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> Institutions like Harvard say they consider an applicant's race as one of several factors - including economic status and religious belief - in order to build

> Institutions like Harvard say they consider an applicant's race as one of several factors - including economic status and religious belief - in order to build classes that accurately represent the racial and ethnic diversity of the country. I mean, this is all kind of window dressing for elite institutions to be elite, right? There are millions of people qualified to attend these university, Harvard gets to hand select from all of them who gets to join their walled garden based on whatever Harvard Admissions is into right now. Notice that they don't care about diversity of viewpoints or politics. If these universities actually cared about minority enrollment, they could always expand the size of their enrollment. But none of them want to admit that the only real cache of their education is the exclusivity.

JumpCrisscross 4y ago
> they could always expand the size of their enrollment There are reasons beyond manufactured exclusivity for why this doesn’t work. College education isn’t just about students soaking up material. We need more online vocational schools where that’s the sole purpose. But let’s not throw out the baby with the bath water.
- thatfrenchguy 4y ago
  Compare say, Berkeley to Stanford, and you'll see why this could work.
  - JumpCrisscross 4y ago
    > Compare say, Berkeley to Stanford Berkeley is highly exclusive [1], albeit 3x less so than Stanford [2]. The class-size difference, about 12,000, is noise against the millions of degrees conferred to Americans every year. Meanwhile, Stanford produces different graduate as a result of its process. Forcing homogenisation to one model for ideological purity is misled. [1] https://admission.universityofcalifornia.edu/campuses-majors/berkeley/freshman-admit-data.html https://admission.universityofcalifornia.edu/campuses-majors... [2] https://stanforddaily.com/2021/10/14/stanford-admit-rate-drops-to-record-low-3-95-for-the-class-of-2025/ https://stanforddaily.com/2021/10/14/stanford-admit-rate-dro...
    - hot_gril 4y ago
      tl;dr Berkeley is still exclusive even after you're admitted Berkeley has its own way of filtering students once they're admitted. This is most obvious with the computer science majors, of which there are two that involve almost the same coursework. EECS is super hard to get into to begin with. Whereas anyone in the school can intend L&S CS, but there's a rather high GPA cutoff (at like 30th %tile but don't quote me) for declaring, and you're effectively barred from most upper-div CS classes until you've declared, usually second year IIRC. If you miss the cutoff for L&S or one of the other exclusive majors, you end up in an alternative. CS usually becomes the other CS: cognitive science. Yes it's a real field, but at Berkeley that just means you couldn't make comp sci. Cog sci has very few classes within its own major; instead everything is cross-listed with other majors, and you have a very hard time getting a spot in the class. The other common duo is Haas vs economics. And many of the required lower divs are "weeders," huge classes with low average grades that students perceive mainly as obstacles to the upper divs. I'm not saying this is a bad strategy, though.
      - abeppu 4y ago
        I also want to highlight that this dynamic messes up those adjacent programs. I was a cognitive science student because I thought it was fascinating, and it's unfortunate that the program gets a bit diluted by being branded "the other CS" and some share of students that don't actually care about the other components.
        hot_gril 4y ago
        Yeah, it kinda stinks. I want to edit my comment saying that cog sci is just mostly the alt bucket for comp sci, but it's too late. My roommate was cog sci because he actually cared about it, then he switched majors.
- legitster 4y ago
  I largely agree, except: When I look back on my own college experience, the actual academic content might only account for, like, a quarter of the value I got out of it. And data seems to back this out - entirely online degrees don't nearly drive as much success as the in-person experience. So universities are certainly not going to admit that the content and learning portion of their experience are not important. But moreover I suspect what Harvard and others don't want to admit is that they don't fully understand what makes alumni successful, and are terrified of changing the recipe too much.
thatfrenchguy 4y ago
> Notice that they don't care about diversity of viewpoints or politics Ever talked to someone from Harvard? (they'll usually tell you in the first 4 minutes you meet them telling you they went to school in Boston). They admit quite a number of conservative people if that's what you're worried about, and even their more left people are pretty center-right, as in they really don't want to pay more taxes. > they could always expand the size of their enrollment Really the feds could (and imo should) force them to do so, given a ton of their money come from federal grants. It's always been insane to me that private schools can receive 50k+ per grad student from my taxes, knowing that most people will never get in. Also insane how the elite UCs for example educates more people than the entire ivy league combined.
- deleted 4y ago
