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People are always going to use their money to buy status. So as long as these college offer prestige & status, people with money are going to use it to get in.

People are always going to use their money to buy status. So as long as these college offer prestige & status, people with money are going to use it to get in. Much like doping in sports, you have two paths you can take: try to combat cheating, or accept the cheating as part of the game. I think these universities should accept that they are providing an education, but they are selling prestige, and split their admissions into two pots: people who pay their way in and the other who earns it. And they announce ahead of time what the size of each bucket is. When you apply, you chose which path you will take and that's it, you're stuck. The people who choose the merit path take the standard entry exams, have their grades review, etc. And the ones who do the best get in. Those who choose to pay for admission participate in a silent auction, and those willing to pay the most are admitted. This system isn't "fair", but the outcome is effectively the same as our current setup. With the most notable difference being that, at least this system is transparent and acknowledges that X% of incoming students paid for their post.

MiroF 6y ago
The problem is that you can only sell prestige if there is strategic ambiguity between the two categories.
- rhizome 6y ago
  And that ambiguity is an economy: the rich slackers are seen as smart by association with the achievements of (past) students admitted by merit, and the rabble students acquire aristocratic social cache by the same token. I'm not an economist, but I wouldn't be surprised if this is a self-powering machine.
  - acruns 6y ago
    That is an absolutely wonderful use of the word cache.
    - arcticbull 6y ago
      You're looking for cachet ("the state of being respected or admired; prestige") not cache ("hidden away for future use").
      - clankyclanker 6y ago
        Also not to be confused with Caché (apparently pronounced like cachet): https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/InterSystems_Cach%C3%A9 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/InterSystems_Cach%C3%A9
        Galanwe 6y ago
        I will be the picky one: Caché, cache, cachette and cachet have a different pronunciation. Cachet and cachait do have the same though. Same for caché and cacher.
        MiroF 6y ago
        > Caché, cachet I'll be honest I have no idea what the difference is between these two.
        arcticbull 6y ago
        Ones French, and is the past tense of the verb cacher, “to hide”
        MiroF 6y ago
        No, I meant the pronunciation!
        arcticbull 6y ago
        Haha it’s should be the same - but maybe that’s because I learned French in Canada.
  - closeparen 6y ago
    Sufficiently prestigious schools are drowning in perfect applicants. You don’t even need to admit any rich slackers. Just let some of the qualified substitute money for luck.
    - MiroF 6y ago
      There are certainly some rich slacker/less talented people at prestigious schools, though I agree with the main thrust of your argument.
    - solveit 6y ago
      > Sufficiently prestigious schools are drowning in perfect applicants. This is by design. There exist tests that can distinguish between the merely very good and the outstanding. Elite US universities go out of their ways to not use them, precisely so they can admit the merely very good legacies.
      - MiroF 6y ago
        Elite schools don't use them at least partially so they can take the same tests as every other school.
      - lumost 6y ago
        A test that splits the top .1% of test takers vs. the top 1% likely isn't the best indicator of future career performance ( the source of university prestige ), or necessarily academic performance.
        rdtwo 6y ago
        That’s because future career is mostly influenced by how much money your parents have.
        saagarjha 6y ago
        Ok, a test that splits between the top 0.01% and the top 1%. One student goes to national competitions, the other is merely a decent student at your local high school. The SAT lacks the granularity to distinguish between them.
  - leoc 6y ago
    This is "the right mix".
- kbenson 6y ago
  Just because you know the relative size of each cohort doesn't mean you know if a specific person was in one or the other. There's always the possibility that someone admitted for money actually ends up excelling. I know quite a few people that got far more serious in college and ended up doing quite well even through in high school they were far from good students. That's before even considering that some small amount of what graduating from one of these schools conveys is a high likelihood of having networked with other people that will be well placed later. My naive expectation is that someone graduating with a science major from MIT might have had a harder curriculum than someone graduating from that same major from Harvard, but I also (again, naively) expect that the person from Harvard may have made contacts with people that will be more diversely placed and in more powerful positions later.
- dnautics 6y ago
  not really. If the auction monetary results were somehow leaked (or hell even if they were published) it's a very strong indicator of what people are willing to pay to be around kids who have brains. You're only in a bind if you're rich AND your kid is smart, because everyone will be suspicious that your kid only got in because of $$. And then, if I were rich I'd probably want my kid to have to struggle a bit to see what it's like for a change. I'm sure there are plenty of actually rich people who think like me.
- happyjack 6y ago
  This.
- kmonsen 6y ago
  It’s like all the silly mobile games, you need a pool of cheap players so the rich people can feel accomplished when they spend money. This is similar, there needs to be enough for people being accepted to and graduating from a university so when the rich kids also does it people think that he is smart and accomplished.
  - TheOtherHobbes 6y ago
    The last thing you want is rich mediocre kids believing they're smart and accomplished when they aren't. Some of them will go into politics and business, and their entitlement and delusionally rosy view of their talents will make them a national liability. You really want to steer rich slackers towards wasting their lives with dumb hedonism, keeping them as far away as possible from any activity with strategic influence.
- ben_w 6y ago
  Not necessarily. Fancy high-end watch bands like Rolex and Omega are not fundamentally better at telling the time than a Casio F-91W. The difference is pure prestige.
slivanes 6y ago
Imagine seeing that type of perverse qualification for sports teams? Some players that pay for the privilege to play, others through dedication and skill. Is this the type of spectacle you would want to watch? Actually, maybe seeing some spoilt rich brat getting creamed on a football field would be worth admission.
