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I think you're still not not getting the point Abbot is making. > They already tried to build a system that uses merit and qualifications alone, and the compla

I think you're still not not getting the point Abbot is making. > They already tried to build a system that uses merit and qualifications alone, and the complaint is how doing that has led to extremely biased results. How did it produce "extremely biased results"? You're being vague here, but I suspect by "biased results" you mean they produced a racial (and perhaps gender) makeup you don't like. Abbot rejects the idea that a non-discriminatory admissions process is biased because it produces student body with the "wrong" racial makeup. His view is that picking a "right" racial makeup and utilizing discrimination to achieve it, is a form of bias. Also how is it "intentionally inflammatory and insulting"? Are you aware that 62% of African Americans do not support the use of race in admissions?[1] Perhaps what's insulting is and admission process that looks like this: https://www.economist.com/img/b/1280/1482/90/sites/default/files/images/print-edition/20180623_USC932_0.png https://www.economist.com/img/b/1280/1482/90/sites/default/f... 1. https://www.pewresearch.org/fact-tank/2019/02/25/most-americans-say-colleges-should-not-consider-race-or-ethnicity-in-admissions/ https://www.pewresearch.org/fact-tank/2019/02/25/most-americ...

customkitchen 4y ago
>You're being vague here, but I suspect by "biased results" you mean they produced a racial (and perhaps gender) makeup you don't like. No, you are completely and utterly wrong on that. This is more of the same intellectually lazy assumptions, please stop this. And I get his point perfectly, it is still insulting and dismissive. When someone starts talking about school vouchers and "merit" in the context of this then it's mostly an admission that they don't know what they're talking about. It has absolutely nothing to do with the problems faced by a school like MIT that already has an extremely low acceptance rate anyway. They know how to test students on academic rigor, that isn't the issue. The fact is, they already cannot accepts all students who pass based on academic merit alone. Your chart even demonstrates that is the case with Harvard, the issue is explicitly not that racial makeup is being considered over academic achievement.
- Manuel_D 4y ago
  > No, you are completely and utterly wrong on that. This is more of the same intellectually lazy assumptions, please stop this. Then can you explain what was biased about an admissions process that does not discriminate on the basis of race, gender, and other identity characteristics, if it wasn't the demographics of the student body? It's still vague how a race-agnostic admissions process would be biased. > The fact is, they already cannot accepts all students who pass based on academic merit alone. Your chart even demonstrates that is the case with Harvard, the issue is explicitly not that racial makeup is being considered over academic achievement. I'm not sure how one arrives at this conclusion. An African American student in the 4th decile (as in, is scoring above 40% of students and below 60% of students) has the same chances at admission at an Asian student in the top decile. Even at that top of the academic performance an Asian applicant has a ~15% chance at admission while an African American student at the same academic performance has nearly a 60% chance at admission. There is nowhere near equal chances at admission between racial groups at the same academic performance. The fact that they have many more qualified applicants doesn't make their admission practices any less discriminatory. If I have 500 qualified white applicants and 5,000 qualified Asian applicants and I admit 100 whites and 100 Asians have I not discriminated against Asians? Just because I'm picking both from the same qualified pool doesn't change the fact that I'm making a 10x disparity favoring whites.
  - customkitchen 4y ago
    >Then can you explain what was biased about an admissions process that does not discriminate on the basis of race, gender, and other identity characteristics, if it wasn't the demographics of the student body? It's still vague how a race-agnostic admissions process would be biased. There can still be implicit bias. Please read this publication from MIT on this exact subject: https://tll.mit.edu/teaching-resources/inclusive-classroom/implicit-bias/ https://tll.mit.edu/teaching-resources/inclusive-classroom/i... >An African American student in the 4th decile (as in, is scoring above 40% of students and below 60% of students) has the same chances at admission at an Asian student in the top decile. Ok, but that still doesn't change the facts. The issue is not that there aren't enough qualified students or that unqualified students are being placed above qualified ones or that merit is being ignored. That just isn't what's happening at all. That graph is missing a lot of important context, like the actual court case it was talking about that is currently headed for the Supreme Court: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Students_for_Fair_Admissions_v._President_and_Fellows_of_Harvard_College https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Students_for_Fair_Admissions_v... The whole thing about "we need more merit" is a misdirection. It's a bad, irrelevant take. This professor should be ashamed to have put his name on such dreck. >If I have 500 qualified white applicants and 5,000 qualified Asian applicants and I admit 100 whites and 100 Asians have I not discriminated against Asians? It very well might be so, but now you're coming back around to the same thing about implicit bias again, the very thing that the original article was dismissing as not an issue. The plaintiff even argued in court that Harvard was doing this...

