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Greetings everyone and welcome to the first session, our first live session of Introduction to Sociology.

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The last few days have been simply extraordinary in terms of the response and the discussion

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on the course website which I’ve been following.

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Although I have not been able to respond to each and every one of your postings,

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I want you to know that I’ve been looking carefully at the many things that you have written

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and I am so impressed with the level and quality of the discussion and the ways

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in which you are all helping one another along to develop a better understanding of the material.

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This is peer learning at its best and this a very impressive group of students from all over the world.

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I want to begin today by thanking my own administration —

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the President and the Provost, and the Dean of the faculty and the Dean of the college,

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and the Associate Dean, and the people at the McGraw Teaching Center,

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and the people working here in the broadcast center at Princeton University for making all of this possible.

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It’s this university’s commitment to bringing courses like this to a wider public and being inclusive

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that has made this possible,

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and their decision to devote the resources to this kind of enterprise

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makes me feel wonderful as a member of the Princeton faculty

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and I know that my colleagues on the Princeton faculty feel as though very similarly to me

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that this is a very special moment in the history of higher education that we are a part of,

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that we have the privilege of being a part of.

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And, I want to say also that, you know,

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this is really part of a pretty long-standing tradition here at Princeton:

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In our university we have a very generous financial aid package to students

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who’ve come here from a very wide variety of backgrounds.

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And one of the things that I think didn’t come across in the article by Malcolm Gladwell

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is the extent to which that is significant in the ongoing life of Princeton.

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We have certainly the best financial aid package in the world and it is something that we are very proud of.

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Probably 60 percent of our students are on financial aid.

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Our students are not required to take out loans to come here.

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The financial aid is available to students not only from the United States but from all over the world,

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and it extends from $5,000 to $50,000 depending on the needs of an individual family in a given year

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and I have received questions over e-mail from students around the world asking

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whether or not it’s possible for people from outside the United States to apply for financially aid.

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And the answer is yes, there are no limitations on that,

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and financial need is not taken into consideration when admissions decisions are made.

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Over ten percent of our student body comes from outside the United States

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and many of those students are on financial aid.

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I want to talk today about the Malcolm Gladwell article but first I want to begin by discussing in some detail

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the article that we read by C. Wright Mills which was written of course in 1959.

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And I want to begin by welcoming the students from around the world

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who are part of our seminar for today.

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I should say at the outset that we invited a couple of more people to join us today and for technical reasons,

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some of them are not up on the screen — they might pop up during the course of our conversation.

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But for the time being, we are going to speak with the people that are there.

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I’d like them to introduce themselves to us beginning with the person on the far left, Dipendra.

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And then let’s go through each person.

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And I’d like the each of you to say something about what you thought was most interesting,

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something brief about what you thought was most interesting about Mills’s essay, “The Promise.”

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Dipendra.

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>> Hi, this is Di [from] Nepal.

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And if you are wondering where Nepal is, we are in [inaudible] India [inaudible]. We’re a very small country.

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I come from [inaudible]. My bachelors in rural development and I have a major in sociology as well.

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Particular interested in this, today’s text by C. Wright Mills.

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I’ve been very much fascinated for those examples of study relating to the institution of the society,

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specifically at his out during the lecture regarding divorce and marriage.

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That was one thing very much interesting to me.

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Another thing we tried, at the last time, the text which is

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that if you want to develop your socialism then you should plays very mean.

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So, that, about the thing that have been striking…

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>> Okay. Dipendra unfortunately the connection to you was not great

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but I will summarize though that you thought that one of the most interesting things

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has to do with the connection of the sociological imagination to marriage and divorce.

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And, we will look forward to hearing more from you later, hopefully with a better connection.

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Doug?

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>> Yeah, hi, I’m Doug, I’m from Philadelphia.

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I don’t know. “The Promise,” — I believe is the name of the paper —

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my impression, it was really hard to understand — you know,

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trying to put myself back in 1959 and trying to understand where it was coming from.

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It seemed almost like he was just trying to focus on the psychology, I guess, of being trapped.

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But I also want… I did understand the basic thing of where I was going with it.

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>> Doug, could you tell us a little bit about yourself in Philadelphia.

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>> Yeah, I’m a firefighter in Philadelphia.

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34 years old which I think makes me the oldest member of the panel.

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You know, I took a little bit of college.

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After high school I was in the Navy most of the time.

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And now I’m trying to get back in college.

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>> And are you, are you talking to us from the firehouse right now?

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>> No. No, (>> [laugh]) I can’t.

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I can’t do that. [laugh] (>> [laugh])

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Everything that I say is — what — my opinion; it has nothing to do with the Fire Department.

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But no, I’m at my house and yeah, I’m excited to be here.

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>> Okay. Thank you, Doug.

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>> My name is Estela Diaz.

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I’m a Princeton University student majoring in Sociology.

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I’m originally from Los Angeles, California and currently living in Spanish Harlem in New York City.

