway? Students bring many traits to the classrom when they grapple with difficult concepts together. Wit, shyness, impulsiveness, perserverence, anger. Good education helps temper and balance them. In effect,yes,you become “smarter”. Provided you are sufficiently challenged and engaged.</p>
<p>I am certain that almost all of us can do more with what we are given, but the potential for significantly large improvements is limited by our innate ability. Even with lipstick, a pig is still a pig.</p>
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<p>I agree. Even the privileged ones know they need fresh blood, and elite school admission is an attempt at a “controlled transfusion”, done in a way as to not impact the power and the privilege of the tribe.</p>
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<p>I certainly do not want neo-cons to use it as an excuse to trash public education. I am on your side here too.</p>
<p>My point here is to show how much social sciences hedge conclusions so as not to offend anyone. To borrow from Shakespeare, it is “full of sound and fury, signifying nothing”.</p>
<p>In this study, these folks are given detail admission information that elite colleges treat as “national secrets” and all they can conclude from it is “that existing data is not enough to demonstrate that mismatch exists or doesn’t”. If that is not lame, I don’t know what is.</p>
<p>The giant elephant in the room everyone is avoiding, of course, is admission decisions in elite colleges. The data is pretty clear to me that Duke does not admit the best students they can get, but the best students on a racial and ethnic basis, according to some prescribed “pie” graph.</p>
<p>The Dean, who did not think the study important enough to read up on, was obviously anticipating accusations of discrimination, replied “I’d say that our ratings system is a tool – no more and no less – for gathering, organizing, and interpreting some of the information we use in the admissions decision. There are many additional factors that we consider in making our decisions, which is why we read and discuss each individual application rather than simply let a rating system determine the decision”.</p>
<p>Still not getting what you’re getting at, sorry. As a budding social scientist (in my second incarnation), I understand all to well the abundant complications of social science research and why conclusions that are concrete and biting are hard to come by if you’re intellectually honest.</p>
<p>I’m really not sure that you’re analyzing this properly. Mismatch suggests that students are unable to succeed. Saying mismatch is occurring requires more than expectations of preparation, more than one year of grades, and in fact, a more meaningful outcome than grades (social mobility and generational success that people are claiming access to elite higher education provides, for example), etc. Poor grades are not a good indicator of success relative to where they would have been. Like I was saying earlier, so many people believe that the culture context cannot be reflecting in a grade system which requires certain disenfranchised groups to uncomfortably code switch into a new framework. It’s almost like judging someone in their second language and calling it an even playing field. Now, I don’t buy into this stuff going quite that far, but there is no doubt that leaning and living in one of the various cultures that are not strongly voiced in the hegemony of society is a detriment when trying to navigate the education system.</p>
<p>Is the entire point of that post to say that just because social scientists don’t make the claim doesn’t mean the data doesn’t support that claim? That just shows a lack of understanding of the complexity of social systems being studied. In fact, just like you said, don’t forget that social sciences are not physical sciences-- it is not just that unpopular conclusions are politicized, it’s that conclusions are hard to come by period. At best, we often can only say what we appear to observe and go on to describe in detail all the things that cannot be controlled for, that you cannot isolate, and that you cannot account for which could have major effects on your conclusions.</p>
<p>If a person can become “smarter” in a general sense, then a test that is heavily “g loaded” should do the job. The most “g loaded” tests are IQ tests, and there is no way in hell the researchers will get themselves involved with this can of worms.</p>
<p>We do know, however, that IQ tests are highly correlated with verbal scores, and that IQ scores tend to stabilize in childhood. (Recent work do seem to suggest that adopted children, after leaving home, become more like their biological parents they have never met, then their adopted parents that raise them.)</p>
<p>So, after all that is said and done, I still don’t think there is going to be much difference. We are what we are.</p>
<p>If you look at the story closely, you will see the authors said the following:</p>
<p>"Researchers are not even settled on what ‘mismatch’ should mean, let alone making firm statements about whether there is ‘mismatch.’ </p>
<p>So, what is the point of the study if you don’t know what you are studying? Pretty lame if you ask me.</p>
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<p>I am aware of the limitations of social sciences and the ability to control variables. Biological sciences have that problem too. What I am objecting to is the fact that although the data can be used to support many positions, almost always the researchers choose the least controversial, and not the most obvious.</p>
<p>The other point is this. If I were to wait until social sciences give me a green light to act, I will be waiting forever. All I can do is to act on the best information available to me at this time, but be prepared to change course if and when new knowledge becomes available. Part of the problem of being human, I guess.</p>
<p>Where is tk21769 when we need him the most? He can explain my position better than I can.</p>
<p>I’d love to continue this conversation, but it’s utterly off-track (and this thread has had enough of this). I completely disagree with your statements and I’m studying policy right now where I have to constantly act on information that is nowhere near certain and has validity issues.</p>
<p>Not only do I disagree with your conclusions about social science (not just in these cases but in others), I disagree with your extension of the first studies conclusions (they’re not obvious at all), and I disagree with the conclusion you’ve come to (it’s not supported by research in learning sciences). You’re essentially saying there’s intellectual determinism, which is an idea popularized in the early 20th century and for which there was never any “good” evidence by today’s standards. In fact, this belief in intellectual determinism is an underlying cause of the social reproductive effects of education in the American system. The legacy of the concept of the “bell curve” and an “IQ” have had disastrous effects on the structure of our education. Despite an orgy of evidence from psychology and cognitive science to the contrary, intellectual determinism is still a widely held belief.</p>
<p>Canuckguy, you should be reading more education research before making your claim based upon that one study that’s not even demonstrating (without stating), your theory.</p>
<p>I am sitting in a hotel room trying to type a post on an iPod. My *ability *is severely compromised.</p>
<p>I think the article does have some relevance to Hillary’s claims. Her position seems to be close to the view that the biggest diff between a Princeton education and any other is in the filtering mechanism applied to admissions.</p>
<p>My position is that there is much much more to intelligence than “g” or what IQ measures and that some education is better than others at exercising these faculties.</p>
<p>I guess we just have to agree to disagree. My area, btw, was education and learning. When you see stuff like “multiple intelligence” took off when the founder explicitly declared the theory can not be tested, I began to think we are entering a priesthood and not science.</p>
<p>Maybe all of this will be superseded by behavioral genetics, which I suspect will make liberals like me even more uncomfortable (Yes, we Canucks are liberal). When theory conflicts with data, however, I go with the data. That usually makes me the odd man out.</p>
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<p>I do not disagree with you in substance. Before we take that leap, however, that “something” must be observable and quantifiable so it can be tested and measured. Not too much to ask, is it?</p>
<p>If you are suggesting that math is better than sociology to “excercise these faculties”, I agree wholeheartedly. ;)</p>