- ertemplin 6y ago
  This is how quite a few high school football teams work... It's usually done through booster clubs.
spullara 6y ago
Then they could just run a dutch auction for the spots!
mattnewton 6y ago
A large part of the prestige comes from being associated with the people who got in on merit. A school that did this would implicitly devalue that prestige for anyone from an obviously wealthy background. Instead they pretend this doesn’t happen to keep the prestige of “got into x school” valuable.
- protomyth 6y ago
  A large part of the prestige comes from being associated with the people who got in on merit. I can see that for UC Berkeley, but would that be true of somewhere like Harvard? I get the feeling it would devalue some of the perks of a Harvard education to accept on merit, when a lot of the students from low income backgrounds find the value in mixing with the legacy students.
  - mattnewton 6y ago
    Plenty of legacy students would get in anyways because of the incredible access to tutors, impressive sounding enrichment programs, and plain better schools wealth brings in this country, no need to stack the deck even further. "Got into harvard" is supposed to be a mark of a high achieving individual and would be devalued if they were more explicit about pay-to-play.
NullPrefix 6y ago
>I think these universities should accept that they are providing an education, but they are selling prestige, and split their admissions into two pots These universities also provide valuable networking opportunities. Would it be appropriate to completely segregate the pots so that they couldn't network?
- Uhhrrr 6y ago
  That's where the value comes in, right? Bright people meet people with capital and valuable social networks and vice versa.
mrxd 6y ago
That would probably be illegal for a public university. Elite private universities frequently defend themselves against the criticism that they reinforce social hierarchy and class privilege. They would incur significant reputational damage if they had official policies that did just that.
- gowld 6y ago
  What do you mean? We just had a huge lawsuit where Harvard produced detailed evidence that they have exactly those policies, and it was never a secret before then. https://google.com/search?q=harvard+legacy https://google.com/search?q=harvard+legacy Other private schools are no different.
belorn 6y ago
There are three systems. People who pay their way in, people who has the highest grades, and people who get in through diversity quota. Transparency in all three would cause a major waves into the public perspective of admission practices.
- MiroF 6y ago
  Cal doesn't have a "diversity quota."
  - ghaff 6y ago
    Every competitive school has a diversity goal (though perhaps not outright quota) at some level for many dimensions of diversity. Many/most schools have academic floors but are then looking to blend in other factors other than pure academic achievement.
    - SpicyLemonZest 6y ago
      The UC chancellors would certainly like to blend diversity goals into their admissions process, but they're prohibited from doing so by state law, and most commentators I've seen believe the prohibition is reasonably effective.
    - MiroF 6y ago
      > diversity goal Well, if Cal has one - it's not one that it can target through changing admission practices.
    - renewiltord 6y ago
      The UCs are prohibited from doing this by Prop 209. Prop 16 this year is an attempt to undo that https://ballotpedia.org/California_Proposition_16,_Repeal_Proposition_209_Affirmative_Action_Amendment_(2020) https://ballotpedia.org/California_Proposition_16,_Repeal_Pr...
      - kepler1 6y ago
ianmobbs 6y ago
> This system isn't "fair", but the outcome is effectively the same as our current setup. With the most notable difference being that, at least this system is transparent and acknowledges that X% of incoming students paid for their post. With the current setup, there are consequences to trying to pay your way in if you're caught. What's the point of removing those consequences?
- samatman 6y ago
  Those consequences, in practice, simply act as an additional filter: you have to be savvy enough, and well-connected enough, to make a large alumni donation, and butter up the admissions committee. This would replace that with cash on the barrel, which is simpler and more honest. I'm not convinced it's better, but that would be the point of so doing.
ajkjk 6y ago
I'm generally opposed to this kind of acceptance-of-bad-things but in this case I kinda agree. If people are willing to pay millions to go to college, that's potentially a great advantage to students who otherwise have trouble affording it -- let the rich kids subsidize it for everyone else. By not funneling the donations through weird under-the-table transactions it can be more directly used for a net good for the student body. It is tricky to maintain the 'prestige' associated with an institution doing this, so I don't really agree with making it too public. But, after all, it was kinda an open secret that this happens and the prestige was maintained away, so if it kept happening with a bit more legitimacy it probably wouldn't change much. Prestige doesn't just mean academic credentials: for some people, if they see Berkeley on a resumé they probably want it to be because that applicant is super-rich and well-connected! My ideal reform would be a simultaneous enactment of several things: * allow people to pay millions to go to college; allow this to fund student aid for other students. Explicitly stop using it to build buildings * stop having all of these overfunded and weirdly inappropriate sports institutions as a core part of academia. * stop with massively-inflated grades that allow the rich-but-undercapable kids to graduate with the appearance of successful academics. They can buy their way in but they have to do as well as everybody else after that. * ensure that the influx of money from rich kids' applications doesn't go to administrators in any way, as that would incentivize them to over-prioritize these people. This reframes things so that the point of strong applications isn't to _get in_, it's to get the scholarships required to get in for free instead of paying the absurd tuition. Meanwhile the school has to keep admitting remarkable kids in order to maintain its brand as prestigious. All of this is already how it works, but making it explicit ought to align incentivizes in a way that makes the whole thing less disturbingly bizarre.
- anonAndOn 6y ago
  > let the rich kids subsidize it for everyone else The state schools already do this. It's called "out of state tuition". For example, UC Berkeley charges California residents $14k/yr tuition while everyone else pays $44k/yr. Not surprisingly, the number of out of state students admitted to the UC system is increasing every year. [0] [0]https://www.ucop.edu/institutional-research-academic-planning/_files/factsheets/2020/fall-2020-admission-table-1-1.pdf https://www.ucop.edu/institutional-research-academic-plannin...
