Stanford University data glitch exposes truth about scholarships
sfchronicle.com
sfchronicle.com
At least they are teaching their students the ethics they need to succeed in the financial industry.
University too, can have a diversity policy as well as a merit policy. To compete and attract the best students, University must either provide merit based scholarship, or organize with other universities to get rid of merit based scholarships everywhere (cartel!)
If it’s not need-based, don’t insist it’s need-based.
To play devil's advocate here: the press and the public do not want to hear that tech companies pay 7 digits of monthly salary to attract some talent. Nor do they want to hear that Universities have to offer merit based scholarships to attract top students, otherwise these students will go elsewhere.
Companies advertise their diversity efforts but not the salaries of their executives. Stanford said what the public wanted to hear.
It'll be nice when we start to culturally grow up a bit and begin trusting the world. Collaboration/hybridization is much quicker than competition when it comes to genetic evolution & I suspect the same holds for cultural evolution.
"[Allcock’s report] says the school also tells applicants not to reveal to their classmates the size of their discount."
Unwritten or unspoken, it does need to go.
No, this will expose evidences of institutional and systemic racism and question people about the country name. Should it be United State or Segregated State?
We need a design theory based on mindfulness.
This is the best apologism for a liar, because apparently that's what the person lied to 'wanted to hear', according to the liar.
Integrity does not depend on what people want to hear. Stanford can articulate their view point and do their own thing. Lying betrays a lack of belief in their view point and a lack of integrity.
It would appear that scholarships follow a similar vein.
There's a bait and switch that colleges do. Also hospitals, but mostly colleges.
On the one hand they go out and tell people what a value driven organization it is, how their passion is making the world a better place -- when they are asking for money from people almost of whom have far less in the bank than they already do and when they are defending things like very adventagous tax rates.
On the other hand when they get caught doing something that looks unprincipled or rapacious they all of a sudden become economists lecturing you about how of course every organization acts as an interest maximizier and what are you naive?
Well maybe we were naive. But now that everyone knows what the deal is maybe they can lay off the disingenuous appeals for donations and tax expenditures. Fool me once and all that.
Who fights for XYZ must be able to fight and not to fight,
to say the truth and not to say the truth,
to render and to deny service,
to keep a promise and to break a promise,
to go into danger and to avoid danger,
to be known and to be unknown.
Who fights for XYZ has of all the virtues only one:
that he fights for XYZ.
In theory. In practice (history is full of it), the castes develop overnight. A group of individuals has to make decisions and manage the oversight and record keeping, etc. This leads to corruption and a de-facto aristocracy.
Is that not privilege? Why could a government official get a car while a normal person would have to wait years?
Children of government officials got preference at the best universities and jobs. Is that not aristocracy?
Communism is all about privilege — everyone is equal but some people are more equal than others.
/s
In some ideal world alums of that school would immediately turn around and tell the school "You will not get a penny until you terminate everyone who participated in approving and carrying out this program for lying and do so publicly" but instead what we are going to get is more pieces about "how the school needs to get better".
Those should be one policy, the diversity policy is about making sure top talent doesn't go elsewhere . . . your comment implies that people from "diverse" backgrounds are not top talent, whether that's what you meant or not.
Malia Obama is Diverse. John Dorsey from the wrong side of Chicago is just an Urban Youth.
From what I know that doesn't seem to be the case at all, it's about projecting a positive image of your company (The candidates skills are secondary) (Though in theory the standards should be identical)
The hiring practices should be based upon who would be the best candidate (Experience, technical skills, personality, Education)
When you simply focus on what objective skills you need as an employer, you should find "Diverse"/minority candidates in proportion to what percentage of top candidates they occupy.
This surely creates the most level playing field?
I feel the former has stronger gratitude for his school.
We had a large percentage of my graduating high school class end up at ivy league schools. It was interesting to talk to them a decade after they had graduated and were in full swing with their professional career's and life.
One buddy I know who went to Princeton and ended up on Wall St told me they hound him for donations. His fraternity does the same with the emphasis on exactly what you pointed out. He wants his children to have a better chance they he did, so he donates large six figure sums every year to the school and fraternity hoping when his two kids grown up, they will have a leg up on the competition to get in there.
Stanford prefers people with 1 graditut and 3 moneys.
Keep in mind they not only give scholarships but also education to the least in need .
Seems like one could solve this issue by making university cheap or free.
I can't pick words to express just how similar are these two systems.
And in all of those countries, you have huge masses of clueless parents seeing these institutes as something that magically, effortlessly make their children "big men" of higher socioeconomic standing overnight once they graduate.
As for me, my own experience was that it takes a lot to convince parents that Western "big name business school" is a gigantic waste of money if you go there for actual skills and knowledge. And the argument "you go to business school to make connection with kids of other rich people" does not hold water either. All of such students are well connected people to begin with, and are very class conscious themselves. If they see no use of socialising with you, what will make them want doing so?
I wrote another post below explaining how it was for me.
It is essentially an exchange where the student pays a massive amount of tuition money and the university gives them two years to network with people. I believe the goal is to make friends with the folks who were going to get that finance job through their connections anyway, and then maybe they can get YOU a finance job too.
