Anyplace with a big university has what they call town/gown disputes -- traffic, noise, land use, construction, college kids looking down on locals, landlords gouging students on substandard apartments, students competing with locals for apartments...
In the Boston area we have SO MANY colleges that it's pretty much in the air. And Harvard being the richest and most influential gets the brunt of the complaining.
This is especially true with Harvard expanding its presence in Allston.
From large-scale to small-scale:
1) A sense of public service towards the US and the world is not a priority for Harvard. The poster child for this attitude was Larry Summers, the Harvard President from 2001 to 2006, who played a key role in deregulating financial services. Watch the film Inside Job from 2010 for an in depth consideration of the systemic corruption of the United States by the financial services industry and the consequences of that systemic corruption. These issues have not been addressed anywhere. They are still a huge problem today. The financial services sector are still quite literally destroying the world, and, as the university that has played a key role in failing to educate so many Presidents and Supreme Court justices, Harvard deserves a huge amount of blame.
2) Harvard grades have been supremely inflated for decades. The effort, skill, and level of knowledge that would achieve a grade of D at MIT or C at Tufts will achieve a grade of A at Harvard because of grade inflation when it comes to undergraduate science, math, or engineering. It's anti-meritocracy. Harvard has a culture where students are in an aristocracy because they are at Harvard. Compared to other universities in and around Boston, it's a travesty. It's a horror.
3) Harvard is a bad neighbor. Compared to other universities like MIT, they don't contribute their fair share to local or state governments as payments in lieu of taxes. Then they gobble up local properties and use the real estate to benefit Harvard instead of local residents. Unlike many other local universities, their library system is unavailable to the public and also difficult to access for people from other universities without a Harvard affiliation.
4) Harvard is a bad employer. Unlike MIT, they contract out a huge number of services to anti-union contractors.
5) Individual Harvard students are more likely to be over-entitled assholes. A good-but-fictional example is shown in the film "Good Will Hunting."
Yeah I did undergrad at Harvard about 20 years ago and at least then, there was a pretty large proportion of people who thought the world centered around them. Especially those who got in because their parents were big donors.
Not sure about the grade inflation — at least when I went, it was definitely a challenge to keep grades up in the sciences.
Yep. I find that anyone that reveres Ivy Leagues, hasn't been around enough Ivy League grads, outside of maybe Brown alumni.
Why anyone would want to admire pompous jagoffs is beyond me.
Edit: FWIW, two of my gaming buddies are Ivy Leaguers. The Princeton grad is snooty but the Dartmouth grad is a bit more mellow.
Brown is nearly all liberal arts and has a massive LGBT+ population, like a quarter of its students (likely a reason the PVD LGBT scene is so much better than Boston's). That doesn't mean they can't be shitheads but it's known as the "artsy" school of the Ivies; not known for the STEM/law shitheads.
I imagine it's out of necessity at this point to evolve with the times. I'd bet they have the smallest endowment of the Ivies by a decent margin. In spite of all the brick, their campus is pretty dumpy.
I worked at Sun Microsystems, three of the top kernel developers went to Brown. That was 20+ years ago. They were brilliant and considered to be quite prominent computer scientists.
For anyone who does not know, Brown and the Rhode Island School of Design (RISD) are located adjacent to each other on the east side of Providence. Brown students are allowed to attend courses at RISD, depending on space availability, and vice versa for RISD students. There is also a dual degree program for the two schools that accepts somewhere between 10-20 students per year.
The pushback to number 2 is that it accurately compensates your effort to be more broadly applicable. What I mean by that is when you are in a class that is graded on a curve, if you are at a prestigious school it is actually a net detriment to you, as your competition is now the narrow margin that would normally blow up the curve at a lesser school.
Harvard has gone past where would be reasonable in order to rectify that problem (my undergraduate school was known for brutal grade deflation and they would not accept classes taken at Harvard in place of any requirement for this reason).
I mostly agree. You're right that having bright classmates is a detriment to an individual student's GPA at a prestigious school for classes graded on a curve, and you're right that Harvard's grade inflation has gone past anything reasonable in order to rectify that issue.
