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L.A.’s Elite on Edge as Prosecutors Pursue More Parents in Admissions Scandal

nytimes.com

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Re: L.A.’s Elite on Edge as Prosecutors Pursue More Parents in Admissions Scandal

#171

Post by mturmon »

electricslpnsld wrote: post #106
dvt wrote: post #68

Earlier quoted context omitted.

USC is definitely a status symbol on the West Coast ( especially in Southern California). It's obviously not on the same academic level as UCLA/Berkeley/Stanford/Caltech, but it's still very much an exclusive brand. You don't get it because you don't live here and aren't surrounded by wealthy 16-year olds that yearn to go to USC (often times over UCLA/Berkeley/Stanford). (Disclaimer: I'm a UCLA alum.)

> USC is definitely a status symbol on the West Coast (especially in Southern California). > it's still very much an exclusive brand I would say weirdly exclusively in Southern California. I can’t think of a school with more regional status and less national status than USC. Maybe some of the bespoke NYC schools? Hell, I’ve worked with folks in Oregon and Washington who have thrown out resumes because they went to US…

> ...I can’t think of a school with more regional status and less national status than USC...

The state schools in the midwest are an example of this - say, Kansas State University. Another one: Catholic schools -- St. Louis University; huge regionally, but not nationally. I was not marinated in NY State, but my impression is that the SUNY schools have some of this too.

Really, I think there are a lot of colleges with a big regional reputation, but not so much nationally.

If you know international students, you can see the same kind of thing play out in a larger stage -- universities that are top nationally, but not so well-known outside the country. Say, Seoul National University, or Tsinghua, or ENS, or some of the IITs or IISc. And incidentally, for these excellent schools, it's not their fault that their quality is not well-known outside their host region.

Re: L.A.’s Elite on Edge as Prosecutors Pursue More Parents in Admissions Scandal

#173

Post by mochomocha »

ajross wrote: post #124
mochomocha wrote: post #111

Earlier quoted context omitted.

In the country I come from (France), all the top schools are publicly funded and you get in by taking exams where the whole country students compete once a year. Based on how you rank, you get in or not. Most of them have really low annual tuitions. In some of them, you're even paid! Hard to imagine anything remotely close here when there's always a way to throw money at something (your congressman, dean...) to get t…

Go research financial aid programs and outcomes at elite US Universities. The fact that these schools are subject to financial pressure at the margins absolutely does not mean that they are closed to needy students. There are MANY unfair elements of the US educational system that disadvantage poor and minority students, but access to elite schools for the deserving fraction is just not one of them. We're doing fine h…

What about the middle-class kid who doesn't qualify to any of these programs whose chance to get the best teachers and nurturing environment is spoiled by the dumb rich kid taking a spot and wasting it? What about the extra administrative, time burden and uncertainty of outcome the poor kids have to suffer to chase all these financial aid programs? There's clearly room for improvement.

Re: L.A.’s Elite on Edge as Prosecutors Pursue More Parents in Admissions Scandal

#174

Post by manfredo »

munk-a wrote: post #101
manfredo wrote: post #65

Earlier quoted context omitted.

One one hand, donating to improve the chances of one's kid getting admitted is kind of scummy. On the other hand, the immense amount of money that gets donated is why elite schools are able to give very generous financial aid. Stanford doesn't even charge tuition if parents make less than $125,000 per year. On principle I'm adverse to wealthy people buying opportunities, but if buying opportunities creates more of th…

If the school would benefit from that building why should it be dependent on a rich kid needing to get in to secure that funding? If that rich family didn't end up having a kid that needed to get into that school then the building would never be built - but the family is certainly able to afford funding the construction of that building. I think that's unfair in it's own way on all parties involved.

People rarely give stuff away for free. Philanthropy often serves as a political tool, and a means to increase one's social status. University donations are no different. Families are more willing to donate if they believe that it improves the chances of their kids getting admitted to university.

Re: L.A.’s Elite on Edge as Prosecutors Pursue More Parents in Admissions Scandal

#175

Post by darawk »

gnud wrote: post #164
darawk wrote: post #149

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I'm not so sure. These institutions have an embedded narrative. For universities it's that they are meritocracies, where class/race/gender/etc do not matter. For the justice system it's that everyone is equal before the law and the guilty will be punished. Do they have that narrative though? We already have affirmative action, which is the explicit inclusion of race/gender/class in admissions criteria. We are alrea…

Some of the idea behind programs like affirmative action is that because of race/class/gender, some people score lower on various exams than they could. They were not given equal opportunities - and so to judge them equally during admissions would not be fair. I think affirmative action is tricky, because we single out some reasons for 'sub-potential' performance, but we ignore a lot of others. But even if I think it…

Ya, I wasn't trying to argue for or against affirmative action in that comment. Just trying to point out that it's already not driven purely by intellectual merit. I agree on the off-switch issue as well. It's the problem with subsidies of any kind - they might be useful for a time, but at some point, we want to get rid of them...but they tend to be permanent.

Re: L.A.’s Elite on Edge as Prosecutors Pursue More Parents in Admissions Scandal

#176

Post by asdff »

akhilcacharya wrote: post #161
saagarjha wrote: post #151

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What makes you feel "condemned for life"?

I know I’ll never be able to match the accomplishments of people that got into Duke the year I didn’t, for example.