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One of the things I thought was most interesting is considering the sociological imagination

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in context of the United States 2012 political campaign and the presidential election.

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I’m just kind of considering how issues are framed —

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Whether they are framed as personal issues or public issues, especially the economic downturn.

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>> Fascinating. Is it Nana who’s next?

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>> I’m Nana. I’m from Georgia.

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It’s Caucasus not Georgia in USA.

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>> [laugh].

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>> I am working as a representative of Israeli delegation here in Georgia and Ukraine and in Belarus.

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Also I have a travel company with my friend; we’re dealing only with incoming tourists,

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And for me the most… I pay attention on the sociological imagination in the chapter one:

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it was quite interesting for me how people can imagine the things in the world,

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and also marriage and divorce, because in Georgia it’s quite complicated.

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>> Thank you, Nana.

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And then finally.

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>> Hello, my name is Pavel [inaudible] University School of [inaudible]

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and National Relations which is the case in Southwestern Russia.

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I found this article very interesting because it’s referring to the effect

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that our lives are just a moment in terms of historical change and even the…

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so we have to think more, to think wider in this case.

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>> That’s very interesting.

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Okay, well, these are some very interesting ways of beginning our thinking

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about what Mills was trying to say and what I’d like to do now with you guys is

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to try to go through the essay in a little bit of detail —

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from Kathmandu, to Siberia, to Georgia, to Spanish Harlem, to Philadelphia —

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and talk about the meaning of some of these lines and how we should interpret them.

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I want to begin with the first paragraph, the second line where Mills says,

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“they sensed that within their everyday world, they cannot overcome their troubles

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and this feel, and this feeling they are quite often correct.”

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One question that I want to ask you is this:

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is there some sense in which that line, and the essay as a whole, gives an impression to people

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that if only they can develop a sociological imagination, that they can overcome their troubles?

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And is that really realistic?

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What are some of the dilemmas involved in thinking about this in such a way?

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>> Yeah. I believe that was something that

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had something to do a little bit more with this psychology of it, you know,

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somebody kinda trapped in their own sometimes made-up shell.

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It’s because they feel — I mean it’s almost like looking at this minute, you know, I was never able…

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I wasn’t much of a person that was very smart coming out of high school, I guess,

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so I didn’t take the college route.

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And as I got older, I wanted to go to college but now this is a forwarding opportunity.

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I feel like I’m widening now a little bit like from personal experience.

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So that’s kinda like the way I look at it — like

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instead of me [standing there] in my own shell, now I feel like I’m just through this course.

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I’m feeling like I’m kind of getting over it.

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>> And, is there a sense though — I’m curious to know — in which…

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Does having a sociological imagination give us any legitimate reason to believe

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that we are in a better position to overcome our personal troubles?

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Or is that an unrealistic kind of thing to begin the essay with?

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>> I didn’t personally interpret it as such. Instead I interpreted this repeated notion

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of not being able to overcome one’s personal troubles —

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I interpreted that as Mills arguing for a larger perspective, not necessarily saying

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that having a sociological imagination will allow you to overcome troubles

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but instead emphasizing that our troubles are not strictly derived from the individual.

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So Mills is arguing that having that sociological imagination will give you a different perspective on your troubles

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but it will not necessarily solve your troubles.

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>> Very interesting. Would anyone else like to comment on this?

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>> I think almost the same because I, I think it’s not depend to overcome the troubles,

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it’s not coming from the sociological imagination.

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You can you can solve your troubles and solve your problems without knowing it but it helps you quite a lot.

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>> But are you sure about that, Nana?

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Are you really sure that having a sociological imagination would help you in solving the personal troubles?

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>> Eh. Like in Georgia [inaudible].

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>> Oh, really? Could you say more about that?

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>> Let’s say, in Georgia if you’re…

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like, for people who are coming from abroad, it’s not easy to find some jobs.

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If you are not an investor it’s not easy to find it.

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If you know the sociological imagination, like to help

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how people think about it, you will not come in Georgia and start your work here.

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You will go to another country to find some job.

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Let’s say, let’s say this example.

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>> So, in other words, having the socio… that’s a really good answer.

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Having the sociological imagination is going to perhaps one way of having a sociological imagination

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is to know our probabilities, and understanding the probabilities means

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that we can assess our chances and decide what we should try and what we shouldn’t try, right?

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>> Yeah.

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>> Okay. But let me ask you a question, Estela.

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You’re a Princeton student, okay?

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>> If you knew (>> Mhm.) the probabilities when you applied to Princeton of being accepted,

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would you have ever tried?

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>> I mean, I think I kind of did know the probabilities was less than ten percent acceptance rate.

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And over, I think it’s, it was about 30,000 people who applied my year,

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with only… with less than 2,000 of us being accepted, the probability was extremely low.

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But you have to, in the case of applying to Princeton University,

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I think there was something worth a lot more than… I think it was worth taking my chances.

