
America Lets Too Much Young Talent Go to Waste - pseudolus
https://www.bloomberg.com/opinion/articles/2019-02-06/america-neglects-talent-of-too-many-of-its-best-and-brightest
======
_zskd
I have a saying when my peers compare themselves to the Zuckerbergs and Gates
and Musks of the world: How many hundreds of thousands of dollars did your
parents spend on your education? Because you have to realize that is who you
are competing with.

I went to a VERY RURAL high school. We had 3 math classes that everyone went
through... none of them college level. My math class decided it was funny to
rip up the floor tiles and smash them against the blackboard when the
teacher's back was turned. Kids would just not do the homework and they would
pass them so they didn't have to deal with them for another year.

No AP classes, no test prep to speak of. Top of the class were just the
obedient kids who did the 7th-grade level homework assignments. We had a small
band and it was tight-knit and fun.

I get really down on myself because I'm so far away from what I actually want
to be. But did I actually have a chance? Yeah. But a small one. Much smaller
than a lot of other people. And now the kind of jobs I can get are... fine I
guess. Not great, just fine. I'm almost 30 and now I need to learn a ton of
mathematics my peers have known for a decade.

I ended up going to whatever Chicago college would take me at an affordable
rate ( DePaul ). College was hard. I worked 40 hours a week and went to night
classes. I struggled through the "easy" classes and SCRAPED past on the hard
classes.

Still, my early education wasn't SO BAD. At least I didn't have to worry about
violence or a gang trying to draft me.

I have a crazy idea around this: End high school sooner.

Let the kids leave sophomore year, or even earlier. Let them go to trade
schools.

For most of the country, school is just child jail. Why are we forcing
students who WANT TO LEARN AND IMPROVE deal with students who do not want to
be there, and are going to end up working at a tire plant anyway?

"But but but.. the education!" They are not getting an education anyway. The
schools do not have enough resources to teach these kids. They do not want to
be there. They are torturing everyone around them because they are bored.

~~~
downrightmike
"Let the kids leave sophomore year, or even earlier. Let them go to trade
schools." Germany does this.

~~~
2019ideas
Looking back at my education,

Precalc and English were me 2 most useful classes.

"Science" "engineering" and "history" were actually useless. If you were going
to get further education, college science eclipses HS science in 1 semester.
My Engineering class was the most absurd, it wasn't engineering. History was
basically propaganda.

High school needs to end sooner. AP classes are the sign of this.

~~~
irrational
The problem is, you have no idea what you will pursue after HS. I didn't have
any interest in history in HS. I ended up getting a BA in history in college
because I fell in love with it. I never would have guessed I'd end up there
while in HS, but in retrospect I'm grateful for the history classes I had to
take.

~~~
2019ideas
> I didn't have any interest in history in HS.

I blame your teachers.

~~~
wkearney99
Well, parents certainly come in ahead of teachers for failing to encourage
interest in history. It's not just teachers that have to magically light the
spark.

------
orky56
We are looking at the problem all wrong.

College Board, a for-profit private corporation, is the company responsible
for administering the SAT/ACT which is essentially a college entrance exam.
Its cost is non-negligible for a low income student and it can be prepared for
with classes that once again have a cost that is non-negligible.

As the article states, colleges also have a profit motive and want to maximize
their revenue. They are not incentivized to admit high-performing, low income
students when they have a low probability of having their families donate
prior to admission and just as likely have a low probability to donate after
graduation. Remember that upward mobility is not just a factor of alma mater
but also your network of high worth individuals that allows you to have the
disposable income to donate.

So it's money all the way down. We can keep kicking the can further down the
road and blame the next party. However I think it's worth stopping this issue
with the employer. Outside of credit risk, the income of a potential employee
is irrelevant if that individual is capable of handling the responsibilities
of the position.

Yes, alma mater is a strong indicator of success and capability. However so is
self-directed learning, examples of big fish in the small pond, etc. We need
to further democratize free/low-cost education by investing in that
infrastructure and content at the community level. Most importantly, we need
to remove the stigma of not having a shiny diploma.

Employers need to also invest beyond the current employee and into communities
to get these potential stars out of the vicious cycle of inequality.

