The vanished grandeur of accounting - <AUTHOR> http://www.bostonglobe.com/ideas/2014/06/07/the-vanished-grandeur-accounting/3zcbRBoPDNIryWyNYNMvbO/story.html <comment><USER2> This is a really neat article, and I look forward to reading the book. The field of accounting really is a marvelous and, in current times, under- appreciated bedrock of civilization. In the course of certain matters, I have had the opportunity to work with forensic accountants, which is a field I did not know even existed. Basically, when $100 million disappears from a ledger, forensic accountants dive in and figure out what happened. It is incredible the kind of narrative, capturing a panoply of human behavior, that can emerge from digging through some spreadsheets and associated e-mail chains.

To analogize, imagine spelunking through git commits on a 10 MLOC project trying to figure out: "is someone trying to insert a backdoor? is someone just incompetent? is this just the predictable result of a death march?"

<comment><USER3> In practice, forensic accounting is roughly as interesting as archaeology. It makes for some great headlines in the end, but there is an enormous amount of detail and bureaucracy you have to dig through to get there.

<comment><USER4> > In practice, forensic accounting is roughly as interesting as archaeology. > It makes for some great headlines in the end, but there is an enormous > amount of detail and bureaucracy you have to dig through to get there.

Perhaps accountants and archeologists would say the same about coding.

<comment><USER5> Coding is a creative endeavor. In contrast, forensic accounting is more similar to reading code someone else wrote and trying to figure out what the hell they were thinking when they wrote it.

<comment><USER6> You haven't been coding long enough if you hadn't had projects that consisted mostly of just that.

<comment><USER7> I've done almost nothing and I look at my code and wonder that. Yes, I'm doing it wrong.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> My wife is an accounting professor and teaches Theory of Accounting at the graduate level. That's where things get really interesting, because they tackle all the assumptions underlying our accounting systems. How do you account for fixed goods, costs in different sorts of manufacturing and sales models, various forms of compensation, ownership, subsidiaries, taxes, and how do you reconcile reporting requirements for each country, region, and municipality in which you do business, which all may have different rules, along with reporting rules for taxes, which are generally different still, and with your own internal reporting and analysis needs? Do you specify rules down to the letter (and allow tons of loopholes) or do you try to enforce the spirit of the regulations (and leave lots of wiggle room)? How does all this fit in with other legal requirements? How do you match it up to your business processes and IT systems? etc etc

There are tons of really interesting questions, problems, tradeoffs, and philosophy underlying the various accounting systems used throughout the world, and I'm always interested to hear the various topics she's working up lessons for at any given time. So this book sounds very fascinating along the same lines.

<comment><USER9> Sounds an absolute blast!

</comment></comment><comment><USER10> In South Africa, we suffer from the opposite problem: chartered accountants are fetishized in the business world, far more than MBAs even.

They dominate the leadership of big business and the CA(SA) designation, especially for a black African is a golden ticket to opportunity and a huge salary. Our youngest and brightest minds aspire to be accountants, rather than engineers. It may not be a coincidence that South African business is sometimes accused of having a lack of flair and imagination.

<comment><USER11> Given the state of South Africa is a former dutch colony, that seems to align with the article's historical facts.

<comment><USER10> That's an interesting idea, but it could be a bit of a stretch. Dutch Boers, later called Afrikaners tended to aspire to be farmers, rather than merchants. In the last 65 years or so, Afrikaners did move into the big business world, but that was a nationalistic reaction to the economic dominance of English- speaking whites.

If I had to hazard a guess, I'd say that the rise of the CA as CEO has to do with the complex conglomerates that were created during the apartheid era. Companies had limited expansion opportunities, so they'd use their capital in unrelated businesses. South African Breweries, for example owned a large supermarket chain. The focus on the bottom line in these complex conglomerates rather than a specific business was presumably a great fit for bean counters. And even though the era of great unfocused conglomerates has ended as expansion opportunities opened up when apartheid ended, CAs were deeply entrenched in the corporate world, and the phenomenon of CAs on top has continued.

<comment><USER12> As a counter argument out of all the C__ officers the accountant is most likely to actually understand the business. It's not uncommon for companies to focus on effectively irrelevant part's of their business.

<comment><USER13> >the accountant is most likely to actually understand the business

This is where conflicts arise... the accountant is most likely to know which parts of the business are _currently_ generating profit but, depending on the business, may not be very adept at understanding _why_ certain parts are more profitable or the longer-term position of the company within its markets.

You wouldn't want an accountant to be CEO of the typical software start-up, for example.

(I actually partly qualified as an ACA many moons ago before abandoning it...)

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> Accounting has always struck me as a field that is un-appreciated by the masses, but valued quite highly by those somewhat more in the know. For instance, a background in accounting is highly valued in investment banking.

</comment><comment><USER15> For the most part the article was interesting. However one thing stood out to me:

To the audience of the time, the paintings carried a clear message: Mastering finance was an achievement requiring both skill and humility.

I don't know about humility. I mean having someone paint a portrait of you seems like hubris. Ensuring that the painting shows you wearing gold rings does not seem to indicate humility (modesty, humbleness).

Maybe the chosen painting is not necessary of painting from the period and the others indicated humility.

</comment><comment><USER16> My grandfather's New Year's Eve ritual was to do the accounting for the year (he was an inventor and business owner). Post Nazi era, he was an engineering professor at Texas Tech, and replaced the ritual by grading of papers. Precisely one year before I was born, when he was 80, he did that and then died in his sleep.

</comment><comment><USER17> There is a wisdom here, lieing in the English name: accounting, to hold accountable, to reckon up the debts and mete out justly and rightly.

It's something worth pondering and considering it as a righteous practice.

<comment><USER13> The origin of the words "audit" and "auditor" is also interesting. The auditor would receive (listen to) the state of affairs/finances as described to him and then report that to his master.

</comment></comment><comment><USER18> Hi, any peeps here who are accountants or in finance or just investors who read quarterly reports and earning statements/balance sheets for fun and profit in trading?

I used to do it for diversified biotech's with multiple earning dates after a FDA rejection where the market either dramatically discount or over-inflate the stock price over the book value/IP of the company.

I know peeps who are also valued investors who similarly do the same thing distressed assets after a scandal with a CEO or something where the market's valuation is incorrect when you do the cash flow projections, tangible assets etc.

Now I trade options based on volatility, so try not to do as much directional trading. But love to hear some of your guys' accounting wizardry in reading those balance sheets.

<comment><USER19> I don't always understand them, but I enjoy John Hempton's posts: [http://brontecapital.blogspot.com](http://brontecapital.blogspot.com)

</comment></comment><comment><USER20> This comparison of double entry accounting and calculus may be interesting:

[http://www.austintek.com/gnucash/ncsa-gnucash- talk-3.html#ss...](http://www.austintek.com/gnucash/ncsa-gnucash- talk-3.html#ss3.2)

</comment><comment><USER21> Accounting seems to something that is easy to offshore. Two companies I've worked at moved the low level accounting tasks to India and Macao respectively. Much of it is mechanical in nature and once the grunt work is done you can have someone local crosscheck it if needed.

<comment><USER9> OK, I don't know much about accounting, but offshoring apparently doesn't work well for many software projects. I imagine accounting is the same. Certain types of work will be suitable, much won't.

<comment><USER22> You have a valid point but I wholeheartedly disagree.

There was a post on StackOverflow a while back where developers from different countries commented on the strengths/weaknesses of their home countries in the field of programming.

Many of the devs from India commented that the caste system had a huge influence on the types of people who become programmers. Essentially, many people from families in the higher classes go to school to learn programming because of the prospective earning potential and pressure from their families to succeed.

Many of the anecdotes mentioned projects that failed because the developers working offshore had a tendency to build the projects strictly to the specification. Despite the fact that the specification was incomplete or contained assumptions that were later discovered to be false. Ie they built what they were told to build, not what matched the 'real' requirements of the project.