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>> But the thing is just: did having a sociological imagination and knowing the odds,

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did that increase the chances of you applying? Or don’t you think

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that there are some people who are having that knowledge might have said, “It’s not worth it to try at all”?

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I mean, if somebody finds out that the chances of doing,

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of succeeding in any field are small, does that knowledge necessarily help them in the end?

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We’re assuming that it’s empowering to have that knowledge,

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but I wonder if it could also be disempowering.

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What do you… (>> I think it could…) Go ahead.

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>> it could certainly be discouraging, especially if you consider Mills’ article in general,

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he’s kind of taking away from the notion of individual agency and individual power.

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So when you take that away, it does and can seem very discouraging.

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>> Doug, what do you think about this?

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>> Well, basically I think that Estela hit the nail right on the head.

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That — you know — that sense of, you know, when like things are hopeless,

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people are going to say, “Why am I going to put the effort in?”

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But, if you realize, like Estela did, that you know, that doesn’t just define who you are,

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that, you know, that 10%, if you’re going to part of that 10%,

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you’re part of that ten percent like what are you going to do about it?

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It is what it is, and that really, I think that could really be freeing for somebody

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because that’s not going to really upset them if they turn around and get rejected.

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They’ll say, okay, whatever, you know, although I was ready for that.

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It’s kinda like a you know, “expect the”… “expect the worst,”

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or “hope for the best and expect the worst” kind of thing, I guess.

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And I don’t know if I am missing that point.

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>> Let’s move on to the next part of the paper.

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At the very beginning of the second paragraph, Mills says, “Underlying this sense of being trapped

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are seemingly impersonal changes in the very structure of continent-wide societies.”

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There were some discussion on the discussion boards

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over the last few days about what Mills meant by impersonal changes.

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And I thought that you guys did a very good job

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of clarifying the issue for those who were confused, but what does this mean to you?

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What are some of the kinds of impersonal changes

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that affect you in the society in which you live as a way of conceiving of what Mills is talking about?

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Dipendra, could you start?

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>> I was very much interested in the previous paragraph

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so I was about to speak but I lost my connection.

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So, maybe I would rather go back to that paragraph and I’ll jump to this paragraph at the end.

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>> Sure, why don’t you do that. (>> So, in the previous thing.) Go ahead, please do.

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>> So, I have a different I have a, I have a different perspective on

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that it does say, it is said that within the everyday works they cannot overcome the troubles.

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I want to keep myself in this example.

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I have my parents divorced.

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So in this actually when my parents, then was suddenly, the problem that I’m facing in the world.

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So, I, believe is facing this kind of problem and I was so… I have a small sister

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and I have my mom crying in front of me every day and my dad was with another woman.

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So, how I felt, it was like I felt that this was only me. This is only “I’m the guy” problem.

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But sociological imagination, I think that in a broader perspective,

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when I look at my society then I see a lot of people who get who get divorced so then, then I do is,

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I simply hiding myself and say that, okay boy, this is, this is not only the way you move ahead.

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It’s not, spend your whole life regretting because your dad married to another woman or something.

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So, when I look at only… when I think that is my problem only, I feel I’m trapped in that problem.

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But when I come out of my family, when I come out, when I look at my society then I feel a lot,

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this is the broader perspective that I should look into and that really motivated me.

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>> Well, I think that, that is a really wonderful statement because what you’re saying

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is that you feel as though the understanding that your experience was not a personal problem

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but was part of a larger trend and a larger public issue inspired you to feel empowered.

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And that you decided that you are going to rise above your social circumstances

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with that knowledge knowing that was not your fault

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or knowing that this was not the fault of your family —

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and I actually, I think that’s a really excellent response to my concern

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and it’s really a nice response because I think that in the case of divorce,

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it’s true that many children feel as though they are themselves the cause of their parents’ divorce

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so they feel as though they are responsible for it and certainly it’s true

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that their family members blame themselves, and I think it is the case that

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if you know that you’re part of something larger and wider, perhaps that is actually empowering

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to be able to get beyond it and move beyond it.

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And yet I must tell you that I feel still nevertheless a certain concern over these lines

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and what they imply in the essay because for many people, you know, their lives are just really hard.

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And, it is going to be hard for them whether they know that they’re part of a larger social trend or not.

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And the ability to rise beyond their social circumstances,

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I worry, takes a lot more obviously than any kind of knowledge or understanding of this kind,

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but perhaps that’s just obvious and not worth being overly concerned with.

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By the way, in our Princeton Seminars, there are moments, as Estela will tell you, of complete silence.

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And I encourage those moments in my seminar. I believe in silence.

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I think it’s great for people to be able to sit and think for a second.

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Sometimes we’ll have silence for 30 seconds in the room before somebody talks.

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We shouldn’t always feel pressured to fill in every gap at every moment,

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and no more so just because we happen to be on the Internet for 30,000 other students right now.

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Does anybody else have anything they wanted to add to that before we move on there, then?

