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If we allow entry of students from underperforming schools into colleges with historically high academic requirements, one of two things will happen, neither of
by fromthestart 7y ago
If we allow entry of students from underperforming schools into colleges with historically high academic requirements, one of two things will happen, neither of which are particularly good:
1. These students will struggle and be much more likely to fail out, depending on how much of a boost they're given by the so called adversity score
2. Standards will be lowered and as a result graduates will be less competent and schools lose prestige and/or society suffers in the long run from workers who previously would not have qualified for their degrees.
You cannot undo the damage of 12 years of poor schooling by simply throwing a student into a more rigorous curriculum, no matter how admirable the intent.
And arguably point 2 has already been happening for some time anyway given the swelling of college ranks over the last few years and the corresponding devaluation of the college degree. More people may hold degrees, but the normal distribution of intelligence has not changed, which must indicate that the rigor of the average degree has dropped substantially in the last few decades given the proportion of the population that is now educated.
- leetcrew 7y agothose aren't the only two possible outcomes. I went to a pretty good state school with pretty generous admissions criteria, but very rigorous coursework. most of the required courses for stem majors started at the 200 level. if you got a "good" highschool education (ie passed calculus) you were expected to start with CS-201. if not, there were lots of gentle 100-level courses to ease you into programming or teach high school math material that you either didn't take or failed. note when I say gentle, I mean the material itself is not difficult. you would be assigned a large quantity of work in every class at every level. plenty of kids failed out along the way, but it was more because they didn't put in enough time than being hopelessly underprepared for the rigor. you do kinda have to give up on the "undergrad takes exactly four years" thing if you want this to work though. some people will need to do more than 120 credits to fulfill the requirements of the degree. not everyone will be able to take a full-time course load every semester or even any semester. that doesn't make the end result worse when they finally graduate (though it may be more expensive).
- akhilcacharya 7y ago1) Unlikely, because even today the most selective schools that use holistic admission have far higher graduation rates than less selective schools 2) Even if this is true, this is a feature not a bug As it turns out, college really isn’t all that difficult in most cases, and never has been. If anything standards have increased!