The US Financial sector probably employs 5 million people in this country. You are telling all those people are unethical as your comment implies? That is a bit biased.
This is the downside of diversity and inclusion. Companies and schools have gotten so good at paying lip service to it, we can't tell what kind of bullshit happens on the inside.
It seems like you're faulting society's wish to increase diversity for lies about diversity. And, sure, that's true in the sense that being ask about the issue is necessary for an untruthful answer–but that's just a meaningless truism.
Large changes take time, and there are always setbacks on the way. The environmental movement created the concept of "greenwashing", which seems similar. But even that is progress of sorts, because it's literally "PR for environmentalism". When it's exposed, it promotes schemes such as certifications. And even when not exposed, it establishes good practices as the new norm for next generation.
Name dropping Ellen Pao never helps on HN or reddit. People here really don't like her, whereas she's a hero in other spheres. Nevertheless, I don't agree with everything she did but she offers insight people miss.
If you can convince the people who are getting fleeced that their situation is because they haven’t worked hard enough, they won’t struggle when you steal the coat off their back.
I personally know two other Russians few years older than me who went for Harvard MBA, and now spill bitter tears for spending a big portion of their family fortune for, at best, laughably mediocre education for such price.
And even in the mid-tier college I was going to, I saw that very few people who were getting not even a scholarship, but a "income supplement stipend," usually given to low income students, being given to another Russian guy who was always dressed expensively and casually wore $2000 watch and few other surprisingly well off people.
I instantly understood that they do it in anticipation that if this guy will work in his father's company and earn big buck, they can proudly put his testament and his salary on their graduate outcomes statistics.
Although as I am sure many here would agree, it makes little sense for those who want to participate in startups.
Are people surprised that other people and institutions commit fraud and lie? No. No one is surprised. However when a criminal commits a crime, people react in kind.
She’ll get a better education, have a car at graduation and you will save a lot of money.
I can think of only one: UCLA is a popular transfer school for folks with 2 years of CC.
Here’s an example from a community college near where I grew up.
http://www.hvcc.edu/career-transfer/transfer/articulation_by...
The value varies by major. A good friend of mine went from the engineering sciences major to SUNY Binghamton or Buffalo, where he got an engineering BS and a paid co-op. He ended up paying very little, had no debt, and had a network right out of school to get a job for his PE. Then He started his own engineering practice.
Some state universities have partnerships with other schools for masters programs too. My school had a 3-2 masters program where you’d end up with a state BS/BA and an MS in engineering or sciences from a another school, sometimes public sometimes private.
The nice thing about program transfers vs a normal transfer is that there are no surprises. All of your general education and in-major requirements are met. Anecdotally, it’s a better experience for some majors because the larger universities usually consider teaching a distraction, and you get better instructors and smaller classes for in-major stuff in the CC. Intro to CS in my state school was a hazing ritual designed to reduce a group of 600 students down to 300 for the spring. At the CC, it’s 30-40 kids.
What are you talking about here?
Need-blind admission would be "we'll make the decision of whether to admit you without considering whether you can afford to come". It's analogous to an iPhone offered for sale at $1000, even if you can't afford to pay $1000 for an iPhone.
Need-based aid means charging less money to people who, in your judgment, can't afford more. It's analogous to finding scruffy people on the street and giving them 70% off coupons for iPhones.
There is no logical dependence from one to the other. An Apple store does practice need-blind admission, and definitely does not practice the "required" need-based aid.
The former improves average post-graduation median salary, so it's good for the reputation. But I doubt the latter contributes in the same way.
Not that quick. I'm familiar with a certain department in a certain party school in the Midwest. The faculty in that department is entirely white, with the exception of one Indian, who was hired long ago. There is no reason to believe that the applicant pool contains mostly white people or that the top applicant is invariable white - the job market in the Sciences has been LOUSY the last ten years!
But the department is all-white. You'd think it tells something about the atmosphere in that institution, and indeed it's frankly xenophobic.
> The former improves average post-graduation median salary,
> so it's good for the reputation. But I doubt the latter
> contributes in the same way.
In particular, the data time and again show that in the US wage gaps persist for women and minorities. [0] [1]
So if "diversity candidates" who matriculate to Stanford have above average median salaries post-graduation, these scholarships are "good for the reputation" in the same way.
[0] http://www.pewresearch.org/fact-tank/2016/07/01/racial-gender-wage-gaps-persist-in-u-s-despite-some-progress/
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Racial_wage_gap_in_the_United_States
1. With high-income whites some dumb blokes may sneak in due to privilege and winging it based on family connections, etc. This might be happening at the expense of spunky smart low income whites or blacks who worked harder and were smarter to overcome their disadvantage to get to a point where they’re in the pool of those being considered for admission into Stanford.
2. Diversity hires bring fresh perspectives and help break group-think. In my experience, all-white, all-Indian, all-Asian, etc. teams were always inferior in terms of the experience of working there to diverse teams.
I am fairly certain that a poor white guy would have a very different perspective from one who grew up in a life of privilege but that socioeconomic diversity doesn’t look as good I guess.
