zlacker

>>cwwc+(OP)
Yes, this behavior of college students is exactly what proves that America has become a nation of grifters. This is certainly the most prominent, the leading indicator, the most serious corruption that we should be focusing on. </s>

The fish rots from the head.

>>mindsl+O6
In this case though, lies have effectively been made mandatory to gain entry to certain 'elite' institutions. That is ultimately from the head, since sensible leadership would put an end to this immediately, but it's from a head that came into place in what, the 80s, 90s? Maybe earlier?

In India it's purely score based. Top on the JIT (although I guess they have special things for scheduled castes or something), you get in. In Sweden the same. Top 1% on the högskoleprov and there's nothing you can't get in to. Maybe KTH has its own, more advanced maths test for entry, and I think you need to pass an interview for medicine at KI, but aside from that nothing you can't get into. At ETH they see whether you can pass a first year of courses.

But in the US it's a bunch of weirdness, and it's from Idpol. I don't know if you could avoid it-- India obviously doesn't want to avoid it completely, but another idea is to not have the arbitrary eliteness be a thing. I used to believe in something like it, believing that only certain Swedish universities were okay (and that's probably still true for education), and then a bunch of Germans who wanted to be professors got jobs at the ones I thought were shitty and started doing good research and suddenly you ended up with places like Örebro, which I had regarded as 'what even is this' producing real science. I think the Germans are right and that a distributed less status-based university system is sensible.

>>imposs+9l
India and Sweden don't have US-elite-level institutions governed by the admissions processes you discuss. KTH is not Harvard, and KI is not HMS. There are American universities with such processes, and enough students admitted under them in California and Texas and a few other US states to repopulate Sweden, and I would think for every Swedish university there is an equivalent or better US university with such an admissions process. I hazard the same thing could be done for all of Europe.

>>esbran+NZ
KTH and KI have many students who would do well at schools like Harvard. The level of the education is better than at the best IITs. It has people like Håstad still active.

Would you say the same about Independent University of Moscow or about or the ETH? At least IUM is obviously better than Harvard. I don't have specifics about Harvard people, but I know that the Chalmers people I know have a higher average level than the Ivy League (none from Harvard) people I know. I have no comparison of the KTH people and the Chalmers people, but in theory the KTH people should be better, because I've never been in a workplace with both the KTH people and the ivy league people, so I can't compare them.

The core thing though, is that people in the US who want to get into these schools have to do hoop jumping. For these Swedish schools hoop jumping makes no sense, because you'll get in if you're academically sound enough, so you can actually focus on academic soundness, so you do.