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>> Yes. May I add something? It will be kind of question.

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When you were talking in your lecture about sociological imagination,

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what we find was mortgage and divorce — situations and issues.

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I remember the words of Soviet secretary-general Joseph Stalin ’cause he once said to Averill Harriman.

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He said, “The death of one man is a tragedy, the death of million is statistic.”

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I’d like to know that I am not a fan of Joseph Stalin, and my opinion, he was a dictator.

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That was just the first thing that came to my mind,

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whether there is an argument, whether he said it or not.

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So I wanted to ask a bit political question.

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I understand that in terms of historical change, as also Mills noted,

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our lives are only a moment so today anything around us could be revealed as a statistic —

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even our lives can be a statistic within this scope

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of the population size, and then the scope of many other issues.

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So our president tells about wages.

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When he tells about wages, he cites average wages data.

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Why doesn’t he cite the lowest [inaudible], for example Tatiana

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who is which a school teacher in Siberia in who has four children and tries to survive with four kids.

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How do you think, professor? Can the government treat its people just as a statistic?

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And where is the border of statistic and the real life?

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>> Well, I think that it’s very tempting to use a single statistic,

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and of course what a sociological imagination is going to do,

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is going to try to encourage people to look at the variation,

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and to try to explain the variation in a society.

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And, I think that there’s always a tendency to try to put the focus in one place or the other

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but your job is as a sociologist is to move toward an understanding and grasping

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of that variation in which you just did in your wonderful comment

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and that’s a great quote which I’m sure that I’ll be using in the future when I give this lecture again.

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I want to ask you guys to take a peek though at the notion of

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that first line in the essay, and I want to get back to this issue of impersonal changes.

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Could you guys try to think about what that means,

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and try to help the students who were concerned about that all on the website to reflect on that a little bit more?

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What are some of the impersonal changes in your society?

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Nana has gone off, why don’t we go to Doug?

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>> When I look at this line, as far as impersonal changes,

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I felt like that was something that, you know,

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in a time, I mean, it was brought up before about what’s going on with the housing crisis,

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with the job crisis and everything else.

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And in a time when jobs are, you know, so few and far between,

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somebody can very easily think of themselves “Well there’s something wrong with me that’s why I’m not working,”

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when, if they look at the, you know, the way that everything is in society,

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it’s not a personal change that you need to make,

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it’s the way that the society is that, you know, the…

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the structure and, as it goes, the very structure of the continent-wide society

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that if there’s, there’s change made to the system,

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not something that has to do with this one person —

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like I feel like that line is trying to give somebody a little bit of hope you know,

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like “Look, it’s not you! You have the ability, you just need to understand

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that there’s a problem out there right now.” I think we’re just going

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to need to try a little bit harder and don’t let yourself down and don’t feel like you’re trapped.

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>> Okay. Estela?

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>> No, I think he saw that very well.

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I’m trying to think.

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I’m looking at what he says the structure of continent-wide societies and just contextualizing this

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in nineteen…, I mean, if we consider the effect of the Internet now in our very discussion here today,

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where we were discussing this with people on various continents, various countries.

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So looking at impersonal changes, that’s something far beyond our what he says as personal troubles,…

305
00:27:44,261 --> 00:27:51,205
>> Yeah. I think that one of the things that concerns me about this point as well is that, you know,

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the emphasis on, obviously, the impersonal changes and that as if they are always trapping us.

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And I think that we have to have more a nuanced view of it — at least I would propose that —

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and the, you know, the impersonal change of today of the Internet

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obviously is also leading to possibilities like the one that we have before us right now.

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And, I think that our job as sociologists

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is to look at the ways in which impersonal changes not only trap us,

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but also liberate us and potentially make us more free.

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And I wonder whether or not anybody could present an example other than the Internet

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of any kind of impersonal change in their own society.

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Or perhaps the internet is the best one for your society right now that you’d like to refer to,

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but in which the actual impersonal change has been liberating rather than simply constraining.

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Remember silence is fine. Silence is good in the seminar.

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Everyone can think.

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>> I think that was a good example, try to recover other issues.

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>> Okay. Well maybe we can ask our online viewers,

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the other members of the class, to think about that issue a little bit as we move forward in the class.

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I want to move on now to a discussion of the New Yorker article

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that was written by the great writer, the great non-fiction writer, Malcolm Gladwell.

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And I saw some questions on the discussion boards

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about why I would have assigned this article for the first class.

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And in fact, the article was assigned

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for exactly the reason that many of you proposed in your answers to the person who asked that question:

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because I believe it exemplifies the sociological imagination.

329
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Can you guys hear me right now?

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Yes? Okay, good.

331
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So, let’s begin now by talking a little bit about Gladwell’s article.

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Gladwell being a Canadian who came to the United States

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and was kind of intrigued by the culture of New York City

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in which he found that there were many people who were obsessed with Harvard in particular,

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and who seemed to think that if they had gone there

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that there was nothing of greater importance that could have happened to them in their lives.