~~~
vokep
Since it does in fact have racist origins, maybe a campaign could be organized
to make more aware of this? seems like the kind of thing that pretty much
everyone except racists would be for, and so its just a matter of getting the
word spread, once it is, outrage organically will emerge, and from that
hopefully change.

~~~
mikestew
_Since it does in fact have racist origins_

The article doesn't say that. The Army test before it seems to fit that
description, but my reading says what would become the SAT was simply to keep
stupid people out. The fact that the test's author thought "stupid people"
would consist primarily of non-Nordic not-white-folk not withstanding, the
test is what brought college admissions equality, or at least more of it, to
minorities and immigrants.

 _seems like the kind of thing that pretty much everyone except racists would
be for_

Even if it were admittedly design to keep out minorities, the fact that it
backfired and did the exact opposite is enough for me to support such a test.
So you're calling me a racist? Can't we just have an honest discussion?

------
chuck-
I wrote about it before, but the smart poor face quite the uphill battle.
Friend of mine scored a 1600 on the SAT but went to one of the worst high
schools in the area. He was rejected from elite universities. He couldn’t
compare to those that also scored well on the SAT, subject SATs (which our
high school didn’t make clear was a thing), and those that already took
calculus 1-3, linear algebra, data structures, and proof based mathematics
courses from magnet schools. It isn’t just about raw intelligence and scoring
highly on exams. He was behind before he started by attending our high school.

Some elite schools talk about free scholarships for those that make less than
a certain income, but how many of those elite schools are admitting poor smart
students? When you’re smart and attend a HS that doesn’t make you competitive,
you tend to get rejected.

~~~
deogeo
Perhaps there's too much focus on the truly elite schools, and not enough on
the good or very good ones. Surely it's possible to succeed by attending
those?

~~~
war1025
The obsession over elite schools makes even less sense if you frame it in
terms of where these people are coming from.

If you had the wherewithal to do well at a lousy high school, you'll be just
as able to make something of yourself at a mid-grade university.

Elite universities are important if you want to be in the "elite" clique. If
you just want to make a better life for yourself, any old university will get
you pretty far. One close to home will likely be a lot more relatable
culturally as well. Not everyone wants to uproot their identity and go be
someone else somewhere else.

------
40acres
This is my go to defense for "social justice reform" when pulling at the
heartstrings doesn't work. There are a couple of truisms when it comes to the
global economy for the next 100 years (barring major catastrophe):

1\. The US will not be able to compete w/ India or China when it comes to
population. 2\. As low-hanging fruit in the economy is gobbled up, advanced
economies will need to rely on highly skilled workers to continue growth.

Basically, America is going to have to get MUCH better at realizing the full
potential of it's population in order to keep growing. That means investing in
poor neighborhoods and undeserved communities, providing equal access and
opportunity and removing as many barriers as possible to those who have been
traditionally marginalized.

While many companies use "woke as a business strategy" the underlying
economics behind the recent diversity push of major tech companies is backed
by these facts.

~~~
zozbot123
Most "woke" advocacy hardly favors "realizing the full potential of [our]
population". Back here in the real world, the "woke" folks are the ones
pushing for deeply flawed educational approaches like "whole language" reading
(aka don't actually teach kids to read by explaining the rules that link
written and spoken English, viz. phonics; just give them fully-formed written
texts and let them figure it out!) and "reform math" (aka don't actually teach
kids the traditional, efficient algorithms for computing simple arithmetical
operations, just have them do a lot of fuzzy "mental math" and "discovering
their inner knowledge" without even caring whether they're anywhere near a
correct approach. They'll figure it out eventually!). These approaches are
being pushed as a result of mindless cargo-culting and politicking, and are
doing quite a bit of damage to our educational system. The basic attitude of
not caring about the actual outcomes of what you're teaching persists all the
way through K12, and explains quite a bit of how far U.S. primary and
secondary schooling underachieves compared to the rest of the developed world.