The 'average' programmer there has little personal interest in the field and culturally they're more inclined to respect authority 'do as their told' not 'do what they think is right'.

A true measure of potential in a programmer can be seen in the willingness/ability to think and approach problems with a high degree of divergent thinking. To look beyond the rules/limitations of a system and discover novel solutions to their problems.

Accounting OTOH requires a very high degree of convergent thinking. Meaning, it's not only expected but absolutely vital for accountants to work within the bounds of the established laws/policies. There's a very fine line between creative accounting to increase the margins and cooking the books.

In cultures that put a lot of emphasis on respecting authority and doing what's expected, accounting may be a better fit culturally. Especially, compared to cultures that put less emphasis on authority and order.

That's not to say that there aren't talented/passionate programmers in those countries. There definitely are, they just may not be as prevalent as you or I may assume; for cultural reasons that we may not inherently understand.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER23> The missing chapters might be found in the book by the author

The Reckoning

[http://www.amazon.com/The-Reckoning-Financial- Accountability...](http://www.amazon.com/The-Reckoning-Financial- Accountability-Nations/dp/0465031528/ref=pd_ybh_2)

</comment><comment><USER24> Considering that the invention of modern accounting was literally the driving force behind the renaissance, one has to wonder whether Dogecoin is going to be responsible for a similar reinvention of society.

<comment><USER25> > _the invention of modern accounting was literally the driving force behind > the renaissance_ //

Go on?

<comment><USER24> [http://www.amazon.com/Double-Entry-Merchants-Created- Finance...](http://www.amazon.com/Double-Entry-Merchants-Created- Finance/dp/0393346595/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1403566096&sr=8-1&keywords=double+entry)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER26> This would be perhaps more interesting with a contemporary angle. Has anything changed in the last 30 years?

 _Today, the internal ethics of accounting have receded from public view. No one publicly celebrates the virtues of balancing one's books and of audits with great art or gripping characters. Occasionally an accounting hero emerges, bringing a billion-dollar loss to light, but few people appreciate it, as the Dutch did, as a profound moral advance in business and public affairs._

This ending is dissapointly shallow.

<comment><USER27> _Today, the internal ethics of accounting have receded from public view._

That's _one_ way of putting it.

<comment><USER26> Its not like it went from de Medici to Enron to Lehman without a little assistance.

There's a much more interesting story about the rise and fall of 'the prefession', hyper-specialization, commodification, diversification, conflicts of interest and the (predictable) things that ensue.

The _fundamental_ innovation has long been commoditized. Yet there are also interesting lessons about the status that accrues to innovation, and the sociology of commoditized professionals. There are _reasons_ why ethics have receded from public view and otherwise minimized.

But the seem to escape the author's intellectual grasp or go beyond the depth of his curiosity.

<comment><USER27> To be fair, some chapters may have been left (or edited) out of this summary. Perhaps they think the more historical parts are more interesting to the Globe's readers.

Perhaps every profession will be "commodified" eventually, but how do you assess accountants as compared to say, attorneys or physicians?

<comment><USER26> The reason its an interesting subject is that the professions (eg: law, accountancy, medicine) were initially set up exclude non-qualified practitioners for the purpose of limiting competition.

So, at its heart, the idea of being a 'professional' is not congruent with working in a state of pure-competition, in terms of the basic trade. The exclusionary structure of the professions was indeed a part of there allure.

This was justified in several ways for many years. But essentially the main justification(s) revolved around the concept of trust. A person needs to place fiduciary and/or implicit trust in his lawyer, his accountant, and his doctor. That is, he must divulge information to each professional which is sensitive-- more specifically, it can be used to harm-- the client/provider of information in particular. To get the societal benefit of the professional services, it's crucial that such information flow occur, and that the client (or potential client) have his implicit trust maintained.

Since this is a complex-contracting problem at a game theory level, the practical way it was handled was by excluding a great many potential practictioners. Thus, _the economic & social privledge was provided under the condition of self-policing to levels worth of such privledge_. This is the origin of professional 'qualifications'.

So, the passing of the bar exam, or the medical school or financial charter examps, were the means to provide a structural gate of minimum quality and a throttle on maximum throughput re: competition from new entrants. This limitation on competition, not to mention the vulnerable negotiation dynamics (see: implicit trust), allowed the professions to negotiate "advantageously" free market rates for many years. This origin in political economy is critical to understandin the lucrative remuneration dynamics of the professions in a historical context.

So this at least paints the picture at a level which leads to some light shining down on a problem we have today.

(1) _The professions are not at all suited (either culturally, or otherwise) to incorporate un-fettered levels of competition._ In part this is mitigated by regulation; but other parts remain problematic. Its not just the issues around abuse of implicit trust. It also involves the sociology of "exclusivity" and how the cultural changes from commoditization make the concept of acting "professionally" problematic (either disadvantageous or otherwise prohibitively costly). However, the "professional" aspects of rendering "professional services" are critical to their value for greater society.

(2) _The old ways of limiting competition are no longer capable of limiting competition_. Nor providing the status boost that being (a lawyer, doctor, accountant) "professional" once had. The more obvious problem with this is the feedback loop with #1. The more subtle and vexing problem is how to solve this in a way that is consistent with "professionalism", whilst at the same time works from a broader perspective of political economy (ie, does good things broadly speaking for the structure of society, and the legal/health/busineess infrastructure that underpins basic civilization.

Hope that helps clarify a couple things.</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment>


Google Wave - a developer's eye view - <AUTHOR> http://www.theregister.co.uk/2009/06/03/google_wave_and_developers/ <comment><USER2> So Javascript is a Playskool language? C'mon, it's the lingua franca of the web...time to learn for real buddy. You might learn something.

<comment><USER3> So isn't Scheme, that's what makes them powerful.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> To me Google Wave is "the mother of all demos" part 2.

<comment><USER5> naw, not quite. Remember, when the "mother of all demos" was done, none of those things existed: mouse, word processor (that advanced), copy and paste and almost everything else. So foreign (for the time), and so visionary.

Google Waves seem more of a mashup of current technologies (im/email/wiki/picture sharing) in a real time mode.

<comment><USER4> I meant it's a continuation (and extension) of Engelbart's vision. And I agree that almost nothing (in computing history) beat that demo.

But I know Xerox PARC and Bell Labs had great demos that weren't recorded. And I'm sure when things like molecular assemblers, AGI or even the semantic web come out they'll be great demos.

I see Waves as something with huge, even if the Google client failed. I like the ideal it's going after; the further decentralization and integration of the web.</comment></comment></comment>


Peer Review as a Service: It's not about the journal - <AUTHOR> http://theoj.org <comment><USER2> _For scholarly publishing, the secret sauce - the essential thing - is a mechanism for review_

I'd venture to say that's close but not phrased quite right. The secret sauce of academic journal publishing is that we get young academics hired. If you can figure out a way for a young junior faculty member to get tenure without publishing in a traditional journal then you're golden. But as it stands today, the name of the journal is the currency on your CV. Peer review is part of the mechanics of how that works, but it's the prestige that's the key part, not the review mechanism itself.

Tenure committees can't read the actual papers of all the applicants to form an opinion on the quality of the research. They need some form of proxy. Today that's the impact factor and reputation of the journal title, almost exclusively. It's entirely possible that that will change and something else (or most likely a variety of something elses) will take its place. There are a lot of people working on alternatives right now. I don't know what the winners are going to be, but it's not going to be number of tweets or Facebook likes. If you want to break the existing system you have to figure out how to get a young academic without an established reputation noticed in her field and hired. If you can do that without the need for a journal at all then you can put a crack in the foundation of the industry.

<comment><USER3> > Tenure committees can't read the actual papers of all the applicants to form > an opinion on the quality of the research.

I once discussed this with the dean of a humanities faculty in Norway. He said they did not take h-index and similar metrics into account while debating tenure.

So I asked: "How do you evaluate the applicants, then?". "We read their papers" he replied. A room full of professors laughed loud.