kondu 6y ago
This is pretty much what happens in most of the top private engineering schools in India. About a third of the seats are earmarked for "management quota", meaning you pay the management to get in. The rest qualify via various exams. Works well, doesn't really devalue the prestige of the uni or the students who get in by paying like some of the sibling comments are speculating.
- harpratap 6y ago
  And the private ones aren't really prestigious like the public funded IITs. > Works well, doesn't really devalue the prestige of the uni or the students who get in by paying like some of the sibling comments are speculating. Not sure which part of India you lived in but private engineering schools like Manipal, SRM, Vellore aren't considered prestigious. BITS is the only private one which has good clout but they don't have any management quotas.
maedla 6y ago
This would completely erode any public perception of prestige of any University that implements it.
- tzs 6y ago
  That's probably true if done the way suggested, where the auctioned slots are open to anyone who pays enough money. Suppose that instead the auction was only open to people who got put on the wait list after the regular admissions process? Top schools get a lot more qualified applicants than they have openings for, and a lot of people end up on the wait list who are just as qualified as people who were admitted.
- gowld 6y ago
  We just had a huge lawsuit where Harvard produced detailed evidence that they have exactly those policies, and it was never a secret before then. https://google.com/search?q=harvard+legacy https://google.com/search?q=harvard+legacy Other private schools are no different.
rjsw 6y ago
That is how ancient universities used to operate, there were several types of student who paid different amounts for their tuition, some background here [1]. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Commoner_(academia) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Commoner_(academia)
scandox 6y ago
I went to a boarding school in the UK that followed this model. Ultimately you lose the prestige. Not necessarily quickly enough for any individual to care. But that's the path. Lots of boys sitting in their rooms smoking weed and ordering pizza and having to be edged out over 2 or 3 years because their parents paid for a swimming pool...
- hatmatrix 6y ago
  Probably depends on the portion of donor vs. merit positions though doesn't it? As long as the overwhelming majority is merit-based, the academic reputation of the school should be maintained.
  - renewiltord 6y ago
    No, lots of things are maintained on a collective illusion. We pretend that you have to be smart to get into Yale but you could donate a building and get in. But if Yale put up a sign saying you can get in for the price of a building, now buying a building makes the admission worthless to you. It needs plausible deniability to work.
  - scandox 6y ago
    This also completely ignores the effect on the other pupils. It's like any form of corruption, it lowers morale and makes people view their situation in a reductive and transactional manner. Ultimately it fosters an attitude which is characterised by a desire to game, control and exploit as opposed to learn, understand and engage.
    - spiritplumber 6y ago
      I did a bit of research work at the University of Ottawa, which by necessity ends up having a sizeable contingent of diplomats' offsprings. A guy walked up to me and straight up offered to pay me to do his senior project for him. I reported him to his academic advisor. She told me "Thanks for telling me, but there's not much we can do about it without causing an international accident." So next time we saw each other, I agreed to help him with his senior project if I got to go a few rounds with him. He didn't take me up on it.
supercanuck 6y ago
So if it happens, why hide it? Nobody is complaining about fairness or that it happens, let it happen but be open and honest about these transactions so other market participants can behave accordingly.
spiritplumber 6y ago
"Providing an education" and "selling prestige" are going to decouple more and more as remote education gets better, which it will since right now there's no choice but to invest in it.
dlubarov 6y ago
This seems like a natural solution to me, since it's not all that different from merit-based scholarships. At my school for example, the full tuition price was ~$40k, but a portion of admitted students were offered a $10k merit scholarship. So we already had two categories of students, with somewhat different prices and somewhat different admission standards. I don't see a problem with adding adding more categories along the same lines, as long as some minimum academic standard is enforced. If I'm in the middle category, I'm happy with my peers who pay more than me because they subsidize the other categories, and I'm happy with my peers who pay less because they elevate the school's reputation.
yakz 6y ago
Why not just let students sell their slots? Sell at any time, but any earned credits are forfeited and they can't be re-accepted to the institution for some number of years.
- saagarjha 6y ago
  Why wouldn’t you just sell your slot for a gap year?
manfredo 6y ago
I think this is largely how it works, but it's not explicitly separated into two pots. Rather, things like legacy status and family donors are factors in a multifaceted admissions process. Someone who donated twice as much might not have their kid get admitted if academics and test scores are bad, whereas someone who didn't donate as much might get in with good grades and test scores.
shuckles 6y ago
Private schools can decide what they sell, but the UCs should “sell” a great education to as many people as possible at the lowest cost. In that view, pricing schemes that buy only a few scholarships for the low income is an insane priority.
pvg 6y ago
The University of California is a public university. It's also huge and doesn't really suffer from the artificial scarcity of something like 'an undergrad spot at Harvard'. There are lots of ways to get in. What you're describing sounds at once cynical and naive to me and that's a questionable starting place for thinking about public policy in a country-sized state.
rmk 6y ago
