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.
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.
The degree to which the elite institutions have managed to co-opt the left by playing identity progressives against economic progressives is both brilliant and scary. They've managed to paint adding some privileged, Ivy League educated minorities to corporate boards as progressive victories on behalf of minority groups who mostly don't even attend college. Meanwhile there has been zero progress on adding workers to corporate boards, which would do far more to advance the material and social interests of those same minority groups.
> 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.
> 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.
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.
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.
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?
> Lawyers for the schools said in a court filing that the "plaintiffs' goal in pursuing such discovery is to harass and embarrass, rather than because it is relevant to their actual antitrust claim."
> The defense lawyers also called the demand for admissions and development records "intrusive and burdensome."
Prediction: the schools lose, and have to turn over the data.
Maybe if their argument was on privacy of the donors, they'd have a chance. Saying "it's intrusive and burdensome" to ask us for this is utter BS that any judge should see through.
Discovery happens before a trial. The plaintiff gets to ask the defendant for relevant documents. This can be clearly weaponized—the plaintiff can request everything and make the defendant spend a lot of time and money on it. A common recourse is for the defense to argue the initial discovery request is overbroad and burdensome. Often there’s some negotiation but of course the judge makes the ultimate call. I won’t opine on the merits of this particular claim, but it’s a common claim.
It also works both ways. The defendant can dump all sorts of papers on the plaintiff and say, “be careful what you ask for, good luck wading through this!”
I guess the ace in their sleeve is that "harass and embarrass" rhymes. It sticks in your mind and will draw your attention every time you see or hear it being used. That's an easy 10x multiplier to the strength of the argument :).
This is one of those complex topics which on HN, seesm to lead to "it's simple, do X" types of analyses, which tend to be simple, confident, and wrong.
Some facts to consider:
At Harvard, over 40% of non-minority students received special treatment for admissions (which includes factors such as being a legacy, athlete, or the 'dean's list' which was a list of high donating parents). 75% of those would not have been admitted w/o that help. I think this lawsuit is trying to pierce this veil. [1]
For those that argue "meritocracy" and that standardized testing is the answer: the SAT has a correlation of about r=0.3 to 0.5 with first year college GPA. Thus, the explained variance (r*2) is about 9% to 25%, meaning as much as 81% of college success is not statstically predicted by the SAT. [2]
> For those that argue "meritocracy" and that standardized testing is the answer: the SAT ...
Maybe other standardized tests are or could be better predictors. Some countries rely exclusively on them for admission (and if I'm not wrong, also the US is some specialized fields such as law or medicine).
> 75% of those would not have been admitted w/o that help
this not making a claim anywhere near as interesting as it pretends. Since you're using a %, what is the % difference in quality that admitting these 75% makes (assuming it's even true, considering I don't believe much from the Guardian) and how does that (what the author calls "affirmative action") compare with other affirmative actions taken to achieve a balanced class? were they otherwise 99% good enough, or only 10% good enough?
My money is on above 90% because I went to an elite school (that has no legacy) and lots of people there were extremely highly qualified, and the ones who weren't did not fall in a pattern of being wealthy or whatever, probably better explained by something like your evidence of how ineffective IQ (what SAT does correlate to) or high school grades are in predicting college GPA and how effective GPA is or isn't in predicting future contributions. I find grades have much more to do with psychological makeup, like do you rebel against authority, or knuckle under. Good grades are valuable, but don't tell the whole story of your value as a contributor, sometimes screwed up and crazy genius works better. But either way, shouldn't that be up to the school what combinations they wish to place their bets on?
Seems like you are going down the path of presenting the reality, where a lot of people will ignore "wealth favoritism", cronyism, nepotism, etc... But mention affirmative action, specifically minorities of color as oppose to women of a certain persuasion (also ignored or given a pass), and things can get real hot and tribalistic, real fast.
Well sir/madam, good luck with your arguments and evidence. At the very least, as it's doubtful such biases or prejudices that protects systematic advantages and socioeconomic position will be altered, it will make for a good popcorn read.
It does not look to me the SAT study you linked to concludes what you claim it concludes.
You are saying in 81% of the cases the SAT score is useless. They are saying this:
When HSGPA (high school GPA) and SAT are combined, the correlation with FYGPA jumps to .61, an increase of .08 and a 15% boost in predictive utility over using HSGPA alone.
