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At least donating a building gives value to the other attending students that far outweighs the cost of their child going

iscrewyou 8y ago
What about the kids that didn’t get to go? The ones that the rich students replaced. That’s the real tragedy. The students don’t even know that they were out-moneid.
- bradleyjg 8y ago
  Why is that a tragedy? So they didn’t go to Yale, Stanford, or USC (?!?). Presumably if they were borderline at those schools they ended up somewhere perfectly fine. I’m happy these parents are being prosecuted, but I don’t think there were any tragedies here.
- throwaway287391 8y ago
  The amount to donate a building probably covers the cost to expand the student capacity of a university by several dozen students. With the donation they could easily afford to accept everyone they otherwise would have accepted and also accept the one rich kid and still come out way on top. So I'd be surprised if they did this -- though not shocked.
  - drb91 8y ago
    Schools also have an incentive to keep acceptance rate as low as possible as it’s an (extremely bullshit) signal of value.
    - throwaway287391 8y ago
      Sure, but if we're actually talking about donating a building (maybe I took that too literally?), we're talking about 3 kids a year, tops. It would barely change the 2nd decimal place in an acceptance percentage at a lot of schools.
      - drb91 8y ago
        Yea but why would they? Their prestige is grounded in the illusion of elite meritocracy.
        kortilla 8y ago
        Because they don’t want the illusion of meritocracy to be tarnished. It’s better to say 10k students were accepted on merit and an addition 3 building donation students.
- beenBoutIT 8y ago
  The opportunity cost is tremendous, replacing intelligent students with an idiot students robs the universities in so many different ways.
munk-a 8y ago
I reject this - if we want admission in the US to be entirely wealth based and Oligarchic we should just buy that concept whole-hog. Many of us (I hope?) believe that scholarships that allow smart people coming from bad backgrounds to succeed are worth their cost[1] so clearly the ability to make use of your education is part of our general societal motivation to give someone one. [1] There are lots of scholarships, grants and other things out there, many go to people who don't need them and there are issues with the system both on that end and with regards to the cost for an education - please ignore those and just focus on the concept of financial aide to an intelligent driven student who genuinely needs it to pay fair value to get an education in terms of reimbursing all expenses given to give this student an education and nothing else.
- phil21 8y ago
  Don't you need the funding of the super rich guy with the dumb kid who takes up a single student slot in order to offer free school to the dozen kids who "deserve" it academically? Without the first (in aggregate, over generations), the others don't even have the option.
  - darpa_escapee 8y ago
    Plenty of people make donations for reasons of prestige, legacy and even genuine care, which have nothing to do with making sure their kid gets into a certain school.
    - stale2002 8y ago
      But there would still be less of those donations. There would be some, yes. But significantly less. And less money means that these school are unable to let in as many poor people as they did before.
      - munk-a 8y ago
        In general terms regarding systems in our society - If the system is dependent on charity to support it... it isn't supported, if the system is valued by society then society should support it up to the cost of it's value. Education is absolutely worth the cost and the need to charity is highlighting the underfunding here[1]. [1] Also, the inefficient use of money, higher education is absolutely guilty of inefficient operation with lots of cushy bureaucrat jobs, but imagine we could make higher education efficient and it still required an additional injection of cash via charitable donations.
jazzyjackson 8y ago
This assertion that it's a value-add for the rest of the students assumes that they wouldn't have new buildings donated by alumni as an honest donation and not a bribe. I think it would be very interesting to see a plot of the number of buildings named for the donor + how many children of donors were admitted in exchange for these buildings. I would expect that schools can get all the endowment they need without trading admission for it. Anyone seriously trading a building for a spot in the school is not making a trade in the best interest of the school, they are playing favorites to keep particular donors happy. But wouldn't the school be better off as a whole, to stand with integrity, without the cloud of corrupt donors?

iscrewyou 8y ago

What about the kids that didn’t get to go? The ones that the rich students replaced. That’s the real tragedy. The students don’t even know that they were out-moneid.

bradleyjg 8y ago
Why is that a tragedy? So they didn’t go to Yale, Stanford, or USC (?!?). Presumably if they were borderline at those schools they ended up somewhere perfectly fine. I’m happy these parents are being prosecuted, but I don’t think there were any tragedies here.
throwaway287391 8y ago
The amount to donate a building probably covers the cost to expand the student capacity of a university by several dozen students. With the donation they could easily afford to accept everyone they otherwise would have accepted and also accept the one rich kid and still come out way on top. So I'd be surprised if they did this -- though not shocked.
- drb91 8y ago
  Schools also have an incentive to keep acceptance rate as low as possible as it’s an (extremely bullshit) signal of value.
  - throwaway287391 8y ago
    Sure, but if we're actually talking about donating a building (maybe I took that too literally?), we're talking about 3 kids a year, tops. It would barely change the 2nd decimal place in an acceptance percentage at a lot of schools.
    - drb91 8y ago
      Yea but why would they? Their prestige is grounded in the illusion of elite meritocracy.
      - kortilla 8y ago
        Because they don’t want the illusion of meritocracy to be tarnished. It’s better to say 10k students were accepted on merit and an addition 3 building donation students.
beenBoutIT 8y ago
The opportunity cost is tremendous, replacing intelligent students with an idiot students robs the universities in so many different ways.

munk-a 8y ago

I reject this - if we want admission in the US to be entirely wealth based and Oligarchic we should just buy that concept whole-hog. Many of us (I hope?) believe that scholarships that allow smart people coming from bad backgrounds to succeed are worth their cost[1] so clearly the ability to make use of your education is part of our general societal motivation to give someone one. [1] There are lots of scholarships, grants and other things out there, many go to people who don't need them and there are issues with the system both on that end and with regards to the cost for an education - please ignore those and just focus on the concept of financial aide to an intelligent driven student who genuinely needs it to pay fair value to get an education in terms of reimbursing all expenses given to give this student an education and nothing else.

phil21 8y ago
Don't you need the funding of the super rich guy with the dumb kid who takes up a single student slot in order to offer free school to the dozen kids who "deserve" it academically? Without the first (in aggregate, over generations), the others don't even have the option.
- darpa_escapee 8y ago
  Plenty of people make donations for reasons of prestige, legacy and even genuine care, which have nothing to do with making sure their kid gets into a certain school.
  - stale2002 8y ago
    But there would still be less of those donations. There would be some, yes. But significantly less. And less money means that these school are unable to let in as many poor people as they did before.
    - munk-a 8y ago
      In general terms regarding systems in our society - If the system is dependent on charity to support it... it isn't supported, if the system is valued by society then society should support it up to the cost of it's value. Education is absolutely worth the cost and the need to charity is highlighting the underfunding here[1]. [1] Also, the inefficient use of money, higher education is absolutely guilty of inefficient operation with lots of cushy bureaucrat jobs, but imagine we could make higher education efficient and it still required an additional injection of cash via charitable donations.

jazzyjackson 8y ago

This assertion that it's a value-add for the rest of the students assumes that they wouldn't have new buildings donated by alumni as an honest donation and not a bribe. I think it would be very interesting to see a plot of the number of buildings named for the donor + how many children of donors were admitted in exchange for these buildings. I would expect that schools can get all the endowment they need without trading admission for it. Anyone seriously trading a building for a spot in the school is not making a trade in the best interest of the school, they are playing favorites to keep particular donors happy. But wouldn't the school be better off as a whole, to stand with integrity, without the cloud of corrupt donors?