tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6329595.post8447936456758064311..comments2024-03-19T03:55:23.248-05:00Comments on Althouse: End unpaid internships, drop the SAT for college admissions, and stop requiring a college degree for jobs where it's not needed.Ann Althousehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/01630636239933008807noreply@blogger.comBlogger132125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6329595.post-57156365129064397432012-03-10T23:00:47.086-06:002012-03-10T23:00:47.086-06:00Companies require college degrees for a practical ...Companies require college degrees for a practical reason beyond the whole, "we think it is a reliable predictor of something important," thing. HR departments receive massive numbers of resumes, way too many to examine individually. They therefore need ways to filter them down to a manageable level, and presume that - all else equal, somebody with a degree is a better risk than somebody without.<br /><br />I agree that a test can be better, but they are difficult to do in the general case. One employer did hold tests for programming positions. Anybody could show up and take it, and if you scored high enough, they would interview. The tests were directly related to programming knowledge. Once I joined the company, I took part in grading them, and was appalled at how low many people scored. It was a much better filter than examining resumes.<br /><br />But how do you write a test for a sales or administrative position? Is it even possible?FuzzyFacehttps://www.blogger.com/profile/16954689009569716785noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6329595.post-51203814078262301772012-03-10T08:18:09.016-06:002012-03-10T08:18:09.016-06:00Intelligence has become the new virtue, replacing ...Intelligence has become the new virtue, replacing work ethic.<br /><br />People talk about how smart someone is, rather than how hard-working.<br /><br />People we don't like are "stupid," or "retarded."<br /><br />For a non-judgemental people we sure like to categorize based on smarts. Since smarts are largely inherited this isn't very fair.NotWhoIUsedtoBehttps://www.blogger.com/profile/14568355742926021406noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6329595.post-20218608396625984002012-03-10T08:10:02.147-06:002012-03-10T08:10:02.147-06:00The last two people I hired for a marketing positi...The last two people I hired for a marketing position and a purchasing position both had 'only' a high school diploma. At the final interview level they beat out three, four year degrees and two, two year degrees because I believe their work ethic and ability is better then the other folks. <br /><br /> Both have started out great. So I'm with you Blue@9! Now if I could keep some more of my money to grow my business faster I could hire more people like this. Instead I have to worry about how much cash is set aside for my quarterly tax payments that the elite in government will use to give lottery winners food stamps.Stevehttps://www.blogger.com/profile/18379011331847919780noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6329595.post-48662260425484996982012-03-10T08:04:06.654-06:002012-03-10T08:04:06.654-06:00We overvalue verbal intelligence. We undervalue t...We overvalue verbal intelligence. We undervalue the ability to work.NotWhoIUsedtoBehttps://www.blogger.com/profile/14568355742926021406noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6329595.post-41620397447727048992012-03-10T07:57:15.184-06:002012-03-10T07:57:15.184-06:00Employers should use the ASVAB. I think it has val...Employers should use the ASVAB. I think it has valid results in a general way. <br /><br />If it's good enough for a color blind Armed Forces, good enough for the civilian wanna-be elites that seek to rule them.SGT Tedhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/00184808889760136366noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6329595.post-51882400634557544072012-03-10T07:39:49.664-06:002012-03-10T07:39:49.664-06:00since the duke power ruling eliminates the ability...<i>since the duke power ruling eliminates the ability for employers to give iq and skills tests</i><br /><br />When I did the Veterans Adminstration Vocational Rehab for my service disabilities, they gave me Cognitive and Physical skill based tests to see how they could best get me a job.SGT Tedhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/00184808889760136366noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6329595.post-58151579760431406542012-03-10T07:18:00.839-06:002012-03-10T07:18:00.839-06:00Why would we want to eliminate "class" d...Why would we want to eliminate "class" differences in the first place?<br />What makes Murray think that kids are equipped for college with or without high SAT scores?