131–140 of 187 posts
One of my favorite realizations is that more things are free when you have money. People just want your business. It’s expensive being poor.
Payday loans, credit card interest. Financing plans. Being poor is cripplingly expensive.
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Instead of need-based aid, try need-blind colleges. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Need-blind_admission
That's... the same concept? Need-blind admission requires need-based aid. Stanford is on Wikipedia's list, by the way.
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Credit cards are the one thing I can’t wrap my head around. I am not American and most of my young U.S. friends I met early in college were so excited about having a credit score of x which entitled them to more debt...
Then those young US friends were idiots. I only know people who use credit cards to get 2%+ back from their purchases, plus an interest free 20 to 45 day loan. If you're spending with a credit card more than the cash you have on hand, then you're doing it wrong. Obviously, there must be some cohort of people that pay interest, but there's no reason anyone with half a brain can't setup up autopay and earn the cash bac…
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Sure, but don’t lie about it. If it’s not need-based, don’t insist it’s need-based.
Ok, lies are unacceptable. To play devil's advocate here: the press and the public do not want to hear that tech companies pay 7 digits of monthly salary to attract some talent. Nor do they want to hear that Universities have to offer merit based scholarships to attract top students, otherwise these students will go elsewhere. Companies advertise their diversity efforts but not the salaries of their executives. Stanf…
There's a bait and switch that colleges do. Also hospitals, but mostly colleges.
On the one hand they go out and tell people what a value driven organization it is, how their passion is making the world a better place -- when they are asking for money from people almost of whom have far less in the bank than they already do and when they are defending things like very adventagous tax rates.
On the other hand when they get caught doing something that looks unprincipled or rapacious they all of a sudden become economists lecturing you about how of course every organization acts as an interest maximizier and what are you naive?
Well maybe we were naive. But now that everyone knows what the deal is maybe they can lay off the disingenuous appeals for donations and tax expenditures. Fool me once and all that.
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From what I know it's the latter. We had a large percentage of my graduating high school class end up at ivy league schools. It was interesting to talk to them a decade after they had graduated and were in full swing with their professional career's and life. One buddy I know who went to Princeton and ended up on Wall St told me they hound him for donations. His fraternity does the same with the emphasis on exactly w…
As a fellow Princeton grad, I think his children will indeed have a better chance than most of getting in due to their legacy status, resource rich upbringing, and those donations.
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The argument for diversity as a good investment: 1. With high-income whites some dumb blokes may sneak in due to privilege and winging it based on family connections, etc. This might be happening at the expense of spunky smart low income whites or blacks who worked harder and were smarter to overcome their disadvantage to get to a point where they’re in the pool of those being considered for admission into Stanford.…
> In my experience, all-white, all-Indian, all-Asian, etc. teams were always inferior in terms of the experience of working there to diverse teams. I feel like I'm missing some kind of obvious universal common-sense knowledge in having to ask this, but by what mechanism could this possibly come about?
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A private university, especially privileging students from finance backgrounds, is about as far from communism as it gets.
Actually, no. This reveals the extent to which the US financial industry operates with similar quasi-aristocratic political dynamics - especially covert privilege based on perceived conformity and career potential - as the old Soviet Communist Party.
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Actually, no. This reveals the extent to which the US financial industry operates with similar quasi-aristocratic political dynamics - especially covert privilege based on perceived conformity and career potential - as the old Soviet Communist Party.
Aristocracy and privilege are about as far from communism as it gets.
In theory. In practice (history is full of it), the castes develop overnight. A group of individuals has to make decisions and manage the oversight and record keeping, etc. This leads to corruption and a de-facto aristocracy.
I am surprised people are surprised by this. I went to B school over twenty years ago, and my experience was after I applied and was accepted and passed on going, they offered a scholarship. It was clear it had nothing to do with need, they wete just trying to persuade me to go. Tuition amounts are just sticker prices that you can negotiate down based on your bargaining power. If you don't know that you don't belong…
Are people surprised that other people and institutions commit fraud and lie? No. No one is surprised. However when a criminal commits a crime, people react in kind.
It is somewhat amusing that they give scholarships to people with financial industry background, who are the least in need, and who will receive the highest salaries on exit - and then claim that their scholarships are need based. At least they are teaching their students the ethics they need to succeed in the financial industry.
Companies can have both a diversity policy and a policy to make sure the top talents don't go elsewhere. University too, can have a diversity policy as well as a merit policy. To compete and attract the best students, University must either provide merit based scholarship, or organize with other universities to get rid of merit based scholarships everywhere (cartel!)
Those should be one policy, the diversity policy is about making sure top talent doesn't go elsewhere . . . your comment implies that people from "diverse" backgrounds are not top talent, whether that's what you meant or not.