This is fairly common in India in private institutions, especially professional schools such as for Engineering, Medicine, Dentistry and Business Administration. A certain percentage of places are designated 'Management Quota', i.e., the management is free to do with them as it wishes. They are used in many ways. For example, if a certain religious community/sect/order runs the place, it may set aside a large chunk of the management quota to admit students from its community/sect/order; if a (non-sectarian) charitable trust runs the place, as is very common, it may set aside some percentage of the management quota for indigent students who would otherwise not had the chance to attend the institution. Additionally, almost invariably, some part of the management quota is sold to the highest bidder in a pure cash transaction. In this way, rich students end up subsidizing a reasonable number of otherwise deserving students. There is a significant number of (relatively much less deserving) candidates that all institutions (private or public) are required to admit, such as those coming from the so-called "Scheduled Castes", "Scheduled Tribes", "Other Backward Classes" (from communities that have been lagging in privilege and access to economic opportunities because of their caste/religion), and candidates that have done most of their prior schooling in (massively underserved) rural areas (IOTW, "Reservation" aka Affirmative Action candidates). In fact, the chunk of places allotted (by Government Order) to Affirmative Action candidates is much larger than Management Quota, and even 'Merit Quota' (i.e., candidates who sit competitive examinations in order to gain admission). As far as subsequent success is concerned, though, it's sink-or-swim for all the candidates who are admitted: they are not given any preference in tests, exams, etc. In some specific cases, for a small initial period, affirmative action candidates may be allowed to advance with lower scores, but that is very much a small exception, not the norm.
- corin_ 6y ago
  I'm curious - here in England, calling a person or a group of people "backward" would be rude/demeaning. Is that different in India, or is it a case or mixed wires in translating terms to English? Or do the people being called that find it demeaning but it's still socially acceptable among other people?
  - rmk 6y ago
    "Backward" has negative connotations here, in the west. But generally, the abbreviation "OBC" (Other Backward Castes) is used. From my personal observation, SC/ST/OBC folks are as caste-conscious as anyone else, but have successfully translated their caste identity into political power in India. In fact, it is fair to say that people from these categories (who comprise a numerically significant portion of the population) have a pretty good grip on power at every level of government, down from your local municipality ward up to the offices of the Prime Minister/President (do you know that the current Prime Minister of India is from a OBC)? Generally, in polite conversation, no one ever talks about the other person's caste. A lot of the time, this is unnecessary, though. There are tons of caste signifiers, such as your last name, your skin tone, your language (both speakers can use the same language but the set of words used and usage/abusage can tell you a lot about the person's background. Like how you could tell a cockney from an upper-crust West Londoner.) Don't even get me started on food. If you are a "pure vegetarian", then it's a very good chance you are high-caste. With the professions also, things are changing a bit more quickly, but age-old divisions remain. You would be hard-pressed to find a Brahmin working a construction site (there's a good chance a Brahmin would be in an air-conditioned office drawing up the plans for said site); almost zero chance you'd see an upper-caste person going out fishing to sell the catch and make a living, and so on. If you participate in a conversation with a group of Indians who have just met (at the workplace, say), just observe how they interact: they will put out direct or subtle questions like: "Where are you from originally?", "Where did you attend college?", "What do your parents do?", "Are you vegetarian or non-vegetarian?"... It just goes on and on. You can tell a lot about a person within 15 minutes of meeting him, if you have been raised in India. EDIT: BTW, the terms "Scheduled Caste", "Scheduled Tribe" (perhaps even "Other Backward Classes") were introduced by the British! The British bureaucrats who ruled the country had an obsession with making tidy lists to categorise people (hence the "Schedule" in "Scheduled"!) and came up with the (original) lists of these castes and tribes!
deleted 6y ago
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bnralt 6y ago
Another way, which would solve other problems as well, would simply be to uncouple credentials and education, and require any institution that receives federal funding to open the credentialing to everyone. Just as anyone who meets the requirements is eligible to take the exam for the CFA or CPA, anyone who meets the requirements should be eligible to take whatever exams or projects a college uses for it's credentials to obtain a degree (colleges could opt in to using a nationwide credentialing system instead of creating their own if they prefer). Open internships and the like to everyone as well. This would theoretically lead to college degrees representing what they claim to represent (skill of an individual at graduation, not at their junior year of High School), would solve most of the cost issue (self studying and taking the exam would be a viable option that wouldn't be penalized), and admittance would be much less important (since it'd be disconnected from credentials). Of course it would also defang the leverage universities currently hold over society, so I imagine they'd fight tooth and nail against it.
alphachloride 6y ago
In this case there will possibly be a new market for paying to be admitted through the merit path.
jerzyt 6y ago
I'd agree with this if the diploma had an indication which bucket the degree came from. When I need a brain surgeon, I'd like to know if he/she got the degree on merit or connections.
- kortilla 6y ago
  Is the implication here that the college doesn’t not actually test knowledge? If so, I’m not sure I’d want a doctor from there whether or not he/she happened to be smart as a 17 year old.
vmception 6y ago
> I think these universities should accept that they are providing an education, but they are selling prestige But this has how it has always been. Everyone knew it was always like this, had a feeling it was like this while they were considering or going through higher education, and now a couple articles and investigations come out. Is anyone surprised here? The only thing that has occurred is that people covet these institutions and also think they have a chance of accessing them, thanks to illusions of meritocracy that become real enough to be meaningful avenues for a wider population than before. In the past it was very clear who didn't have a chance and who did. Look at the example applicants in the article! A babysitter who knew reality and took a chance they got - babysit with this connected family and ask for the favor. DUH! Ka-CHING! Even dropping out of that kind of university looks good. Life upgraded. What game are the rest of you all even playing?
kingkawn 6y ago
Once you choose to sell off your prestige you’ve no longer got it to sell

