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Non-academic diversity should never be "rightfully ignored". Universities are a wonderful tapestry of people, and students benefit by being exposed to students

Non-academic diversity should never be "rightfully ignored". Universities are a wonderful tapestry of people, and students benefit by being exposed to students from a variety of socio-economic backgrounds. My undergrad university in the UK (Bristol) was/is widely regarded as an "Oxbridge reject" school, full of those from the upper-classes that were expected to go to Oxbridge but failed. The private schools (called public schools in the UK) were outraged when Bristol announced that they would start offering placements not on academic achievement but on potential, so a straight-A student from Eton would be evaluated about the same as a straight-B student from inner-city comprehensive schools where the teaching was noticeably worse. It was a great idea. It is wrong, if not dangerous, to evaluate universities by abstract metrics such as research or academic performance. Universities are much, much more. They are the student newspaper, the radio station, the sports teams, the activists, the hackers, the politicians. Students undoubtedly benefit from exposure to all. (Disclosure: I'm a white middle-class Englishman who went to a Top 10 univerisity in the UK and now I'm a PhD student at the University of Californa, Santa Cruz)

jessriedel 16y ago
OK. In my comment, I was just trying to keep the discussion focused on non-academic diversity. I agree with what you say to a certain extent; I'm willing to consider other factors in admissions besides academic excellence. But I find it hard to believe that the quality of academics isn't negatively impacted to an unacceptable degree when a sizable fraction of the class (the OP claims > 10%) has much poorer scores (the OP claims roughly one standard deviation). Also: Gauchos >> Banana Slugs
reinhardt 16y ago
It is wrong, if not dangerous, to evaluate universities by abstract metrics such as research or academic performance. I fail to guess in what sense research and academic performance are somehow "abstract metrics" while non-academic diversity isn't. You may dispute their effectiveness but SAT/GPA scores, number of peer-reviewed publications, million dollars in grants, etc. are certainly less abstract than the color of your skin or the word on the street about the school you attended.
- Lewisham 16y ago
  They are abstract in the sense that it is not immediately clear what makes them go up or down. Does the presence of a sports team make students feel more school pride, increasing student performance? How much does commute times factor in? What about whether there's political activist students that successfully negotiate better benefits for TAs? If you look at metrics alone, you lose the woods for the trees. It looks like CalTech have their head on straight, at least according to some comments here, about potential and passion, not about numbers. This is what the blog post advocates, and that I think is a very short-sighted position to take.
yummyfajitas 16y ago
If universities are the student newspaper, the radio station and the sports teams, a 1 in 9 chance of sharing a dorm room with an underachieving black guy and the opportunity to go to student protests, then as a taxpayer, I want to stop funding them. It sounds like a huge waste of money.
- jessriedel 16y ago
  Then you can pull the money from Berkeley, I guess. Other than that, the large majority of the very-top-tier schools are private. Yes, they receive public money for research, but the undergraduate "experience" is funded by tuition, endowment, and donations. Still, I agree. This seems like a fantastically inefficient way to meet people with different backgrounds.
  - yummyfajitas 16y ago
    Roughly half the public money for "research" is actually pocketed by the university and spent on education/administration/etc (the university calls it "overhead"). This is a dirty little secret of science funding - a big chunk of it isn't funding science at all, but is merely a subsidy for big research colleges. Also, even tuitions at private colleges are massively subsidized - the subsidies just follow the students (e.g., subsidized student loans, need-based aid, etc).
zeteo 16y ago
"students benefit by being exposed to students from a variety of socio-economic backgrounds" You got any evidence about the trade-offs on that? In my experience, the very diverse student body of my alma mater formed closed cliques (racially, nationally) and the wide variance in backgrounds caused most, if not all, classes to slow down to the lowest common denominator.
rmk 16y ago
If one wants to be exposed to people from different backgrounds, one should go live in a big, metropolitan city / travel the world while earning his way. Sucking down enormous amounts of public / donor / endowment money to run social experiments, whether in university or otherwise and then using weasel-words like 'diversity' etc. is of questionable value, at best, unacceptable at worst... Why should the taxpayer or the wealthy donor be fleeced to provide zero value to the unwitting student (who probably doesn't have enough maturity to make decisions independently anyway)?

jessriedel 16y ago

OK. In my comment, I was just trying to keep the discussion focused on non-academic diversity. I agree with what you say to a certain extent; I'm willing to consider other factors in admissions besides academic excellence. But I find it hard to believe that the quality of academics isn't negatively impacted to an unacceptable degree when a sizable fraction of the class (the OP claims > 10%) has much poorer scores (the OP claims roughly one standard deviation). Also: Gauchos >> Banana Slugs

reinhardt 16y ago

It is wrong, if not dangerous, to evaluate universities by abstract metrics such as research or academic performance. I fail to guess in what sense research and academic performance are somehow "abstract metrics" while non-academic diversity isn't. You may dispute their effectiveness but SAT/GPA scores, number of peer-reviewed publications, million dollars in grants, etc. are certainly less abstract than the color of your skin or the word on the street about the school you attended.

Lewisham 16y ago
They are abstract in the sense that it is not immediately clear what makes them go up or down. Does the presence of a sports team make students feel more school pride, increasing student performance? How much does commute times factor in? What about whether there's political activist students that successfully negotiate better benefits for TAs? If you look at metrics alone, you lose the woods for the trees. It looks like CalTech have their head on straight, at least according to some comments here, about potential and passion, not about numbers. This is what the blog post advocates, and that I think is a very short-sighted position to take.

yummyfajitas 16y ago

If universities are the student newspaper, the radio station and the sports teams, a 1 in 9 chance of sharing a dorm room with an underachieving black guy and the opportunity to go to student protests, then as a taxpayer, I want to stop funding them. It sounds like a huge waste of money.

jessriedel 16y ago
Then you can pull the money from Berkeley, I guess. Other than that, the large majority of the very-top-tier schools are private. Yes, they receive public money for research, but the undergraduate "experience" is funded by tuition, endowment, and donations. Still, I agree. This seems like a fantastically inefficient way to meet people with different backgrounds.
- yummyfajitas 16y ago
  Roughly half the public money for "research" is actually pocketed by the university and spent on education/administration/etc (the university calls it "overhead"). This is a dirty little secret of science funding - a big chunk of it isn't funding science at all, but is merely a subsidy for big research colleges. Also, even tuitions at private colleges are massively subsidized - the subsidies just follow the students (e.g., subsidized student loans, need-based aid, etc).

zeteo 16y ago

"students benefit by being exposed to students from a variety of socio-economic backgrounds" You got any evidence about the trade-offs on that? In my experience, the very diverse student body of my alma mater formed closed cliques (racially, nationally) and the wide variance in backgrounds caused most, if not all, classes to slow down to the lowest common denominator.

rmk 16y ago

If one wants to be exposed to people from different backgrounds, one should go live in a big, metropolitan city / travel the world while earning his way. Sucking down enormous amounts of public / donor / endowment money to run social experiments, whether in university or otherwise and then using weasel-words like 'diversity' etc. is of questionable value, at best, unacceptable at worst... Why should the taxpayer or the wealthy donor be fleeced to provide zero value to the unwitting student (who probably doesn't have enough maturity to make decisions independently anyway)?