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And he wrote this essay based on, as we know,

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based on the research of sociologist Jerome Karabel largely,

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about the nature of admissions at Harvard, Princeton and Yale,

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and the way in which it moved in the direction that it is in today.

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And, one of the things that I found very interesting about the responses on the Internet to this

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was that, there were many people who saw the decision

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of the Ivy League Schools to look at the “whole person” rather than a single dimension

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as meaning — as implying — that, that was somehow a false promise,

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or that people have been excluded

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that people, that they themselves were being promised something that wasn’t really fair or obtainable

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when they were given the hope that they one day could achieve or go to an Ivy League School.

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And I’m just curious about that response because my own feeling about it in looking at the way

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that the system of college admissions emerged is that,

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while I think it’s good that the largest group of students in the university

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has gotten there because of their academic achievement,

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I think that it is also true that there are so many other qualities in life

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that make for a deserving and an interesting human being.

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And, would we really want a college to only include the people who have the highest scores

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rather than a system like the one that has been designed

356
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which actually looks at a much wider variety of personal characteristics?

357
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And I’m just curious about what your response was to some of those comments

358
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and how you would design a system like this if it was up to you.

359
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Dipendra.

360
00:32:55,467 --> 00:32:59,322
>> Actually when I was going through this text,

361
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what I’ve felt was the education system the admission system

362
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that was there and unfortunately, in Nepal, I’ve been practicing that now.

363
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So, we have the, actually a brief background of

364
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the admission system that we have here and then I’ll get back to my point.

365
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So, here at Nepal, what [we have] there are typically two different kinds of colleges or universities.

366
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The primary targets of all the university and all the college here in Nepal is you should get at least good marks —

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at least, [inaudible] more than 60 percent or more than three GPA —

368
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so that you can get into good college or something like that.

369
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And very few, very few colleges and universities — we count in hands or fingers —

370
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that they’ll look overall student or they look at overall characteristics of students.

371
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So it would depend, but I would like to say seeing, to look at examples

372
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that I have seen here in Nepal, what I have come to conclude is typically,

373
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there are two different university here that I would like to mention in Nepal.

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The Tribhuvan University which is government owned university and Kathmandu University

375
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that is privately owned university.

376
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So, why does Tribhuvan University does it?

377
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They don’t have a proper definite system of taking in students.

378
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So, every time they can have a ticket of admission in that college.

379
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They have let’s say you have crossed 50 percent then you’ll get into that university — and where I am now.

380
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And before coming to this university, I actually dropped the Kathmandu University

381
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because private university and which required rigorous competition.

382
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They had added a baseline for academics.

383
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We need to get at least 60 percent in your high school, then

384
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you should be astounding in extra curricular activities,

385
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you should be astounding in sports, you should be social, and so many characteristics.

386
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And where the products that come out after from the universities after four years,

387
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we can see a clear distinction here in Nepal:

388
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Kathmandu University, which has a system of looking a student from all dimension,

389
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the students are… they are very practical, they know a lot of things, you know, they are outgoing.

390
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And while we look at the students of Tribhuvan University,

391
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what I see is students are very much confined to books —

392
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not even in textbooks: we have these papers here that means the questions that, the exams.

393
00:35:45,813 --> 00:35:53,365
So there are some predicted questions and you go through that question and you will get questions out of that.

394
00:35:53,365 --> 00:36:02,507
It is sometimes… that’s really a very difficult task at Tribhuvan University.

395
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So, what I feel is, for a college student to get admission, academics should be one of the primary criteria,

396
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but we should have also look at the students in overall —

397
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how good they [inaudible] in society, how good they [inaudible] in sports.

398
00:36:18,317 --> 00:36:19,852
That’s what I [think].
>> Thank you.

399
00:36:19,852 --> 00:36:23,018
Thank you for that interesting comment, Dipendra.

400
00:36:23,018 --> 00:36:25,049
Would anyone else like to comment on this?

401
00:36:25,049 --> 00:36:27,210
>> Yes, may I comment?
>> Yes.

402
00:36:27,210 --> 00:36:30,424
>> Because getting in is a very pressing problem for me.

403
00:36:30,424 --> 00:36:39,113
Now I’m graduating in a few days, and then I’ll be… I have to find an advocate’s masters program.

404
00:36:39,113 --> 00:36:46,485
And while I was reading “Getting In” article, I have a feeling you know,

405
00:36:46,485 --> 00:36:56,591
well, the situation that existed in the beginning of the twentieth Century in Harvard University and Yale etc.

406
00:36:56,591 --> 00:37:02,170
With standardized tests now exists in Russia,

407
00:37:02,170 --> 00:37:07,384
in the twenty-first century, in the beginning of the twenty-first century.

408
00:37:07,384 --> 00:37:18,787
So, I think it’s not a good way to admit students just on the basis of standardized tests.