He then went on telling us about how they shortlist the candidates and how many paper each person in the committee has to read. The figures where something like one paper or small book read in depth for each candidate and five papers read more casually. The candidates choose the reading list.

To me it does not seem a great amount of work for somebody that is about to appoint another scholar as their peer. It also seems to me as a very decent way to treat applicants: as people that did contribute interesting knowledge, not data points.

<comment><USER4> I am a mathematics professor who has served on several hiring committees. In our context this would be impossible.

In particular, I was asked to help hire an algebraic geometer -- algebraic geometry not being my specialty. For me to read and understand the highly technical papers of each of 500 job applicants, outside my area of expertise, would take an astronomical amount of effort -- completely out of the question.

And not only that, but distinguishing thorny unsolved problems from fairly routine technical exercises is quite a challenge -- one reason that high-end journals solicit multiple reviews. It is sometimes possible to fool many (but not all) of the experts.

We rely principally on recommendation letters (generic, and submitted via a centralized system, so candidates can get one set of letters for all jobs to which they apply). But, yes, which journals candidates have published in is important.

<comment><USER5> >high-end journals solicit multiple reviews. It is sometimes possible to fool many (but not all) of the experts.

I thought this was a debated point. Don't a lot of people assert that the prestigious high end journals don't really review them for correctness etc, but instead focus on how "ground-breaking" or "news worthy" ??

<comment><USER6> Experts are sometimes necessary to identify and translate the papers into something that you can understand—include whether it's ground-breaking or news-worthy.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> I'm a physicist and a see a few problems with this. Currently, refereeing is essentially community service. Have you talked to any editors at journals such as the Physical Review or New Journal of Physics? I would imagine that the largest cost of running a journal (let's say an online journal) are the costs of the editors salaries. Let's say that you scale your referee system (which is cute) and add in statistics on referees (do they often accept/reject? Areas of expertise? Time to submit a review, etc.), your editor will still have to take time to resolve the inevitable disputes between authors and referees. As the number of papers grows, you will need to either have more editors, or start paying editors to do this full time.

Another problem that you will run into is the question of curated content. There is a place for having refereed content that is technically correct, but not necessarily impactful (for example, Nature's scientific reports), but such a journal will have a low impact and will have a hard time attracting impactful papers (which are still valuable for career advancement). Otherwise, your editors can start to curate the content based on impact, but this requires even more time and expertise from your editors. I think you'll eventually run into some of the same problems as traditional journals...

Have you thought about working with existing journals to improve the refereeing process?

For some of the other issues that you bring up, such as attaching code--I think that this will have to be something required by funding agencies. I have found the "new" supplementary material sections of journals to be a source of improvement...

</comment><comment><USER8> This seems to realise the "disentangling dissemination and authentication" suggested by the ArXiv guys themselves ([1], linked from [2])

[1] [http://www.cs.cornell.edu/~ginsparg/physics/blurb/pg01unesco...](http://www.cs.cornell.edu/~ginsparg/physics/blurb/pg01unesco.html)

[2] [http://www.cs.cornell.edu/~ginsparg/physics/blurb/](http://www.cs.cornell.edu/~ginsparg/physics/blurb/)

</comment><comment><USER9> It seems there's been quite a bit of talk about collaboration/review in science and academia as of late. Makes sense, as there are some real unsolved problems here.

Shameless plug: I'm also working on tackling peer review, but from a bit of a different angle. Penflip.com ([https://www.penflip.com/](https://www.penflip.com/)) is like GitHub for non- programmers. It hosts public and private writing projects backed by git repos, but the interface is stripped down and simplified. Command line access is unnecessary (though still possible) thanks to an in-browser writing interface.

While still relatively early in development, I think Penflip has big potential in academia and science. If anybody here is interested in this space, I would love to hear your thoughts on my project.

<comment><USER10> You say Penflip is for non-programmers, but your project page says stuff like:

* Markdown support

* Built on Git

and non-programmers have no idea what these are and why they should care. You should probably do some user testing with non-programmers to figure out what claims are relevant on your front page.

EDIT: pricing is confusing as well. It says "Plans can be paid monthly or annually.", but the paying plans mention that they have to be "(paid annually)" which does not make sense. Can you clarify ? So can you actually pay per month or do you have to pay per year ?

Additionally, what is the license for public projects ? GitHub makes it clear that they have to be open-source. How about on Penflip ? Can they be open, while retain a copyright license ?

Also, why don't you have some intermediate plans ? Imagine I'm writing a book, having the 8 dollars plan for 50 projects seems completely overkill, I'd probably want a plan in there with 2 to 5 project or something like that. 50 seems like a company/organization plan.

And it's not clear what "premium support" means in the pricing, nor why we should care about it.

This being said, it's a good project, but I see many ways you could improve on how you communicate around it.

<comment><USER11> I second this. I found out about Penflip earlier today and was interested in using it for my fiction writing hobbies. But the 50 repos plan is an overkill for me. I would also like to see some smaller plans, maybe for 10 repos?

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> I came here to comment that it is a little strange that a project organized around web publishing would not have hyperlinked footnotes. I had forgotten how distracting it was to have to scroll down to the footnote and then scroll back up and try to get back to where you were in the paper.

Halfway through this comment I realized that I could not recall if there was any discussion about uniform publication style/format. Would papers in the _OJA_ all have the same format (including hyperlinked footnotes!) or would it be a potpourri of different formatting quirks?

</comment><comment><USER13> > if our editorial board had been paid for their work (as many are)

To my knowledge, the vast majority of editorial boards are composed of researchers who are not paid by the publisher (they have their normal salary, the same as if they did not take part in the editorial board), nor even have a contract with the publisher. I don't think it's true that many editorial boards of academic journals are getting any money out of this job.

</comment><comment><USER14> In traditional journals, the outcome of reviews is a yes or no for the article to be published. My feeling is that this is stressful and unecessarily constraining for an open journal on internet. Why not assigning points and let reader set their own point sum threshold when they subscribe ? The review mechanism could then be more automatic and wouldn't need an editor.

<comment><USER15> My wife has peer-reviewed a number of articles and she doesn't just provide a Yes or No. The final outcome is one of four choices. Publishable in current form, Publishable after minor revisions, Not publishable in current form or not suitable for journal. In addition to this she is expected to provide at least half a page of critique and feedback that is (anonymously) passed on to the authors as justification for her decision.

For example the last paper she just reviewed was the third revision of paper she rejected the first time around. The authors had obviously taken her (and others) comments on board and produced a better paper because of it. Had instead the paper been published online in its original form, but with a very low score, neither the authors or the readers would have benefited.

</comment></comment><comment><USER16> Scholastica used to have functionality that made it easy to create ArXiv overlay journals. See an older video demonstration: [http://vimeo.com/36720688](http://vimeo.com/36720688)

It wasn't a heavily utilized feature so we deprecated it. Maybe if the community says there's a big need for this we'll bring it back?

</comment><comment><USER17> I would like to see code review as a service too! :)

<comment><USER18> I would like ideas feedback as a service, please.

</comment></comment><comment><USER8> What about peer-to-peer crytocurrency payments of peer-reviewed research, using bounties and reviewer reputation?

<comment><USER19> A colleague at NICTA was working on something similar (a market-machanism for review, reviewer reputation, and citation) a few years ago:

[http://rickyrobinson.id.au/2009/07/24/citemine-a-new-way- to-...](http://rickyrobinson.id.au/2009/07/24/citemine-a-new-way-to-do-peer- review-and-publishing)</comment></comment>


Paypal.com is not available - <AUTHOR> https://www.paypal.com/ <comment><USER2> Flickr and amultiverse.com also appears to be down for me. (seattle)</comment>


Pornhub Bypasses Ad Blockers with WebSockets - <AUTHOR> http://blog.bugreplay.com/post/152579164219/pornhubdodgesadblockersusingwebsockets?utm_source=hn&utm_medium=post <comment><USER2> TL;DR uBlock Origin already blocks WebSocket ads.