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.
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.”
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%.
> 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?
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.
No the students did receive aid and they probably received more aid than they would at almost any other school in the country. Of course there are cheaper sticker price options like in-state public universities, but specifically talking about the aid, it is quite good at elite schools. If people want to be mad about kids getting ripped off they should be mad at mediocre private U that has the same sticker price with a worse product and substantially worse aid packages.
Anyway the claim in the lawsuit about lost money is really just theoretical - most of the top schools collaborate in developing methods to determine how much aid a student should receive. The lawsuit is claiming that if the top schools could not "collude" on aid, students would have gotten more of it.
However I think that is a massive assumption that is not going to play out the way they would like. These schools reject 100s of qualified people every year that would gladly take a spot with current aid packages. There might be an occasional superstar that schools do compete over, but your average small town middle class 1600 SAT kid is super fucking replaceable.
Hell I could see aid being lower if schools didn't "collude", because being part of this need blind consortium is good PR. The lesser schools that give lesser aid are the ones that supposedly don't collude.
Legally it will be an interesting case though - the reason these schools are allowed to work together on aid package formulas is because they practice need blind admissions, which really only the top unis do. The lawsuit argues that admissions is not actually need blind, because of preferential admission for wealthy donors and some other admissions dynamics that are more common and inadvertently factor in wealth.
That makes this discovery highly relevant to the case, and while I think need blind status will be ultimately upheld, I'm sure the schools don't want the info getting out.
Interestingly, the initial lawsuit is based purely on public info and a handful of salty (unclear why) students. There isn't private info about people's aid packages or anything like that supporting it as far as I can find. I suspect the people suing realized they had an argument the schools weren't actually need blind, and that is what they actually wanted to challenge, so they dug up an argument about supposed low ball aid packages because the need blind schools form an aid consortium.
A lot of the articles about the lawsuit have left out critical details about what is actually being claimed, the claims make no sense until you realize this is actually about challenging need blind status. Here is an article that does touch on the key issues: https://www.nytimes.com/2022/01/10/us/financial-aid-lawsuit-...
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.
They are private universities, why does it matter in the first place?
Should Catholic seminaries be forced to admit islamic students? Jeff Bezos has a $150 million house in Los Angeles, should he be forced to allow the homeless to live there?
There are a lot of other universities.
But if we are going to be strict about it, then it should be strict. We have to look at the exact makeup of every single group of people in the USA and make everything is exact. So that means Jewish students should make up only 2% of elite schools, Catholics should make up 22% of the student body, 1.1% should be muslims, 14% of students must be black, hispanics must be 18.7%, 58% must be white, 7.2% of students Asian and of course must divide it more and more. We have to figure out how many left handed students must be allowed to be in elite universities, how many with crooked vs straight teeth. This is all wonderful stuff.
Of course at universities, 50% should be men and 50% should be women. Right now, 60% of students are women and 40% are men, universities must stop admitting so many women, that is very clear. Universities should only allow 50/50.
At the premier public university of UC Berkeley, 36% are Asian and so that must be adjusted downwards to 7.2%. 23.8% of Cal Berkeley students are white, so of course, the white student population must be increased to 58%. A lot less Asians should be admitted.
At UCLA, 58.6% are women, so that has to come down so it is 50%. 28% of the student body are Asian, so that has to come down to 7.2%. White are 26.3% so that has to be adjusted up to 58%. Hispanics are 22.6%, that has to come down to 18.7%.
Of course, this must happen at every single university.
I am starting to see how this game should be played now.
> They are private universities, why does it matter in the first place?
It's not because something is private that suddenly no regulations apply. Regarding universities, I don't think the issue is that some category is over-represented, but the fairness of the admission process. That being said, with affirmative action, the admission process is already biased and isn't on academical merit alone.
This is a problem markets can fix. The only way you get into an elite school is you donate a lot of money, you were admitted for color, or you know how to play the game. None of these abilities are things businesses should value, and I'd rather take a top student from a top state school because they're competent at the right things.
It’s very rare that “be highly competent” alone is enough to optimize for (ethical) success.
People, including one’s customers, often have drivers other than competence (e.g., significance or likability). Knowing how to cater to those drivers while also being competent is a fairly common and consistent recipe for success.
