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Alabama tracking students' locations to penalize them for leaving games early

nytimes.com

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Re: Alabama tracking students' locations to penalize them for leaving games early

#231
post #166
post #149

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You are free to come an go any time you want, swiping or not, but only people who swipe in before the game starts, and swipe out after the game ends would get entered to win playoff tickets. It would be easier to game (you could leave for part of the game and return), but is less invasive than the app approach.

Students would just give their cards to their friends who were staying at the game.

Students could just give their phones to their friends.

Re: Alabama tracking students' locations to penalize them for leaving games early

#232
post #145

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Those schools are often actually cheaper than public schools for people without much money. While this is true on paper, it's not always the case in practice. I was able to get multiple acceptance offers to Ivy League schools, and poor enough to have the sliding scale of tuition slide all the way to $0. But all of them had an estimated cost of attendance[1] so optimistic about ancillary expenses during the school y…

Ancillary expenses make college hard to attend, but that's not because the school is ripping you off, it's because life is expensive. The absolute cheapest housing in Cambridge, MA is in the middle of downtown on Harvard's campus.

I don't disagree. But the cost of attendance includes a line item for "personal expenses" (which includes books and all that stuff). For 2019-2020 academic year at Harvard, that line item is $4,193[1]. There's also a line item for "travel expenses", but when using their net price calculator with my circumstances when I went to school, that kept coming back as zero.

By zero'ing out tuition, fees, and room and board, that leaves $4,193 as the cap on demonstrable need, which federal loans and many scholarships will use as a max limit on cumulative aid. This is unrealistically optimistic, and serves to needlessly cap the potential ability to raise funds via merit scholarships or loans, shifting part of the cost burden to ongoing cashflow.

Which, I'll concede, isn't necessarily too hard due to the plethora of work-study and student jobs available. But I only knew that after the fact, and the prospect of getting stuck far away from home without the money to make ends meet and the knowledge that your family is too far away to help you get home and too poor to help financially is terrifying to a kid right out of high school.

I also learned, through the work that I did for the university I went to, that the cost of attendance isn't as black and white as it's made out to be either. Although universities may differ in policies, they can make accommodations in your individual cost of attendance letter if you can justify the deviations. But I only learned of that flexibility after experiencing the system, and it wasn't clear at the outset. So I didn't even realize that was a possibility when evaluating acceptance offers and aid packages.

[1] https://college.harvard.edu/financial-aid/how-aid-works

Re: Alabama tracking students' locations to penalize them for leaving games early

#233
post #199
post #145

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Those schools are often actually cheaper than public schools for people without much money. While this is true on paper, it's not always the case in practice. I was able to get multiple acceptance offers to Ivy League schools, and poor enough to have the sliding scale of tuition slide all the way to $0. But all of them had an estimated cost of attendance[1] so optimistic about ancillary expenses during the school y…

If you were accepted into multiple Ivies with full financial aid you were definitely eligible for work study and student loans. Personally, I would recommend anyone in that situation to opt for the Ivy as it really does open doors later in life.

> Personally, I would recommend anyone in that situation to opt for the Ivy as it really does open doors later in life.

For anyone that comes across this post: I fully agree. I was fortunate in the particular intersection of my skills being comparatively rare, and having a professor that took a personal liking to me and acted as a mentor (while opening a few doors on my behalf through his connections). While I've been successful myself, it's been through connections I've made post-school (other than the bootstrapping from that one professor). I can't imagine the possibilities that would have come with seeding that entire process throughout school.

> If you were accepted into multiple Ivies with full financial aid you were definitely eligible for work study and student loans.

You're not wrong, but that was non-obvious at the time. The student loans were a particularly sticking point, as the cost of attendance letter provided by the schools had optimistic line items for personal expenses (which include books and supplies), creating an artificially low limit on the ability to take out loans. And I wasn't familiar enough with the college experience, nor had access to anyone that was, to understand the potential for work study. Better onboarding collateral geared towards first generation college students would have easily clarified things and provided confidence around this, rather than leaving a gaping unknown on how I was going to make ends meet.

Re: Alabama tracking students' locations to penalize them for leaving games early

#234
post #145

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Those schools are often actually cheaper than public schools for people without much money. While this is true on paper, it's not always the case in practice. I was able to get multiple acceptance offers to Ivy League schools, and poor enough to have the sliding scale of tuition slide all the way to $0. But all of them had an estimated cost of attendance[1] so optimistic about ancillary expenses during the school y…

I'm a little surprised by your story. I was in a similar situation myself, except that I chose to go to an Ivy League school, and there were sufficiently many work-study options available to help pay for all my expenses.

