“I Tested into Stanford Through My Own Hard Work.” JK, Her Parents Paid $6.5M
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Of course Comcast is going to try to setup barriers to entry to protect itself from competition. That's why we have institutions such as the FTC. But Non-profits or government-funded educational organizations doing the same is just evil, in my opinion.
If I can self-study for even the MCAT and earn an elite score, should I not be allowed to take the required lab credits and then be eligible for great med school programs? Why should things like donations, private schools... Or conversely bad schools, having an abusive childhood, have any say in qualifying or disqualifying me? Is that not evil that it does?
In a broader sense, shouldn't the goal be to extend a Stanford education opportunity to as many as possible? Not to limit it for reasons of maintaining prestige?
But of course that isn't the goal - the goal is maintaining privilege and prestige, and enforcing economic segregation.
There is no sense in which any of this is about genuine meritocracy, or is likely to be about meritocracy any time soon - because genuine meritocracy would be incredibly threatening politically, culturally, and financially.
I disagree. The "enforcing economic segregation" baseless assertion makes no sense at all.
Those who invest so much time and effort and even money into a chance of enrolling in one of these institutions are, quite obviously, not motivated to oppressed the masses. They in fact share the same motivation as everyone in the world: increase the chances that their offspring has a good,successful life.
> There is no sense in which any of this is about genuine meritocracy, or is likely to be about meritocracy any time soon
This is another baseless assertion that makes no sense at all. Meritocracy is the core reason why enrolling in these institutions is such a competitive activity, and also why there is so much criticism targetting these back-door enrollments. Those who were admitted want their efforts and personal investment to mean something, and those who aspire to be admitted want to have a fair shot at it.
Extracurriculars, private schools, math tutors, legacy admissions... This all mostly comes from parents.
If they want education and competition they'd open up their program to everyone. Instead, the competition is at the barrier to entry into the program.
He argues that getting a high quality education is a good investment on average, but mostly not because it actually makes you better at anything, rather explicitly because it acts as a socioeconomic filter and subsequent signal.
Evidence for this:
- In college you learn things roughly linearly, taking in roughly the same amount of information each semester. There is a large effect on average income if you get a degree. If you go for seven semesters and then leave without a degree, there's no significant effect on earnings over having never gone at all. Surely you must have learned something while you were there, and if that information was valuable, it should have affected your earnings somehow.
- If you test people on the information they learned in school they don't test much better on it than people that never took it, indicating both that they don't use it and don't have that skill anymore, despite still cashing in on the degree somehow in the way of earnings.
- In scenarios where an education system has all at once added or subtracted a year from a degree program for everyone, the subsequent effect on degree holders was an order of magnitude smaller on the percent change in earnings of the degree receivers than it was on the percent change on time learning. (~2% change in earnings / 25% change in time in school)
Basically, it seems that the labor market has to filter down resumes per application to a high-demand job somehow, and that we have very few actual high quality signals to do so, so we lean on signals for academic pedigree. This results in people with academic pedigree being disproportionately successful, which reinforces the impression that academic pedigree is a signal for someone who will be successful, and is further reinforced by biases towards hiring people like them.
It might actually be that scaling our existing education system isn't very useful, and would just force the labor market to pick another, maybe even less meritocratic, signal to filter candidates on. If that's true, we might be better off targeting the problem of finding better signals for the labor market to filter on.
It definitely has an ideological bent, but if you get past that the arguments are actually pretty compelling, and at least to me (as someone who works with the education system) look like the strongest arguments for the role education plays in our economic system.
I'm not being flip. The super-rich and the plebs mostly don't mix at elite schools
That wouldn't fulfill the more traditional aspects of education, but it would give American businesses a pretty tangible leg up over cultures that, eg, try to do everything in the family. It'd be a good deal for everyone.
Time and time again, I was only aware of my friends' affluent backgrounds years after knowing them well.
We are inclined to see the best in our allies. Have you considered in this case your value as a connection, and characteristics as a person, may influence how others treat you? You may have had a different experience from a different perspective.
My observations were that most people are nice, but there are certainly cliques, and even some pretty bad bullying, at a different elite school.