  [deleted]
- marcusverus 4y ago
  > They admit quite a number of conservative people... Nope. Fewer than 10% of students are conservative.[0] > and even their more left people are pretty center-right... Nope. ~65% self-identify as "Very Progressive" or "Progressive"! [0] There is no pretending that this is an accident, given that conservatives outnumber liberals by ~40% in the general population! [1] [0] https://features.thecrimson.com/2022/senior-survey/national-politics/ https://features.thecrimson.com/2022/senior-survey/national-... [1] https://news.gallup.com/poll/328367/americans-political-ideology-held-steady-2020.aspx https://news.gallup.com/poll/328367/americans-political-ideo...
  - feet 4y ago
    >conservatives outnumber liberals by ~40% in the general population! [1] You seem to have misunderstood the article you cited, from the article: >The percentage calling themselves conservative has been steadier over time and, at 36%, is the same today as in 1992.
    - trention 4y ago
      No, he hasn't. Conservatives are 0.36 of the general population, which is ~40% higher than the 0.25 that are liberals.
googlryas 4y ago
It also seems straight up incorrect. There are way too many international students at Harvard for it to represent the makeup of the country.
btown 4y ago
Expanding the size of enrollment isn't just something that can flipped like a switch. One cannot simply build a high-rise dormitory without increasing the capacity of all other facilities in lockstep - and a university designed to be fully walkable can only accommodate so much simultaneous construction. And more generally, you have the use of applicants' race backwards - the entire point of affirmative action is to take into account an applicant's merit-based performance relative to the opportunities they received growing up - and it is difficult to evaluate this fairly without taking into account the opportunities that might have been denied to the applicant as a result of their race. To put it another way, two hypothetical applicants from two families with different races but equivalent wealth etc. in the same community may have been treated incredibly differently based on their race. An admissions office forced to be "blind" to an applicant describing this discrepancy in opportunity would be less effective at evaluating applicants based on merit.
- Overtonwindow 4y ago
  Ivy schools have some of the largest endowments, rivaling the GDP of some small countries. If Harvard, and Yale were serious about diversity, they would let people attend for free.
  - legitster 4y ago
    Ummm, they largely do.
  - naniwaduni 4y ago
    If they admit you in the first place, they pretty much do, which was indeed a pretty salient perk of the top-tier colleges among the Asian immigrant parent crowd, at least a decade or two back. For a particular cohort of second-gens, you were going to an "elite" institution or you were going to state—the family finances weren't going to support sticker price without a near-full scholarship.
- legitster 4y ago
  > A university designed to be fully walkable can only accommodate so much simultaneous construction. Well, your implication here is that accessible, affordable colleges are clearly a second-rate experience. I'm not necessarily disagreeing here, but it's something academia themselves have not admitted. Your example forgets that they are still allowed to look at financial/hardship data to determine merit. So presuming that someone with identical upbringing must have had a harder life because of the color of their skin only exists to perpetuate bias.
Aunche 4y ago
Everything makes sense when you think of Harvard and similar universities as selfish private institutions that want to maximize their reputation. They want the children of world leaders, billionaires, and actual super-geniuses. They don't want to dilute their brand with thousands of extra students with mundane backgrounds that end up being moderately successful professionals who make mid-six-figures. Affirmative action students give the school more credibility among URMs, so they offer more to Harvard than a somewhat more qualified Asian who isn't quite IMO medalist level.
- legitster 4y ago
  My friend who was in a doctoral program put it best: "The point of academia is to make more academics. Bachelor and Master degrees are their funding source."
- snapplebobapple 4y ago
  It's more than this. It's way better to think of Harvard et al as large hedge funds abusing the school tax loophole. They do want the children who will be world leaders, billionaires etc. but it is because those are the most likely to donate to the hedge fund. They don't want to grow admission because it might hurt hedge fund donations but also because educating people is secondary to their actual purpose and should only be engaged in to the point that their primary purpose is maximized (middle management doesn't make the kind of donations worth worrying about for a hedge fund, they want a higher minimum efficient scale).
belter 4y ago
Don't underestimate how much they can push the cognitive dissonance :-) "Do Unto Other Harvard Students" - https://www.theatlantic.com/politics/archive/2017/07/do-unto-other-harvard-students/533514/ https://www.theatlantic.com/politics/archive/2017/07/do-unto... “...but we also recognize principles such as inclusiveness and equality, which many members of the Harvard community consider of paramount importance to our mission..."