I feel like I'm missing some kind of obvious universal common-sense knowledge in having to ask this, but by what mechanism could this possibly come about?
Wow.. I chose the wrong career track.
It's not all that high, since calling them beginners isn't exactly true [0]. It looks like a decent-sized chunk of the students have years of work experience in finance/consulting/tech and some already have advanced degrees. They weren't going to be paid poorly to begin with.
[0] https://www.gsb.stanford.edu/programs/mba/admission/evaluati...
link to book: http://amzn.to/2AqPTfw
I'm surprised that it's not as significant of a difference as I thought initially.
This isn't how data works. It isn't something physical. It's 2017. After the whole media piracy FUD that dragged on for years, everyone should understand how it works. Stanford had the data all along. The article doesn't say that Allcock deleted the data so he may still have it even if he gave Stanford "back" a copy.
He asked that the report not be shared publicly because he has returned the data to the school, which has not disputed its findings.
Although I can understand the fact that he's a student there and wants to remain one, he could've released it all anonymously, perhaps with some redaction of specific personal details; this (recent?) strong desire to toe the line is unfortunate, because it means the school can still distort the facts however it wants.
For example they don't give Honorary degrees and you only have to disclose your financial status and if you need financial help only after been accepted.
But awarding them merit based and then claiming to be needs based is hypocrisy.
[1] - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fisher_v._University_of_Texas_...
that is just the PR side of things. you also have to think of the students.
Stanford lied to potential students and told them that they did not offer merit based scholarships thus inducing them to pay full price. That is an intentional misrepresentation of fact for financial gain on Stanford's part at the expense of students who paid full price.
A good question to ask, though, is why were they lying about it? What message were they trying to send by saying they did not give any merit based awards? What made them instead decide to do the opposite of what they said they were doing?
If your goal is to help disadvantaged people, you should be giving out some combination of need- and merit- based scholarships.
The second part assumes class is the only disadvantage. Perhaps preference for poorer student is the only type of affirmative action accepted by both major US political parties. And I agree money solves a lot of problems, but it doesn't fix every race and gender issues. The best example is all of the famout actresses bringing awareness to sexual assault.
citation?
https://www.theroot.com/black-immigrants-overrepresented-in-...
Can't remember the article I original read. I went to MIT and of the handful of black students I knew well, half were foreign.
Legacy WASP types have had no problem running many institutions, and most of them are pretty average in terms of capability.
The only disadvantaged population (overachieving children of poor immigrants, mainly European and Asian) is discriminated against through affirmative action in the admissions process and apparently also for scholarships.
* Higher for domestic students
* Higher for female students, even though female students had greater savings
This doesn't seem to be a case where they are helping people facing a headwind.
* Grants = need based to enable students who needed financial help.
* Scholarship = merit based to attract the best students
When did this change?
The comments about the rich not needing aid isn't entirely true, having rich parents doesn't automatically mean the child is rich. I would want to see the report in order to draw my own conclusions.
The over looked point - if this had been favoured against females or internationals, you can sure bet there would be massive public outcry, calls for people to quit their posts and protests at the University.
Shitty compared to whom? Who are the examplars of information security universities aren't matching? Academia security doesn't look so bad compared to governmental or corporate security.
Security involves trade-offs and some of universities' lower security is a conscious choice to not impair academic freedom or collaboration.
> apparently doesn't hire any.
If their graduates are as good as claimed, the University can't afford them. And many wouldn't want to work there because most of the University's problems are not interesting.
My opinion, based on my observation at a half dozen campuses is that academic computing is ok, but the central services type stuff (payroll, admissions, accounting, HR) is often underfunded and struggling to meet mushrooming compliance requirements.
Compared to a similar sized organization in another sector, they aren’t as good as a bank, .gov revenue department or insurance company. But they are better than a municipal government, k-12, or retail.
Our security team is relatively new. When I first started back in 2013 we didn't really have one. So if you had a few programmers that didn't understand security, many things got through. We do a much better job now, but I can see how other universities can really struggle.
Given the categories, I'd sooner attribute this to unconscious bias rather than a secret plot to bias towards female and/or international students though.
People just want your business.
It’s expensive being poor.
I only know people who use credit cards to get 2%+ back from their purchases, plus an interest free 20 to 45 day loan. If you're spending with a credit card more than the cash you have on hand, then you're doing it wrong. Obviously, there must be some cohort of people that pay interest, but there's no reason anyone with half a brain can't setup up autopay and earn the cash back benefits and rental car/travel insurance benefits without paying any interest at all.
They could have been doing exactly what you described
I apologize though if I read it incorrectly the first time.
Credit cards are an efficient gateway to a higher credit score which achieves these goals
It is pretty easy to wrap your head around, read a book before you finish concluding debt is irresponsible in all scenarios.
We should be drumming into heads from an early age the real cost of debt, the value of saving, time value of money, when debt makes sense and when it doesn't, etc.
Anyone can open an online account at Vanguard. Imagine what could be done in a generation or two if people would participate in the markets instead of buying lottery tickets and being bitter and envious about "the rich"
Most Americans think "meritocracy" refers to the former. The reality is that it nearly always refers to the latter.