For sure! You can see my replies to sibling comments, but those opportunities exist. I just was too naive at the time and without sufficient personal support to be able to understand that. And while some of the acceptance offers made reference to things such as work study, there was a presumption of understanding in many of them on how that stuff works. And I was a first generation college student without anyone to help me fill in that knowledge gap.

There were additional issues like the logistics and upfront costs of a cross-country move, as well as the timing of aid disbursements and expense needs. Which I neither had the savings nor the cashflow to confidently support, nor anyone to lean on temporarily for it. While there were plenty of unknowns for the state school, they were manageable enough for me to be competent in my ability to handle them and close enough to my personal support network if things went south.

Many schools do in fact have the ability to address such needs. I just didn't learn was a possibility until after the fact. For anyone else that happens to be in that situation, I'd strongly encourage doing what you did and taking the Ivy offer. There will be sufficient support to accomodate your circumstances. It'd just be nice if the schools themselves improved their offer letters or follow-up collateral to address the concerns/needs that are likely for those which qualify for a zero'd out tuition or whose application/FAFSA documents indicate are a first generation college student.

Re: Alabama tracking students' locations to penalize them for leaving games early

#235

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Intramural, participatory sports are a wonderful thing. I have never heard anyone argue against them. They don't require stadiums with amenities that would make royalty blush, nor seven-figure salaries paid to coaches.

Do you know what revenue the Florida State, Alabama, Texas A&M football programs bring in? The head coach if Texas A&M brings more revenue and prestige to the school (and thus higher student demand, more donations, and more licensing deals,) than some professor of gender studies does. The head coach of a top tier BCS school probably is responsible for more revenue than even the president of the university. Nobody wou…

> Couldn’t we say the same about Google or any other tech company? Why should the universities be feeders for talent for private business? It’s ridiculous when you consider it that way. Why should Google benefit from a San Jose State University computer science graduate if the 49ers shouldn’t benefit from a UCLA student athlete?

I've been saying precisely this. The public is footing the bill for training employees for corporations.

Re: Alabama tracking students' locations to penalize them for leaving games early

#236
post #157

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> successful football programs generate positive publicity for the school Maybe for lower tier colleges, but I sincerely doubt that anyone gives a rodents behind how the football teams of Stanford, Berkeley, MIT, Harvard, Princeton, CalTech and others top-tier Universities are, before applying to them.

Apparently even Caltech has been sanctioned for violating NCAA rules. https://www.google.com/amp/s/amp.si.com/college-basketball/2...

Those sanctions were widely ridiculed in the sports press.

Briefly, it is not uncommon at Caltech for students who have two or three possible electives that would fit into one open slot in the schedule to not register for any of them at the start of the term, and sit in on all of them and do the homework for all of them for two or three weeks, and then decide which to take. They then register for that one.

This practice is approved by the faculty and administration.

Caltech had just gotten a new head of athletics, and while reviewing student records he realized that (1) several students on Caltech teams had done this "try before registering" thing, (2) for those two or three weeks, before they picked and registered for one of those courses, they were technically, by NCAA rules, part time students, not full time students, and (3) they had attended team practice sessions during that time.

It's against NCAA rules to allow part time students on a team, including team practices. The new head of athletics reported Caltech's inadvertent violation of this rule to the NCAA, and also reported that all student athletes were properly full time before participating in any games, and that they would make sure in the future to not allow students to join the team until they had registered for a full load.

The NCAA response was to put more severe sanctions on Caltech than they had put on major athletic schools that had committed massive rules violations, such as fake classes and grades to keep players from becoming ineligible for low grades, bribes, and the like.

The sports press take on this was generally it was more evidence that the NCAA is incompetent and/or corrupt. The NCAA had been criticized for slaps on the wrists against those big schools with big money sports programs, so many thought that they came down hard on Caltech to try to look like they could be tough without the downside of damaging one of the big money making athletic programs.

Re: Alabama tracking students' locations to penalize them for leaving games early

#237
post #229

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Well, most of us are Irish and German, so it does stand to reason that we would enjoy those things.

My genetic background is mostly from those places too, yet I'm not like that. Those things are cultural, not genetic. Americans are loud and boorish because they choose to be.

America draws a lot of its culture from those two countries, but my point was more facetious than literal.
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