<br />The poor are fucked. Their liberal owners have no interest in doing the things needed to be done, not while they vote for more bread and more circus. The poor are done for and the "class" that works and strives will continue to rule. <br />If all,all, the money of the one percent were given,given,to the poor the once percent would have it back in twenty years. With interest. You cannot overcome stupidity with the elimination of "class".Michaelhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/08258681007386089907noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6329595.post-81546589442013122522012-03-10T03:43:23.833-06:002012-03-10T03:43:23.833-06:00You assert--at least implicitly--that the entire c...<i>You assert--at least implicitly--that the entire correlation of family income with S is due to the use of income to buy more F through expensive coaching.</i><br /><br />It could be coaching. More than likely, it's a correlation produced by the general fact that a wealthy household tends to be a magical success incubator for everything, including higher scores on crappy tests. <br /><br />The reason I say that the decline in scores wasn't related to coaching is that you said: <i>if the old SAT really had been utterly coachable, there wouldn't have been a need to rescale the scores to hide the decline</i>. I have no idea why scores went down, but I do know that coaching of richs kids exacerbated the anti-coaching changes to the SAT because it was seen, quite correctly, as an unfair situation.<br /><br />Your position that a test can test innate ability but you can do better if you have advanced knowledge is baldly illogical. The claim was that the SAT was uncoachable. You couldn't study for it. Just show up. Obviously, that was a lie. But you are apologizing for it. Why? Either there is innate ability which can be tested or there is not. Which is it?<br /><br />A better solution would be to have a marketplace of tests. Tests are not particularly expensive to make. There is no reason to have the duopoly of crap and crap lite that we have now. <br /><br />Finally, I do not think I am the only one here with an SAT fixation. You've got a little bit of one going yourself. Anyway, it's been stimulating. I mean that. Good night.Seven Machoshttps://www.blogger.com/profile/16108141171592424635noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6329595.post-44737671143631153942012-03-10T03:33:20.954-06:002012-03-10T03:33:20.954-06:007M, It's v. late and I'm v. tired, so I he...7M, It's v. late and I'm v. tired, so I hereby cede the rest of my time to Blue@9.<br /><br />buenas nochesChip S.https://www.blogger.com/profile/13210586187250159751noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6329595.post-32368572432354698212012-03-10T03:29:01.065-06:002012-03-10T03:29:01.065-06:00The decline you speak of was not related to coachi...<i>The decline you speak of was not related to coaching.</i><br /><br />No shit! That would be some pretty bad coaching.<br /> <br />You really do seem to have a fundamental misunderstanding of what numbers represent, to the point where you don't even understand that I've answered all your inane questions. But, for some crazy reason, I'll try one more time:<br /><br />There is no contradiction at all in saying that the ability measured by a test that no one has advance knowledge of is innate, while at the same time any particular person's score on that test will be higher the greater his familiarity with the questions on the test. It's most easily stated this way:<br /><br />S = f(A, F), where S represents a student's test score, A represents the student's innate ability, and F represents the student's familiarity with the test's content and style. You were apparently shocked and crestfallen to learn once upon a time that F has a positive effect on S. You seem to have concluded, therefore, that S is uncorrelated with A. That is an invalid conclusion.<br /><br />You assert--at least implicitly--that the entire correlation of family income with S is due to the use of income to buy more F through expensive coaching. But you haven't presented any systematic evidence of that; and no, "data" is not the plural form of "anecdote". Please feel free to provide this evidence.<br /><br />OTOH, maybe you'd find an anecdote more persuasive than that x,y, z shit. So here's one: A professor (in a relatively mathematical field) once told me that he considered a student's vocabulary to be an excellent indicator of intelligence. Does this mean that vocabulary can't be taught? If vocabulary can be taught, does that mean the professor was a deluded fool?Chip S.https://www.blogger.com/profile/13210586187250159751noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6329595.post-38440445674123297532012-03-10T03:19:43.569-06:002012-03-10T03:19:43.569-06:00Blue -- I tried to respond to your comment but my ...Blue -- I tried to respond to your comment but my comment got eaten. Then, I decided that you are a blowhard not worth my time.