When a potentially "bright" kid has been subjected to 12 years of such deeply-
flawed, even outright nonsensical cargo-cult schooling, how can we even expect
her to be interested in college?

~~~
jessaustin
I'm sorry the comment describing how SFUSD had eliminated algebra from middle
school [0] has been deleted. Waiting until junior year to split up a class
based on math aptitude is probably good for those in the middle, but it's
certainly bad for those with higher or lower than average aptitude. As I
recall, my pre-algebra and algebra I courses were attended by two classes: 7-8
and 8-9 grades respectively. After that there was no requirement that you take
a particular course in a particular year, just that you had passed the
prerequisites. This seemed to work very well, since everyone was ready for the
material.

[0] [https://priceonomics.com/why-did-san-francisco-schools-
stop-...](https://priceonomics.com/why-did-san-francisco-schools-stop-
teaching/)

~~~
geebee
I didn’t realize anyone had read it, I moved it To the parent comment in the
thread.

~~~
jessaustin
Haha no worries... I guess I should have looked for it before posting.

------
megaman8
Pushing more and more people to go to college isn't going to raise
productivity. It will just lead to even more degree inflation. We've been
seeing degrees pay out less and less as more and more people get them. This
shouldn't be surprising. Look at the extreme cases in China. The amount highly
educated labor is so vast that Seasonal workers moving to the city earn more
than the average College graduate. Is this how we want to end up?

It would be much better to give students the right kind of education, and make
sure that post k-12 training reflects the demands in the market. Right now
there's huge demand for construction workers that isn't being filled, and
there are many other niches that could use the right type of trained workers.
And industry needs to get better at highering, and better at understand what
they actually need, rather than continuing to advertise job templates for
which no one's given any thought to what they actually need.

~~~
gerbilly
I disagree, let the companies do the training. If it's so valued in the
market, then surely they will be happy to provide that training.

Why we let the companies push that externality on higher education is beyond
me.

And I think degree inflation would be a great thing, if we could just reduce
tuitions.

A highly educated populace is a good thing.

I've worked as farm labour in a tiny little town, where most of the the
farmers went to college.

If you want to go back to the farm, it's fine. Training is fine, but a true
education is something they can never take away from you.

~~~
solatic
> I disagree, let the companies do the training. If it's so valued in the
> market, then surely they will be happy to provide that training. >Why we let
> the companies push that externality on higher education is beyond me.

Welcome to the flip side of doing away with non-compete agreements. Why should
a business invest so much money in training workers when they'll just get
poached away by a competitor who is virtually guaranteed to be able to offer
higher pay, not just for the value of the trained skill but because the
competitor doesn't need to pay the overhead costs of training them? When new
employees can leave their contracts at any time and for any reason, the
expectations of employers necessarily shift away from training.

Now of course, reality is a little more nuanced. Training for long-time
employees to keep them up-to-date makes more sense since they have so much
domain experience internalized. A just law would need to allow for some
exceptions to allow employees to break their non-competes in cases like toxic
workplaces, and the law would need to set a maximum term for a non-compete to
prevent workers from being exploited for low pay for their entire working
lives.

But the notion that employers today should take "no-experience-needed"
candidates off the street, give them 6+ months of full-day training with pay,
and allow them to walk right out the door a week later to their competitor...
is laughable on its face.

~~~
gerbilly
Screw non competes, they aren't even enforceable most of the time anyway.

My answer to why companies should train people if they can just leave for
another company is twofold:

1: It evens out. Sometimes people will leave company A, which trained them,
and come to your company, and other times they you will train them and they
will leave. As long as the relative rates are about even, it should be ok.

2: Any general training that would apply to all similar companies can just as
easily be acquired on the job at any given company. So train the employees,
and if you really don't want to lose your 'investment' then perhaps treat them
nicely?

Why are we always so quick to cry a river for huge organizations that hold a
disproportionate amount of power over individuals?

~~~
Raidion
The problem with #2 is that if a company spends $30k of time and effort to get
an employee trained up, the poaching company can offer a raise of 10k and
still be in the black 3 years later. If the original company decided to match
that offer, they're now spending 60k more over three years, and the poaching
company can offer a 15k raise and STILL be in the black after 3 years. Any
money you pay in training is a sunk cost that doesn't have to be paid by your
competitors.