As I understand it, most "elite" universities give special consideration to the children of parents who make large donations, in order to encourage such donations.
Is this not well known?
I have heard a couple of arguments in favor of the practice:
1) It brings more money into the university (most important reason for the university)
2) It enables the university to admit and educate a larger number of students than it could otherwise afford to (potentially pro-social reason)
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?
It sounds like the issue isn't the wealth favoritism, it's that the colleges all explicitly state that they don't favor applicants due to wealth. The former has always been true on one level: they're expensive. The latter is presumably due to restrictions on various funding systems requiring them to not have any wealth favoritism.
If the claims of the suit are true, then it's presumably trying to use proxies for wealth rather than explicitly saying "give us $$$s and we'll let you in"/
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.
Graduating from an elite college is tautologically wealth signaling, so why would the same interested students complain about that fact while at the same time perpetuate its significance?
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
Part of the issue with this is that wealthy people are often wealthy because they're very smart, and being smart is in part due to genetics. So it follows that smart children will disproportionately have wealthy parents, and that will lead to more children of wealthy parents in high ranking colleges. This has been proven many times, most famously in the NLSY which surveyed thousands of kids over the course of their life, and researchers found if you adjusted for IQ you could predict a child's future income well, and you could predict which children of wealthy parents were likely to build more wealth or lose it all by looking at their IQ.
Unfortunately the courts have a history of disallowing the use of IQ, viewing it as a violation of the civil rights act (see Griggs v. Duke Power Co. for more info). The colleges may be found liable of favoritism towards wealthy students, despite it most likely being the opposite.
It's always been obvious the the wealthy are over represented at these schools and that "need blind" admissions somehow result in classes of overly wealthy mixed with just enough middle and lower income folks to blunt the plutocratic sheen a bit.
Presumably need blind admissions skew high income to begin with just because some parts of America verge on third world and illiterate without even taking other factors into account, but I also have to assume their financial aid practices are carefully designed, perhaps with full US government support (FAFSA is a hilarious thing in many respects), to further distill out an appropriately wealthy distribution of admits.
The fact that government money and aid can go to these schools that are so instrumental in the creation and sustenance of elites has always been a farcical betrayal of the democratic ideal.
Very curious how far they've gone to prevent documentation of the kinds of things plaintiffs would know doubt like to know from ever existing to begin with.
[+] [-] Analemma_|3 years ago|reply
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.
[+] [-] havelhovel|3 years ago|reply
[+] [-] rayiner|3 years ago|reply
[+] [-] vagabund|3 years ago|reply
A lesson that generalizes well. Remember Occupy Wall Street, Piketty's tome, the Bernie primaries? It all feels like distant history now.
[+] [-] zumu|3 years ago|reply
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.
[+] [-] AtlasBarfed|3 years ago|reply
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.
[+] [-] Telemakhos|3 years ago|reply
[+] [-] remote_phone|3 years ago|reply
[+] [-] theGnuMe|3 years ago|reply
[+] [-] AlbertCory|3 years ago|reply
> The defense lawyers also called the demand for admissions and development records "intrusive and burdensome."
Prediction: the schools lose, and have to turn over the data.
Maybe if their argument was on privacy of the donors, they'd have a chance. Saying "it's intrusive and burdensome" to ask us for this is utter BS that any judge should see through.
[+] [-] jonstewart|3 years ago|reply
It also works both ways. The defendant can dump all sorts of papers on the plaintiff and say, “be careful what you ask for, good luck wading through this!”
[+] [-] TeMPOraL|3 years ago|reply
[+] [-] dumbotron|3 years ago|reply
I don't even disagree with this, but I'm not sympathetic towards the schools, either.
[+] [-] xmddmx|3 years ago|reply
Some facts to consider:
At Harvard, over 40% of non-minority students received special treatment for admissions (which includes factors such as being a legacy, athlete, or the 'dean's list' which was a list of high donating parents). 75% of those would not have been admitted w/o that help. I think this lawsuit is trying to pierce this veil. [1]
For those that argue "meritocracy" and that standardized testing is the answer: the SAT has a correlation of about r=0.3 to 0.5 with first year college GPA. Thus, the explained variance (r*2) is about 9% to 25%, meaning as much as 81% of college success is not statstically predicted by the SAT. [2]
[1] https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2021/nov/17/harvar...
