Astral Codex Ten

Yale

4 min read

Yale

Article

Yale is a recurring venue in the Astral Codex Ten archive, appearing 2 times across 2 issues between June 06, 2023 and July 30, 2024. The archive places it in contexts such as “most US colleges & universities who feared all the money would go to the usual suspects, Harvard, Yale, Illinois”; “Go achieve whatever is considered normal for your class. Get a degree at Yale”. It most often appears alongside Wikipedia, /r/iamverysmart, 4chan.

Metadata

  • Category: Venues
  • Mention count: 2
  • Issue count: 2
  • First seen: June 06, 2023
  • Last seen: July 30, 2024

Appears In

Source Context

Recovered passages from the original issue text. When the raw archive preserved outbound links inside the source passage, they are listed directly under the quote.

Highlights From The Comments On The Academic Job Market
June 06, 2023 · Original source
Some of what's going on is historical, going back to about 1950, when the Feds started throwing money at universities to do research. The NSF was founded c. 1952 b/c everyone realized that science had won WW II thus needed serious funding. The question was HOW, and we got a bastard version of the German system and our old tradition of colleges being for educating elite youth. Remember that many of the important scientists of WW II were German. There, all universities were research universities--there was no UG education as such--and their goal was to produce research and prepare scholars/scientists. They were supported by the German state, and departments were given budgets they could spend as they chose (and there was, basically, just 1 fully tenured "Ordinary Professor" per department, and he ran it, often like a fief. That was what US scientists envisioned after the war--fund the best scientists directly to produce the best science. But this met howls of protest from most US colleges & universities who feared all the money would go to the usual suspects, Harvard, Yale, Illinois (go Illini!), etc. And it was unAmerican. States urged the money go to states for allocation to their schools. The scientists howled -- nobodies at places like the Southern University of North Dakota at Hoople would get, and waste, scientific research dollars. Bad Science would be done!! The compromise is what we have today is the result, anyone, even a nobody at SND@H, could submit a grant, and if it was, in fact Best Science, it would be funded. So, virtually every school in the US tries to be a research oriented school, not just for the prestige, but because of the sweet overhead money that comes in, helping fund student-attracting facilities like salt water pools and paying big money to sports coaches.
Matt Yglesias Considered As The Nietzschean Superman
July 30, 2024 · Original source
Certain flavors of the liberal compromise, accepted grudgingly and half-heartedly, are psychologically toxic. A common one says - go achieve whatever is considered normal for your class. Get a degree at Yale, go into finance, and get a brownstone in Brooklyn - as long as you very slightly hate yourself and think that in an ideal society you wouldn’t exist.