[HN Gopher] Students suing elite U.S. colleges seek 'wealth favo...
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Students suing elite U.S. colleges seek 'wealth favoritism'
information
Author : cwwc
Score : 71 points
Date : 2023-02-11 17:56 UTC (5 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (www.reuters.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (www.reuters.com)
| honeybadger1 wrote:
| It's always about money now.
| strikelaserclaw wrote:
| i mean, if all the smart kids from poor, middle and upper
| middle classes (who are basically the powerhouses who create
| new research, build new companies etc...) stopped putting these
| universities on a pedestal, they wouldn't have much leg to
| stand on. As it stands, humans are basically pretty amoral,
| they only cry if they are disadvantaged, and they forget all
| about unfairness if they become the lottery winners.
| voisin wrote:
| Always has been.
| julienchastang wrote:
| Not really. A couple of generations ago, you could attend a
| US state college and pay off the tuition by working summer
| jobs. Now, due to a long list of factors, colleges attempt to
| extract every nickel out of parents/students. I don't have
| the reference on my finger tips, but universities are
| employing AI algorithms to achieve this. In turn, parents
| have to hire consultants to get advice on bargaining the
| tuition price down -- in sum, an arms race.
| angmarsbane wrote:
| Isn't part of the benefit of getting into these universities the
| fact that you get to interact with people from a wealthier
| economic class? You have the opportunity to meet people who can
| invest in your ventures or who can introduce you to people who
| can.
| yunohn wrote:
| The main part is the status signaling. And using the value of
| the university degree for future wealth building.
|
| Not hating, just observing.
| peacefulhat wrote:
| not if they took your seat
| dismantlethesun wrote:
| If you dont give the wealthy an unfair seat then they will
| not be in that university.
|
| Instead they will be forced to go to another private school
| which will receive their endowments, and soon grow to the
| point they can compete with elite schools. Harvard, et all
| will still be good schools but not the "best" schools that
| people die to get into.
| ameister14 wrote:
| While the universities can completely do that, they can't
| get an antitrust exception while they do. That's the issue
| here, I think. The universities are colluding with one
| another as regards pricing and financial aid. This was
| allowed under an exception to antitrust law so long as
| financial aid played no role in admissions. The group is
| alleging that financial aid, or the lack of it, plays a
| role in admitting rich students. If that's the case, it's
| possible (but not anywhere close to certain) that the
| universities don't qualify for the antitrust exception.
| antegamisou wrote:
| > You have the opportunity to meet people who can invest in
| your ventures.
|
| and who are also completely lacking empathy for the financially
| challenged at best, disregard and look down upon the less
| privileged at worst. Both may lead to social isolation of
| persons with different socioeconomic background attending said
| schools.
| yodsanklai wrote:
| I attended an elite institution in my country.
|
| My experience:
|
| - people from less privileged background didn't need empathy.
| By being there, they were bound to have a successful career
|
| - students tend to get along better with people from similar
| background/interest but there were enough diversity so that
| nobody felt they didn't belong, and nobody was looked down.
|
| That being said, we don't have as much inequalities as in the
| US and also no quota/positive discrimination. Everybody who
| was there passed the same selective anonymous exams, which I
| think is very important. I can see why US students who
| benefited from favorable admissions criteria are looked down
| or suffer from imposter syndrome.
| Aloha wrote:
| You can be middle class or upper middle class and have that
| viewpoint if you've had insufficient exposure to people from
| different socioeconomic backgrounds.
| busterarm wrote:
| Try gambling (say, poker) with the ultra rich. They don't
| really give a shit win or lose because they like the
| entertainment, but they _absolutely hate_ to lose to
| someone who needs the money. For one, that money is never
| coming back to the table for them to win back later, and
| two, that person was playing for completely different
| stakes as the rest of the table and actually "got over" on
| them.
|
| If you even want to get into such games, having the money
| isn't enough. You need the aura that it's small stakes to
| you. Multiple cash game hustlers have written about this
| phenomenon.
| moonchrome wrote:
| Generalizing gambling anecdotes sounds like a huge leap.
| busterarm wrote:
| Gambling shows you a person's true nature.