I was an engineer. It's not obvious to me why in undergrad anyone would have viewed me as an important connection, although it's impossible to have the perspective to reflect on that without some bias.
A bit off topic but that's such strangely positive wording for an industry that's a complete fraud. You wouldn't describe homeopathy or faith healing as "fighting" a disease. But TCM is endemic in China. Normal doctors in normal hospitals prescribe it alongside modern medicine. They also get a cut of the profit from sales. It's institutionalized ripping off of desperate people by giving them false hope.
Huffman and Loughlin both pleaded not guilty to charges
of conspiracy to commit fraud and conspiracy to commit
money laundering, charges punishable by up to 20 years
in prison each.
https://edition.cnn.com/2019/04/16/us/felicity-huffman-sente...
Huffman was among 13 parents who agreed to plead guilty
last week to a charge of conspiracy to commit fraud.Which may very well be a valid point, given the explosion of the SAT prep cottage industry.
That's way off. Harvard is 15% from the top 1% [1], and that's typical for Ivy League.
[1] https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/projects/college-mobilit...
There should be no elite school, because the education is the same anywhere.
Case in point, if you watched the Bernie Sanders CNN debate, they had someone (white) from Harvard University ask Bernie if he wanted to turn the US into Soviet Russia which is probably the stupidest question I've ever heard posed against Bernie or any candidate.
I can only assume that the person chose to ask such a question because they are: a) surprisingly ignorant b) offered something generous by CNN to say it c) didn't believe what they were asking but did it anyway d) didn't go to Harvard, but lied
all but one put Harvard in a bad light.
A university will happily tarnish its illusion of 'meritocracy' for the right amount of money - as long as it is the beneficiary. It's not going to let its employees tarnish that image for personal gain.
Life isn't fair, and neither are admissions (Although the universities try their best to convince children and the non-thinking otherwise.)
When a store's employees steal merchandise from a store, and sell it out of the back door, they aren't guilty of raising prices for the store's customers. They are guilty of theft... From their employer. Nobody wastes time moralizing about what impact their actions have on shoppers, because it's a second-order effect.
Selling the illusion of a university being a meritocracy is the same thing. Employees doing it for personal gain are stealing from the university, not the students.
However, In this case, the spot was for a good student with a solid sailing sports background that was taken.
I don't think that's ever been acceptable. I mean, people do it, but it's not acceptable in the least.
I feel pretty bad for the kids too. They will forever know that they aren't a 'real' student.
Their defense is that they thought it was a legal donation, but clearly still expected that it would buy their daughter admission.
I don't think they care at all.
Given that everyone, from faculty, to students, to employers, accepts it, without batting an eye, I'd daresay that yes, it is acceptable.
You may personally not like it, but society accepts it.
There's a lot of, for instance, sociopathic behaviours that I do not like, and most people consider unfair, unjust, unethical, etc - yet our society not only accepts, but rewards them.
> The university then gets to decide to admit your child in return.
> It may not be meritocratic, but it's not corrupt (except perhaps insofar as by pretending the exchange is a donation, the university and donor manage to cheat the taxman).
> The donor is simply paying the university to provide a service that they have every right to offer for money.
> It also benefits other students, which is why the universities take the deals in the first place.
> In this case, we're talking about bribery of specific employees to act against the interests of their employer. That's simply corruption.
> They might be equally non-meritocratic, but they're definitely not equally dishonest or equally socially harmful.[1]
I would rather attend a school with a $500 million endowment and a handful of idiots running around than a school with a $400 million endowment where everyone who is there deserved to be there.
Idiots are a problem wherever they are. If a good educational pedigree gives their idiocy a patina of respectable credibility, that's a social and political problem, not just an educational one.
edit: spelling
I agree it's distasteful, but like the grandparent I don't see that this is a problem worth solving. US universities are doing well at their jobs, on the whole. They're doing so well that the rest of the world wants to send their rich losers there instead of educating them locally!
Parents: don’t cheap out on your kid’s future! If you want to get them a slot at an elite school, do it the honorable way and buy the school a new building.