I think the only viable way to get ads to the users is by randomizing it into "regular" content.

PornHub already shows you a big wall of images from videos, why not add a view images that are ads?

<comment><USER3> It did strike me as odd while researching this that they spent so much time getting around ad blockers when they own the ad server as well as the content..

They could leverage the kind of stuff Facebook does already by serving the ads as regular content.</comment></comment>


Record number of colleges drop SAT/ACT admissions requirement - <AUTHOR> https://www.washingtonpost.com/education/2019/10/18/record-number-colleges-drop-satact-admissions-requirement-amid-growing-disenchantment-with-standardized-tests/ <comment><USER2> As someone who dealt with severe depression during high school, I feel like the SATs really helped me out during college admissions time. Just getting out of bed every day was a real struggle for me and as a result my attendance was poor, my grades were spotty, and I didn't have any formal extra curriculars I could show off. But I did get the highest SAT scores in my class, and I feel like that helped demonstrate that I had some raw potential even if it wasn't expressed in all the traditional ways.

It made my high school teachers and principal who might otherwise have written me off pay more attention to me. This was helpful in terms of getting recommendation letters, and also just being allowed to graduate despite a substantial number of absences. It helped get me into a college with a decent computer science program, and I met with much more success there than I had in high school. The freedom and challenges of the college environment really brought something out of me that high school hadn't.

I think there are a lot of kids in my situation, who are smart but haven't really "figured it all out yet" in high school. Hopefully there are other ways aside from standardized tests for them to demonstrate that they have potential, and hopefully teachers and colleges are paying attention.

<comment><USER3> I do think this is an important take. colleges should avoid relying excessively on a single measure of aptitude to evaluate applicants for this reason. there are lots of bright kids who struggle in high school but really blossom in college if they're given a chance.

that said, I was in a similar position to you in high school. I would always get one of the highest scores in the class on tests/exams but usually get a poor overall grade due to missed homework assignments. the teachers did recognize that I was smart, but they concluded that the only possible explanation for my poor performance was that I was just lazy and pretty much wrote me off. in my my life at least, educators have been very willing to make exception after exception for less bright students who seem to try hard but will happily let smart underperformers fail without inquiring why.

<comment><USER4> They don't need to inquire why when the vast majority of students fall into the former category.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> It's a cynical move to hit their enrollment numbers, sold to the public as something to improve "diversity". But it's really just laying the groundwork for schools to cope with life after the college boom is over.

For elite schools, it also makes it easier to provide cover for legacy and donor admissions. You no longer have to explain how Keese James Shackleford IV got into the the Shackleford school of dkljalfjaf while scoring just 950 on his SAT.

<comment><USER6> Exactly. Colleges are in the business of marketing prestige, why lend credibility to a test anyone can take to prove they are intelligent without paying to attend for four years.

Ex professor here. Faculty have the power to end this bezzle if we admit students are learning nothing and we'd all be better off with real jobs.

<comment><USER7> > Ex professor here. Faculty have the power to end this bezzle if we admit > students are learning nothing and we'd all be better off with real jobs.

I learned quite a lot in most of my classes in college; if your students weren't maybe that's not an indictment of the education system so much as their particular institution & instructors.

<comment><USER8> I've also learned a lot in my degrees, and greatly enjoyed my time in the university. However, I've only ever needed a tiny fraction of what I learned there in my jobs at Google and Facebook.

<comment><USER9> > " _However, I've only ever needed a tiny fraction of what I learned there in > my jobs at Google and Facebook._ "

That's interesting. What did you do at those positions?

I was at a different FAANG and used the hell out what I learned at university. RF knowledge, embedded systems, creating physics simulations, and a bunch of other stuff. Hell, I wish I'd learned more; some DSP knowledge would be hella handy right about now.

If people are finding that they aren't using what they learned at university in their career, it's the career that's the problem, not the university education. The university is not responsible for the career path people choose to take.

<comment><USER8> I worked in Chrome for a while, but for past few years I worked in security related areas, both at Google and at Facebook. You could make the case that the mathematics I've learned helped me understand how RSA and ECC work, but that has actually been mostly irrelevant in my experience, unlike things like system design, vulnerability detection and management, fuzzing, reverse engineering, which I have mostly learned on the job, not at university.

 _If people are finding that they aren 't using what they learned at university in their career, it's the career that's the problem, not the university education._

This is a bit myopic with respect to how normal people view university education. For a typical person, the point of education is not to learn things, but to obtain a degree. The point of degree is to get a good job. If they manage to get a good job, that's a success, and nothing more is expected from the university education: people learn how to do the job mostly on the job anyway. In this context, if people don't use what they learned in the university in the careers, that's okay, what matters for normal people is the career, not the learning. Of course, it might be different for you (it is different for me, I love learning for learning's sake), but that's observably not how most people approach life.

<comment><USER10> > This is a bit myopic with respect to how normal people view university > education. For a typical person, the point of education is not to learn > things, but to obtain a degree. The point of degree is to get a good job. If > they manage to get a good job, that's a success, and nothing more is > expected from the university education

The point of a university, however, is for people to learn things. The fact that most people today treat universities as trade schools is unfortunate, and IMO is having a negative effect on universities and people (like myself) that went/are going there to actually learn something.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> No disagreement that there are fundamental elements of our socio-economic system that suppress certain groups of people, but this approach seems to be tackling this problem from an extremely misguided direction.

The end goal is certainly to increase college enrollment among groups who have historically been underrepresented, and removing all academic and skill prerequisites from academic and skilled trades programs would certainly increase enrollment numbers, but by totally devaluing those programs in the process.

The enrollment and degree isn't what we should be trying to provide these groups it's the underlying knowledge and skills so they are prepared for these academic programs in the first place. This approach, though, is almost worse than doing nothing because it's pretending to help when it's actually just hurting everyone and serving the interests of the student loan industry in the process.

There was a story in the news that broke recently of a high school doing exactly what this is describing, sneaking disadvantaged kids into ivy league colleges when they didn't have any of the skills or knowledge required for the degree programs. Obviously it didn't go well.

You can find more information at

[https://www.npr.org/2018/12/03/672817734/the-reality-of- t-m-...](https://www.npr.org/2018/12/03/672817734/the-reality-of-t-m-landry- prep-a-school-in-small-town-louisiana)

There was also a really great Feakonomics podcast talking about America's math curriculum and how the SAT is changing to focus on the right kinds of skills.

[http://freakonomics.com/podcast/math- curriculum/](http://freakonomics.com/podcast/math-curriculum/)

<comment><USER12> Agreed, this approach is misguided.

Removing standardized tests removes a useful metric admissions can use to analyze applicants as part of a holistic process. Is it a perfect metric? No, but the scores are good predictors for diligence which is crucial for college success.

If you need to go to college to develop fundamental critical thinking skills, then something is very, very wrong with your basic education system.

Wouldn't it be more optimal to develop those skills from the beginning of life, through the family, bolstered by a rigorous basic education BEFORE you start college?

<comment><USER13> The challenge is that the environment that is predisposed to produce teenagers with a well rounded educational foundation and well developed critical thinking and studying skills... tend to be affluent households that can afford to move to areas with great schools, and send their kids to a constant stream of extracurriculars.

That's not to say it's impossible to succeed in adverse conditions, but it's inane to pretend conditions are _on average_ not more adverse for certain populations.

There's a fundamental question of identity some colleges are struggling with. To put it in exaggerated terms - do they want to be ivory tower institutes of learning, or do they want to be a kaleidoscope of all of the next generation who do not want to go on to trade work?

For people who want to go to college purely for rigorous academic study with the brightest young academic minds, this is going to be a shift. The populations will be formed less so based purely on that narrow selection criteria.

It's a progression which has been happening for decades, but as it seems in many things, the rate of change is accelerating.

<comment><USER14> >For people who want to go to college purely for rigorous academic study with the brightest young academic minds, this is going to be a shift.

