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I'll zoom in on the diversity point, but I realise it's not the whole focus of the article. Seems to me the real point here is both blindingly obvious, and for

I'll zoom in on the diversity point, but I realise it's not the whole focus of the article. Seems to me the real point here is both blindingly obvious, and for some reason never discussed. Education is a pipeline, and everyone is obsessing over the final stage, forgetting the rest. It's short-term thinking that misses the real problems. If you want your society to produce successful university graduates from all demographics, you need to ensure all demographics have access to quality pre-university education. As I understand it, this simply isn't the case in the US today. No-one seems to have any interest in improving the state of affairs. (Perhaps because it's less glamorous than talking about universities?) As it stands, the left-leaning suggestion is to explicitly weight the universities' admissions criteria to ensure an increased number of disadvantaged candidates are able to gain admission, despite falling short of the usual academic requirements (branded positive discrimination). A disproportionate number then fail in their studies, as the article says. The right-leaning suggestion is to do nothing at all, as far as I can tell. Neither is a solution. Solve the pipeline problem. Invest seriously in pre-university education. I'm continually surprised that articles on the topic don't even mention this in passing. Disclaimer: I'm not an American, I'm not an academic, I'm just a random muppet on the Internet.

MyHypatia 7y ago
I agree that the needed work (and hardest work) is access to quality pre-university education. That being said, I find it bizarre that we fret over whether minority applicants are given an unfair boost, while at the same time allowing legacy admissions and athletic preferance admissions to continue. Both of these boost applicants who otherwise would not make it through. We don't fret too much when a spot is taken by a wealthy legacy admit or obscure sport admit, yet we have multiple lawsuits and court cases if the spot is taken by a racial minority. John Hopkins University ended legacy admissions and I applaud them. https://www.theatlantic.com/ideas/archive/2020/01/why-we-ended-legacy-admissions-johns-hopkins/605131/ https://www.theatlantic.com/ideas/archive/2020/01/why-we-end...
- MaxBarraclough 7y ago
  I'm in the UK. I've never heard of 'legacy admissions' happening here, nor admissions in return for dropping money on a university. I get the impression from The Guardian that these things are quite unique to America, and really don't occur in the UK. [0] [1] [2] Similarly I've never heard of someone being admitted to a UK university for the purpose of getting them to complete in university sports. Sports are funded by universities, but generally, few people really care about university sports, the way it should be. It may help in admissions if you have non-academic achievements on top your academic ones, but sports aren't given the special status that they are in US universities. On the race point, the only lawsuit I'm aware of is the one against Harvard for discriminating against Asian applicants. (There's no question that Harvard have higher grade-requirements for Asian applicants.) The courts decided the Harvard admissions policy wasn't unconstitutional. [4] My understanding is that if a similar approach were taken in hiring decisions, that would be extremely illegal. If you'll excuse a tangent: we also don't have 'campus police' in the UK, for which I'm thankful. Universities hire security guards, the way business parks do. The American system is to have police officers on the payroll of a university, expected to follow orders from the university's power-structure [5]. Deans should not be able to issue orders to police officers. [0] https://www.theguardian.com/education/2019/oct/01/harvard-admissions-process-white-privilege https://www.theguardian.com/education/2019/oct/01/harvard-ad... [1] https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2019/jan/23/elite-schools-ivy-league-legacy-admissions-harvard-wealthier-whiter https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2019/jan/23/elite-school... [2] https://www.theguardian.com/education/shortcuts/2019/mar/13/us-admissions-scandal-oxbridge https://www.theguardian.com/education/shortcuts/2019/mar/13/... [4] https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2019/oct/01/harvard-ruling-admissions-racial-bias-asian-americans-latest https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2019/oct/01/harvard-ruli... [5] https://www.google.com/search?q="ordered+campus+police" https://www.google.com/search?q="ordered+campus+police"
  - MyHypatia 7y ago
    Yes, unfortunately in the US we have legacy admissions and athletic admissions without much oversight on how athletically talented the student is. "A study, published earlier this month in the National Bureau of Economic Research, found that 43 percent of white students admitted to Harvard University were recruited athletes, legacy students, children of faculty and staff, or on the dean’s interest list — applicants whose parents or relatives have donated to Harvard. That number drops dramatically for black, Latino, and Asian American students, with less than 16 percent each coming from those categories. The study also found that roughly 75 percent of the white students admitted from those four categories, labeled 'ALDCs' in the study, “would have been rejected if they had been treated as white non-ALDCs,” the study said."[1] We are already aware that the current admissions policy has the effect of heavily and unfairly favoring wealthy white students. Then we try to "correct" for that. For some reason we talk about and fret a lot more about policies that tip the scales for minorities, but for legacy admissions it's just "how things are done". In my opinion if a university uses legacy admissions, they should be barred from receiving federal funding. When JHU stopped using legacy admissions, the number of minority students increased. It would be interesting to know if the number of nonwealthy white students increased as well. My point is, there is clear favoritism for the wealthy class, and at least one easy fix (drop legacy admissions) to get towards a more merit-based system. [1]https://www.nbcnews.com/news/us-news/study-harvard-finds-43-percent-white-students-are-legacy-athletes-n1060361 https://www.nbcnews.com/news/us-news/study-harvard-finds-43-...
primitivesuave 7y ago
I traveled around the US to practically every major city of the United States selling software to middle/high schools. The quality of education is excellent in certain places and abysmal in others. You can probably guess the correlation between school quality and the wealth of the surrounding neighborhood. Even if you were to tackle the issue of vast economic inequality, you would still need a new generation of parents who understand how to nurture an academic culture within their home and community. It is irrelevant how helpful our education software was to the classrooms who implemented it - it requires students who value education and who show up at school with food in their stomach and without the all-encompassing stress of what awaits them at home at the end of the day.