~~~
gerbilly
Sure but presumably, unless all employees start out only at your company, then
the effect would also sometimes happen in your company's favour.

As I said in point #1, as long as the rate of defections/arrivals is about
even, then your losses on one employee would be offset by your gains on
others.

~~~
thereisnospork
Having an even defection/arrival rate requires other companies to also train
their employees, and not only hire previously trained persons.

------
olefoo
Our society wastes most peoples talents. At a time when we face problems that
require a full mobilization of all human ability to solve if we are to achieve
mere survival as a species.

The wasting of talent does not always look like someone languishing in a
position below their abilities. Waste of talent can also look like someone
expending their creativity pushing addictive services or building products for
an audience of pampered elitists.

You deserve a better world.

~~~
SomethingOrNot
> The wasting of talent does not always look like someone languishing in a
> position below their abilities. Waste of talent can also look like someone
> expending their creativity pushing addictive services or building products
> for an audience of pampered elitists.

Oh, my heart bleeds for Silicon Valley-type (the TV series) programmers.
Sniff.

~~~
olefoo
Wastrels and scoundrels do not always suffer for their sins. Such is life.

------
arikr
Made me think of this tweet from @patrickc

"The high-return activity of raising others' aspirations."

[https://twitter.com/patrickc/status/1092676941902012416](https://twitter.com/patrickc/status/1092676941902012416)

[https://siepr.stanford.edu/sites/default/files/publications/...](https://siepr.stanford.edu/sites/default/files/publications/12-014paper_6.pdf)

Abstract

> Only a minority of high-achieving, low-income students apply to colleges in
> the same way that other high-achieving students do: applying to several
> selective colleges whose curriculum is designed for students with a level of
> achievement like their own. This is despite the fact that selective colleges
> typically cost them high-achieving, low-income students less while offering
> them more generous resources than the non-selective postsecondary
> institutions they mainly attend. In previous work, we demonstrate that the
> vast majority of high-achieving, low-income students are unlikely to be
> reached by traditional methods of informing students about their college
> opportunities since such methods require the students to be concentrated
> geographically. In this study, we use a randomized controlled trial to
> evaluate interventions that provide students with semicustomized information
> on the application process and colleges' net costs. The interventions also
> provide students with no-paperwork application fee waivers. The ECO
> Comprehensive (ECO-C) Intervention costs about $6 per student, and we find
> that it causes high-achieving, low-income students to apply and be admitted
> to more colleges, especially those with high graduation rates and generous
> instructional resources. The students respond to their enlarged opportunity
> sets by enrolling in colleges that have stronger academic records, higher
> graduation rates, and more generous resources. Their freshman grades are as
> good as the control students', despite the fact that the control students
> attend less selective colleges and therefore compete with peers whose
> incoming preparation is substantially inferior. Benefit-to-cost ratios for
> the ECO-C Intervention are extremely high, even under the most conservative
> assumptions.

------
felonthrowaway1
Poverty-spent childhood in a rural area of Oklahoma here. I'm also a convicted
felon. Never had perfect marks in high school. No one in my family ever went
to college except me.

A mentor saved my life. She opened my eyes to the world outside of Oklahoma,
and I had so much anger saved up inside of me that it fuels me even today.
I've spent the last couple decades building startups and have made millions
doing it.

Now I'm 35 and I run an online communications school that helps thousands of
young people with a focus on mentorship.

Standard tests are the wrong approach. Find mentors.

~~~
maxxxxx
Good story. A lot of people in your position never meet the mentor that will
turn their life around and their potential gets wasted.