Screw that. If you work hard people take notice, that's it. You can go to a CC, grind hard through your classes, transfer into a school with a better network, continue to grind hard, and land the job because anyone who sees your CV will see that you are a fighter who gives a shit.

Some of the richest kids in my high school paid full tuition to ivy league schools, didn't come to play school, and ended up with a scrappy job anyone could have gotten from just about any school. Work hard.

Re: L.A.’s Elite on Edge as Prosecutors Pursue More Parents in Admissions Scandal

#177

Post by povertyworld »

madengr wrote: post #58
munk-a wrote: post #44

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Back a while high school was the sort of "standard education" things have changed and now college is considered the default level people should have in the workforce, back when college was rare I think private colleges made sense, they were more of a final specialty training step at the end of your education - now that has shifted over to PhDs - let PhD programs remain privatized for whatever reasons, but we should e…

I don’t want the USA to turn into India or China, where your academic fate is decided by some cruddy standardized test given in 5th grade.

Well, I guess that opinion just depends on how well you did on standardized tests in 5th grade. I smoked all my peers on that test they give you at the end of elementary. It would have been great if some communist party bureaucrat swooped in and took me to a school full of high scorers. Too bad that was my peak academically. Ha.

Re: L.A.’s Elite on Edge as Prosecutors Pursue More Parents in Admissions Scandal

#178

Post by asdff »

munk-a wrote: post #44
ForrestN wrote: post #40

I'm surprised that this scandal doesn't seem to be causing anyone to think one step further and realize that the entire premise of "elite" colleges with competitive admissions is a device for the perpetuation of inequality. We're devoting most of our advanced educational resources to helping people who would already be successful reap even more rewards. I understand the idea of meritocracy in fields with life or deat…

Back a while high school was the sort of "standard education" things have changed and now college is considered the default level people should have in the workforce, back when college was rare I think private colleges made sense, they were more of a final specialty training step at the end of your education - now that has shifted over to PhDs - let PhD programs remain privatized for whatever reasons, but we should e…

The whole labor dynamic has changed in the US over the last half century. Manufacturing left and never came back. Unskilled labor is not in demand any longer, skills are, so it's no wonder that there are a lot of people with bachelors degrees. Most PhDs, at least in stem, are fully funded at least.

Re: L.A.’s Elite on Edge as Prosecutors Pursue More Parents in Admissions Scandal

#179

Post by darawk »

leftyted wrote: post #165
darawk wrote: post #149

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I'm not so sure. These institutions have an embedded narrative. For universities it's that they are meritocracies, where class/race/gender/etc do not matter. For the justice system it's that everyone is equal before the law and the guilty will be punished. Do they have that narrative though? We already have affirmative action, which is the explicit inclusion of race/gender/class in admissions criteria. We are alrea…

> Do they have that narrative though? We already have affirmative action, which is the explicit inclusion of race/gender/class in admissions criteria. We are already a long ways from pure meritocracy. I think affirmative action is a bad idea for exactly this reason. It has eroded the narrative. It's trendy for left-wing types to argue things like "Harvard isn't a meritocracy" or to sneer at the idea of a meritocracy…

> I think affirmative action is a bad idea for exactly this reason. It has eroded the narrative. It's trendy for left-wing types to argue things like "Harvard isn't a meritocracy" or to sneer at the idea of a meritocracy altogether (don't get me started on the right-wing types).

I too hate those people passionately. I'm all for meritocracy in general. I'm just also for pareto-optimal outcomes in resource-constrained environments.

> I think doing this in the open would be a disaster. What won't destroy the narratives is implementing your idea in the background. This has already happened to some degree. Most students at Harvard don't pay very much. Their education is subsidized by rich families one way or another.

Ya it's definitely already a thing in the background. And maybe that's the right level for it, i'm not sure. Though I think we could basically be providing free tuition to say, 75% of students by opening it up to people who aren't willing to donate a building, but could pay say 500k/year. Which is quite a large group of people, especially when you consider international students.

> But I don't think that's a good thing. Somewhere along the line our institutional narratives have become cliched in people's minds. Maybe this will lead us to a wonderful new world where we can be perfectly rational and implement ideas like yours. But I doubt it. I think if we lose the institutional narratives we're going to lose the institutions. Maybe the new institutions will be better, who knows? (I'm not optimistic).

That could be. But I think a big part of the problem right now is that we don't treat education enough like a financial investment. The narrative around it is already too imbued with some moral character that it doesn't really have. We have people going into debt to earn degrees in poetry or psychology, in part because of this odd narrative that a college degree magically endows you with the ingredients for success - regardless of what that degree is in. I think dosing that with a degree of financial realism might be a benefit.

Re: L.A.’s Elite on Edge as Prosecutors Pursue More Parents in Admissions Scandal

#180

Post by akhilcacharya »

asdff wrote: post #176
akhilcacharya wrote: post #161

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I know I’ll never be able to match the accomplishments of people that got into Duke the year I didn’t, for example.

Screw that. If you work hard people take notice, that's it. You can go to a CC, grind hard through your classes, transfer into a school with a better network, continue to grind hard, and land the job because anyone who sees your CV will see that you are a fighter who gives a shit. Some of the richest kids in my high school paid full tuition to ivy league schools, didn't come to play school, and ended up with a scrapp…

I think there's a lot of inherent ability tied within ability to be accepted into an elite program (SAT score, etc) that I simply don't have. That doesn't help matters at all.
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