A lawyer for Students for Fair Admissions "quizzed [Harvard College’s long-serving Dean of Admissions and Financial Aid] on the 'Dean’s Interest List,' a special and confidential list of applicants Harvard compiles every admissions cycle. Though the University closely guards the details, applicants on that list are often related to or of interest to top donors — and court filings show list members benefit from a significantly inflated acceptance rate" [1].
[1] https://www.thecrimson.com/article/2018/10/18/day-three-harv...
would you rather have no legacy admits and ZERO scholarships whatsoever ?
or would you prefer to have some number of legacies + scholarships and new buildings funded from their donations ???
If the university is suppised to produce good students ir shouldnt be that 1 student in 21 is a complete dud. Because that's how it works, they are duds, who cant be kicked out and they will get their diploma even if they cant read.
In theory (not reality) those who finish top universities should be top people.
To tell it other way: would you be happy if 1 car in 21 didn drive? Or 1 apple in 21 was poisonous?
The top universities have long watered down their achivements anyway. Most is just pure nepotism.
state schools and community colleges do exactly that, how is that working for them?
>> If the university is suppised to produce good students ir shouldnt be that 1 student in 21 is a complete dud. Because that's how it works, they are duds, who cant be kicked out and they will get their diploma even if they cant read.
"complete dud" is doing a lot of work here, it is not necessarily true that legacies are dumb. Even if they are dumber than average, it doesn't mean they cannot go and achieve great things later in life.
For example Malia Obama - does she deserve a harvard admission just because her father was president?
or donald trump - he was admitted and graduated from wharton - does he meet criteria of "top people" ?
It depends? For some good, for some not so good? For a multitude of reasons? One of them being "world is unfair"? Other being money?
Public universities work in Europe. At least to some degree.
Also, this is a philosophical question: should the top universities "manufacture" best students, or are they places where rich peoples" kids can meet each other?
If you hire a programmer do you want: one who can code great, or one who played basketball with the president's kids?
What they offer is connections. Those rich kids whose parents bribed their way in? Extremely valuable connection to make. That's why private universities do the whole "eye-watering ticket price, but most students have some level of merit-based scholarship" setup. Mingling the talented and the well-connected is an extremely valuable proposition for everybody involved. If you're looking for a school made of exclusively meritocratic gifted scholars, that's what elite public schools like Cal are for. But if you want a school that creates the most opportunities for success, private schools are where that's at.
At that point you might as well abolish private universities altogether, because what’s their point?
Hint: most of the people pushing for these things would be perfectly fine with that. But won’t admit it.
all these named scholarships and named professor titles - are coming from donations
People with the cash to bribe their way into Harvard, who know smart people, are “top people”.
Would you prefer a doctor who studied hard and was the best of the best, or someone who bribed their way and checks notes played basketball with the president's kid?
If world was fair top universities are supposed to "produce" top students. Not be a club for rich peoples' kids.
That's how it works in many places: you get most points on objective tests - you get in.
Rich people still have a leg up, since they can pay for tutors / prep schools for their kids.
But if the kid is a moron it wont get to a top place.
I prefer to go to a doctor who finished university on merit and skill, not nepotism.
I suspect if we looked at the overall set of students who were admitted to elite universities while their parents have given a $10M donation, that we'd find that that set of students was academically well above-average as compared to the overall population, probably above-average as compared to all students attending all four-year universities, even though they might be below the average of the overall admitted students to that elite university.
That doesn't make them anything close to "complete duds".
But is that actually happening? Harvard only has around 7k undergraduates. For comparison the UC system has 230k. By all accounts ivy leagues is interested in cultivating an "elite" student body, not to grant as many students access to education as possible.
I dare say that an international airport is about the last thing Harvard needs.
Edit: I guess, though, that the point of degrees from schools like these is not the degree, but the connections. But I'd guess those could be purchased as well.
If you do business in the Middle East, you begin to notice the kids of the elites all went to weird no-name Western schools. Turns out they want a Western degree, but don’t want to be away from the capital too long. So they find random universities who will give them a degree for, essentially, no-show remote learning classes. Win-win.
As someone without a college degree in tech, and who has attempted but failed to get a tradition “corporate” job based on skills and track record I can sort of understand. Not the same thing at all, but you’d be amazed (or not?) at how much importance some folks put on having a piece of paper even in casual social settings in some circles. Actual skills need not apply.
One could say the same of a billionaire buying their idiot kid an Ivy League education. They're clearly not going to benefit from it. But it looks good and might fool a person here and there.
It is a form of pride and pretend superiority, false legitimacy and so on.
This may vary by department or over time, but I think there's no reason to believe a Harvard Undergrad Alumni you meet ever did any college level work.
But this was just before all the RateAProfessor sites got big and when I was still proud of my cum laude GPA. About 5 years later is when I started hearing everyone was getting As at Harvard, so I think it was a sudden shift right after your time and certainly not just a Harvard thing.
Too bad too, since the half of undergrads who weren’t cheaters were the nicest, brightest, salt-of-the-earth people.
This made me laugh out loud.
There are majors at every university that are easy to graduate from. Often these are aimed precisely at academically unambitious athletes and well-connected mediocre students.
Harvard is no exception.
Getting into elite schools is the hard part. Graduating is not.
> But I'd guess those could be purchased as well.
Maybe? Not really? If you’re already part of that social circle and socio-economic status (SES), you don’t have to buy it. If you’re not already in that that SES, then building elite connections requires quite a bit of cultivation that, imho, is not easy for most college-aged kids to pull off, largely due to ignorance of SES/class distinctions in the US.
There's no need to buy grades. All grades are A anyway.
But also, those off-the-books social connections are another one (how big/common is this - we'll never know - that's the point). Making sure the college president knows who you are, and that you have 14 other family members who are alums. Oh look, my son is applying now too, just letting you know!