409
00:37:18,787 --> 00:37:28,394
Academic records is a very is a very… is an important problem

410
00:37:28,394 --> 00:37:35,325
but while admitting they should see…

411
00:37:35,325 --> 00:37:45,817
they should see the person[’s] hope — hope as in hope —, his background, his experience,

412
00:37:45,817 --> 00:37:56,351
what he can do, maybe… just not only his studies.

413
00:37:56,351 --> 00:38:01,681
>> So, it’s interesting to hear your perspectives on this, and it is true that outside the United States,

414
00:38:01,681 --> 00:38:06,654
that the standards are usually much more narrow for admissions decisions.

415
00:38:06,654 --> 00:38:12,510
And I think that, that is what accounted for some of the surprise

416
00:38:12,510 --> 00:38:18,584
that initially came on to the site about the way that it’s done here in the United States.

417
00:38:18,584 --> 00:38:22,744
I want to, oh, I see we have another person that just joined us.

418
00:38:22,744 --> 00:38:25,756
Another Princeton student named Dixon Lee.

419
00:38:25,756 --> 00:38:27,136
Hi, Dixon.

420
00:38:27,136 --> 00:38:28,286
>> Hi, Mitch.

421
00:38:28,286 --> 00:38:32,824
>> So, we’re talking right now about the Malcolm Gladwell essay

422
00:38:32,824 --> 00:38:39,120
and one of the interesting points that I want to sort of end by thinking about,

423
00:38:39,120 --> 00:38:43,075
is something that came up a lot on the discussion boards

424
00:38:43,075 --> 00:38:47,519
which was the study that was cited — and this is for everybody, not just for Dixon —

425
00:38:47,519 --> 00:38:56,704
the study that was cited by Gladwell, by my colleague Alan Krueger, who did a study of the people

426
00:38:56,704 --> 00:39:01,346
who were — let’s say “hypothetically,” as it’s described in the article —

427
00:39:01,346 --> 00:39:09,394
accepted into a state university like Penn State, at a private university like the University of Pennsylvania.

428
00:39:09,394 --> 00:39:14,890
And what was his point in making that comparison and what did he find?

429
00:39:14,890 --> 00:39:17,377
Does anybody remember?

430
00:39:17,377 --> 00:39:22,527
It certainly elicited a lot of response on the discussion boards.

431
00:39:22,527 --> 00:39:28,105
>> Um. So they referred to it as comparing apples to apples.

432
00:39:28,105 --> 00:39:37,621
And what they discovered is that both the person who decides to go to the more elite university —

433
00:39:37,621 --> 00:39:45,517
“elites” — and the person who decides to go to the state school, both do well in the future.

434
00:39:45,517 --> 00:39:53,689
With the finding of one exception, which is those from the lowest economic strata.

435
00:39:53,689 --> 00:40:01,009
Those from this strata were seen as benefiting from the elite’s education.

436
00:40:01,009 --> 00:40:07,887
And it didn’t say… it didn’t explain this in any way but that was the finding.

437
00:40:07,887 --> 00:40:13,629
>> Can anybody explain — thank you Estela — Can anybody explain to us what was the logic of the article?

438
00:40:13,629 --> 00:40:18,951
He used the words “selection” and “treatment”, and what was the exact way

439
00:40:18,951 --> 00:40:28,241
in which he went about in doing his study, in which those words became so important?

440
00:40:28,241 --> 00:40:30,901
What was he measuring? What was he comparing?

441
00:40:30,901 --> 00:40:36,206
Does anybody have any memory of that aspect of the article?

442
00:40:36,206 --> 00:40:42,577
What was Krueger doing there?

443
00:40:42,577 --> 00:40:46,166
In the traditional — it’s just to jog your memory —

444
00:40:46,166 --> 00:40:51,783
in the traditional measures of the impact of an Ivy League education,

445
00:40:51,783 --> 00:40:56,175
comparisons have been made between the salaries of people

446
00:40:56,175 --> 00:41:01,270
who graduated from Ivy League Schools and the salaries of people

447
00:41:01,270 --> 00:41:08,339
who graduated from other schools, and what Kruger said was, “Let’s change the comparison.”

448
00:41:08,339 --> 00:41:16,237
Instead of comparing it in that way, how did we do it?

449
00:41:16,237 --> 00:41:22,291
He compared the people who were the same person.

450
00:41:22,291 --> 00:41:25,675
He only took people who were graduated, who were admitted

451
00:41:25,675 --> 00:41:28,862
both to private schools — to Ivy League Schools — and to other schools

452
00:41:28,862 --> 00:41:32,048
and who chose, for some reason, to go to the other school instead.

453
00:41:32,048 --> 00:41:38,543
And he compared those same people against the average people who came out of Ivy League Schools

454
00:41:38,543 --> 00:41:44,766
and he found out that those people actually did just as well as the people who went to Ivy League Schools.