| bloodyplonker22 wrote:
| This is the type of equality of opportunity that is worth
| fighting for rather than the racist type which included acts such
| as affirmative action.
| BuckyBeaver wrote:
| [dead]
| LarryMullins wrote:
| The last time this sort of class-awareness trend got started in
| America was Occupy Wall Street, and the corporate media killed
| it by platforming and showcasing the looniest most alienating
| fringes of that movement, starting the descent into the
| 'racist' style of progressive activism which most of the public
| find alienating (https://www.pewresearch.org/fact-
| tank/2019/02/25/most-americ...)
|
| I think they'll do it again. If this movement finds legs and
| makes itself hard to ignore, then the corporate media will once
| again use their editorial powers to shift the conversation away
| from the class narrative, probably again in the direction of
| divisive race politics.
| bloodyplonker22 wrote:
| Occupy Wall street was not really about equality of
| opportunity. It was more about equality of outcome.
| bobwaycott wrote:
| Indeed. The historically proven and repeated best method to
| kill any moment of social and political consciousness that
| unites multiple segments of society across race, class, and
| gender lines is to turn everyone's attention to a new
| divisive identity politics--breaking down the common threads
| that bring people of vastly different backgrounds together to
| mutually support and advocate for each other.
|
| Sadly, the weak left in the US falls for it every time,
| shrinking at each step, becoming incapable of providing a
| vision for a better future for all--because they all start
| fighting over who's doing the identity politics thing better.
| The right uselessly plays into the new narrative by fighting
| over how much they should have to even care about the new
| identity politics, arguing for a return to the time before
| the identity politics became the dominant theme.
|
| With both sides playing a pointless game, the damage is done
| --the fight that united people rarely returns with the same
| force it had before (as people exhaust themselves over
| divisive identity politics), and neoliberal dominance secures
| another decade or so of relative ease and impunity.
| antegamisou wrote:
| Hopefully Americans eventually are waking up and realize that
| the actual oppressors can be any of race/gender identity/sexual
| orientation, but what they all have in common is revenue that
| either directly or indirectly cone from the exploitation of the
| masses.
| paulpauper wrote:
| I think federal funding should be contingent on full transparency
| of everything. You do not get money unless everything is
| disclosed.
| colechristensen wrote:
| Let's be careful with this kind of thinking. I accepted federal
| funding in the form of student loans, should they get full
| transparency for everything in my life as well?
|
| I drive on federally funded roads, should they get recording
| devices to see and hear my every move?
| twic wrote:
| If you are receiving government support for your benefit, no.
| If you are receiving government support to provide benefits
| to others, yes.
| BuckyBeaver wrote:
| [dead]
| toomuchtodo wrote:
| Hedge funds with a college attached aren't beholden to federal
| dollars.
|
| Edit: I stand corrected, and I rescind my assertion.
|
| https://www.openthebooks.com/assets/1/7/Oversight_IvyLeagueI...
| pyuser583 wrote:
| There's only one reputable college in America that is free of
| federal funding - Hillsdale College.
|
| All the others take federal money in some way, shape, or
| form.
| lotsofpulp wrote:
| They are receiving plenty of dollars from federal taxpayer
| guaranteed student loans, that they otherwise would not
| without the government.
| q1w2 wrote:
| I used to work in the admissions office of a top 5 school in the
| US.
|
| I was naive and initially shocked by "the list" when I was told
| about it. A list of applicants who were the children of faculty,
| staff, very large benefactors, and politicians. They could NOT be
| denied by any admissions councilor without a very serious reason
| (eg. convicted of a violent crime).
|
| I raised an eyebrow.
|
| Then I discovered that that list accounted for a full 25% of
| EVERY incoming class. Literally hundreds of students per year.
|
| I raised the other eyebrow.
|
| Then I realized that the constant and extreme push for diversity
| recruiting was to obfuscate the obvious nepotism and secrecy in
| admissions. The remaining part of the incoming class had to
| vastly overachieve diversity metrics so anyone questioning
| admissions or seeking transparency could be easily demonized for
| being <insert insult>.
|
| They will never ever EVER allow transparency in admissions.
| Ekaros wrote:
| And at that point. I think it should be entirely open auction.