I used to box in a gym where a lot of poor kids went and it was amazing how
little they knew about the wider world. All they knew was crime, prison,
poverty, anger, disappointment and violence. Although a lot of them were
clearly very intelligent I doubt they will ever escape that cycle.

~~~
itronitron
In the USA, the historic path for that demographic to gain a broader world
view is joining the US military. Bonus points if you use it to pay for
college.

------
jedberg
There was recently a Planet Money podcast[0] about the HAIL program at U of
Michigan. That program basically sends a pamphlet to poor and/or rural
students in Michigan with good grades to let them know about the scholarships
that the school already offers and to let them use a fast-track application
process.

Basically it is telling them about things they already had access to but might
not have known about. It was only a small experiment, but the early results
were promising.

[0]
[https://www.npr.org/sections/money/2019/01/24/688395248/hail...](https://www.npr.org/sections/money/2019/01/24/688395248/hail-
to-college-access)

------
_hardwaregeek
I’ve wondered about this. If you assume that intelligence is evenly
distributed across some demographic and a particular group is
underrepresented, then you’re missing a lot of intelligent people and
accepting a lot of less intelligent people in your overrepresented group.

Any company that is struggling with hiring should take notice. I’ve noticed a
bias towards Ivies and traditionally well regarded CS schools in initial
recruitment, in getting interviews and in decisions. And sure, that’s
understandable, but would it really hurt for Google to send a few recruiters
to HBCU’s? Or for Microsoft to sponsor a program for underprivileged kids to
learn to program. Or heck, help kids who can’t afford to go to college still
get opportunities in tech.

~~~
Shekelberg
> If you assume that intelligence is evenly distributed across some
> demographic

Why on earth would you assume this? It's well known that IQ scores do differ
across demographic groups. Maybe you are assuming that all groups have equal
underlying genetic potential, but there's no actual evidence for this, it's
just the politically correct belief that everyone is scared to question.

~~~
unimpressive
>Maybe you are assuming that all groups have equal underlying genetic
potential, but there's no actual evidence for this, it's just the politically
correct belief that everyone is scared to question.

Well, for good reason. The eugenics programs of the 20th century didn't
noticeably improve the average persons life but did ruin (or end) the lives of
millions. I'm not surprised people are scared after an outcome like that. Not
to mention the supremacist arguments which relied on disparities in ethnic
intelligence being the scientific consensus.

19th century social justice activists were able to simultaneously believe that
consensus and advocate on behalf of folks. A lot of the problem with the new
school is its withering fragility. I'm to understand the jury is still out on
whether variance in IQ scores represents underlying genetic variance in _g_ ,
but which outcome should we hope for? I think I'd prefer to live in the world
where it's genetic, that's generously solvable outright with a few decades of
well funded research into genetic engineering. By contrast, bigotry and social
disparities are intractable logistical nightmares that might take a century to
solve.

------
gaze
Articles like this ultimately describe the symptom and not the actual problem.
They have a subtext of how we're wasting talented people, and not how we're
failing to care for disadvantaged people in general. Ultimately we have to
believe that all people have worth, not just the talented ones.

------
nabnob
"I am, somehow, less interested in the weight and convolutions of Einstein's
brain than in the near certainty that people of equal talent have lived and
died in cotton fields and sweatshops." \- Stephen Jay Gould

------
cameldrv
This is even more true under No Child Left Behind. Schools are graded by pass
rates on a test. Once a child is good enough to pass the test, there is no
incentive to provide anything more, and there is every reason to redirect all
resources given to talented students towards students on the borderline
between failing and passing.

The result is that gifted education has effectively disappeared from American
public schools. Parents of smart rich kids will compensate by sending them to
a private school or sending them to enrichment activities outside of school
that challenge them at their ability level. Poor kids can't do this, so
they're stuck with an education that doesn't help them reach their potential.

The best broad-based way I can think of to address this is to give schools
some incentive for producing students that perform exceptionally. Designing
the incentives will certainly be fraught though. It is very hard to design
something like this that doesn't have too many unintended consequences and is
politically palatable.

~~~
dragonwriter
> This is even more true under No Child Left Behind

As NCLB was repealed in 2015, you have either a verb tense problem or are
pointing to the wrong law.