MiroF 6y ago

The problem is that you can only sell prestige if there is strategic ambiguity between the two categories.

rhizome 6y ago
And that ambiguity is an economy: the rich slackers are seen as smart by association with the achievements of (past) students admitted by merit, and the rabble students acquire aristocratic social cache by the same token. I'm not an economist, but I wouldn't be surprised if this is a self-powering machine.
- acruns 6y ago
  That is an absolutely wonderful use of the word cache.
  - arcticbull 6y ago
    You're looking for cachet ("the state of being respected or admired; prestige") not cache ("hidden away for future use").
    - clankyclanker 6y ago
      Also not to be confused with Caché (apparently pronounced like cachet): https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/InterSystems_Cach%C3%A9 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/InterSystems_Cach%C3%A9
      - Galanwe 6y ago
        I will be the picky one: Caché, cache, cachette and cachet have a different pronunciation. Cachet and cachait do have the same though. Same for caché and cacher.
        MiroF 6y ago
        > Caché, cachet I'll be honest I have no idea what the difference is between these two.
        arcticbull 6y ago
        Ones French, and is the past tense of the verb cacher, “to hide”
        MiroF 6y ago
        No, I meant the pronunciation!
        arcticbull 6y ago
        Haha it’s should be the same - but maybe that’s because I learned French in Canada.
- closeparen 6y ago
  Sufficiently prestigious schools are drowning in perfect applicants. You don’t even need to admit any rich slackers. Just let some of the qualified substitute money for luck.
  - MiroF 6y ago
    There are certainly some rich slacker/less talented people at prestigious schools, though I agree with the main thrust of your argument.
  - solveit 6y ago
    > Sufficiently prestigious schools are drowning in perfect applicants. This is by design. There exist tests that can distinguish between the merely very good and the outstanding. Elite US universities go out of their ways to not use them, precisely so they can admit the merely very good legacies.
    - MiroF 6y ago
      Elite schools don't use them at least partially so they can take the same tests as every other school.
    - lumost 6y ago
      A test that splits the top .1% of test takers vs. the top 1% likely isn't the best indicator of future career performance ( the source of university prestige ), or necessarily academic performance.
      - rdtwo 6y ago
        That’s because future career is mostly influenced by how much money your parents have.
      - saagarjha 6y ago
        Ok, a test that splits between the top 0.01% and the top 1%. One student goes to national competitions, the other is merely a decent student at your local high school. The SAT lacks the granularity to distinguish between them.
- leoc 6y ago
  This is "the right mix".
kbenson 6y ago
Just because you know the relative size of each cohort doesn't mean you know if a specific person was in one or the other. There's always the possibility that someone admitted for money actually ends up excelling. I know quite a few people that got far more serious in college and ended up doing quite well even through in high school they were far from good students. That's before even considering that some small amount of what graduating from one of these schools conveys is a high likelihood of having networked with other people that will be well placed later. My naive expectation is that someone graduating with a science major from MIT might have had a harder curriculum than someone graduating from that same major from Harvard, but I also (again, naively) expect that the person from Harvard may have made contacts with people that will be more diversely placed and in more powerful positions later.
dnautics 6y ago
not really. If the auction monetary results were somehow leaked (or hell even if they were published) it's a very strong indicator of what people are willing to pay to be around kids who have brains. You're only in a bind if you're rich AND your kid is smart, because everyone will be suspicious that your kid only got in because of $$. And then, if I were rich I'd probably want my kid to have to struggle a bit to see what it's like for a change. I'm sure there are plenty of actually rich people who think like me.
happyjack 6y ago
This.
kmonsen 6y ago
It’s like all the silly mobile games, you need a pool of cheap players so the rich people can feel accomplished when they spend money. This is similar, there needs to be enough for people being accepted to and graduating from a university so when the rich kids also does it people think that he is smart and accomplished.
- TheOtherHobbes 6y ago
  The last thing you want is rich mediocre kids believing they're smart and accomplished when they aren't. Some of them will go into politics and business, and their entitlement and delusionally rosy view of their talents will make them a national liability. You really want to steer rich slackers towards wasting their lives with dumb hedonism, keeping them as far away as possible from any activity with strategic influence.
ben_w 6y ago
Not necessarily. Fancy high-end watch bands like Rolex and Omega are not fundamentally better at telling the time than a Casio F-91W. The difference is pure prestige.

slivanes 6y ago

Imagine seeing that type of perverse qualification for sports teams? Some players that pay for the privilege to play, others through dedication and skill. Is this the type of spectacle you would want to watch? Actually, maybe seeing some spoilt rich brat getting creamed on a football field would be worth admission.

ertemplin 6y ago
This is how quite a few high school football teams work... It's usually done through booster clubs.

spullara 6y ago

Then they could just run a dutch auction for the spots!