Will it? The academic cheating scandal and what we know about legacy admission tells us that many prestigious colleges very decidedly don't put pure academic rigor above all else. I've heard tell that getting into Harvard and surviving its social scene is harder than actually graduating from it. Anecdata, but of all the big-name schools, I've only heard of a handful that deliver on their "chew you up if you're not intellectually ready" reputations: MIT, CalArts, several UCs... That's about it.

I'm of the opinion that the radical and purposeful shift we should be moving towards is one of parity in rigor and support for all students passed a certain level of demonstrated competence. Then, lottery.

<comment><USER15> You might not fail out of a lot of big name schools that like to keep their graduation rate high, but you'll come out with a boatload of C's. You may have a degree, but that's not a great outcome, and why go to school for four years if you aren't learning effectively? I know that people say that it's a networking opportunity, but most of my friends that got good jobs they were happy with out of college were the ones that worked hard. The ones who just floated by continued to float by.

<comment><USER14> Because the networking thing is real, and often supercedes one's grades or demonstrated competence in a job market based primarily on networking.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER16> Have all the commenters here assuming that this is a misguided attempt that'll end up letting any idiot into degree programs as long as they are labeled "diverse" considered that maybe, _possibly_ standardized tests aren't necessarily a good measure of one's ability to a learn well through a degree program? That _maybe_ the ability to answer hundreds of multiple choice questions and write five-paragraph essays in several high-pressure thirty minute sprints _isn 't_ a prerequisite to success in a field? Are they not bothered by the fact that these tests are surrounded by an industry of expensive prep classes _specifically_ meant to teach you how to take a test?

This doesn't say _you can 't_ submit scores. Most still will. But it does say that performance on one specific exam doesn't have to be a deciding factor, which I see as a step forward.

<comment><USER8> It is well known and universally acknowledged that SAT scores are highly predictive of educational outcomes. See eg. [https://collegereadiness.collegeboard.org/educators/higher-e...](https://collegereadiness.collegeboard.org/educators/higher- ed/test-validity-design/validity-studies) . You can use other alternative measures to predict educational success, but it's important to get it right, otherwise you'll end up with low quality student body that isn't able to learn much and will drop out at high rates. Currently, high school GPA is also good at predicting success, but it's highly variable among schools. Should SAT testing be abolished, parents who now pay for prepping will instead put their children in schools where they are guaranteed high GPAs.

With all of its flaws, standardized testing is still the best of all available alternatives for the purpose it's used for. You need to acknowledge that no matter what approach you use, it will be gamed.Thus, if you want to ensure fairness, you need to choose one that's hardest to game. Clearly, high school GPA, essays and volunteering is much easier to game than SAT score.

<comment><USER17> That doesn't jive with the submitted article in the Washington Post:

"Research has consistently shown that ACT and SAT scores are strongly linked to family income, mother's education level and race. The College Board and ACT Inc., which owns the ACT, say their tests are predictive of college success, but (as with many education issues) there is also research showing otherwise."

There are studies that have shown rigor of high school course work is the strongest predictor of college success: [https://www.chronicle.com/article/Study-Says-Rigor- of/8973](https://www.chronicle.com/article/Study-Says-Rigor-of/8973)

I think we can all agree that allowing two private companies to be the gate keepers of higher education is a terrible idea.

<comment><USER8> This WaPo quote is a good example of a common practice in modern journalism, which is to write something which literally is true, but leaves the reader with the wrong impression of the reality.

Yes, the rich people tend to do better on SAT. So? Why would anyone expect all groups to do equally well on SAT? There is no problem with that. It would only be a problem if SAT had different predictive validity between the rich and the poor, that is, poor people with a given SAT score had different outcome in predicted variable than the rich people. By and large it is not true.

> The College Board and ACT Inc., which owns the ACT, say their tests are > predictive of college success, but (as with many education issues) there is > also research showing otherwise."

Of course there is research showing otherwise. There always is. The real question here, which WaPo is eliding, is what's the preponderance of evidence, and it overwhelmingly is on the side of high predictive validity of SAT. Don't believe me, see for yourself: go to Google Scholar and search for "sat predictive validity".

> There are studies that have shown rigor of high school course work is the > strongest predictor of college success: > [https://www.chronicle.com/article/Study-Says-Rigor- > of/8973](https://www.chronicle.com/article/Study-Says-Rigor-of/8973)

It is marginally better than SAT, and it's worse than GPA + SAT. I predict if we dropped SAT, it's predictive validity would fall significantly, because it's much easier to game GPA than to game SAT.

> I think we can all agree that allowing two private companies to be the gate > keepers of higher education is a terrible idea.

Where I went to school, a government agency designs the test, of which all students take the exact same version on exact same date. Universities by and large exclusively consider the score in admissions. I think it's superior system, more fair and egalitarian.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER18> Ignoring the debate about its usefulness, I have a really hard time with the line of thinking that minority/disadvantaged populations do poorly on the test therefore it is discriminatory.

Everyone takes the same test. Preparing for it more (prep classes etc) will make you do better. That is true, but what does a non discriminatory measure look like then? Unless it has exactly proportional results then it can be called discriminatory. What sort of test/measure can you create that will make having resources to prepare for it more than someone else not matter? Would that even be a good measure?

<comment><USER19> One suggestion I like is to totally change the test format every year. This would basically invalidate test prep and put everyone on the same footing.

<comment><USER20> This would give the wealthy even more advantage because they have the time and resources to throw at the test compared to the poor.

The test changes every year? No problem, just prep for the meta test like how people prep for the FAANG interviews. Multiple formats? No problem, just spend more time preparing for each format. Changing topics? No problem, just cover as many topics as necessary.

I think the key is to see that the poor, by definition, have much less time and money to tackle the problem. Therefore, to have a level playing field we should design the test such that prep _may_ help, but there is a ceiling to it, and I think the SAT is somewhat decent in this respect.

The optimal test strategy can be covered in one afternoon. The format is well known and cheap study guides/sample tests are available pretty much everywhere. If the test changes every year, imagine how much more difficult it would be for a poor student to prep for it.

Edit: typo

<comment><USER21> If is it just resources how do the poor from certain cultures manage to do well on the standardised tests while other cultures with upper middle class incomes underperform? The problem is a lot more complex than just money.

<comment><USER20> Agree with you that resources is just one factor and probably not the dominating factor. I am arguing from the point of all things being equal, a test that doesn't change from year to year requires less time and resources to prep for compared to a test that does change year to year. And for a poor student, the former is probably more equitable than the latter.

As for standardized test scores and ethnicity/culture, that is a sensitive and contentious topic that I prefer not get into.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER22> I wasn't the best student in high school (2.65GPA) but I did have excellent standardized test scores. I feel like they really helped me in my college hunt and were a significant factor into getting accepted into some of the schools I did.

There are other people like myself who are just bad students for one reason or another. A student's future prospects of education shouldn't be dependent on just test scores or a GPA (what this is playing into) because those scores aren't reflective of a student. It's reflective of them playing into the system. The system rewards the typical student — or what we think of as a typical student — and completely neglects the overall picture of the student.

Does my GPA reflect being sexually assaulted by a teacher? Having my best friend die? Having an increasingly troubled home setting? Running out of my medication routinely? Being bullied? No. My GPA simply indicates how I did in the classroom.

A student has an array of attributes. Only one of those attributes is score. Other attributes factor contribute and influence score. I realize it's hard to quantify or quality non-tangibles into these attributes. But it needs to be done for the betterment of future students.

<comment><USER23> And it corrects for kids who go to fancy private schools where grades are highly inflated (it's what parents are paying for, after all). The standardized tests correct for inflated grades.

</comment></comment><comment><USER24> The article says it's top ranked schools but then gives a list of a lot of lesser known colleges, for profit mills like U. Phoenix, a whole bunch of theological schools, Yeshivas and Talmud institutes, trade colleges, and bottom tier state colleges (for example for new high school grads, CSU is test optional but UC is not).

Yes there's also a handful of colleges that are known.