[2] https://satsuite.collegeboard.org/media/pdf/national-sat-val...
[+] [-] yodsanklai|3 years ago|reply
Maybe other standardized tests are or could be better predictors. Some countries rely exclusively on them for admission (and if I'm not wrong, also the US is some specialized fields such as law or medicine).
[+] [-] fsckboy|3 years ago|reply
this not making a claim anywhere near as interesting as it pretends. Since you're using a %, what is the % difference in quality that admitting these 75% makes (assuming it's even true, considering I don't believe much from the Guardian) and how does that (what the author calls "affirmative action") compare with other affirmative actions taken to achieve a balanced class? were they otherwise 99% good enough, or only 10% good enough?
My money is on above 90% because I went to an elite school (that has no legacy) and lots of people there were extremely highly qualified, and the ones who weren't did not fall in a pattern of being wealthy or whatever, probably better explained by something like your evidence of how ineffective IQ (what SAT does correlate to) or high school grades are in predicting college GPA and how effective GPA is or isn't in predicting future contributions. I find grades have much more to do with psychological makeup, like do you rebel against authority, or knuckle under. Good grades are valuable, but don't tell the whole story of your value as a contributor, sometimes screwed up and crazy genius works better. But either way, shouldn't that be up to the school what combinations they wish to place their bets on?
[+] [-] Tozen|3 years ago|reply
Well sir/madam, good luck with your arguments and evidence. At the very least, as it's doubtful such biases or prejudices that protects systematic advantages and socioeconomic position will be altered, it will make for a good popcorn read.
[+] [-] credit_guy|3 years ago|reply
You are saying in 81% of the cases the SAT score is useless. They are saying this:
[+] [-] q1w2|3 years ago|reply
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.
[+] [-] julienchastang|3 years ago|reply
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.”
```
[+] [-] Ekaros|3 years ago|reply
[+] [-] graphe|3 years ago|reply
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|3 years ago|reply
Without some kind of intervention that prevents employers using college degrees for employment decisions we’re gonna be here a while.
[+] [-] caddemon|3 years ago|reply
Anyway the claim in the lawsuit about lost money is really just theoretical - most of the top schools collaborate in developing methods to determine how much aid a student should receive. The lawsuit is claiming that if the top schools could not "collude" on aid, students would have gotten more of it.
However I think that is a massive assumption that is not going to play out the way they would like. These schools reject 100s of qualified people every year that would gladly take a spot with current aid packages. There might be an occasional superstar that schools do compete over, but your average small town middle class 1600 SAT kid is super fucking replaceable.
Hell I could see aid being lower if schools didn't "collude", because being part of this need blind consortium is good PR. The lesser schools that give lesser aid are the ones that supposedly don't collude.
Legally it will be an interesting case though - the reason these schools are allowed to work together on aid package formulas is because they practice need blind admissions, which really only the top unis do. The lawsuit argues that admissions is not actually need blind, because of preferential admission for wealthy donors and some other admissions dynamics that are more common and inadvertently factor in wealth.
That makes this discovery highly relevant to the case, and while I think need blind status will be ultimately upheld, I'm sure the schools don't want the info getting out.
Interestingly, the initial lawsuit is based purely on public info and a handful of salty (unclear why) students. There isn't private info about people's aid packages or anything like that supporting it as far as I can find. I suspect the people suing realized they had an argument the schools weren't actually need blind, and that is what they actually wanted to challenge, so they dug up an argument about supposed low ball aid packages because the need blind schools form an aid consortium.
A lot of the articles about the lawsuit have left out critical details about what is actually being claimed, the claims make no sense until you realize this is actually about challenging need blind status. Here is an article that does touch on the key issues: https://www.nytimes.com/2022/01/10/us/financial-aid-lawsuit-...
[+] [-] angmarsbane|3 years ago|reply
[+] [-] FrontierPsych|3 years ago|reply
Should Catholic seminaries be forced to admit islamic students? Jeff Bezos has a $150 million house in Los Angeles, should he be forced to allow the homeless to live there?
There are a lot of other universities.