mattnewton 6y ago

A large part of the prestige comes from being associated with the people who got in on merit. A school that did this would implicitly devalue that prestige for anyone from an obviously wealthy background. Instead they pretend this doesn’t happen to keep the prestige of “got into x school” valuable.

protomyth 6y ago
A large part of the prestige comes from being associated with the people who got in on merit. I can see that for UC Berkeley, but would that be true of somewhere like Harvard? I get the feeling it would devalue some of the perks of a Harvard education to accept on merit, when a lot of the students from low income backgrounds find the value in mixing with the legacy students.
- mattnewton 6y ago
  Plenty of legacy students would get in anyways because of the incredible access to tutors, impressive sounding enrichment programs, and plain better schools wealth brings in this country, no need to stack the deck even further. "Got into harvard" is supposed to be a mark of a high achieving individual and would be devalued if they were more explicit about pay-to-play.

NullPrefix 6y ago

>I think these universities should accept that they are providing an education, but they are selling prestige, and split their admissions into two pots These universities also provide valuable networking opportunities. Would it be appropriate to completely segregate the pots so that they couldn't network?

Uhhrrr 6y ago
That's where the value comes in, right? Bright people meet people with capital and valuable social networks and vice versa.

mrxd 6y ago

That would probably be illegal for a public university. Elite private universities frequently defend themselves against the criticism that they reinforce social hierarchy and class privilege. They would incur significant reputational damage if they had official policies that did just that.

gowld 6y ago
What do you mean? We just had a huge lawsuit where Harvard produced detailed evidence that they have exactly those policies, and it was never a secret before then. https://google.com/search?q=harvard+legacy https://google.com/search?q=harvard+legacy Other private schools are no different.

belorn 6y ago

There are three systems. People who pay their way in, people who has the highest grades, and people who get in through diversity quota. Transparency in all three would cause a major waves into the public perspective of admission practices.

MiroF 6y ago
Cal doesn't have a "diversity quota."
- ghaff 6y ago
  Every competitive school has a diversity goal (though perhaps not outright quota) at some level for many dimensions of diversity. Many/most schools have academic floors but are then looking to blend in other factors other than pure academic achievement.
  - SpicyLemonZest 6y ago
    The UC chancellors would certainly like to blend diversity goals into their admissions process, but they're prohibited from doing so by state law, and most commentators I've seen believe the prohibition is reasonably effective.
  - MiroF 6y ago
    > diversity goal Well, if Cal has one - it's not one that it can target through changing admission practices.
  - renewiltord 6y ago
    The UCs are prohibited from doing this by Prop 209. Prop 16 this year is an attempt to undo that https://ballotpedia.org/California_Proposition_16,_Repeal_Proposition_209_Affirmative_Action_Amendment_(2020) https://ballotpedia.org/California_Proposition_16,_Repeal_Pr...
    - kepler1 6y ago

ianmobbs 6y ago

> This system isn't "fair", but the outcome is effectively the same as our current setup. With the most notable difference being that, at least this system is transparent and acknowledges that X% of incoming students paid for their post. With the current setup, there are consequences to trying to pay your way in if you're caught. What's the point of removing those consequences?

samatman 6y ago
Those consequences, in practice, simply act as an additional filter: you have to be savvy enough, and well-connected enough, to make a large alumni donation, and butter up the admissions committee. This would replace that with cash on the barrel, which is simpler and more honest. I'm not convinced it's better, but that would be the point of so doing.

ajkjk 6y ago

I'm generally opposed to this kind of acceptance-of-bad-things but in this case I kinda agree. If people are willing to pay millions to go to college, that's potentially a great advantage to students who otherwise have trouble affording it -- let the rich kids subsidize it for everyone else. By not funneling the donations through weird under-the-table transactions it can be more directly used for a net good for the student body. It is tricky to maintain the 'prestige' associated with an institution doing this, so I don't really agree with making it too public. But, after all, it was kinda an open secret that this happens and the prestige was maintained away, so if it kept happening with a bit more legitimacy it probably wouldn't change much. Prestige doesn't just mean academic credentials: for some people, if they see Berkeley on a resumé they probably want it to be because that applicant is super-rich and well-connected! My ideal reform would be a simultaneous enactment of several things: * allow people to pay millions to go to college; allow this to fund student aid for other students. Explicitly stop using it to build buildings * stop having all of these overfunded and weirdly inappropriate sports institutions as a core part of academia. * stop with massively-inflated grades that allow the rich-but-undercapable kids to graduate with the appearance of successful academics. They can buy their way in but they have to do as well as everybody else after that. * ensure that the influx of money from rich kids' applications doesn't go to administrators in any way, as that would incentivize them to over-prioritize these people. This reframes things so that the point of strong applications isn't to _get in_, it's to get the scholarships required to get in for free instead of paying the absurd tuition. Meanwhile the school has to keep admitting remarkable kids in order to maintain its brand as prestigious. All of this is already how it works, but making it explicit ought to align incentivizes in a way that makes the whole thing less disturbingly bizarre.

anonAndOn 6y ago
> let the rich kids subsidize it for everyone else The state schools already do this. It's called "out of state tuition". For example, UC Berkeley charges California residents $14k/yr tuition while everyone else pays $44k/yr. Not surprisingly, the number of out of state students admitted to the UC system is increasing every year. [0] [0]https://www.ucop.edu/institutional-research-academic-planning/_files/factsheets/2020/fall-2020-admission-table-1-1.pdf https://www.ucop.edu/institutional-research-academic-plannin...