| 25% of incoming class going to highest bidder in order. Then
| that money would be used to lower tuition of the other 75%.
| julienchastang wrote:
| > Then I discovered that that list accounted for a full 25% of
| EVERY incoming class.
|
| This is open knowledge. From the WSJ,
| https://www.wsj.com/articles/to-get-into-the-ivy-league-
| extr...:
|
| ```
|
| Nearly half of white students admitted to Harvard between 2009
| and 2014 were recruited athletes, legacy students, children of
| faculty and staff, or on the dean's interest list--applicants
| whose parents or relatives have donated to Harvard, according
| to a 2019 study published in the National Bureau of Economic
| Research.
|
| At Harvard, low-income students with top academic scores had an
| admit rate of 24% compared to 15% for all other applicants,
| according to a 2013 study by the school. Harvard has said it
| believes enrolling a diverse student body is important because
| the school wants students to learn to work with people from
| different backgrounds.
|
| "The middle class tends to get a little bit neglected," said
| Hafeez Lakhani, a private college counselor in New York who
| charges $1,200 an hour. "Twenty years ago, Ms. Younger would
| have had a good shot at an Ivy League school."
|
| ```
| groffee wrote:
| It's open knowledge NOW, not when OP discovered it. You
| clearly wouldn't get into the class.
| graphe wrote:
| > The prospective class action filed last year against 17 schools
| alleged a price-fixing conspiracy in which schools restricted
| financial aid, causing a class of potentially more than 200,000
| students to over-pay for tuition by tens of millions of dollars.
| The lawsuit survived an early bid by the schools to dismiss it.
|
| What does this mean? They didn't qualify for student aid, they
| qualifed and were denied, or they went to a school, saw they
| could have paid less and were upset?
| Spivak wrote:
| One school cuts their financial aid program, sucks but not
| illegal. Every school cuts their financial aid program, smells
| like price fixing. Students would have chosen a school with a
| more attractive financial aid program, which is a real effect
| -- it's super common to apply a bunch of similar schools and go
| to the one that gives you the most financial aid but the
| allegation is that all the programs dried up all at once and
| not going to college at all pretty much isn't an option for a
| lot of fields.
|
| Without some kind of intervention that prevents employers using
| college degrees for employment decisions we're gonna be here a
| while.
| Overtonwindow wrote:
| Universities these days seem to contain a lot of social gangs,
| roaming around, looking to see where they can exert power and
| influence. Generally through outrage and cancelling of others.
| Truly, this is not what university is supposed to be.
| WhatsName wrote:
| I too made that assumption before reading the article. But
| after reading it, that does not seem like making the wealthy
| the new "woke" nemesis. They much rather seek to uncover
| institutional corruption, where donations to a college yield
| better chances for your kid in getting accepted.
|
| Let's not kid ourselfs that is not a wild conspiracy or some
| socialist agenda. Ending corruption is in everybodies interest,
| except you are planing to yourself profit from that system by
| making strategic donations in your offsprings interest.
| analog31 wrote:
| My kids are both university students right now. One at the
| state "flagship" university, the other at a regional campus. I
| ask them about things that I read in the news about higher ed.
| Basically, they're aware of this stuff, and have opinions on
| it, but it hasn't really affected them.
| Barrin92 wrote:
| That's literally what university has been for hundreds of years
| if not since medieval times. Practically any social movement or
| organisation of relevance can trace their roots back to an
| academic society largely from elite schools.
| ffggffggj wrote:
| That's definitely how right wing media portrays them. The
| reality is quite a lot more varied and nuanced. You should talk
| to some undergrads if you can! You may be surprised that things
| aren't as you've been told.
| mc32 wrote:
| Yep same about police actions. Sometimes they are in the
| wrong and abuse their power, but for the most part they're
| doing their job, but if you listen to the media they're at
| war with poor people.
| sidlls wrote:
| I don't need the media to see that. For one, I lived it as
| a poor person. For another, not being poor anymore, I still
| see it on a practically daily basis when I'm at the office.
| oneoff786 wrote:
| The problem with police brutality is not that it's
| commonplace, but that there are no repercussions for it. If
| blatantly abusive cops were held accountable the issue
| would not be as problematic.