JumpCrisscross 4y ago

> they could always expand the size of their enrollment There are reasons beyond manufactured exclusivity for why this doesn’t work. College education isn’t just about students soaking up material. We need more online vocational schools where that’s the sole purpose. But let’s not throw out the baby with the bath water.

thatfrenchguy 4y ago
Compare say, Berkeley to Stanford, and you'll see why this could work.
- JumpCrisscross 4y ago
  > Compare say, Berkeley to Stanford Berkeley is highly exclusive [1], albeit 3x less so than Stanford [2]. The class-size difference, about 12,000, is noise against the millions of degrees conferred to Americans every year. Meanwhile, Stanford produces different graduate as a result of its process. Forcing homogenisation to one model for ideological purity is misled. [1] https://admission.universityofcalifornia.edu/campuses-majors/berkeley/freshman-admit-data.html https://admission.universityofcalifornia.edu/campuses-majors... [2] https://stanforddaily.com/2021/10/14/stanford-admit-rate-drops-to-record-low-3-95-for-the-class-of-2025/ https://stanforddaily.com/2021/10/14/stanford-admit-rate-dro...
  - hot_gril 4y ago
    tl;dr Berkeley is still exclusive even after you're admitted Berkeley has its own way of filtering students once they're admitted. This is most obvious with the computer science majors, of which there are two that involve almost the same coursework. EECS is super hard to get into to begin with. Whereas anyone in the school can intend L&S CS, but there's a rather high GPA cutoff (at like 30th %tile but don't quote me) for declaring, and you're effectively barred from most upper-div CS classes until you've declared, usually second year IIRC. If you miss the cutoff for L&S or one of the other exclusive majors, you end up in an alternative. CS usually becomes the other CS: cognitive science. Yes it's a real field, but at Berkeley that just means you couldn't make comp sci. Cog sci has very few classes within its own major; instead everything is cross-listed with other majors, and you have a very hard time getting a spot in the class. The other common duo is Haas vs economics. And many of the required lower divs are "weeders," huge classes with low average grades that students perceive mainly as obstacles to the upper divs. I'm not saying this is a bad strategy, though.
    - abeppu 4y ago
      I also want to highlight that this dynamic messes up those adjacent programs. I was a cognitive science student because I thought it was fascinating, and it's unfortunate that the program gets a bit diluted by being branded "the other CS" and some share of students that don't actually care about the other components.
      - hot_gril 4y ago
        Yeah, it kinda stinks. I want to edit my comment saying that cog sci is just mostly the alt bucket for comp sci, but it's too late. My roommate was cog sci because he actually cared about it, then he switched majors.
legitster 4y ago
I largely agree, except: When I look back on my own college experience, the actual academic content might only account for, like, a quarter of the value I got out of it. And data seems to back this out - entirely online degrees don't nearly drive as much success as the in-person experience. So universities are certainly not going to admit that the content and learning portion of their experience are not important. But moreover I suspect what Harvard and others don't want to admit is that they don't fully understand what makes alumni successful, and are terrified of changing the recipe too much.

thatfrenchguy 4y ago

> Notice that they don't care about diversity of viewpoints or politics Ever talked to someone from Harvard? (they'll usually tell you in the first 4 minutes you meet them telling you they went to school in Boston). They admit quite a number of conservative people if that's what you're worried about, and even their more left people are pretty center-right, as in they really don't want to pay more taxes. > they could always expand the size of their enrollment Really the feds could (and imo should) force them to do so, given a ton of their money come from federal grants. It's always been insane to me that private schools can receive 50k+ per grad student from my taxes, knowing that most people will never get in. Also insane how the elite UCs for example educates more people than the entire ivy league combined.