kondu 6y ago

This is pretty much what happens in most of the top private engineering schools in India. About a third of the seats are earmarked for "management quota", meaning you pay the management to get in. The rest qualify via various exams. Works well, doesn't really devalue the prestige of the uni or the students who get in by paying like some of the sibling comments are speculating.

harpratap 6y ago
And the private ones aren't really prestigious like the public funded IITs. > Works well, doesn't really devalue the prestige of the uni or the students who get in by paying like some of the sibling comments are speculating. Not sure which part of India you lived in but private engineering schools like Manipal, SRM, Vellore aren't considered prestigious. BITS is the only private one which has good clout but they don't have any management quotas.

maedla 6y ago

This would completely erode any public perception of prestige of any University that implements it.

tzs 6y ago
That's probably true if done the way suggested, where the auctioned slots are open to anyone who pays enough money. Suppose that instead the auction was only open to people who got put on the wait list after the regular admissions process? Top schools get a lot more qualified applicants than they have openings for, and a lot of people end up on the wait list who are just as qualified as people who were admitted.
gowld 6y ago
We just had a huge lawsuit where Harvard produced detailed evidence that they have exactly those policies, and it was never a secret before then. https://google.com/search?q=harvard+legacy https://google.com/search?q=harvard+legacy Other private schools are no different.

rjsw 6y ago

That is how ancient universities used to operate, there were several types of student who paid different amounts for their tuition, some background here [1]. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Commoner_(academia) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Commoner_(academia)

scandox 6y ago

I went to a boarding school in the UK that followed this model. Ultimately you lose the prestige. Not necessarily quickly enough for any individual to care. But that's the path. Lots of boys sitting in their rooms smoking weed and ordering pizza and having to be edged out over 2 or 3 years because their parents paid for a swimming pool...

hatmatrix 6y ago
Probably depends on the portion of donor vs. merit positions though doesn't it? As long as the overwhelming majority is merit-based, the academic reputation of the school should be maintained.
- renewiltord 6y ago
  No, lots of things are maintained on a collective illusion. We pretend that you have to be smart to get into Yale but you could donate a building and get in. But if Yale put up a sign saying you can get in for the price of a building, now buying a building makes the admission worthless to you. It needs plausible deniability to work.
- scandox 6y ago
  This also completely ignores the effect on the other pupils. It's like any form of corruption, it lowers morale and makes people view their situation in a reductive and transactional manner. Ultimately it fosters an attitude which is characterised by a desire to game, control and exploit as opposed to learn, understand and engage.
  - spiritplumber 6y ago
    I did a bit of research work at the University of Ottawa, which by necessity ends up having a sizeable contingent of diplomats' offsprings. A guy walked up to me and straight up offered to pay me to do his senior project for him. I reported him to his academic advisor. She told me "Thanks for telling me, but there's not much we can do about it without causing an international accident." So next time we saw each other, I agreed to help him with his senior project if I got to go a few rounds with him. He didn't take me up on it.

supercanuck 6y ago

So if it happens, why hide it? Nobody is complaining about fairness or that it happens, let it happen but be open and honest about these transactions so other market participants can behave accordingly.

spiritplumber 6y ago

"Providing an education" and "selling prestige" are going to decouple more and more as remote education gets better, which it will since right now there's no choice but to invest in it.

dlubarov 6y ago

This seems like a natural solution to me, since it's not all that different from merit-based scholarships. At my school for example, the full tuition price was ~$40k, but a portion of admitted students were offered a $10k merit scholarship. So we already had two categories of students, with somewhat different prices and somewhat different admission standards. I don't see a problem with adding adding more categories along the same lines, as long as some minimum academic standard is enforced. If I'm in the middle category, I'm happy with my peers who pay more than me because they subsidize the other categories, and I'm happy with my peers who pay less because they elevate the school's reputation.

yakz 6y ago

Why not just let students sell their slots? Sell at any time, but any earned credits are forfeited and they can't be re-accepted to the institution for some number of years.

saagarjha 6y ago
Why wouldn’t you just sell your slot for a gap year?

manfredo 6y ago

I think this is largely how it works, but it's not explicitly separated into two pots. Rather, things like legacy status and family donors are factors in a multifaceted admissions process. Someone who donated twice as much might not have their kid get admitted if academics and test scores are bad, whereas someone who didn't donate as much might get in with good grades and test scores.

shuckles 6y ago

Private schools can decide what they sell, but the UCs should “sell” a great education to as many people as possible at the lowest cost. In that view, pricing schemes that buy only a few scholarships for the low income is an insane priority.

pvg 6y ago

The University of California is a public university. It's also huge and doesn't really suffer from the artificial scarcity of something like 'an undergrad spot at Harvard'. There are lots of ways to get in. What you're describing sounds at once cynical and naive to me and that's a questionable starting place for thinking about public policy in a country-sized state.