455
00:41:44,766 --> 00:41:49,026
And so his point was, that it was not necessarily the treatment

456
00:41:49,026 --> 00:41:53,904
of going to an Ivy League School that mattered — in terms of the success of people —

457
00:41:53,904 --> 00:42:01,618
but it was instead the selection into the system from the very beginning

458
00:42:01,618 --> 00:42:05,933
of certain kinds of people that were destined to be successful.

459
00:42:05,933 --> 00:42:10,650
And he basically, despite the fact that he’s a Princeton professor

460
00:42:10,650 --> 00:42:14,561
and has every reason to be biased in favor of the Ivy League,

461
00:42:14,561 --> 00:42:20,174
he concluded that the impact of the Ivy League is not nearly as great

462
00:42:20,174 --> 00:42:24,411
as it’s taken to be by the wider society and the wider world.

463
00:42:24,411 --> 00:42:28,418
Now it seems to me that that kind of analysis that Krueger did,

464
00:42:28,418 --> 00:42:32,282
is in the best tradition of the sociological imagination.

465
00:42:32,282 --> 00:42:37,797
And it seems to me that, that kind of information should be empowering to many people,

466
00:42:37,797 --> 00:42:46,104
regardless of whether or not they would even want to come to Princeton or some other Ivy League School.

467
00:42:46,104 --> 00:42:50,725
Did you guys… did that information make a similar impression on you guys?

468
00:42:50,725 --> 00:42:58,243
What effect did it have on you to read that part of the article?

469
00:42:58,243 --> 00:43:02,600
>> Yeah, I understood. Yeah, I understand what you’re saying.

470
00:43:02,600 --> 00:43:08,969
The one quote that he has here is “having Penn on your resume opens doors.”

471
00:43:08,969 --> 00:43:15,689
And I do notice that there is that sort of the meanest attitude when it comes to society in general.

472
00:43:15,689 --> 00:43:20,257
People turn and maybe look at certain people a certain kind of way — they put them up on a pedestal —

473
00:43:20,257 --> 00:43:24,563
and you know, it can sometimes be a little unfortunate that they would do something like that

474
00:43:24,563 --> 00:43:28,369
but you know, I understand; and

475
00:43:28,369 --> 00:43:34,726
because there’s such an emphasis that’s been put on for so long about who’s coming out of where —

476
00:43:34,730 --> 00:43:38,243
just, you know, how, also like what he said earlier in the article,

477
00:43:38,243 --> 00:43:41,759
you know, when he… when somebody said they were from Harvard it was like everybody

478
00:43:41,759 --> 00:43:44,948
in the room got quiet you know and they were like, “Oh, this guy is from Harvard!”

479
00:43:44,948 --> 00:43:49,970
Just like I understand that’s what he was explaining.

480
00:43:49,970 --> 00:43:55,782
And it kind of seems to me like — I’m not sure if I got [it] right,

481
00:43:55,782 --> 00:43:59,949
but what he was saying was that some of the [students]

482
00:43:59,949 --> 00:44:06,480
well, did really well in the lower-tiered school — like the state school — that they only did

483
00:44:06,480 --> 00:44:10,776
as good as the people who were like average students in the Ivy League School.

484
00:44:10,776 --> 00:44:13,906
>> No, no, no, no, no, no. It was exactly the opposite of that.

485
00:44:13,906 --> 00:44:18,846
He is basically saying that if you took the same person who is admitted to both,

486
00:44:18,846 --> 00:44:24,913
then it’s really ultimately the individual who mattered more than (>> Okay.) the social context.

487
00:44:24,917 --> 00:44:29,699
>> Okay, so, yes. I, I just, I understood that what he was talking about with that, you know,

488
00:44:29,699 --> 00:44:36,057
having Penn on your resume, that’s basically, you know, the whole, the general thing basically.

489
00:44:36,057 --> 00:44:37,797
Your dream is what you’re looking at.

490
00:44:37,797 --> 00:44:41,045
You know, when you’re coming out of that school, you’re grand and people look at

491
00:44:41,045 --> 00:44:46,012
that and they think that when you’re coming out of Penn or Harvard, you’re like a Mercedes.

492
00:44:46,012 --> 00:44:49,134
>> Right. But his… >> When you’re coming out of Penn State,…

493
00:44:49,134 --> 00:44:52,170
>> But his point though is — and it’s important to clarify this

494
00:44:52,170 --> 00:44:55,162
and make sure that we get on the same page on this point —

495
00:44:55,162 --> 00:45:00,580
is that his point is that when you look at the statistical data for large numbers of people,

496
00:45:00,580 --> 00:45:07,131
then those anecdotal stories actually don’t have as much explanatory value

497
00:45:07,131 --> 00:45:13,190
as the analysis that he did would have.

498
00:45:13,190 --> 00:45:15,472
Dixon, what do you think about this?

