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"The school says releasing the information could put it at a competitive disadvantage" Likely because people might find their policies unethical, which would s

• eganist 8y ago
  > Likely because people might find their policies unethical, which would stop them to making choices that maximize the perceived value of a Harvard degree? Which assumptions are you relying on which result in one begetting the other?
  • pcstl 8y ago
    If they reveal their policies, those are highly publicized and enough moral outrage is generated, they'll have to commit to changing their policies or risk having their reputation permanently stained. Of course, being Harvard University, they would probably wouldn't take too hard a blow, but it would still devalue them.
    • eganist 8y ago
      I guess I'm missing a point. Why would it devalue them with their target audience?
      • llampx 8y ago
        Currently, Harvard, Yale and the other Ivy Leagues are perceived as the best education money can buy. If it turns out that it's not actually that hard to get into Harvard if you have money or are legacy (and that the education itself is middling), it may lead to a hit in reputation. It may not make a difference to the Cruella DeVille types directly, but public perception is a thing. If enough of the public perceives a Harvard degree as ill-gotten, the value of that degree goes down. Ergo, they start losing applicants to the other Ivys.
        • s73v3r_ 8y ago
          "and that the education itself is middling" If this were true, wouldn't we already know this?
          • csa 8y ago
            Yes, we do. Largely, it is (esp. for lower level classes). The professors largely do not care about teaching -- they have research to do. The idea is that they typically point you to some materials, and they assume that smart people will figure it out. Don't get me wrong. The learning resources are phenomenal, and folks can and do learn a ton from their peers. That said, most of the teaching is awful. If someone wants to be taught well, don't go to an Ivy -- go to small liberal arts college (lots of good teachers at these schools).
      • michaelt 8y ago
        Presumably pcstl thinks poor kids hoping to achieve class mobility won't apply because they don't want to support a school that discriminates against them. Hence, you get a class of people willing to overlook discrimination (such as the beneficiaries of it).
      • larkeith 8y ago
        If I were considering going to Harvard, knowing that there was recently a widely publicized controversy surrounding their acceptance criteria would certainly make me think twice - apart from the moral concerns of supporting such an institution, it's a safe bet that hiring managers would be aware that Harvard graduates were not necessarily selected for merit, which might cause them to value it less than a scholastically-equivalent education from a different university.
        • sverige 8y ago
          If there were any moral concerns in the hiring world at large, the Ivy League would already be in decline. The truth that it is more about connections than raw talent or merit has been evident for a long time. The myth that America is a meritocracy and that the Ivy League only takes the most meritorious is one of the most successful marketing schemes ever devised. This reminds me of an old joke: Q. How do you know that someone attended Harvard? A. They tell you within 30 seconds of meeting them.
          • csa 8y ago
            > This reminds me of an old joke: > Q. How do you know that someone attended Harvard? > A. They tell you within 30 seconds of meeting them. This is almost exclusively only true for the people who were one of the (extremely) weaker admits. There is definitely a way to talking about going to Harvard (usu. only when asked), and saying it directly is not the usual preferred choice.
            • sverige 8y ago
              Oh, I did not know that. Did you go to Harvard perchance?
              • csa 8y ago
                I will redirect my answer to a question you didn’t ask. Google the following and check the top link for a decent read: Michael Giovinco Harvard Boston quora
• rueynshard 8y ago
  I doubt it would make much of a dent in their reputation. It is already widely perceived (whether true or not) that children of important donors, legacies and other groups get preferential treatment.
  • smsm42 8y ago
    It may be worse than that. E.g. the claims in the Asian-American applicants' lawsuit may be proven right: https://www.nytimes.com/2018/04/04/us/harvard-asian-admission.html https://www.nytimes.com/2018/04/04/us/harvard-asian-admissio... and there might be other things like that that are generally frowned upon.
  • thisisit 8y ago
    IMO, perceiving and have hard data are two different things. If it was proven by data then they might have to give way to all kinds of lawsuits. Without data they can steadfastly claim to be neutral even if they are perceived otherwise.
  • csa 8y ago
    Legacy and donors do get preferential treatment, but almost all of them are fairly strong academically (not as strong the top 30% or so of the class, but still strong). There are very few people who are unqualified but still get in due to legacy or donor status (cough Kushner cough).
• mjevans 8y ago
  There's also Goodhart's law / Campbell's law. Once the measures for admission are made public they'll cease being good measures as many will teach/live to the measures rather than actually remain high quality students. (Of course the measures may also be bad measures.) It may be better for the school to have a written system for evaluating or at least reaching an initial coarse filter result which they create and disseminate to external auditors who ensure it has been applied 'fairly' to the data set and which can provide opinions about the process without revealing details that could ruin the effectiveness of the measures. Additionally they could monitor the applicant pool to see if the applicants are more uniformly reacting to a discovered / leaked measure and thus that it has ceased being a good tool for decision making.
  • csa 8y ago
    Being smart and being able to get shit done (that describes the top of most elite school classes) is not a mystery -- it's just really hard to do. The people who are able to do it, however, are pretty much all admitted. The measures for admission for the rest of the people (I call them very smart but unexceptional "clones") is based on things that benefit the university -- athletes, donors, etc. The "secret" for these folks is just to add value to the university. Some folks are born with it (cough Kushner cough), but others earn it by being leaders, athletes, etc. Check out Cal Newport's stuff on these matters. He's about as close as it gets to correct, imho.