rmk 6y ago

This is fairly common in India in private institutions, especially professional schools such as for Engineering, Medicine, Dentistry and Business Administration. A certain percentage of places are designated 'Management Quota', i.e., the management is free to do with them as it wishes. They are used in many ways. For example, if a certain religious community/sect/order runs the place, it may set aside a large chunk of the management quota to admit students from its community/sect/order; if a (non-sectarian) charitable trust runs the place, as is very common, it may set aside some percentage of the management quota for indigent students who would otherwise not had the chance to attend the institution. Additionally, almost invariably, some part of the management quota is sold to the highest bidder in a pure cash transaction. In this way, rich students end up subsidizing a reasonable number of otherwise deserving students. There is a significant number of (relatively much less deserving) candidates that all institutions (private or public) are required to admit, such as those coming from the so-called "Scheduled Castes", "Scheduled Tribes", "Other Backward Classes" (from communities that have been lagging in privilege and access to economic opportunities because of their caste/religion), and candidates that have done most of their prior schooling in (massively underserved) rural areas (IOTW, "Reservation" aka Affirmative Action candidates). In fact, the chunk of places allotted (by Government Order) to Affirmative Action candidates is much larger than Management Quota, and even 'Merit Quota' (i.e., candidates who sit competitive examinations in order to gain admission). As far as subsequent success is concerned, though, it's sink-or-swim for all the candidates who are admitted: they are not given any preference in tests, exams, etc. In some specific cases, for a small initial period, affirmative action candidates may be allowed to advance with lower scores, but that is very much a small exception, not the norm.

corin_ 6y ago
I'm curious - here in England, calling a person or a group of people "backward" would be rude/demeaning. Is that different in India, or is it a case or mixed wires in translating terms to English? Or do the people being called that find it demeaning but it's still socially acceptable among other people?
- rmk 6y ago
  "Backward" has negative connotations here, in the west. But generally, the abbreviation "OBC" (Other Backward Castes) is used. From my personal observation, SC/ST/OBC folks are as caste-conscious as anyone else, but have successfully translated their caste identity into political power in India. In fact, it is fair to say that people from these categories (who comprise a numerically significant portion of the population) have a pretty good grip on power at every level of government, down from your local municipality ward up to the offices of the Prime Minister/President (do you know that the current Prime Minister of India is from a OBC)? Generally, in polite conversation, no one ever talks about the other person's caste. A lot of the time, this is unnecessary, though. There are tons of caste signifiers, such as your last name, your skin tone, your language (both speakers can use the same language but the set of words used and usage/abusage can tell you a lot about the person's background. Like how you could tell a cockney from an upper-crust West Londoner.) Don't even get me started on food. If you are a "pure vegetarian", then it's a very good chance you are high-caste. With the professions also, things are changing a bit more quickly, but age-old divisions remain. You would be hard-pressed to find a Brahmin working a construction site (there's a good chance a Brahmin would be in an air-conditioned office drawing up the plans for said site); almost zero chance you'd see an upper-caste person going out fishing to sell the catch and make a living, and so on. If you participate in a conversation with a group of Indians who have just met (at the workplace, say), just observe how they interact: they will put out direct or subtle questions like: "Where are you from originally?", "Where did you attend college?", "What do your parents do?", "Are you vegetarian or non-vegetarian?"... It just goes on and on. You can tell a lot about a person within 15 minutes of meeting him, if you have been raised in India. EDIT: BTW, the terms "Scheduled Caste", "Scheduled Tribe" (perhaps even "Other Backward Classes") were introduced by the British! The British bureaucrats who ruled the country had an obsession with making tidy lists to categorise people (hence the "Schedule" in "Scheduled"!) and came up with the (original) lists of these castes and tribes!

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bnralt 6y ago

Another way, which would solve other problems as well, would simply be to uncouple credentials and education, and require any institution that receives federal funding to open the credentialing to everyone. Just as anyone who meets the requirements is eligible to take the exam for the CFA or CPA, anyone who meets the requirements should be eligible to take whatever exams or projects a college uses for it's credentials to obtain a degree (colleges could opt in to using a nationwide credentialing system instead of creating their own if they prefer). Open internships and the like to everyone as well. This would theoretically lead to college degrees representing what they claim to represent (skill of an individual at graduation, not at their junior year of High School), would solve most of the cost issue (self studying and taking the exam would be a viable option that wouldn't be penalized), and admittance would be much less important (since it'd be disconnected from credentials). Of course it would also defang the leverage universities currently hold over society, so I imagine they'd fight tooth and nail against it.

alphachloride 6y ago

In this case there will possibly be a new market for paying to be admitted through the merit path.

jerzyt 6y ago

I'd agree with this if the diploma had an indication which bucket the degree came from. When I need a brain surgeon, I'd like to know if he/she got the degree on merit or connections.

kortilla 6y ago
Is the implication here that the college doesn’t not actually test knowledge? If so, I’m not sure I’d want a doctor from there whether or not he/she happened to be smart as a 17 year old.

vmception 6y ago

> I think these universities should accept that they are providing an education, but they are selling prestige But this has how it has always been. Everyone knew it was always like this, had a feeling it was like this while they were considering or going through higher education, and now a couple articles and investigations come out. Is anyone surprised here? The only thing that has occurred is that people covet these institutions and also think they have a chance of accessing them, thanks to illusions of meritocracy that become real enough to be meaningful avenues for a wider population than before. In the past it was very clear who didn't have a chance and who did. Look at the example applicants in the article! A babysitter who knew reality and took a chance they got - babysit with this connected family and ask for the favor. DUH! Ka-CHING! Even dropping out of that kind of university looks good. Life upgraded. What game are the rest of you all even playing?

kingkawn 6y ago

Once you choose to sell off your prestige you’ve no longer got it to sell