Most the ones listed it's understandable they don't mandate the tests and rely on other criteria or are colleges that simply have very high acceptance rates. Also most of them, like all the theology and trade schools, have never mandated the tests so there's no real change there.

For academically rigorous schools just because the test is optional doesn't mean you won't need a stellar application and recommendations in order to be accepted if you choose not to send in test results. Also doesn't mean you won't completely lose out on very helpful scholarships that have standardized test cut off points.

</comment><comment><USER25> The GRE is increasingly being dropped as well. The motivation is racial diversity.

For example at Brown: [https://www.brown.edu/news/2019-10-03/gre](https://www.brown.edu/news/2019-10-03/gre)

The GRE is no longer needed for...

American Studies

Biotechnology

Biomedical Engineering

Chemistry

Comparative Literature

Computational Biology

Computer Science

Earth, Environmental and Planetary Sciences

Ecology and Evolutionary Biology

English

French Studies

German Studies

Hispanic Studies

Italian Studies

Mathematics

Modern Culture and Media

Molecular Biology, Cell Biology and Biochemistry

Molecular Pharmacology and Physiology

Neuroscience

Pathobiology

Portuguese and Brazilian Studies

Religious Studies

Slavic Studies

Theatre and Performance Studies

<comment><USER9> > " _Computer Science_ "

While I like to rag on pseudo-diversity as much as the next person, the Computer Science GRE was discontinued in 2013; see [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Graduate_Record_Examinations#G...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Graduate_Record_Examinations#GRE_Subject_Tests). Can't require something that no longer exists.

<comment><USER15> They are most likely referring to the regular GRE, not the subject test. Most CS programs require the regular GRE.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER26> How about a SAT test but instead of getting into a college you get a job. Bring back aptitude testing for employment so we don't have to go through this college rigmarole.

<comment><USER27> I don't think employers want that. They like 4 year college degrees not only because they demonstrate a modicum of intelligence but also because they demonstrate conformity and conscientiousness, as well as the ability to delay gratification. Employers like conformist workers who will put up with boring work without complaint.

A person who does really well in high school and aces their SATs but refuses to go to college sends a signal of nonconformity and a lack of conscientiousness. This is the type of person who may be very smart and highly skilled and also likely to get bored and leave for a different job.

<comment><USER26> So you agree that college has nothing to do with education or job preparation, but rather some abstract general measure of character.

There are other ways to filter for people with these traits. Being smart in general (or being conscientious enough to study hard for the knowledge-based SATs) highly correlates to low time preference, so it may be redundant to do any other tests. There are other ways to teach a job skill without spending 4 years to do it or making a competition out of getting access to learning. In the last century before the college boom, big employers would expect to have to train new employees.

Forcing young people to incur significant unforgivable debt to the education- industrial complex just to prove they have some brain configuration seems wasteful and cruel.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER28> I did the GMAT years ago and more than anything it is a test of how diligently you prepare for it. Guess what, people who diligently prepare for things tend to succeed at them! That's Batman's entire superpower! And those are the kind of people who will succeed regardless of what universities they go to.

<comment><USER29> Sounds like a really useful signal detector then.

<comment><USER30> The SAT and ACT are a fantastic detector to identify rich and motivated parents who are willing to drop off their kid for 2 years at cramming centers for weekly tutoring sessions and trial tests... and who are willing to pay thousands for it.

I've been there, his scores went up significantly. I don't think it made him smarter in any way.

Combine that with our ability to buy a house in a very good school district and send him to expensive summer camps in Tahoe where he can "develop leadership skills" and "contribute to the community" and you have the perfect applicant.

I'm proud parent, and I want my child to get all the opportunities, but the cards were very heavily stacked in favor of him.

It's all bullshit.

<comment><USER9> > " _The SAT and ACT are a fantastic detector to identify rich and motivated > parents who are willing to drop off their kid for 2 years at cramming > centers for weekly tutoring sessions and trial tests... and who are willing > to pay thousands for it._ "

It was great for me, as a poor minority who was highly dedicated to education and self-learning. Felt pretty good to do as well or better than the wealthier kids despite not having access to a tenth of resources they did.

> " _It's all bullshit._ "

Sure, if you're wealthy, you can find a bullshit way to get your kids into a better school that they deserve. But this changes nothing; the wealthy will find some new way to leverage their wealth to do the same and it will be back to business as usual. Meanwhile, it shafts the poor but hard-working students (including minorities!) who had a (semi-)objective way to show that they had talent and dedication, all in the name of pretend "diversity".

That's the real bullshit here.

<comment><USER30> Congratulations on making it in.

The problem with these kind of discussions is that you can always find examples where the system worked in ways that favored those who would in general not benefit from it.

I think there is no question that rich people on average have a huge leg up compared those who are not. That's fundamentally broken.

The fact that you, as member of the non-rich, were able to use that to your advantage doesn't change that overall conclusion.

<comment><USER9> > " _I think there is no question that rich people on average have a huge leg > up compared those who are not. That's fundamentally broken._ "

We already know that it's fundamentally broken but we also know that this action isn't going to change that. So what exactly are you trying to say here?

<comment><USER30> The way I read it, your initial comment seemed to defend the current system for non-rich people since it allows a few non-rich to take advantage of it (at the expense of other non-rich.)

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER31> Speaking as a current grad student, this whole anti-test movement in America is a complete train wreck and will devastate the nation over the long term. Short term, yes, lots of kids will get into lots of programs they are mentally unequipped for. But once they get in, a few will get their shit together and actually do well. Good for them! But the vast majority simply withdraw in the 3rd week before the W shows up on the transcript. The ones who don't withdraw and don't get their shit together are the toxic bunch. That's a significant bunch. They are the ones who show up in labs & loudly say God I hate this class so much! They are trying to build sympathy for their case that the course is too hard. But perhaps it's too hard because they are just not ready for it - haven't taken the prereqs, or not doing homework, or not mentally mature. The SAT is supposed to test to precisely these things. But they've bypassed that hurdle. So now the TAs and adjuncts have to gently break the truth to them. That no, 7/0 + 5/0 is not 12/0\. No I won't give you a point for that because it's the most obvious conclusion. I actually had to escort the kid to the Professor because he threw a tantrum and said stats is supposed to be easy, it's mostly arithmetic!

But in the grand scheme of things, undergrads are mostly harmless. They don't produce research, they are just there to pass courses and join the economy as worker bees. The really harmful cohort are grad students who get into grad programs without passing the subject GREs. In my opinion, the Physics subject GRE and the Math Subject GRE are probably the 2 toughest exam papers we have in the USA. The vast majority of students cannot for the life of them pass it. The ones who do pass tend to do incredibly well in the grad courses. Especially the math GRE, which tests calculus, gradient, hessian, lagrange's theorem, greens theorem, stokes, very basic algebra like elementary group theory, abelian & non commutative groups, cosets, fields & rings, basic number theory, chinese remainder, basic analysis like cauchy schwartz and mean value theorems. If you don't know this material and get into grad school in some math-heavy discipline like math/stat/applied math/... you are going to struggle a lot. If it's some lightweight discipline like OR/IE/Applied Stats/CS/Eng, ok maybe you don't need to know this shit. But then, you shouldn't also show up to graduate probability /statistics classes and then raise your hand in middle of lecture and say you don't know how to compute the distribution of the ratio of 2 gaussians. This is exactly why have the Math GRE, so you can take a few practice tests for free, realize you don't know how to integrate, and maybe work some calculus problems before you apply to grad school, not after. End of rant.

</comment><comment><USER32> Next: no grades needed to get BS, MA, PhD. and no attendance necessary. After all some groups are at a disadvantage and they will not be able to attend the classes.. While we're at it - why don't we have The Degree Lottery (tm), or better yet, give degrees right after conception.

<comment><USER33> > Next: no grades needed to get BS, MA, PhD. and no attendance necessary.

"Soft-science" degrees from diploma-mill universities are already waaay ahead of you!

