The value of a good education lies in its signalling power too.
There are plenty of good professors in non-elite schools, many undergrad classes are approachable enough that a self-motivated student could absorb a lot of content with little supervision, and a lot of schools make their material available through online platforms. All these are great for learning but replicating the signaling part is more difficult.
You are right that visiting the campus is a weak signal.
However, the decision came with a plethora of other decisions, some probably fair, some more reminiscent of the Asians-have-bad-personalities trick à la Harvard.
We're eliminating demonstrated interest as a consideration in our admission paradigm. We'll no longer encourage supplementary submission of materials, including resumes, research abstracts, writing samples, multimedia demonstrations of talents, and maker portfolios.
I searched for "underground", "black" (market/economy) and "undeclared" in the article, but it yielded no results. I am surprised given that (1) the rise of the underground economy is common knowledge for people knowing a bit about the region and (2) measuring its size is a mainstream academic question.
Same reason that watching pirated movies/shows is not counted in viewership statistics. It's illegal, you don't get credit for it. Taxes exist for a reason.
Viewership statistics of movies do not take into account pirated movies mostly because it's difficult to count. Tax offices might only care about movies sold, but producers regularly try to estimate their losses due to pirate channels, and I am sure that people who measure viewership as a proxy for impact on the popular culture would love to have to be able to count everyone.
The article's author makes some observation on employment volumes in Southern Europe, then decries "the Eurozone's failure to implement meaningful pro-growth reforms".
In that context, It makes sense to try to estimate how much of the economic activity has simply been reclassified. The fact that it isn't taxed makes it, once again, more difficult to measure (if that's what you meant by your "Taxes exist for a reason" truism) but not irrelevant.
As a French, it saddens me a bit to say that but you also missed one point: culture. My background includes some grad school experience at a top French university and then at a top US university. One big difference, which became even more obvious to me after I crossed the Atlantic, is that there is (almost) no hustle culture in France.
Make fun of the stupid apps and the copycats but so many undergrads at my American alma mater were trying something, and that is already so much more than what I saw in France. I have seen some undergrads in America make serious money through their side projects and big companies are more often seen as a stepping stone towards something else. In France, the holy grail is to get a CDI (permanent employee contract) at a big company and that’s often pretty much it. They can be great employees but making money within a structure simply does not require the same resourcefulness. I don't know if the culture is contagious once you arrive in a country, or if universities attract different profiles (probably both), but I thought it was also interesting to note that the immigrants were often resembling the locals in both countries.
In my opinion, even the best version of Macron’s plan is bound to produce underwhelming results. While French taxes and bureaucracy might not help entrepreneurship, I do not think that’s why France isn’t a startup nation. Rather, it’s the fact that France isn’t a startup nation that explains why bad policies and bureaucracy have been tolerated for so long. Understand me well: my comment is the opposite of an attempt to diminish the accomplishments of French entrepreneurs, who exist and face higher administrative hurdles than their American counterparts, but is simply written to share some observations on campus culture and entrepreneurship at two top schools.
The question is, why are these based on CDI? I believe the parent is making a good point: if this is a cultural thing, the first question that comes to your mind is "why are not being as conservative as everyone else and not just going for an easy employment?"
You specifically refer to Undergrads as an example of hustle culture in the US, this is true as it's mostly bred into them by the all-achieving american mindset of making a name for oneself ("I'm not a millionaire...yet!"). As a post-prepa engineering school graduate myself, that can hardly be compared with the undergraduate culture we have here for top talent. We have a far stronger culture of learning theoretical sciences in depth (Prépa) and French engineers/quants are well-known worlwide for having a strong academic background in math/physics. We specialize later in school for most people, while early "tinkerers" or programmers may have chosen other paths (IUT/Epitech/...) instead. Not to say one is better than the otheer, but you'd better build a strong academic track before you're 23 (Prepa -> Top school = right signal for employers) or risk experiencing a glass ceiling regardless or your actual skills. The culture is there among students but the corporate hierarchy is still stratified at the top. Regarding the expensive top business schools, a cushy CDI remains the best way to pay off your student debt if you took out loans in the first place. Overall as a young educated graduate in France you'll be bound to expect some struggles as you try to swim against the current. As I remember the words of a dual-degree graduate from Stanford/polytechnique (Antoine D.), "«En France, j’ai appris à apprendre. Aux Etats-Unis, j’ai appris à rêver». There's room for both here but it won't be easy
In short: it’s indefinite pessimism vs the definite and indefinite optimism of the US. See Peter Thiel’s book Zero to One for more details of this theory.