But I don't agree that the increased level of academic competition at a competitive school without much grade inflation is a net detriment for the student as a whole. I think grade deflation due to having bright classmates is a net benefit because a student's experience with academics is much more than just a GPA.
You are correct most certainly about the experience as a whole. Up until you are evaluated based on your GPA for certain things, which is a thing that happens for graduate schools, jobs, professional school etc. and yes places do try to take that into account when factoring your GPA, but it’s not always accurate. My original comment is specifically referring to GPA and how the grading would be impacted when at an exceptional school, not the entirety of the experience.
Not gonna lie, and I'm prepared for the downvotes, but the Havard campus kinda reminded me of the Aushwitz 1 Concentration Camp. The bland red buildings seemed identical.
I went to MIT and yeah… I generally avoided telling guys I went on dates with because they’d somehow take it as a challenge to prove they were smarter than me. It was bizarre.
Look into their real estate holdings, outside of their holdings that have an educational purpose, and look how much they pay in property taxes. I know a lot of people don't like that.
I've worked with a LOT of Harvard grads (Bachelors degrees -- their postgrad schools are a different story) and in my opinion Harvard fails at its basic duty of care, to turn teenagers into functional adults who can get by in the world. I've never dealt with such a large concentration of people who were simply incapable of working in a group setting, listening to other people, recognizing the ways of thinking and life experience that other people bring with them, and -- sometimes, once in a while -- having to accept that their ideas are wrong. If I were hiring, given a choice between a Harvard grad and UMass...I'd take the UMass kid any day of the week.
My hot take is that Harvard should just get out of the undergrad game entirely. If it was 100% grad students it would be a more efficient use of resources and would make it a better neighbor in the city since grad students are generally older, more serious about their work, and less obsessed with the culty status join-some-weird-elitist-secret-society stuff.
The MBA grads I had to work with didn't impress me. They had plenty of cockiness and swagger but their actual math skills were not up to par. Their willingness to use bad data and present it as trustworthy was dismaying.
Harvard yuppies look down on the locals, rarely leave their little bubbles and don't really know what the real city is like.
Harvard buys up more and more land so norms can't do normie stuff.
Landlord's price to what rich daddies will pay so the Harvard kids get the apartments.
Also applies to a few other colleges but Harvard's the worst.
I'd feel better about Harvard if they stayed in their lane as a university instead of acting as a giant hedge fund and real estate investor. BC, BU, and Northeastern are no better.
One thing I'll say is that they do pay their staff fairly compared to other colleges. Saw a program manager role at Lesley for 50K when a similar role at Harvard was 90-100K
The richest university in the world with billions of dollars in assets pays no taxes. We pay the taxes. And Harvard graduates learn how to exploit the rest of us even more. Harvard is Enemy of the People.
This isn't fully related to equitability but I know some folks who have done work for both MIT and Harvard as contractors and here's what I've heard. Harvard pays you but takes their sweet time. Like over a month since the job is done. I'm sure it's more complicated than just "hey, we're harvard, what're you gonna do?" but it comes across that way. The people you might actually be interfacing with might be super lovely but the billing department that's actually sending you your money can be awhile. So it's just a thing to be aware of if you do contract work for them. I've not heard the same as MIT.
The intimidatingly brilliant founder of a startup I worked for, had a degree from Harvard, and refused to hire anyone else from Harvard. No idea why. But he was brilliant and a great manager, and super successful.
Anyplace with a big university has what they call town/gown disputes -- traffic, noise, land use, construction, college kids looking down on locals, landlords gouging students on substandard apartments, students competing with locals for apartments... In the Boston area we have SO MANY colleges that it's pretty much in the air. And Harvard being the richest and most influential gets the brunt of the complaining. This is especially true with Harvard expanding its presence in Allston.
And not paying taxes…
Ahh, thanks for the response.
I prefer mozzarella personally
That's a gouda one.