<br /><br />Good luck out there detecting fallacies based on your paucity of knowledge, though, dude. You're gonna go far.Seven Machoshttps://www.blogger.com/profile/16108141171592424635noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6329595.post-78082063951578004062012-03-10T03:11:33.195-06:002012-03-10T03:11:33.195-06:00Chip -- Test prep costs money. In New York City, $...Chip -- Test prep costs money. In New York City, $400 per hour is common. Courses are expensive. Ask Roy Hale in Springfield Missouri if he is willing to part with $1500 for a test prep course for his kid. I'd love to be there for that.<br /><br />The decline you speak of was not related to coaching. <br /><br />But you fail to answer any of the questions I asked. I'll put it a different way. Say, you took the SAT back in, say, 1995, and you got an 1100. I took you by your tender hand, and I taught you a new way to do analogies, and I taught you how to plug in numbers for letters, which makes about 15 math questions a breeze for you, and I taught you how to manage your time. You take the SAT again, and you get a 1300.<br /><br />Are you smarter? Because you just took a test of innate ability and all.<br /><br />If you aren't smarter, how did you do better on a test of innate ability? Perhaps the word innate is giving you some problems. Merriam Webster has a website.Seven Machoshttps://www.blogger.com/profile/16108141171592424635noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6329595.post-67296820490390716802012-03-10T03:02:04.446-06:002012-03-10T03:02:04.446-06:00Rev -- To this day nobody cares about the new sect...Rev -- To this day nobody cares about the new section on the SAT. A 1200 to me is 600 on what you would call math and verbal in the days or yore.<br /><br />UCSD is the third-best school in a public school system in a state full of great private schools.Seven Machoshttps://www.blogger.com/profile/16108141171592424635noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6329595.post-90323641745301647022012-03-10T03:01:22.918-06:002012-03-10T03:01:22.918-06:00Now, Chip, you gotta ask yourself: how is it that ...<i>Now, Chip, you gotta ask yourself: how is it that there can be some innate intelligence number inside people that can be tested, yet it also can be that testing exactly that thing is much easier to game?</i><br /><br />Well, I'd hate for you to think I was pontificating, so I'll just take a wild stab at this one: (1) There's a finite number of ways to ask the same conceptual questions, so once outfits like Princeton Review started getting access to actual old test questions (I don't have to explain that history to an expert like you), they made it easier to prep for the questions. (2) There's an element of strategy in answering any multiple-choice test, and this is a teachable skill (no doubt you're familiar with "Joe Bloggs"). So in the olden days when people naively believed that no prep was possible, the SAT probably gave somewhat more accurate results.<br /><br />But that just says that there were exploitable weaknesses in the historical SAT. It doesn't say that it was ever <i>useless</i>. Only you keep saying that it's complete shit, in the apparent belief that that constitutes a reasoned argument. <br /><br />Now, don't get me wrong, you wouldn't be 7Machos if you didn't give us fun phrases like<br /><br /><i>stupid math questions involving x, y, and z</i> <br /><br />(the horror!) and <br /><br /><i><b>ridiculously easy</b> to manipuate with coaching techniques</i>.<br /><br />I love that stuff. Really--not being snarky here. We all have our internet personas, and yours is distinctive and entertaining. But I think you really do understand that "ridiculously easy" isn't a quantitative measure of coachability. And I know you're aware of the fact that if the old SAT really had been utterly coachable, there wouldn't have been a need to rescale the scores to hide the decline.<br /><br />But, again, you're the only person here with an SAT fixation. You're probably right that it's well past any pretense of being an IQ test. As to the question of why this evolution occurred, well, there are lots of stories about that. I'd say that your horror at the correlation b/w SAT scores and parental income suggests one explanation: a lack of ability or will to defend against the charge of class bias.Chip S.https://www.blogger.com/profile/13210586187250159751noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6329595.post-60850077816084258712012-03-10T02:59:17.936-06:002012-03-10T02:59:17.936-06:00Rev -- We can do better and we should do better. T...Rev -- We can do better and we should do better. The ACT has been a good start, and the SAT slowly morphing into the ACT is cause for optimism. But both tests are far too narrow, and they are poor indicators of anything useful. <br /><br />Money is not the issue. Making tests is not expensive and it's a volume business. The libertarian in you should favor a market of tests for different people with different skills, instead of a duopoly of shit and near-shit.