<comment><USER28> Or Masters degrees from U.K. ex-polys for any overseas student.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER34> Sounds like they're just trying to get more people through the meat grinder. Unpopular opinion on HN, but if I'm really honest, I didn't learn much about my chosen profession (embedded software development) at college and felt it was mostly a waste of four years. It was all about jumping through the right hoops, getting the credential so I could pass through the Career Gatekeepers.

Half of the software engineering curriculum was too abstract and math-y, and not practical enough. The other half that actually focused on programming were way below my existing programming skill level at the time. I'm trying not to make it a humblebrag, but there were about 3-4 of us who were self-taught and already knew a few languages, who slept through the classes and got straight As and the rest struggled to get hello_world.c to even compile before getting their D and moving on to major in Business. There were some neat software- related electives like compiler construction and one or two cool labs (build a computer from a 68000 and some wires) but they were the exception.

The required electives and diversity indoctrination classes that were supposed to make me well rounded (or whatever) were a waste of time. Nobody took them seriously. I never got into the greek life or into college sports. So most of it felt like high school minus the wood shop boneheads. "Get this game's level over with, with minimal pain, so I can move on to the next level."

Only later did I find out that all of work life is about grinding through the level so you can pass a career gatekeeper and get to the next level. So at least college prepared me with that skill.

</comment><comment><USER35> Surprise, surprise, colleges in the business of printing diplomas (which are about 90% of them at this point) make getting in easier, all while continuing to skyrocket the tuition and indebt students.

Higher education is so bankrupt.

Maybe we should institute no-nonsense schools without all the fluff that do have test requirements for entry.

</comment><comment><USER36> This is because they want to enroll people too stupid to solve basic math problems.

<comment><USER37> Yes and because that will at least get them one semester out of these kids, which will probably need student loans. Even in state tuition will be many thousands of dollars that will trap these kids.

<comment><USER38> Then they will dumb down the curriculum even more.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER39> As someone doing hiring we have begun doing a very basic screening exam - quick writing sample, some basic (EXTREMELY basic) applied work - 1st year college quality is fine.

We have folks with degrees who can barely string together the most basic concepts (literally out of the intro to X course) in their field.

I'm seriously curious how this is even possible. Yes - some are from degree mill places - but even those have to be teaching something for the $$? Is it the pressure of being tested that is throwing folks off? Do people forget what they learned and are not really tested as they progress? We let them sit on their own, use computer etc. If you do hiring do a 5-10 minute screening test at some point - it can be eye opening.

<comment><USER40> Sounds like fizz buzz.

<comment><USER39> I learned something new today - "FizzBuzz" is a basic programming task used for screening.

We do stuff easier than this as a screen, but same idea, yes. We've now done half as multiple choice to speed it up.

It usually takes 3 - 10 minutes range for most folks - so really light weight.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER41> > Vice [...] said "we don't need any more studies."

That's not shocking given who said it, but it makes it seem as if their support of the initiative is rooted on anti-intellectualism.

My family was basically homeless when I was young, the only reason I could get access to _quality_ higher education was the standardized tests we have here.

I'd like to see the data that one college used to decide that there hadn't been any academic impact between students who submitted tests and those who didn't.

</comment><comment><USER42> When I read this article it struck me as a blatant PR battle between FairTest.org and test vendors. This article ended up providing a more nuanced view:

[https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2019/09/10/magazine/coll...](https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2019/09/10/magazine/college- admissions-paul-tough.html)

</comment><comment><USER43> Standardized testing is a good predictor of someone's ability to do well in our STEM oriented society. I score high on these things, but I've also found I'm missing something important compared to people who don't score highly on these things. I think our society is optimized to favor a certain kind of intellectual talent, which certainly exists and is very useful, but does not seem to be the only or even most important personal characteristic.

That being said, these tests should not be abolished, but we should also look at other human characteristics that are beneficial.

</comment><comment><USER44> Maybe I'm wrong in one or many ways. But I'm reading a lot of people suggesting it's for the dumbening. But I never took anything like the SATs in Canada. I don't think we have that. And our universities seem to be doing great.

Here in Ontario admissions goes by your top 6 "university level" high school class grades. It helps prevent your future from being determined by a single test, which to me seems like a terrible design.

<comment><USER45> No, it's a terrible system that we have here in Ontario.

People kill themselves every year at Waterloo when they reach university and discover their 98% grade in high school math was a lie and they are completely unprepared and begin flunking out.

Simultaneously someone who goes to a good high school and learns real math but only gets an 80% (which should be good!) is instead stressing out that they won't get into university because the published admissions average is 90%+. To their credit Waterloo actually adjusts grades based on which high school you go to, but now that is unfair to someone good who happens to go to a bad high school.

Finally you have rich kids that go from getting 60% in day school to getting 98% in their "accredited" private high school night classes which are economically incentivized to give the highest grades to their customers.

What a joke.

</comment></comment><comment><USER46> This is a horrible move that will harm international students from no-name schools more than it equalizes nationals.

</comment><comment><USER47> What's the alternative to these tests?

<comment><USER42> Grades and all of the other factors admissions people like to look at, like volunteer work, extra-curricular activities, projects, essays, etc.

<comment><USER48> The issue I've observed is that those on the lower end of the socioeconomic spectrum are put at a disadvantage when these are given higher weighting. The teenager with wealthy parents can participate in (expensive) extracurricular activities like team sports or take summers off to volunteer... not because they're virtuous, but because someone along the way told them it's a good way to pad their admissions applications.

Meanwhile the brilliant high-school student without parents who can afford these things is less likely to participate in activities requiring investment in equipment or logistics of getting to/from events. Instead of being able to spend a summer volunteering on a hospital ship off the coast of Africa, they're working retail to save up spending money for the year or reduce their student loan burden.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER49> I think there are a lot cynics here, but they should take the test before you really understand why SAT/ACT is stupid as an admission req. Source: Took the test

<comment><USER50> I think the view of many of these supposed cynics is that the alternatives are even less consistent and are more conducive to biases and corruption than a standardized test, even if the test is not optimal in measuring someone's academic abilities. No one is saying they're perfect.

I have taken both tests and while I clearly found them imperfect (as with virtually every test), I would also say that they're far from useless or "stupid" as a requirement.

</comment></comment><comment><USER51> Any schools going the other way and dropping grades from consideration?

</comment><comment><USER52> I got a 1000/1600 on my first try of the SAT. Then I went through a $6,000 SAT summer camp, and got a 1600/1600\. I used this score to tutor privileged children charging upwards to $100/hr. The conclusion, for me? The SAT has become just another way for the privileged to incestuously perpetuate privilege among themselves. I believe it's a great move to stop considering these test scores.

<comment><USER53> Some would say that's a sign the SAT should be improved to be a more accurate prediction of college success, rather than that it should be done away with all together.

I mean, if a graphics card review told you how many FPS you could expect on Half Life 2, it might not show the differences between modern graphics cards. But that's just a sign the reviewers should use a more modern game for their benchmark, not that they should switch to reviewing whether the card's designer sometimes volunteers at a soup kitchen or whether the maker spends a lot of money on ads in the magazine.

</comment></comment><comment><USER54> Common sense should tell us that standardized tests like this are not fair assessments of actual student academic potential. To the extent these tests predict success in college, it's only because they are biased in the same ways that most college support structures are biased. And once the "predictive" tests are in place and accepted, they form a reinforcement loop with college results, each proving the other "right".

But as our society has come to realize how deeply ingrained many systemic biases are in our institutions, in order to break the cycle, you can't just change the support structures at the college, but you have to change the _external_ barriers that have grown up over the years in support of that old system as well. And these standardized tests are a huge part of that. So I'm glad to see this is changing.

<comment><USER33> > Common sense should tell us that standardized tests like this are not fair > assessments of actual student academic potential.

Common sense should tell you no such thing!

Why wouldn't a test that measures a list of aptitudes (writing, comprehension, logic, math, etc.) not correlate to some extent to academic success in a liberal arts degree?