| mc32 wrote:
| I agree with you. Anywhere where thee is limited due
| process is a problem including university campuses as
| well as police departments.
| mc32 wrote:
| Oh the halcyon days when all we wanted to do was study to get
| good grades and get out while ignoring the partying and fun by
| the Greek sisterhood and brotherhood campus orgs.
| sidlls wrote:
| Social and class cliques are a real thing. The so-called
| networking benefits at elite schools like Princeton and
| Stanford don't translate as well or as often to poor students,
| for example.
| mistrial9 wrote:
| your bias is showing here -- guaranteed plenty of elite
| athletes, intellectual talents, hard workers or charismatic
| individuals have a whole new life after participating in
| those places or others.
| paulpauper wrote:
| I think cancel culture is worse at lower ranking institutions.
| It's hard to think of any notable recent incidents at top
| universities. Could be wrong.
| swarnie wrote:
| Depends how you want to define "cancel culture"
|
| I can think of a few notable examples from arguably the
| highest ranked university, Oxford.
| mistrial9 wrote:
| UC Berkeley in particular has embarrassed itself and the
| legacy of Free Speech by hissing, screaming attacks on
| several individuals in public, to drown out their voices.
| Combine that with other very active culture-wars elements
| (not mentioned now) and this grand institution is now wetting
| the bed, so to speak.
| alasdair_ wrote:
| What is the solution? To limit the free speech of the ones
| doing the screaming?
| ameister14 wrote:
| I doubt that it helps their antitrust allegation move forward if
| they cannot also show that students were _denied_ for needing
| financial aid, but it might shake some things loose.
| Analemma_ wrote:
| To the people complaining about this: this is actually a _very_
| positive development that I welcome and you should too. This
| entire time, elite U.S. colleges have been carefully steering
| conversations about admissions in the direction of racial quotas,
| to avoid talking about how by _far_ the largest driver of
| unfairness in the admissions process is legacy admissions and
| donation quid pro quo arrangements. If you want to make college
| admissions more fair, attacking those is way more bang for your
| buck than anything to do with race, and now some students are not
| falling for the distraction anymore and asking to see behind the
| curtain.
|
| Expect colleges to fight this much, much harder than they ever
| did for anything related to affirmative action, because this is
| actually hitting them where it hurts.
| Telemakhos wrote:
| Imagine what would happen if colleges fired their admissions
| departments, set aside all considerations of wealth and race,
| and had a database admit students with a single query on a
| result of standardized test results ordered from highest score
| to lowest, accepting students in that order until the year's
| class was filled.
| jedberg wrote:
| That's how University of California admissions used to work
| for the most part. The formula was:
| Weighted GPA * 1000 + SAT Score + SAT II English + SAT II
| Math + max(remaining SAT II scores)
|
| Then they ordered everyone by that number, and if say they
| were offering 5000 kids admission, the top 2500 would
| automatically get an offer letter. Then they would work their
| way down the list reading essays and adding bonuses for
| things like growing up in a rural area or an underfunded
| district with fewer AP classes.
|
| They would then just keep admitting people until they hit
| 5000 offers.
|
| Then they got accused of racism because that process ended up
| overweighting Whites and Asians compared to the applicant
| pool for all the top schools.
|
| There is/was a lot of debate on why Whites and Asians did
| better, but when you dug in it turned out they tended to
| almost all be upper-middle class or wealthy. So basically it
| was wealth and systemic racism, masked by "standardized
| testing".
|
| Also it should be noted that wealthy people had a better
| chance at a higher weighted GPA because their schools offered
| more AP courses.
| neonsunset wrote:
| This was going so well until the pivot in the last two
| paragraphs.
|
| Is admitting the most capable students unfair? It is
| inherently discriminatory based on their knowledge and
| ability, which seems is what people want, but it also means
| that having more resources to be better equipped aka better
| nurture, which tends to positively influence individual's
| prospects, is suddenly something many are not okay with?
|
| Obviously, the SAT tests _are_ flawed one way or another.
| But then again, they don 't care for students' superficial
| characteristics.