deleted 4y ago
[deleted]
marcusverus 4y ago
> They admit quite a number of conservative people... Nope. Fewer than 10% of students are conservative.[0] > and even their more left people are pretty center-right... Nope. ~65% self-identify as "Very Progressive" or "Progressive"! [0] There is no pretending that this is an accident, given that conservatives outnumber liberals by ~40% in the general population! [1] [0] https://features.thecrimson.com/2022/senior-survey/national-politics/ https://features.thecrimson.com/2022/senior-survey/national-... [1] https://news.gallup.com/poll/328367/americans-political-ideology-held-steady-2020.aspx https://news.gallup.com/poll/328367/americans-political-ideo...
- feet 4y ago
  >conservatives outnumber liberals by ~40% in the general population! [1] You seem to have misunderstood the article you cited, from the article: >The percentage calling themselves conservative has been steadier over time and, at 36%, is the same today as in 1992.
  - trention 4y ago
    No, he hasn't. Conservatives are 0.36 of the general population, which is ~40% higher than the 0.25 that are liberals.

googlryas 4y ago

It also seems straight up incorrect. There are way too many international students at Harvard for it to represent the makeup of the country.

btown 4y ago

Expanding the size of enrollment isn't just something that can flipped like a switch. One cannot simply build a high-rise dormitory without increasing the capacity of all other facilities in lockstep - and a university designed to be fully walkable can only accommodate so much simultaneous construction. And more generally, you have the use of applicants' race backwards - the entire point of affirmative action is to take into account an applicant's merit-based performance relative to the opportunities they received growing up - and it is difficult to evaluate this fairly without taking into account the opportunities that might have been denied to the applicant as a result of their race. To put it another way, two hypothetical applicants from two families with different races but equivalent wealth etc. in the same community may have been treated incredibly differently based on their race. An admissions office forced to be "blind" to an applicant describing this discrepancy in opportunity would be less effective at evaluating applicants based on merit.

Overtonwindow 4y ago
Ivy schools have some of the largest endowments, rivaling the GDP of some small countries. If Harvard, and Yale were serious about diversity, they would let people attend for free.
- legitster 4y ago
  Ummm, they largely do.
- naniwaduni 4y ago
  If they admit you in the first place, they pretty much do, which was indeed a pretty salient perk of the top-tier colleges among the Asian immigrant parent crowd, at least a decade or two back. For a particular cohort of second-gens, you were going to an "elite" institution or you were going to state—the family finances weren't going to support sticker price without a near-full scholarship.
legitster 4y ago
> A university designed to be fully walkable can only accommodate so much simultaneous construction. Well, your implication here is that accessible, affordable colleges are clearly a second-rate experience. I'm not necessarily disagreeing here, but it's something academia themselves have not admitted. Your example forgets that they are still allowed to look at financial/hardship data to determine merit. So presuming that someone with identical upbringing must have had a harder life because of the color of their skin only exists to perpetuate bias.

Aunche 4y ago

Everything makes sense when you think of Harvard and similar universities as selfish private institutions that want to maximize their reputation. They want the children of world leaders, billionaires, and actual super-geniuses. They don't want to dilute their brand with thousands of extra students with mundane backgrounds that end up being moderately successful professionals who make mid-six-figures. Affirmative action students give the school more credibility among URMs, so they offer more to Harvard than a somewhat more qualified Asian who isn't quite IMO medalist level.

legitster 4y ago
My friend who was in a doctoral program put it best: "The point of academia is to make more academics. Bachelor and Master degrees are their funding source."
snapplebobapple 4y ago
It's more than this. It's way better to think of Harvard et al as large hedge funds abusing the school tax loophole. They do want the children who will be world leaders, billionaires etc. but it is because those are the most likely to donate to the hedge fund. They don't want to grow admission because it might hurt hedge fund donations but also because educating people is secondary to their actual purpose and should only be engaged in to the point that their primary purpose is maximized (middle management doesn't make the kind of donations worth worrying about for a hedge fund, they want a higher minimum efficient scale).

belter 4y ago

Don't underestimate how much they can push the cognitive dissonance :-) "Do Unto Other Harvard Students" - https://www.theatlantic.com/politics/archive/2017/07/do-unto-other-harvard-students/533514/ https://www.theatlantic.com/politics/archive/2017/07/do-unto... “...but we also recognize principles such as inclusiveness and equality, which many members of the Harvard community consider of paramount importance to our mission..."