customkitchen 4y ago

>You're being vague here, but I suspect by "biased results" you mean they produced a racial (and perhaps gender) makeup you don't like. No, you are completely and utterly wrong on that. This is more of the same intellectually lazy assumptions, please stop this. And I get his point perfectly, it is still insulting and dismissive. When someone starts talking about school vouchers and "merit" in the context of this then it's mostly an admission that they don't know what they're talking about. It has absolutely nothing to do with the problems faced by a school like MIT that already has an extremely low acceptance rate anyway. They know how to test students on academic rigor, that isn't the issue. The fact is, they already cannot accepts all students who pass based on academic merit alone. Your chart even demonstrates that is the case with Harvard, the issue is explicitly not that racial makeup is being considered over academic achievement.

Manuel_D 4y ago
> No, you are completely and utterly wrong on that. This is more of the same intellectually lazy assumptions, please stop this. Then can you explain what was biased about an admissions process that does not discriminate on the basis of race, gender, and other identity characteristics, if it wasn't the demographics of the student body? It's still vague how a race-agnostic admissions process would be biased. > The fact is, they already cannot accepts all students who pass based on academic merit alone. Your chart even demonstrates that is the case with Harvard, the issue is explicitly not that racial makeup is being considered over academic achievement. I'm not sure how one arrives at this conclusion. An African American student in the 4th decile (as in, is scoring above 40% of students and below 60% of students) has the same chances at admission at an Asian student in the top decile. Even at that top of the academic performance an Asian applicant has a ~15% chance at admission while an African American student at the same academic performance has nearly a 60% chance at admission. There is nowhere near equal chances at admission between racial groups at the same academic performance. The fact that they have many more qualified applicants doesn't make their admission practices any less discriminatory. If I have 500 qualified white applicants and 5,000 qualified Asian applicants and I admit 100 whites and 100 Asians have I not discriminated against Asians? Just because I'm picking both from the same qualified pool doesn't change the fact that I'm making a 10x disparity favoring whites.
- customkitchen 4y ago
  >Then can you explain what was biased about an admissions process that does not discriminate on the basis of race, gender, and other identity characteristics, if it wasn't the demographics of the student body? It's still vague how a race-agnostic admissions process would be biased. There can still be implicit bias. Please read this publication from MIT on this exact subject: https://tll.mit.edu/teaching-resources/inclusive-classroom/implicit-bias/ https://tll.mit.edu/teaching-resources/inclusive-classroom/i... >An African American student in the 4th decile (as in, is scoring above 40% of students and below 60% of students) has the same chances at admission at an Asian student in the top decile. Ok, but that still doesn't change the facts. The issue is not that there aren't enough qualified students or that unqualified students are being placed above qualified ones or that merit is being ignored. That just isn't what's happening at all. That graph is missing a lot of important context, like the actual court case it was talking about that is currently headed for the Supreme Court: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Students_for_Fair_Admissions_v._President_and_Fellows_of_Harvard_College https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Students_for_Fair_Admissions_v... The whole thing about "we need more merit" is a misdirection. It's a bad, irrelevant take. This professor should be ashamed to have put his name on such dreck. >If I have 500 qualified white applicants and 5,000 qualified Asian applicants and I admit 100 whites and 100 Asians have I not discriminated against Asians? It very well might be so, but now you're coming back around to the same thing about implicit bias again, the very thing that the original article was dismissing as not an issue. The plaintiff even argued in court that Harvard was doing this...