<br /><br />Blue -- I had a post responding to some of your comments, but Bloggers ate it. I decided not to bother because you just aren't worth it. You don't know anything about the test you are defending. The fact that your argument has now become that the SAT is good because of the inertia of the college admissions system is especially hysterical.Seven Machoshttps://www.blogger.com/profile/16108141171592424635noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6329595.post-568669360552876522012-03-10T02:53:22.236-06:002012-03-10T02:53:22.236-06:00And if you are brilliant, you are only going to UC...<i>And if you are brilliant, you are only going to UCSD by choice or for financial reasons. </i><br /><br />I don't know what "brilliant" means in this context -- but like I pointed out, UCSD students scored far above average on the SAT. A quarter of them scored in the top 6% nationally.<br /><br />On the other hand, if you only got a 1200 or 1300... maybe community college is a better choice. If you can't handle simple math and vocabulary problems, how are you expecting to survive in an event marginally challenging university?Revenanthttps://www.blogger.com/profile/11374515200055384226noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6329595.post-60741015856477388542012-03-10T02:48:40.273-06:002012-03-10T02:48:40.273-06:00Rev -- Your points are stronger than Blue's, b...<i>Rev -- Your points are stronger than Blue's, but it begs the question: why have the test?</i><br /><br />To identify overall academic and intellectual ability, basically. In theory high school GPA could be used for that, but in practice high school GPA is wildly inflated. A 4.0 doesn't mean what it used to.Revenanthttps://www.blogger.com/profile/11374515200055384226noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6329595.post-5862858619386199812012-03-10T02:46:31.421-06:002012-03-10T02:46:31.421-06:00Rev -- Your points are stronger than Blue's
R...<i>Rev -- Your points are stronger than Blue's</i><br /><br />Really, which ones? The one where I point out you're a sloppy thinker and writer when you say the SAT doesn't correlate to anything other than wealth--and then later backtrack, admitting that it has a modest correlation to first year college success? Or the one where I showed you're full of shit when you said no study has found any such correlation? If you want to argue that those studies were flawed and/or superseded by subsequent research, be my guest, but don't flat out lie. <br /><br />What is terribly sad is that you're a clueless buffoon. You may know some facts, but you beclown yourself by lying in order to bolster your arguments--lies that are easily uncovered by a simple Internet search. You probably do have a much better understanding of the SAT than anyone here, but you've destroyed your credibility by being such a dumbass.<br /><br /><i> but it begs the question: why have the test?</i><br /><br />Because colleges continue to give it weight. Because they'd rather use something that exists and has mindshare than develop something more meaningful. Because they'd rather not spend the money to develop a new test or quadruple the admissions staff to delve really deeply into applications.<br /><br />Any other questions?Blue@9https://www.blogger.com/profile/16371286571496793710noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6329595.post-87506748401178003522012-03-10T02:25:50.400-06:002012-03-10T02:25:50.400-06:00But you haven't laid claim to any inside info ...<i>But you haven't laid claim to any inside info about the Armed Forces Qualification Test</i><br /><br />I don't know the first Goddamn thing about the Armed Forces Qualification Test (and I certainly have spent no time with the College Board).<br /><br />What I do know a lot about is the SAT, and I know it is shit. It was shit and it remains shit. I find it interesting that you managed to elide over the fact that you so obviously don't know what's on the test now or what was on it before. I don't pontificate about things I don't know about. But that's just me.<br /><br />Concering abstract thoughts, every single one of the changes to the SAT has been a move away, sometimes radically, from the kind of goofy abstract questions of the past. The reason its creators moved away from those things is to <b>make the test harder to coach</b>.