------
povertyworld
Well, if people are really concerned about this they could always trying
hiring American developers with 0-3 years experience, and giving a chance to
developers without STEM degrees, or degrees at all. This article still
reinforces the idea that elite degrees are the only way to judge "talent".

~~~
antwerpen
In my experience, Google does this to some extent.

I’ve had great coworkers who didn’t go thru the traditional route.

Personally, Google hired me when I quit my first job out of college, before
the one year mark, and was unemployed for a few months. It wasn’t a great look
on my resume. The vast majority of companies didn’t give me the light of day.
These weren’t top-tier companies, and I doubt they could have offered me the
engineering experience or career growth as Google. Those same companies look
to employment at FANG as signals of competence. 3 years later, they’re
spamming my LinkedIn. One of these companies ask candidates for their SAT
score and high school GPA.

------
fallingfrog
The issue is that there are more people who are talented enough to learn
complex jobs than there are positions. So the system is built to make sure the
children of the well-connected get first dibs on the available positions. No
matter how well educated everyone is, we will always need more food prep
workers than surgeons. In other words: the people in charge of the country
_understand_ that a lot of talent is wasted, they just don't care. And to make
sure that working class people don't get upset about their class status they
use the language of "personal responsibility" and "the land of opportunity".
That way you make it seem like it's their own fault for being in the situation
they're in.

~~~
tmm84
I agree about needing more food prep than surgeons. It is like that scene from
Office Space where the whole question of what you would do with a million
dollars helps you decide what you should do for a living. Everyone wants to be
rich and live easy but it is never that simple. Half of it is education and
the other half is just plain luck/rng/fate. Education sometimes is just one in
a list of things needed in life.

------
JDiculous
Broad clickbait title when the article focuses on standardized testing amongst
low-income minorities.

More than just minorities, the wasted talent problem extends even to the
elite. Ivy League students aspire to work in investment banking and management
consulting. The finance industry is one of the biggest modern-day brain
drains.

The real wasted talent is in the modern day labor market. We need to invest
more in the jobs we want to see - otherwise our brightest minds will continue
to waste their lives making money for wealthy people instead of working on the
important problems.

~~~
cm2187
Much better to have the elite of a generation working on new ways to invade
their fellow citizen's privacy to sell that data to advertisers, which is
basically the business model of half of the Silicon Valley...

------
dba7dba
I know a family who immigrated from East Asia to US about 30 years ago. The
father of the family was from a poor family (which was the case for everyone
30 - 40 years ago) who couldn't afford to send their kids to college, and so
he had minimal education (up to High school?) in their native country. He
worked as a carpenter all his life. Due to lack of money, he received minimal
medical care (aka no checkups etc), and passed away rather young.

The 2 kids went to an inner city high school. They went onto University of
California, which were definitely affordable 20 years ago, with loans and
grants.

One went to an Ivy League and got PhD in STEM and now working in that field.
The other also went to a top ranked public university and got PhD in STEM
also.

Had the dad been given a chance to get a proper education, who knows what he
could've achieved?

~~~
luigibosco
Or if the Dad had health insurance* he may be still alive.

*care would imply that someone does, insurance is more accurate

------
darkerside
I don't understand why these anecdotes are presented as proof that we're
wasting talent. The way I see it, it shows that we have a system where people
from even the poorest of circumstances can find opportunities to excel. Many
other countries are far behind the US in this regard.

~~~
strikelaserclaw
I think america is going down hill in this regard to giving opportunities to
the down trodden. I feel like this new generation of parents due to anxiety
about the future invest much much more in their kids than previous
generations, this naturally causes massive inequality between talented poor
students and talented or even above average students with means. Maybe a
genius might be able to rise above circumstances but for the average very
talented person who isn't born into means, this will be very hard and will
probably get much harder. For all the populist speak that tech leaders give, i
think tech will cause more inequality in every regard. While poor students
whittle away their attention span by using facebook or instagram or responding
to watsapp messages every five minutes due to having poor role models
(parents, teachers, etc... in poor communities). The more educated, parents of
means will restrict usage for their children. In an era when attention span
needs to be the greatest to achieve things (because everything is so
complicated), the people without means in a generation will have the least of
it.

------
speedster217
Malcolm Gladwell has a great set of Revisionist History podcasts on this
subject.

Here's the first one:

[http://revisionisthistory.com/episodes/04-carlos-doesnt-
reme...](http://revisionisthistory.com/episodes/04-carlos-doesnt-remember)

~~~
2sk21
That was a fantastic podcast. I would encourage everyone to listed to it.