MyHypatia 7y ago

I agree that the needed work (and hardest work) is access to quality pre-university education. That being said, I find it bizarre that we fret over whether minority applicants are given an unfair boost, while at the same time allowing legacy admissions and athletic preferance admissions to continue. Both of these boost applicants who otherwise would not make it through. We don't fret too much when a spot is taken by a wealthy legacy admit or obscure sport admit, yet we have multiple lawsuits and court cases if the spot is taken by a racial minority. John Hopkins University ended legacy admissions and I applaud them. https://www.theatlantic.com/ideas/archive/2020/01/why-we-ended-legacy-admissions-johns-hopkins/605131/ https://www.theatlantic.com/ideas/archive/2020/01/why-we-end...

MaxBarraclough 7y ago
I'm in the UK. I've never heard of 'legacy admissions' happening here, nor admissions in return for dropping money on a university. I get the impression from The Guardian that these things are quite unique to America, and really don't occur in the UK. [0] [1] [2] Similarly I've never heard of someone being admitted to a UK university for the purpose of getting them to complete in university sports. Sports are funded by universities, but generally, few people really care about university sports, the way it should be. It may help in admissions if you have non-academic achievements on top your academic ones, but sports aren't given the special status that they are in US universities. On the race point, the only lawsuit I'm aware of is the one against Harvard for discriminating against Asian applicants. (There's no question that Harvard have higher grade-requirements for Asian applicants.) The courts decided the Harvard admissions policy wasn't unconstitutional. [4] My understanding is that if a similar approach were taken in hiring decisions, that would be extremely illegal. If you'll excuse a tangent: we also don't have 'campus police' in the UK, for which I'm thankful. Universities hire security guards, the way business parks do. The American system is to have police officers on the payroll of a university, expected to follow orders from the university's power-structure [5]. Deans should not be able to issue orders to police officers. [0] https://www.theguardian.com/education/2019/oct/01/harvard-admissions-process-white-privilege https://www.theguardian.com/education/2019/oct/01/harvard-ad... [1] https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2019/jan/23/elite-schools-ivy-league-legacy-admissions-harvard-wealthier-whiter https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2019/jan/23/elite-school... [2] https://www.theguardian.com/education/shortcuts/2019/mar/13/us-admissions-scandal-oxbridge https://www.theguardian.com/education/shortcuts/2019/mar/13/... [4] https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2019/oct/01/harvard-ruling-admissions-racial-bias-asian-americans-latest https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2019/oct/01/harvard-ruli... [5] https://www.google.com/search?q="ordered+campus+police" https://www.google.com/search?q="ordered+campus+police"
- MyHypatia 7y ago
  Yes, unfortunately in the US we have legacy admissions and athletic admissions without much oversight on how athletically talented the student is. "A study, published earlier this month in the National Bureau of Economic Research, found that 43 percent of white students admitted to Harvard University were recruited athletes, legacy students, children of faculty and staff, or on the dean’s interest list — applicants whose parents or relatives have donated to Harvard. That number drops dramatically for black, Latino, and Asian American students, with less than 16 percent each coming from those categories. The study also found that roughly 75 percent of the white students admitted from those four categories, labeled 'ALDCs' in the study, “would have been rejected if they had been treated as white non-ALDCs,” the study said."[1] We are already aware that the current admissions policy has the effect of heavily and unfairly favoring wealthy white students. Then we try to "correct" for that. For some reason we talk about and fret a lot more about policies that tip the scales for minorities, but for legacy admissions it's just "how things are done". In my opinion if a university uses legacy admissions, they should be barred from receiving federal funding. When JHU stopped using legacy admissions, the number of minority students increased. It would be interesting to know if the number of nonwealthy white students increased as well. My point is, there is clear favoritism for the wealthy class, and at least one easy fix (drop legacy admissions) to get towards a more merit-based system. [1]https://www.nbcnews.com/news/us-news/study-harvard-finds-43-percent-white-students-are-legacy-athletes-n1060361 https://www.nbcnews.com/news/us-news/study-harvard-finds-43-...

primitivesuave 7y ago

I traveled around the US to practically every major city of the United States selling software to middle/high schools. The quality of education is excellent in certain places and abysmal in others. You can probably guess the correlation between school quality and the wealth of the surrounding neighborhood. Even if you were to tackle the issue of vast economic inequality, you would still need a new generation of parents who understand how to nurture an academic culture within their home and community. It is irrelevant how helpful our education software was to the classrooms who implemented it - it requires students who value education and who show up at school with food in their stomach and without the all-encompassing stress of what awaits them at home at the end of the day.