|
| If not that, then implied statement is very reminiscent to
| slogans used in USSR or during cultural revolution in
| China.
| jedberg wrote:
| > Is admitting the most capable students unfair?
|
| Are they actually the most capable students, or did they
| just have a better chance of getting higher scores on the
| arbitrary metrics chosen? And if so, why did they have a
| higher chance?
|
| There is a difference between better nurture and lack of
| opportunity. It's true, we shouldn't be correcting for
| lack of opportunity at the college admissions level, we
| should be doing it at the elementary level and younger.
|
| But it's a lot easier to correct it at the college
| admissions level, which is a good choke point in one's
| life path, so for now, that is where the focus is.
| Telemakhos wrote:
| Would different test-based or merit-based metrics
| radically change the result? After all, isn't the purpose
| of a holistic approach to college admissions basically to
| make the criterion not one of any measurement of quality
| merit, but of belonging to the right demographic mix that
| the college seeks to attain?
|
| Further, why should colleges try to correct for lack of
| opportunity? Their job is to educate people, and not
| everyone is apt for higher education. Admitting a student
| with poor mathematical abilities into a rigorous
| engineering program is just setting that student up for
| failure, not recompensing him for opportunities lost or
| squandered earlier.
| jedberg wrote:
| > Further, why should colleges try to correct for lack of
| opportunity?
|
| Public schools should do it because they are part of the
| education system that needs correction.
|
| Private schools arguably are still part of the public
| education system since they all get Federal dollars, and
| thus the same argument applies.
|
| If they're getting tax dollars, that makes them a public
| good, and therefore they should be doing things that help
| all people, not just some people.
| danheskett wrote:
| You've accidental confused achievement and ability.
|
| A student who goes to a poor school who offers zero AP
| classes will _always_ achieve lower weighted GPAs than
| students who go to wealthy schools that offer many AP
| classes. No amount of individual achievement will
| overcome that mathematical disadvatnage.
|
| Racism comes into when, because of racism, it just so
| happens that schools who are well funded and can give
| that advantage are overwhelmingly white, and schools who
| are are poorly funded and cannot give that advantage are
| overwhelmingly non-white.
|
| Suggesting that a student who is "placed above his or her
| station" into an elite program is setup for failure is a
| favorite of a few SCOTUS Justices, but in fact is not
| supported by evidence. Graduation and other metrics of
| success are not strongly correlated to past attainment,
| primarily because most programs have already had to deal
| with achievement inequities, and the most successful
| programs already have mechanisms to even out unequal
| prior achievement. Virtually all programs that have elite
| programs already have a substantial apparatus dedicated
| to filling achievement gaps between incoming students.
|
| The larger question of "what is the purpose of college"
| and "is it to educate people" is bigger than this thread,
| but shouldn't be overlooked. For schools that are
| publicly funded in whole or part, there should be a
| larger mission than sending young adults through an
| educational meat grinder. The public mission of public
| universities should absolutely have a social justice
| component.
|
| There is absolutely no doubt that we could design an
| education system which, at an early age, divides and
| tracks students towards a successful and high level of
| attainment. By ruthlessly focusing resources on those
| children with the best chances of success, and minimizing
| resources expended on those with lower changes of
| success, the system could produce many multiples of
| positive outcomes than we do now, but at the cost of many
| more left with almost no attainment. Our present
| distribution of resources, in the US, is haphazardly
| assembled and produces a balance of outcomes, but is by
| no means optimized for any particular set of outcomes.
| neonsunset wrote:
| A student with a full family and access to tutors, with
| better mental health and social situation will be able to
| score significantly better.
|
| However, the downside to "solving" this is significantly
| worse. By giving a headstart to students based on their
| superficial or socioeconomical characteristics creates
| perverse incentives in the system and disconnects it from
| a selection process.
|
| Usually, countries that are not US solve this by
| providing free tutorships or lectures to aspiring
| students, scholarships and a fixed quota of free
| placements in the admission for top performing students
| (each country may have their own flavour of the policy,
| but the main thing they !fortunately! did not use to be
| based on race or gender).