------
cschrist
The "talent waste" problem described in this article focuses on fairness--who
gets access to which learning communities, which opportunities within those
communities, and which support structures.

Regarding fairness, maybe it's less important to think about _access to
learning experiences_ and more important to think about _access to evaluation
experiences_. If everyone had fair access to proving their talent regardless
of how they cultivated it, we might see an increase in learning efficiency. I
wonder if this could lead to some sort of market efficiency for talent
cultivation.

------
georgeecollins
As a parent I am seeing a corollary to this in that there is an insane arms
race in high school education for those who can afford it. Some of my sons
friends are taking their Math SAT before freshman year of high school so that
they take it while high school math is still "fresh". All the bright kids are
cramming AP classes in and taking very advanced math, science and computer
science classes that I am sure most schools can't provide. Essentially these
kids have taken a year or two of college before they have gone.

------
haihaibye
They claim that minority students increased representation in gifted programs
after increased testing and linked to a paper.

They forgot to mention that the paper says IQ cutoffs were 130 for non-
disadvantaged students vs 115 for poor/minority.

This is a standard deviation, 15% of people from a 100 IQ pop exceed this
threshold.

The paper then goes on to say, with lower ovjective standards, the groups pass
the subjective bar at equal rates.

The subjective bar being applied by a system so motivated to achieve
proportional representation they altered cutoffs.

------
confidantlake
I am saddened to here that lots of people had poor high school experiences. My
teachers ranged from good to great. Much better than my college professors.
Students were highly motivated. It was the perfect environment for me.

Growing up I used to think I was smart. Now I think I am the product of a
great education system.

------
bsenftner
America lets too much talent of all ages go to waste. Most people I know with
graduate degrees never were able to get work with their degree. If they have a
job, it is not in their degree, they landed work in "some generalized tech"
somewhere and worked their way up.