<br /><br />Now, Chip, you gotta ask yourself: how is it that there can be some innate intelligence number inside people that can be tested, yet it also can be that testing exactly that thing is much easier to game? How can it be that analogies and antonyms and stupid math questions involving x, y, and z can be both a test of your innate ability and ridiculously easy to manipuate with coaching techniques? And if those questions were so great, why are they gone? Why do we now see essays, which aren't abstract at all, and functions, which involve real mathematical skill and have nothing to do with abstract ability?Seven Machoshttps://www.blogger.com/profile/16108141171592424635noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6329595.post-24061898928366685132012-03-10T02:17:23.099-06:002012-03-10T02:17:23.099-06:00But you haven't laid claim to any inside info ...<i>But you haven't laid claim to any inside info about the Armed Forces Qualification Test</i><br /><br />I don't know the first Goddamn thing about the Armed Forces Qualification Test (and I certainly have spent no time with the College Board).<br /><br />What I do know a lot about is the SAT, and I'm telling you that it is shit. It was shit and it remains shit. I also find it interesting that you managed to elide over the fact that you so obviously don't know dick about what's on the test now or what was on it before. I don't pontificate about things I don't know about. But that's just me.<br /><br />Concering abstract thoughts, every single one of the changes to the SAT has been away, sometimes radically, from the kind of goofy abstract questions of the past. The reason its creators moved away from those things is to <b>make the test harder to coach</b>.<br /><br />Now, Chip, you gotta ask yourself: how is it that there can be some innate intelligence number inside people that can be tested, yet it also can be that testing exactly that thing is much easier to game? How it can be that analogies and antonyms and stupid math questions involving x, y, and z can be both a test of your innate ability and ridiculously easy to manipuate with coaching techniques? And if those questions were so great, why do we now see essays and functions, which involve real mathematical skill, and have nothing to do with abstract ability?Seven Machoshttps://www.blogger.com/profile/16108141171592424635noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6329595.post-52483000457784280322012-03-10T02:02:24.886-06:002012-03-10T02:02:24.886-06:00We're left with this: You believe that your ti...We're left with this: You believe that your time at the CEEB gives you a unique insight into the Big Test. That may well be so. But you haven't laid claim to any inside info about the Armed Forces Qualification Test, and that correlated quite well with the SAT in most of the latter's incarnations. So I don't think I need to know every nuance of every iteration of the SAT to form a judgment about the overall utility of aptitude testing.<br /><br />When people here refer to the "SAT" they probably aren't thinking of its current form, but rather the form in which they themselves took it. For a lot of Althousians, that may have been a long, long time ago, when the thing did more closely resemble an IQ test than a general-knowledge test. So where you see them as citing a very precise (and flawed) test, I see them as making a more general reference to aptitude tests in general. If you scroll up to the top of this thread, you'll see that I chose the Wonderlic test as an example of such tests, simply b/c of its use by a wide range of employers, most famously the NFL.<br /><br />The ultimate idea behind "g" or "IQ" is that abstract thought has distinct properties that are independent of the specific subjects being thought about. To the extent that tasks differ in the degree of abstract thought that they demand, and to the extent that these differences across tasks can be discerned, "g" scores will be useful in predicting success at a variety of tasks. Those predictions will always be imperfect b/c there are other factors besides innate ability that determine success.Chip S.https://www.blogger.com/profile/13210586187250159751noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6329595.post-89840514328799105002012-03-10T01:35:27.879-06:002012-03-10T01:35:27.879-06:00I'm not saying that the SAT is imperfect. Lots...I'm not saying that the SAT is imperfect. Lots of things are imperfect. We are humans. That's how it goes. I'm saying that the SAT is an utter piece of shit. It's so many degrees below imperfect that it makes imperfect look perfect.<br /><br />Secondly, I have issued the same challenge at Althouse many times that I will issue you: what's on the SAT? How is it different than it was 10 years ago? Twenty years ago? You don't know, and I know you don't know. But for reasons that can only be foolish becausee they arise from ignorance and blind trust in a billion-dollar test-making company, you accept the test and its outcomes.