Agreed. If one thinks about it broadly (not just the clichéd look-I-made-it cars) and one might see it more often: having a considered socially desirable spouse/partner, going to certain places on vacation, signalling/posting on SNS. It's really broad, and there is a whole meta. Take a simple thing such as the tech hoodie or t-shirt for instance. Behind the I just like to wear comfortable garments, there is often an attempt to signal that I am making money thanks to my skills, not my look, my company is less boring than yours, etc. I am not saying that there are no true anti-social status people, just that they are likely contrarians and minorities (at least in circles that have escaped the survival mindset).
Being actively anti-social-status is itself countersignalling - you signal that you're not the kind of person like everyone else out there. I think the only way to escape this is to honestly not care - e.g. choose clothes based purely on utility.
I used to feel like that, but as I grew up I realized that social landscape is also part of the environment, so there's utility to be gained by being mindful of what you signal with your clothes or other status symbols. A suit, for example, might not be the most comfortable thing to wear, but can help you navigate the job market and acquire support of other people - in the same way a good pair of mountain shoes can help you navigate rough terrain.
There's also a sending a "non-signal" aspect to it - as in "I don't care, but I'm choosing wear what everyone else is wearing because I don't want to be asked about it/stand out" (which in some ways is a utility because you don't waste time being asked about thing you don't care about).
This has been posted here before but it seems relevant (about explaining the lower Japanese salaries vs US, https://www.kalzumeus.com/2014/11/07/doing-business-in-japan...):
“Most people want to become wealthy so they can consume social status. Japanese employers believe this is inefficient, and simply award social status directly.” The best employees aren’t compensated with large option grants or eye popping bonuses — they’re simply anointed as “princes”, given their pick of projects to work on, receive plum assignments, and get their status acknowledged (in ways great and small) by the other employees.
Regarding the causality, I disagree with you andrewflnr. For instance, jewelry is older than money and there are even statuses in nonhuman circles.
I admit that it's debatable, but I think the value of money comes from the power it gives (you buy other people's time and stuff) but status can do the same and has a more permanent feel (it doesn't deplete linearly, unlike money spent). That's why in some communities, the local priest / doctor teacher is still considered more important than wealthier merchants / land owners. That's why Trump is more powerful than many wealthier billionaires.
You need to consider the following elements:
-You compare the S&P and two Six Sigma funds over different timelines. The index yielded much less than 9% on 2004-2015 (you can halve the performance).
-What’s the common feature between: the S&P, the formal idea of passive indexing, and the emergence of passive investment funds? None of them are 80 years old.
-Retail customers (Joe Blow) rarely have access to hedge fund products directly (they might still be exposed through pension funds, sovereign wealth funds, etc. but it makes the allocation change almost out of their hands).
-Stating performance figures alone is mostly a Bloomberg-reader thing. In practice, there is usually at least an attempt to incorporate some kind of risk measure when selecting hedge funds.
I am not even anti-passive funds but you are memeing a bit too hard.
You might be right to believe that Facebook's PR team is weak or that Experian's practices are bad, but the Experian comparison isn't stunning. Experian's name recognition is nowhere near as strong as Facebook's and it makes the potential loot for journos less interesting.
A large part of a solid PR team’s job is to cultivate relationships with journalists so when situations like these arise, they feel compelled to cover the issue in a more nuanced and educated manner. I don’t mean to say the PR team has to strive to spread lies or dishonesty, but rather be able to get your company somewhat fair coverage. I don’t think that is happening.
I’ll go a step further and argue that for a company like Facebook, you should have a dozen folks whose job is to simply come in everyday and think about the possible attack vectors from the PR side. And then you work backwards from the worst case scenarios of each to begin addressing the issue from various sides (engineering, BD, Corp dev etc), ideally long before it plays out.
To give you an example, google PR for a long time has been super aware of getting caught in a media tsunami charging it for being a monopoly. My hunch is that every public speaker representing google has been made aware of this and is provided guidance. For example, you won’t find google engineers talking at big data conferences even joking about world domination. Instead, in public, google underplays its larger ambition to err on the side of caution.
Some (off the top of my head, Taleb) advance the argument of survival bias:
Smarter criminals are less likely to get caught and so, are less likely to be offered a seat by Chris Hansen.
There are plenty of good professors in non-elite schools, many undergrad classes are approachable enough that a self-motivated student could absorb a lot of content with little supervision, and a lot of schools make their material available through online platforms. All these are great for learning but replicating the signaling part is more difficult.