|
| It is usually much better, in my personal opinion, to
| provide the "help" to those who seek it rather than
| trying to equalize for outcome. Poor upbringing can and
| usually does damage and incapacitates individuals to an
| extent. But any movement among the lines of "not having
| issues or being better prepared means you have to do more
| work" explicitly discourages the optimal behaviour,
| incentivizing victim-hood and demoralizes individuals
| which did use the opportunities available to them or
| managed to create ones.
|
| Again, and I cannot stress this enough, communism _is_
| bad.
| jedberg wrote:
| I agree with you. This should not be solved at the
| college admissions level. Resources should be provided to
| younger students with potential to equalize there. But
| it's still better than doing nothing at all.
|
| > Again, and I cannot stress this enough, communism is
| bad.
|
| Again I agree with you. But I'm not sure how that's
| relevant. Changing the way we do college admissions isn't
| communism.
|
| In fact, admitting students purely based on test scores
| is something that happens in communist countries.
| graphe wrote:
| > Are they actually the most capable students, or did
| they just have a better chance of getting higher scores
| on the arbitrary metrics chosen? And if so, why did they
| have a higher chance?
|
| They are the most capable. You call them abitrary,
| without stating what makes them arbitrary. Until you
| prove they're arbitrary, your opinion isn't worth
| addressing.
| janalsncm wrote:
| Ironically present-day Chinese college admissions are
| arguably far more meritocratic than American college
| admissions. The main factor is performance on the Gaokao
| exam, an 8 hour test which dwarfs the SAT's 3 hours.
| cm2187 wrote:
| I am too remote from this system to have strong opinions
| but I also heard all the princelings are doing great at
| those exams!
| graphe wrote:
| Then we'd have heavy cramming, less fun, suicides and
| pressure like china south Korea or Japan. For better or
| worst.
| rfrey wrote:
| Then you would have universities exclusively populated by
| people who are good at taking whatever type of standardized
| test you're administering.
| Telemakhos wrote:
| Are you suggesting that having people capable of scoring
| well on exams of common necessities for college education,
| like mathematics and language skills, is not desirable? The
| SAT is not a trivia test: a student who can pass a test on
| math up through precalculus is going to get more value out
| of college than one who does not understand algebra and has
| to spend time in remediation. I would much prefer to have a
| university exclusively populated by people good at solving
| math problems and comprehending readings than by people
| selected for their "good vibes" and to fit a diversity
| quota.
| halostatue wrote:
| I took the SAT decades ago, so the predictive nature of
| the SAT may have changed since -- but I doubt that it has
| changed that much.
|
| At that time, the SAT was good at predicting the likely
| performance of a prospective college student ... for one
| term. That's it. I got an excellent score on my SAT (not
| a perfect score, but I thought that it was a bullshit
| measure -- which, like all standardized testing, it is --
| so I didn't care). I did well in my first term, and then
| not so well after that (I ended up doing fine in the end,
| but it took longer to get through a degree program
| because I didn't know what I wanted to be when I grew up;
| I think that Americans, by and large, put too much focus
| on going to university too early and we would be better
| served by an extra year of high school and/or a gap
| year).
|
| One other thing I remember from that time period is that
| a better predictor of overall success in school was
| NOBITH, the Number Of Bathrooms In The House. That is,
| socioeconomic indicators were a better predictor than
| anything else, including nonsense standardized tests like
| the SAT. And given that socioeconomic indicators are a
| better indicator, that is a _strong_ indication that
| there's seriously wasted potential at all levels of
| eduction because we mistakenly equate family
| socioeconomics with success in general.
| jonnybgood wrote:
| You didn't address the comment you're responding to. You
| won't have students who are good at math and language
| skills. You'll have students who are good at taking math
| and language skills standardized tests. Being good at
| math and being good at taking a math standardized test is
| two different things. A student can excel at math but be
| terrible at taking tests for many reasons. You'll have
| bright students falling through the cracks if this was
| the only consideration for admission.
| janalsncm wrote:
| How do you know that this hypothetical student "excels"
| at math if their performance can't be measured? Students
| can and are already given reasonable accommodations. Sure
| tests may be imperfect but I am highly skeptical of any
| claim that math test performance and academic math
| performance are not highly correlated.