------
mnm1
The problem is multi-faceted. On the one hand, you have a culture that largely
celebrates ignorance and stupidity as something to strive for (especially up
through 12th grade) and on the other hand you have universities costing a
quarter million dollars for an undergraduate degree, something one wouldn't be
able to afford without a huge salary, much higher than the median. IMO, the
first one is actually much more damaging, but combined, it should be no
surprise that the outcome is losing out on a lot of talent. No one seems to
care, however, as the national objectives are clearly to extract as much money
from students and leave them in a position where they are forced by law to pay
it back. Profit rather than education. That's literally the national policy on
higher education and we're wondering why our citizens "roll coal" and eat
dish-washing liquid? Or why the masses are so anti anything intellectual?
Stupid policies and a culture of stupidity lead to stupid people.

~~~
leetcrew
please don't imply that $250k is typical to spend on a BA/BS in the United
States. most undergrad programs don't cost anything like that, and the elite
schools that actually cost that much offer steep discounts to most of their
students.

only children of the truly rich are going to school for $250k, and they are
learning alongside students who are getting the same education for way less.

------
davidyu2249
I think there are much better things to worry about. The talented students
will find a way to rise up from their surroundings. They are probably better
prepared for life anyway with their tough upbringing.

------
and-y1
Most companies still want people with a four-year degree. Until that's no
longer the case, talent will continue to go to waste.

------
m0zg
I think it's also about inability to take risks. Rich kids can afford to try
ambitious things and fail: they'll be fine anyway. Poor kids usually cannot.
The only solution to this is a much stronger social safety net.

------
purplezooey
Yes it is a damn shame. A rising tide raises all boats, eh?

------
thelasthuman
If you educate the poor and disadvantaged, they will demand equality.

If the disadvantaged were to be competitive, then it's harder for those at the
top to hold onto what they have.

This is undesirable for those whose position in society requires hierarchy.
Capitalists hate competition.

------
KorematsuFred
I see thousands of Indians coming to USA and having a wonderful life. Indra
Nooyi often says she grew up in a two room apartment (not two bedroom
apartment). As an Indian in USA I often wonder why do so many American young
kids don't show that fire in the belly ? There are of course honorable
exceptions but most of the early teens I meet from low income neighborhoods
simply are not ambitious enough.

I think a part of the reason is that the whole notion of standardized tests, a
set factory assembly line like education model is to be blamed here. The baker
I know, the car mechanic I know and the Sikh guy who runs the motel on my
street they never went to college either but are fairly successful.

Whether you are good or bad at tests is irrelevant when the the very notion of
these tests is essentially very elitist, it does not account for street smarts
and variety of other factors that can lead to success in life. Unless you have
a family and peers you will always live in a low information state where you
simply don't know how to approach this education assembly line.

It might be offensive to some, but USA fought it war of independence because
it believed you dont have to be born a Lord of Earl to be honorable and dream
big. This is the home of the brave and land of free. But then our public edu
system is everything opposite of that.

I was told the following 2x2 matrix by a retired school teacher. Think of a
2x2 matrix (with 4 blocks) along two dimensions. Compliance and IQ.

High IQ, High Compliance => These are the kids schools should promote, send to
college and will end up working for Government and as white collar workers.
They will pay taxes regularly and obey every law. They might not get laid as
much or might not smoke weed ever but they might end up working for Google or
Facebook.

High IQ, Low Compliance => These people while being worthy of college and
other achievements the school system must discourage and discredit them right
from an early age ensuring that no other student is influence by them. These
are the rebels who question authority and challenge status quo. Most of them
will live a miserable, unsatisfactory life disgusted with the system. However
handful of them succeed and the above group ends up working for these people.

Low IQ, High Compliance => These the best of kids (in schools perspective).
These are the kids that we must send to college even if they do not deserve
it. They study things like Gender studies and Race relations and participate
in Bernie Sanders rallies. They sometimes might pretend to be rebels but in
reality are mere tools in the hands of people smarter than them.

Low IQ, Low Compliance => This assembly line leads straight to the Prison
Industrial Complex. You deliberately create laws that these people will end up
breaking and ensure heavy jail time for even minor crimes like possessing few
grams of weed. A large set of American laws are such as a relatively high IQ
informed citizen can easily avoid them but if anyone breaks the law he gets a
very big jail time or even shot dead.

A lot of kids from minority or poor neighborhood show non compliance from an
early age because they grew up in harsh environments. Hence the school system
does everything to suppress them.

~~~
strikelaserclaw
Low income kids are surrounded by negativity and people with low ambition. I
would go as far as to say that ambition is discouraged in poor communities.
This includes parents who are not present because they need to make ends meet,
kids not getting exposure to the world and what it has to offer. Most of life
is experienced through the lens of what is possible and what is impossible.
These lens to a large extent are developed by looking at the world around you.
If everyone you know never went to college, and pretty much barely survive,
you would think that's your lot in life too. Now you have a kid in a shitty
school system, whose parents are never around, and everyone surrounding them
(probably also products of this environment) try to shit on their hopes to
"make it big" or "get out", then you begin to understand a small part of the
"why" it is so difficult for even talented people born in the wrong
circumstances in america to make something of themselves.

------
rijoja
Poor people is not a minority know is it?

------
nerpderp82
The young need to tear their opportunities away from the old which hoard them.
Mandatory retirement at 55 would be a great start.

~~~
jsty
There's a reason they call it the lump of labour _fallacy_

~~~
nerpderp82
The only economist over a hundred years old I'll trust is Marx.

It doesn't appear to be a rigorous fallacy, just a defacto one,
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lump_of_labour_fallacy](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lump_of_labour_fallacy)

~~~
SamReidHughes
Just divide the economy into people with even and odd numbers of letters in
their name and pretend they're part of different countries trading with each
other.