Literally the classes you have to take are related to writing, comprehension, logic, math, etc!

> most college support structures are biased

I am not even sure what this is getting at!

If you are arguing that most of our colleges should not be centered on liberal arts, then the alternative is centered on professional or technical degrees ... which, in most cases, lean even more heavily on math, logic, writing, and comprehension!

Many universities have decided that they value diversity (ever how they define that) higher than or equal to pure academic results. And that is fine for them to make that choice, but it is silly to say that, "... common sense should tell you that there is no correlation between people that are good at lots of things and those same people being good at lots of things in college."

<comment><USER42> The tests have been gamed by a test prep industry that extracts money from wealthy families. Colleges aren't admitting students based only on diversity. They are taking kids with excellent grades, volunteer work, etc. and giving them a closer look. It relies on the judgement of all of the student's high school teachers, rather than a centralized corporate assessment.

Poor kids don't get second or third tries at tests that cost money to take. Even the most brilliant students can have a bad day.

Colleges are held financial accountable to enroll students they can retain, so they can collect a full-term tuition. They aren't going to risk giving a valuable spot to a student that won't be able to perform well academically, just because they are 'diverse'.

Professors would rather teach exceptional, motivated students from all walks of life than the wealthy, entitled children that can afford to spend $5000 on a test prep coach.

<comment><USER33> > The tests have been gamed by a test prep industry that extracts money from > wealthy families.

No matter what you do, it will be gamed by money from wealthy families, because successfully graduating from one of these schools opens doors!

For example, one thing that rich families are doing now is getting apartments in "ghettos" so that certain institutions that use an address as a proxy for "diversity" will include them.

Whenever you have something of value (like an Ivy League education), people are going to compete for it.

Short of a literally random lottery that cannot be sold, there is zero way to change that.

> Professors would rather teach exceptional, motivated students from all walks > of life

Exceptional, motivated students have never had a problem getting into schools. Universities have long adored the idea of having "church mouse" geniuses, but it turns out that there are only so many of them. These self-motivated, exceptional students never had to worry about the SAT, because they knocked it out of the park ... without coaching!

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER55> It makes sense.

To uphold the value of their degrees, elite institutions are more interested in selecting for real-life performance rather than paperwork-wizards. For some fields--like mathematics--I'm sure those things track closely. For other fields, not so much. Throwing the standardized tests away will probably spare them from a great deal of admissions apologetics.

For less prestigious institutions, they like money--as evidenced by how low their ACT/SAT admission cutoffs already are. This move is great for plausible deniability when admitting illiterates for cash and prizes.

edit: would add that Gates and Zuckerberg are prime examples of pre-selecting performance rather than creating it</comment>


Why you should ignore (most) posts about Go - <AUTHOR> http://www.hopelesscom.de/2012/3/20/why_you_should_ignore__most__posts_about_go.html

<comment><USER2> I agree with you so much that I dint even bother to read your post. :D</comment>


Show HN: 0ut.ca URI Shortener and Validator - <AUTHOR> http://0ut.ca/documentation <comment><AUTHOR> Hey, this is still in early beta. I've recently released an API for Validators of Email and different URI components. As for the shortener its self, there is no user system or analytics yet. Feedback is appreciated!</comment>


Ask HN: What are the benefits of using PHP today? - <AUTHOR>

Knowing Python, Ruby, Node.js, Meteor etc. Should one still consider PHP for some projects? <comment><USER2> 1) PHP is a great high-school job. Much better than a paper route, flipping burgers, or working at the car wash. If you freelance you can set your own schedule which can work well around your school schedule.

2) Hosting is cheap so your parents will probably let you use their credit card.

3) It's so approachable that it can help you get started with programming so that some day you can move on to better languages.

</comment><comment><USER3> The combination of lighttpd, fastcgi, php has a very low memory footprint. This is a benefit on Xen servers.

PHP also offers a build in function for nearly everything.

The main drawback of PHP are the tutorials, using mysql without the i, and teach how to implement a website that is vulnerable to SQL injection.

<comment><USER4> 16GB of ECC RAM costs £150 to buy, how much RAM your webserver threads use should never be an issue.

PHP's advantage is "apt-get install php5", copy your .php files in, and you're done.

</comment></comment><comment><USER5> The advantage of any programming language, framework, or library is that you know it already and it allows you to achieve things. I wouldn't personally advocate learning PHP today, but the idea that any language has intrinsic value divorced from its ability to achieve your purposes is mostly untrue.

</comment><comment><USER6> It is widely used and sought after. Any average to decent PHP programmer can find work. Any average to decent Haskell programmer can't.

<comment><USER7> Depending on your intent, this may be a great reason to _avoid_ PHP, or at least to leave PHP out of your job description.

</comment></comment><comment><USER8> I'm a longtime database developer, starting my first web 2.0 app. After much research (including Python, node.js, Go, Perl, Ruby, etc.) I've all but locked on PHP. While I can see that it has idiosyncrasies, I can also see that it's a very mature product.

For example, when I search for "PHP function list", I not only get a function list as the first item, it's an amazingly comprehensive list. The hurdles I've had so far, I've been able to jump over them quickly (quicker than in any other language I've learned) if only because the community support is so good. Usually a simple web search finds the question and answer I'm looking for. I'm pretty blown away by the sheer volume of good info on PHP.

Python is my second choice. There's a lot that I prefer of it, over PHP, but I find that in general its hurdles are higher.

Having developed many industrial-strength apps using less-capable languages, I'm confident I can do the same in PHP.

</comment><comment><USER9> I feel like it is pretty unusual these days to hear about a company moving _to_ PHP from some other language. On the other hand, you often here about a company switching or adding one of the other languages you mentioned to their company's stack

</comment><comment><USER10> Another benefit... it's fairly easy to find a php contractor for any portion of your project that you want to outsource. The cost for a php contractor is relatively inexpensive compared to contractors for other languages.

</comment><comment><USER11> Requisite link to <http://appwithphp.com/> \- some basic minimal knowledge and stuff to make sure what you write is written as right as possible :)

</comment><comment><USER12> <?php include("header.php"); ?>

Between the above and the huge range of existing PHP projects, I always install PHP regardless of what else I'm using.

</comment><comment><USER13> In my opinion the great benefit of PHP especially for non-coder founders is the big offshore talent pool.

</comment><comment><USER14> The tool does not define the problem. It goes the other way around.</comment>


Ask HN: Free software to compare images, similar to Googles reverse image search? - <AUTHOR>

<comment><USER2> Try libpuzzle : [http://www.pureftpd.org/project/libpuzzle](http://www.pureftpd.org/project/libpuzzle)

I'm using it in an erlang wrapper ([https://github.com/eraserewind/erlpuzzle](https://github.com/eraserewind/erlpuzzle)) to crawl tumblr & reddit images, and then dedupe it.

Puzzle signatures are easy to index. I'm using ElasticSearch

<comment><AUTHOR> thanks, i'll give it a go.

</comment></comment><comment><AUTHOR> I would like to store images in two separate locations and make sure there is no overlap. Ideally, this would extend to images that were the same but different sizes, etc but not extremely pressing.

One of the images stores will come from scraping and I would like to compare it to see if the same image already exists on my server.</comment>


Engineering Safety with Uber's Real-Time ID Check - <AUTHOR> https://eng.uber.com/real-time-id-check/ <comment><USER2> TL;DR: They picked an API for face detection</comment>


The Dark Secret at the Heart of AI - <AUTHOR> https://www.technologyreview.com/s/604087/the-dark-secret-at-the-heart-of-ai/ <comment><AUTHOR> I agree with the major premise of the article: explainability of actions and recommendations by AIs will be important, but very difficult to active. Interesting about that law that takes effect in EU in a year!

</comment><comment><USER2> There are ways to make AI decisions explainable. There just aren't that many people working on it. Darpa advertised a grant last year for this, but afaik it's the only group I've heard of tackling that problem space. As the field matures it will happen, no question.</comment>