But if we are going to be strict about it, then it should be strict. We have to look at the exact makeup of every single group of people in the USA and make everything is exact. So that means Jewish students should make up only 2% of elite schools, Catholics should make up 22% of the student body, 1.1% should be muslims, 14% of students must be black, hispanics must be 18.7%, 58% must be white, 7.2% of students Asian and of course must divide it more and more. We have to figure out how many left handed students must be allowed to be in elite universities, how many with crooked vs straight teeth. This is all wonderful stuff.
Of course at universities, 50% should be men and 50% should be women. Right now, 60% of students are women and 40% are men, universities must stop admitting so many women, that is very clear. Universities should only allow 50/50.
At the premier public university of UC Berkeley, 36% are Asian and so that must be adjusted downwards to 7.2%. 23.8% of Cal Berkeley students are white, so of course, the white student population must be increased to 58%. A lot less Asians should be admitted.
At UCLA, 58.6% are women, so that has to come down so it is 50%. 28% of the student body are Asian, so that has to come down to 7.2%. White are 26.3% so that has to be adjusted up to 58%. Hispanics are 22.6%, that has to come down to 18.7%.
Of course, this must happen at every single university.
I am starting to see how this game should be played now.
[+] [-] yodsanklai|3 years ago|reply
It's not because something is private that suddenly no regulations apply. Regarding universities, I don't think the issue is that some category is over-represented, but the fairness of the admission process. That being said, with affirmative action, the admission process is already biased and isn't on academical merit alone.
[+] [-] dumbotron|3 years ago|reply
[+] [-] csa|3 years ago|reply
As a business owner, I value this trait highly.
It’s very rare that “be highly competent” alone is enough to optimize for (ethical) success.
People, including one’s customers, often have drivers other than competence (e.g., significance or likability). Knowing how to cater to those drivers while also being competent is a fairly common and consistent recipe for success.
[+] [-] Eumenes|3 years ago|reply
[+] [-] musicale|3 years ago|reply
Is this not well known?
I have heard a couple of arguments in favor of the practice:
1) It brings more money into the university (most important reason for the university)
2) It enables the university to admit and educate a larger number of students than it could otherwise afford to (potentially pro-social reason)
[+] [-] bloodyplonker22|3 years ago|reply
[+] [-] paulpauper|3 years ago|reply
[+] [-] toomuchtodo|3 years ago|reply
Edit: I stand corrected, and I rescind my assertion.
https://www.openthebooks.com/assets/1/7/Oversight_IvyLeagueI...
[+] [-] colechristensen|3 years ago|reply
I drive on federally funded roads, should they get recording devices to see and hear my every move?
[+] [-] BuckyBeaver|3 years ago|reply
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[+] [-] olliej|3 years ago|reply
If the claims of the suit are true, then it's presumably trying to use proxies for wealth rather than explicitly saying "give us $$$s and we'll let you in"/
[+] [-] ameister14|3 years ago|reply
[+] [-] SnowHill9902|3 years ago|reply
[+] [-] Overtonwindow|3 years ago|reply
[+] [-] sidlls|3 years ago|reply
[+] [-] analog31|3 years ago|reply
[+] [-] WhatsName|3 years ago|reply
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.
[+] [-] Barrin92|3 years ago|reply
[+] [-] honeybadger1|3 years ago|reply
[+] [-] voisin|3 years ago|reply
[+] [-] strikelaserclaw|3 years ago|reply
[+] [-] q1w2|3 years ago|reply
[+] [-] guywithahat|3 years ago|reply
Unfortunately the courts have a history of disallowing the use of IQ, viewing it as a violation of the civil rights act (see Griggs v. Duke Power Co. for more info). The colleges may be found liable of favoritism towards wealthy students, despite it most likely being the opposite.
Lastly here's the article if you're also paywalled https://archive.is/PX63H
[+] [-] Glyptodon|3 years ago|reply
Presumably need blind admissions skew high income to begin with just because some parts of America verge on third world and illiterate without even taking other factors into account, but I also have to assume their financial aid practices are carefully designed, perhaps with full US government support (FAFSA is a hilarious thing in many respects), to further distill out an appropriately wealthy distribution of admits.
The fact that government money and aid can go to these schools that are so instrumental in the creation and sustenance of elites has always been a farcical betrayal of the democratic ideal.
Very curious how far they've gone to prevent documentation of the kinds of things plaintiffs would know doubt like to know from ever existing to begin with.