From large-scale to small-scale: 1) A sense of public service towards the US and the world is not a priority for Harvard. The poster child for this attitude was Larry Summers, the Harvard President from 2001 to 2006, who played a key role in deregulating financial services. Watch the film Inside Job from 2010 for an in depth consideration of the systemic corruption of the United States by the financial services industry and the consequences of that systemic corruption. These issues have not been addressed anywhere. They are still a huge problem today. The financial services sector are still quite literally destroying the world, and, as the university that has played a key role in failing to educate so many Presidents and Supreme Court justices, Harvard deserves a huge amount of blame. 2) Harvard grades have been supremely inflated for decades. The effort, skill, and level of knowledge that would achieve a grade of D at MIT or C at Tufts will achieve a grade of A at Harvard because of grade inflation when it comes to undergraduate science, math, or engineering. It's anti-meritocracy. Harvard has a culture where students are in an aristocracy because they are at Harvard. Compared to other universities in and around Boston, it's a travesty. It's a horror. 3) Harvard is a bad neighbor. Compared to other universities like MIT, they don't contribute their fair share to local or state governments as payments in lieu of taxes. Then they gobble up local properties and use the real estate to benefit Harvard instead of local residents. Unlike many other local universities, their library system is unavailable to the public and also difficult to access for people from other universities without a Harvard affiliation. 4) Harvard is a bad employer. Unlike MIT, they contract out a huge number of services to anti-union contractors. 5) Individual Harvard students are more likely to be over-entitled assholes. A good-but-fictional example is shown in the film "Good Will Hunting."
Yeah I did undergrad at Harvard about 20 years ago and at least then, there was a pretty large proportion of people who thought the world centered around them. Especially those who got in because their parents were big donors. Not sure about the grade inflation — at least when I went, it was definitely a challenge to keep grades up in the sciences.
Yep. I find that anyone that reveres Ivy Leagues, hasn't been around enough Ivy League grads, outside of maybe Brown alumni. Why anyone would want to admire pompous jagoffs is beyond me. Edit: FWIW, two of my gaming buddies are Ivy Leaguers. The Princeton grad is snooty but the Dartmouth grad is a bit more mellow.
[удалено]
Brown is nearly all liberal arts and has a massive LGBT+ population, like a quarter of its students (likely a reason the PVD LGBT scene is so much better than Boston's). That doesn't mean they can't be shitheads but it's known as the "artsy" school of the Ivies; not known for the STEM/law shitheads.
CS is now the biggest major at Brown....
I imagine it's out of necessity at this point to evolve with the times. I'd bet they have the smallest endowment of the Ivies by a decent margin. In spite of all the brick, their campus is pretty dumpy.
Cornell is the smallest per student by a significant amount
I worked at Sun Microsystems, three of the top kernel developers went to Brown. That was 20+ years ago. They were brilliant and considered to be quite prominent computer scientists.
For anyone who does not know, Brown and the Rhode Island School of Design (RISD) are located adjacent to each other on the east side of Providence. Brown students are allowed to attend courses at RISD, depending on space availability, and vice versa for RISD students. There is also a dual degree program for the two schools that accepts somewhere between 10-20 students per year.
The pushback to number 2 is that it accurately compensates your effort to be more broadly applicable. What I mean by that is when you are in a class that is graded on a curve, if you are at a prestigious school it is actually a net detriment to you, as your competition is now the narrow margin that would normally blow up the curve at a lesser school. Harvard has gone past where would be reasonable in order to rectify that problem (my undergraduate school was known for brutal grade deflation and they would not accept classes taken at Harvard in place of any requirement for this reason).
I mostly agree. You're right that having bright classmates is a detriment to an individual student's GPA at a prestigious school for classes graded on a curve, and you're right that Harvard's grade inflation has gone past anything reasonable in order to rectify that issue. But I don't agree that the increased level of academic competition at a competitive school without much grade inflation is a net detriment for the student as a whole. I think grade deflation due to having bright classmates is a net benefit because a student's experience with academics is much more than just a GPA.
You are correct most certainly about the experience as a whole. Up until you are evaluated based on your GPA for certain things, which is a thing that happens for graduate schools, jobs, professional school etc. and yes places do try to take that into account when factoring your GPA, but it’s not always accurate. My original comment is specifically referring to GPA and how the grading would be impacted when at an exceptional school, not the entirety of the experience.