499
00:45:15,472 --> 00:45:20,210
>> So, when I was reading over it, I was interested to see that he says that

500
00:45:20,210 --> 00:45:25,276
the person who is accepted to Penn and the person who’s accepted to Penn State would do the same thing

501
00:45:25,276 --> 00:45:32,642
but then I was wondering, so admissions factors don’t always account for everything that person is capable of.

502
00:45:32,642 --> 00:45:38,328
So, I think it might have been just outside of the scope for his project.

503
00:45:38,328 --> 00:45:45,339
But I think that I would have been interested at this project have continued and then look at —

504
00:45:45,339 --> 00:45:51,201
so — what are the things that the [inaudible] students for and how did those affect people in the upper strata

505
00:45:51,201 --> 00:45:56,014
that normally wouldn’t be affected by the treatment

506
00:45:56,014 --> 00:46:03,762
that Princeton gives the, like the, really lower, lower strata that [inaudible] was talking about earlier.

507
00:46:03,762 --> 00:46:06,301
>> Good. That’s very interesting.

508
00:46:06,301 --> 00:46:09,074
So, basically, I hope that we can use Alan Krueger’s study

509
00:46:09,074 --> 00:46:13,868
as a way of getting and thinking more about the questions that I raised

510
00:46:13,868 --> 00:46:19,272
at the end of the first lecture of how it is that the individual makes a difference.

511
00:46:19,272 --> 00:46:26,167
And the extent to which we are truly trapped by certain social circumstances.

512
00:46:26,167 --> 00:46:31,654
Sometimes, we imagine that the social circumstances that are surrounding us

513
00:46:31,654 --> 00:46:39,092
are trapping us in ways that they actually are not, and it takes constant sociological investigation

514
00:46:39,092 --> 00:46:45,340
to know the difference between a real trap and an illusion of one.

515
00:46:45,340 --> 00:46:53,496
So, I want to end today’s discussion by just saying a little bit about where we’re going next.

516
00:46:53,496 --> 00:46:57,904
I want to say, first of all, that this was an experiment today.

517
00:46:57,904 --> 00:47:01,629
I know that the discussion was by no means perfect

518
00:47:01,629 --> 00:47:06,553
although it was as good as I could have ever hoped from a group of students around the world

519
00:47:06,553 --> 00:47:15,327
and I thought that your comments in the seminar today were really great and interesting and a wonderful beginning.

520
00:47:15,327 --> 00:47:22,105
But technically it could be improved and we will certainly work on that in the weeks to come.

521
00:47:22,105 --> 00:47:25,606
I really appreciate the patience of everybody who’s watching

522
00:47:25,606 --> 00:47:29,647
as well as your interest and I appreciate your support

523
00:47:29,647 --> 00:47:33,198
and your understanding that we are part now of a really big experiment.

524
00:47:33,198 --> 00:47:37,924
We’re trying to do something new and I suspect that we’re going to learn a lot along the way.

525
00:47:37,924 --> 00:47:41,883
When we meet the next time in the online forum,

526
00:47:41,883 --> 00:47:46,533
we’re going to include some new people that were not here today; we’ll also have some familiar faces.

527
00:47:46,533 --> 00:47:53,021
We’ll try to substitute some new people in, to keep the conversation representing different parts of the world.

528
00:47:53,021 --> 00:47:57,196
And, we will try to do some things to improve it each time

529
00:47:57,196 --> 00:48:02,971
until we really get it to a point where it is something that is working really well and we are really happy with it.

530
00:48:02,971 --> 00:48:07,634
But I must say that for a first time today, for a first effort, I’m really pleased with this.

531
00:48:07,634 --> 00:48:13,202
I also, I wanted to say that I was really excited to see the large number of study groups

532
00:48:13,202 --> 00:48:21,275
that had formed from around the world and I wanted to also give a special welcome to the people

533
00:48:21,275 --> 00:48:27,796
that are clearly participating in the class from Iran and from Afghanistan —

534
00:48:27,796 --> 00:48:35,637
two countries which do not have the greatest relationship officially with the United States today

535
00:48:35,637 --> 00:48:43,945
but that is certainly not due to any ill feeling on the part of Americans

536
00:48:43,945 --> 00:48:50,484
and we certainly all believe that these kinds of contacts are the ones that we should be having

537
00:48:50,484 --> 00:48:53,531
and I hope that in our future online seminars

538
00:48:53,531 --> 00:48:59,099
that we can have representatives from Iran and from Afghanistan with us as well.

539
00:48:59,099 --> 00:49:02,246
So, I ’m going to say goodbye to you all now.

540
00:49:02,246 --> 00:49:06,733
So, thank all of you online for participating in this wonderful experiment

541
00:49:06,733 --> 00:49:12,057
and I look forward to seeing you this Monday with the second lecture,

542
00:49:12,057 --> 00:49:16,071
in the discussion boards which I will be monitoring very carefully,

543
00:49:16,071 --> 00:49:26,007
and of course, in our second online seminar next Wednesday.