<br /><br />Finally, it never ceases to amaze me how people apparently cannot get their heads around the fact that people can be smarter or dumber than each other either in certain areas or across the board, yet IQ doesn't exist. Of course it's <i>silly on its face to deny that people are differentially capable of learning advanced mathematics or other intellectually challenging subjects</i>. But, dig it, man: the SAT won't answer this question, nor will any similarly superficial standardized test. And there is no number of how smart you are. You are just smart, in some ways but probably not all ways.Seven Machoshttps://www.blogger.com/profile/16108141171592424635noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6329595.post-49851956435458528502012-03-10T01:23:38.521-06:002012-03-10T01:23:38.521-06:00Now, you should ask yourself: is our education sys...<i>Now, you should ask yourself: is our education system so much like the military that we must resort to similar, crude testing devices?</i><br /><br />Nowhere in what I've written will you find any support for the sole reliance on SAT scores for college admissions. That would be ludicrous. In fact, the most detailed study of college performance I've seen (one that controls pretty well for differences in courses taken) suggests that class rank works about as well as SAT scores in predicting grades.<br /><br />This thread was originally about the advisability of screening job applicants on the basis of college credentials. The discussion naturally turned to the use of aptitude tests rather than sheepskin requirements. So the relevant comparison here is the predictive power of aptitude tests vs. college degrees for performance on various jobs. Both will be imperfect; that's not news to anybody. And even if a BA adds some predictive power to test results alone, is that added predictive power worth the cost of the degree? (By the way, Armed Forces test scores are used all the time by economists to predict individuals' earnings in civilian occupations. They are not simply some random sorting device that the military finds convenient.)<br /><br />I agree completely that there's a history of abuse of intelligence testing by eugenics advocates, and it's crucial not to commit the fallacy of equating "g" with "fitness" or "worth" or anything else aside from the ability to perform certain classes of tasks. I share your revulsion at the potential misuse of "g" measurement. But it strikes me as silly on its face to deny that people are differentially capable of learning advanced mathematics or other intellectually challenging subjects.Chip S.https://www.blogger.com/profile/13210586187250159751noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6329595.post-28621184430894412342012-03-10T01:01:06.686-06:002012-03-10T01:01:06.686-06:00When did effort come into anything? The SAT sucks ...When did effort come into anything? The SAT sucks because it doesn't measure anything. The strongest correlation is wealth, but it doesn't measure wealth, and to suggest so is ridiculous. There is a modest correlation between the SAT and success as a first-year college student, but not anything beyond that.<br /><br />The SAT tests how well you take the SAT. That's it. Which would be great if the SAT was some half-decent test. But the SAT is a shit test. Therefore, it produces shit results that can be gamed.<br /><br />Finally, your mention of the military is a wonderful irony. The military is the last bastion of psychometrics. You should ask yourself why that is. Is it perhaps because the military must quickly and efficiently sort people constantly? And is it because psychometrics provides a very crude way to do that necessary thing?<br /><br />Now, you should ask yourself: is our education system so much like the military that we must resort to similar, crude testing devices? I can understand that your answer is yes, in the name of efficiency. But the collective endowments of our great universities are more than the GDP of many countries and they with far fewer people. We can and should do better.<br /><br />Finally, the thing you are utterly avoiding is that the entire premise of anything involving g is IQ, and IQ is bullshit. It doesn't exist. It is a fable.Seven Machoshttps://www.blogger.com/profile/16108141171592424635noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6329595.post-60688503404614944282012-03-10T00:55:23.739-06:002012-03-10T00:55:23.739-06:00Correction: One of the papers citing the article I...Correction: One of the papers citing the article I quoted was a criticism--not of the reported correlations with the Armed Forces test, but of the authors' attempt to convert SAT scores into IQ scores, which I considered to be an extraneous part of their findings.Chip S.https://www.blogger.com/profile/13210586187250159751noreply@blogger.com