| therealcamino wrote:
| What would happen is you'd still get a result shaped by
| wealth and race, just laundered through a layer of
| standardized testing.
| [deleted]
| graphe wrote:
| Which races are barred from wealth?
| thesausageking wrote:
| It would be a lot worse. Harvard could fill its classes 4x
| over with students with perfect SATs and GPAs. They would
| miss out on the ones who published ground breaking biology
| papers, wrote code for important open source projects, etc.
|
| It would also put a ton of pressure on high school students
| to get perfect scores, creating a ton more stress than they
| already have. And at the expense of much more valuable things
| they could be doing with their time.
|
| The current system has issues, but there are worse ways to do
| things.
| janalsncm wrote:
| This suggests to me that the SAT isn't hard enough then.
| That many students should not be able to get perfect
| scores.
|
| The number of high school or undergrads who wrote
| groundbreaking biology papers is vanishingly small, but you
| do raise a good point. There's a chicken and egg problem.
| Because schools aren't just weighting test scores (because
| the score is flawed) there is incentive to work on other,
| more subjective things.
| cm2187 wrote:
| You are describing the French elitist educational system
| until maybe 15y ago. This counterintuitively resulted in very
| little diversity.
|
| There might be natural reasons for that but there were also
| clearly some perverse effects: because those exams became
| effectively competitive exams (fixed number of seats
| available), they require intense preparation in preparatory
| schools which became the educational equivalent of a 2-3y
| navy seal bootcamp (it's not enough to have good grades, you
| need the best grades). Teachers in poor area high schools
| were often unfamiliar and intimidated by this system (they
| didn't go through it themselves), and were actively
| discouraging good students to take that path. Students not
| having educated parents who knew the system were not pushed
| to work really hard to get into, and survive that system
| either. And you ended up with 80%-90% of the kids in those
| colleges coming from families from similar colleges. Money
| wouldn't be a major factor, the top colleges and preparatory
| schools are free.
|
| Now the natural ratio shouldn't be 3-5% (elite college
| educated parent as % of general population), probably around
| 50-60%, certainly not 80-90%.
|
| For the past 15y, France has opted to break the thermometer
| instead, ie to bypass those exams for the majority of the
| recruitment, and to select students on file which grants them
| full latitude for subjectivity. I suspect they also
| nationalised the selection process of those preparatory
| schools (not super familiar with the latest developments). I
| think the main consequence is that those elite colleges will
| quickly lose their prestige, and it might actually be the
| unstated intention, i.e. converge to a german like education
| system where the name and prestige of the university matters
| little vs the profile of the student.
|
| It might be a good thing or perhaps it will just ruin the
| french educational system, it's hard to tell.
| [deleted]
| vagabund wrote:
| > U.S. colleges have been carefully steering conversations
| about admissions in the direction of racial quotas, to avoid
| talking about how by far the largest driver of unfairness in
| the admissions process is legacy admissions and donation quid
| pro quo arrangements.
|
| A lesson that generalizes well. Remember Occupy Wall Street,
| Piketty's tome, the Bernie primaries? It all feels like distant
| history now.
| latency-guy2 wrote:
| Only if you have been led to believe any of those things were
| popular.
|
| Occupy Wall Street had participants that counted at most
| 30,000 cumulatively across demonstrations in NY and
| surrounding areas. Impressive number? Not in my opinion.
|
| Admittedly, I have no idea what the hell 'Piketty's tome' is,
| so I won't talk about it, seems like its related to a few
| books that sold 1.5m copies, pretty successful, that's it
| from me for now though.
|
| Bernie in 2016 received ~43% of the vote in democratic
| primaries, in 2020 he slipped down to ~26%, neither times was
| he close. Hillary received ~55% in 2016, Joe received ~51% in
| 2020. Opinion polls consistently put Hillary far above Bernie
| throughout the entire election season. In 2020, Joe also had
| the highest approval rating amongst candidates in DNC, only
| dropping for a few weeks where admittedly Bernie had higher
| approval, but then dropped it when it really mattered.
|
| So you'll have to point to me where exactly these people are
| popular, maybe within their own world? Maybe by spending?
