Hacker News Reader

Comment by linhir | Hacker News Reader

If your resume says that you went to Columbia College (the undergraduate college of Columbia University) when you actually went to the School of General studies then you are lying, pure and simple. Now maybe you can get away with it and maybe many employers do not know the difference, but many do and the two do not look the same. College education at the elite level falls in line with the signaling model of education. If you get into Columbia College as an undergraduate it doesn't matter to many employers what you actually learned, its merely a signal for other things--like that you can learn reasonably easily, that you value education, that you're a relatively smart person, etc. If you go to a general studies program that signal, at least to those who know, is greatly diminished. I can earn an online BA from the Continuing Education School of Harvard University, does that seem the same to you as attending Harvard College?

View on HN

First of all, you don't know what you're talking about. Signaling is bullshit. You might as well try and turn one of those acceptance letters into a job offer. See how that works out for you.

The reason elite colleges are elite is because they are filled with people deemed "the elite." Got that?

A big part of the experience at ANY undergraduate school is WHO you happen to be learning WITH not just who you are learning FROM. Harvard made a very deliberate decision to cultivate a class composed of the BEST students from across the nation. It's easy do educate students that are ALREADY motivated, good students. BTW, Harvard also took great pains to make sure that there weren't too many Jews or Asians in the freshman class. (So I guess that signalling thing works in some unanticipated ways too.)

Just keep in mind that signals come in many forms.

I don't really see how signally is bullshit from the examples you've given. Harvard College does make a a decision to cultivate a class composed of the best students, that's sort of the entire point. Acceptance to Harvard College ends up being a signal for those things it selects for, not necessarily those things one actually learns. The gateway is admissions, not what Harvard actually imparts.

Since the admissions standards of Harvard Extension school are lower, it doesn't matter that the students can do the same work. It matters that the students weren't selected in the same way. Selection itself matters to the signal that the education is sending.

As for Harvard (etc) not selecting for Jews and Asians, very explicitly throughout the first 60 years or so (Anyone particularly interested in the topic should read Karabel's The Chosen), that's also, exactly as you point out, a signal sent if you went to Harvard in those years. That doesn't make the policy right or wrong, it just means that if you graduate from Harvard in 1930 you're likely a WASP, and, indeed, that item on you resume is signally to all sort of employers that a good Harvard WASP interviewed you and deemed that your character is fit, that saves a step when they want to hire you at their White-Shoe law firm circa 1935.

So why bother with the education part at all then? Why not just run the admissions process and announce the winners of the beauty contest?

BTW, which "first" 60 years are you talking about? Harvard's admission process wasn't /really/ competitive until the 50's.

http://www.newyorker.com/archive/2005/10/10/051010crat_atlar...

Well, the real answer is that you learn roughly the same quality of things no matter what college you go to, not that you don't learn anything anywhere, just that Harvard College's distinguishing factor is not its education vs. UMass-Amhert, it is the admission process itself.

Neither of our statements re:admission is exactly correct, but what I meant is that admissions wasn't anywhere near being fair until at least the early 1960s (and that's being generous to Harvard), so the 60 years I was referring to was from 1900-1960. Buuuut, that's not quite right because when Eliot was President things were a little more competitive, but whatever.

SO...why on earth do you think that it's lying to say you have a degree from Columbia U if it's "only" from the General Studies program.

Did you know that Columbia will hand you a masters degree in Electrical Engineering or Chemical Engineering even if you've never set foot in New York?

http://www.cvn.columbia.edu/

Are those guys (those who earned their degree over the Internet) fakers too?

Doesn't it just depend on what is printed on your degree? You put whatever that says on your resume, simple enough.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com