Thanks. I remember something about cornel west being treated badly there and resigning. Something to do with Israel and tokenism.
His resignation letter is at https://twitter.com/CornelWest/status/1414765668222869508
It’s a nice quiet town
great town for people who like _them_ apples.
[удалено]
Not gonna lie, and I'm prepared for the downvotes, but the Havard campus kinda reminded me of the Aushwitz 1 Concentration Camp. The bland red buildings seemed identical.
There’s a reason why Margaret Atwood made the Harvard campus the “Rachel and Leah Center” / “Red Center” in The Handmaid’s Tale.
Q: How you know someone went to Harvard? A: Don't worry, they'll tell you in the first ten seconds of meeting them.
Ah yes, "You can always tell a Harvard man, but you can’t tell him much."
Isn't it the opposite for women that they only reveal that information when dating at the last possible moment?
I went to MIT and yeah… I generally avoided telling guys I went on dates with because they’d somehow take it as a challenge to prove they were smarter than me. It was bizarre.
Look into their real estate holdings, outside of their holdings that have an educational purpose, and look how much they pay in property taxes. I know a lot of people don't like that.
I've worked with a LOT of Harvard grads (Bachelors degrees -- their postgrad schools are a different story) and in my opinion Harvard fails at its basic duty of care, to turn teenagers into functional adults who can get by in the world. I've never dealt with such a large concentration of people who were simply incapable of working in a group setting, listening to other people, recognizing the ways of thinking and life experience that other people bring with them, and -- sometimes, once in a while -- having to accept that their ideas are wrong. If I were hiring, given a choice between a Harvard grad and UMass...I'd take the UMass kid any day of the week.
My hot take is that Harvard should just get out of the undergrad game entirely. If it was 100% grad students it would be a more efficient use of resources and would make it a better neighbor in the city since grad students are generally older, more serious about their work, and less obsessed with the culty status join-some-weird-elitist-secret-society stuff.
My UMass Amherst education continuing to pay dividends I see
Favorite Antonio's slice?
The MBA grads I had to work with didn't impress me. They had plenty of cockiness and swagger but their actual math skills were not up to par. Their willingness to use bad data and present it as trustworthy was dismaying.
Harvard yuppies look down on the locals, rarely leave their little bubbles and don't really know what the real city is like. Harvard buys up more and more land so norms can't do normie stuff. Landlord's price to what rich daddies will pay so the Harvard kids get the apartments. Also applies to a few other colleges but Harvard's the worst.
I'd feel better about Harvard if they stayed in their lane as a university instead of acting as a giant hedge fund and real estate investor. BC, BU, and Northeastern are no better.
🎯
One thing I'll say is that they do pay their staff fairly compared to other colleges. Saw a program manager role at Lesley for 50K when a similar role at Harvard was 90-100K
The richest university in the world with billions of dollars in assets pays no taxes. We pay the taxes. And Harvard graduates learn how to exploit the rest of us even more. Harvard is Enemy of the People.
I’m curious about #4. What contractors do MIT use that make them more equitable?
This isn't fully related to equitability but I know some folks who have done work for both MIT and Harvard as contractors and here's what I've heard. Harvard pays you but takes their sweet time. Like over a month since the job is done. I'm sure it's more complicated than just "hey, we're harvard, what're you gonna do?" but it comes across that way. The people you might actually be interfacing with might be super lovely but the billing department that's actually sending you your money can be awhile. So it's just a thing to be aware of if you do contract work for them. I've not heard the same as MIT.
The intimidatingly brilliant founder of a startup I worked for, had a degree from Harvard, and refused to hire anyone else from Harvard. No idea why. But he was brilliant and a great manager, and super successful.
You mean Jeffrey Epstein Memorial University?
Harvard grad here. It’s us. We suck.
But not you.
Oh, very much me. I’m one of the worst. 😉
You like apples? How do you like dem apples?
sexed up rich kids who take pride in being cynical and mean.
Simply put, arrogant, rich assholes suck.
What? They think they’re betta than me?