| That only works for Bernie, not for Occupy Wall Street which
| was a very minor event by all measures. Can't speak to
| Picketty, so I will leave that undecided on my end, and let
| you define it's success.
|
| Note, I am far from a Democrat or a Socialist, in fact I'm
| Republican through and through.
| havelhovel wrote:
| You are spot on. I'm a middle-class student who played the game
| to get into one of the six schools mentioned in this article.
| It was immediately obvious that the "diversity" of my school
| came from a large number of dual citizens living a life of
| luxury and privilege. Racial quotas were a red carpet for the
| international elite who spoke the same language and shared the
| same life experiences regardless of their race, whether they
| came from anti-Democratic countries or upstate New York. These
| same individuals got special platforms to talk about adversity
| while I went to bed hungry. I am grateful for the financial aid
| that was given to me, and I will always appreciate the large
| endowment that supported this, but I hope the admissions system
| gets exposed for what it is.
| AtlasBarfed wrote:
| And this will be very very good popcorn-munching drama.
|
| I mean, I do think that students getting in because daddy gives
| a couple million isn't the end of the world.
|
| The college I went to 20 years ago went away from need-blind
| admissions, which basically meant if you can pay you get some
| preference. Now THAT was bad, because it affected the general
| student population. If instead you have a reserved number of
| "bribe" students and that means pure-merit admissions can be
| done with the rest of the students, well, ok.
|
| I love how admissions of athletes to play sports gets a total
| pass. Probably because it putatively is a good means for
| minorities to get into schools, even if they are separated off
| into purely sports training tracks and joke academics.
|
| The real issue is the MBAs running the colleges as a profit
| industry. Except there's no profits, so they pay... themselves.
| busterarm wrote:
| > I love how admissions of athletes to play sports gets a
| total pass. Probably because it putatively is a good means
| for minorities to get into schools, even if they are
| separated off into purely sports training tracks and joke
| academics.
|
| And sadly, even if they succeed on this track into the world
| of professional sports, the joke academics and lack of
| financial training (if you had a financial education you
| would never play college sports anyway...) mean that they're
| set up to go broke and fail in life as soon as the injuries
| add up or their athletic ability is no longer exceptional to
| their peer group.
| zumu wrote:
| > the largest driver of unfairness in the admissions process is
| legacy admissions and donation quid pro quo arrangements
|
| From my personal experiences, I suspect the restriction of
| financial aid based on arbitrary cutoffs affects more people. I
| know several people who got into ivys, but didn't go because
| they didn't qualify for financial aid and chose not to take on
| large amounts of debt, coming from frugal lower/middle class
| families.
| remote_phone wrote:
| I agree but I'm always wondering how admissions departments and
| those who are in charge benefit from donations. I understand
| bribery, but this is a bit different. If the money goes to
| universities for a donation, do people somehow get rewarded for
| this?
| HarryHirsch wrote:
| It's all about access - donate money, get your children into
| a place where they can have access to political and
| professional networks. That's the University of Southern
| California admissions scandal.
|
| More money gets you a voice in hiring committees where you
| can set the tone of the department and shape political
| discourse. The Koch brothers (those people again) did that
| very successfully with George Mason University when they
| transformed what was a commuter college into a megaphone for
| libertarian ideas.
| Kon-Peki wrote:
| > It's all about access - donate money, get your children
| into a place
|
| There is also a flip side to this coin, which is why
| universities usually call this the "development" office.
|
| If you are going to give money away, you are very likely to
| give it to an organization to which you have some sort of
| affinity to. Universities are actively trying to cultivate
| that affinity so they can capture some or all of your
| charitable spending. And they really, really don't want any
| donor to know how much they've been manipulated. Many
| people really believe that their child earned their
| admission letter based on merit.
| 1123581321 wrote:
| The charitable read is that large donations and perennial
| benefactors are good for the school, and admissions considers
| the welfare of the school in addition to other factors.
| at_a_remove wrote:
| Used to work in a university, pretty close to the data. The
| Alumni & Donations people played things _very_ close to the
| chest, to the point of near irrational paranoia (wait, you
| want us to give alumni access to this stuff but ... not let
| us know who the alumni _are_?), so I think the fight for this
| kind of information is going to be quite intense.
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