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Top colleges should select randomly from a pool of ‘good enough’ (2005)

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Re: Top colleges should select randomly from a pool of ‘good enough’ (2005)

#251

Post by jollofricepeas »

hardwaregeek wrote: post #130

One interesting example is the UT system. Because affirmative action was banned in Hopwood v. Texas, the UT system resorted to a program where they accept the top 10% of each high school's class into all UT schools. It's an interesting way of doing admissions, albeit not perfect. One critique that I'm anticipating seeing is that this encourages going to a mediocre high school. Except...getting good students to go to…

Isn’t the United States still heavily segregated???

Take a look at the data on Milwaukee, Detroit and Chicago for example.

As Clarence Thomas has mentioned often “affirmative action” just covers up larger injustices like underfunded public schools and housing discrimination.

In a lot of states, we have Democratic big cities and Republican towns with a Republican state legislature.

Guess which areas in the state get the most funding for their schools —- it’s NOT the cities with the most people per square mile.

READ:

- https://www.usatoday.com/story/money/2019/07/20/detroit-chic...

- https://www.jsonline.com/story/news/local/milwaukee/2019/01/...

- https://www.newyorker.com/culture/essay/clarence-thomass-rad...

Re: Top colleges should select randomly from a pool of ‘good enough’ (2005)

#252

Post by tfehring »

stale2002 wrote: post #234
murgindrag wrote: post #196

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's not significantly more people. The US has 5000 universities and colleges, and perhaps a dozen really elite schools, depending on where you draw the line. Those schools have more money. No one else does. And only some of that money comes from donations. Much of it are your taxpayer dollars at work. The direct way is to donate money. The indirect way is to swing government funds.

> It's not significantly more people. Ok, well it is more people than the amount of spots that they take up. > Those schools have more money. No one else does. Ok, so if an elite person takes up one spot, but the extra money allows 2 more spots to open up, then that is a net increase in total number of slots. So that is still a benefit to the extra people who can go to that college.

Spots at elite universities are constrained for the sake of artificial scarcity, not because of financial considerations.

Re: Top colleges should select randomly from a pool of ‘good enough’ (2005)

#253

Post by tfehring »

duncan_bayne wrote: post #43

Absolutely. Because we want our doctors and engineers to be just "good enough", none of this elitism for us! I'm sure they'll still cure cancer and get us to Mars, right? And the truly elite who miss out by random chance ... that doesn't matter because justice doesn't require us to recognise and appropriately reward genius. In fact, screw those priviliged geniuses, they're only first in line because they won a geneti…

It's not obvious that the current process does better than chance at detecting genius, though - at the margin, the formal and informal tests used for admissions are far better predictors of your parents' tax bracket than of your own inherent ability.

Re: Top colleges should select randomly from a pool of ‘good enough’ (2005)

#254

Post by jonnypotty »

hardwaregeek wrote: post #130

One interesting example is the UT system. Because affirmative action was banned in Hopwood v. Texas, the UT system resorted to a program where they accept the top 10% of each high school's class into all UT schools. It's an interesting way of doing admissions, albeit not perfect. One critique that I'm anticipating seeing is that this encourages going to a mediocre high school. Except...getting good students to go to…

You think getting good students to go to crappy schools is a way to improve those schools? I'd say you don't know anything about schools then.

And you think randomly selecting students instead of selecting them on the basis of merit is a way to find gems?

This is all such wishful thinking without any evidence or even, I have to say, common sense.

Re: Top colleges should select randomly from a pool of ‘good enough’ (2005)

#255

Post by Randomini »

jonnypotty wrote: post #254
hardwaregeek wrote: post #130

One interesting example is the UT system. Because affirmative action was banned in Hopwood v. Texas, the UT system resorted to a program where they accept the top 10% of each high school's class into all UT schools. It's an interesting way of doing admissions, albeit not perfect. One critique that I'm anticipating seeing is that this encourages going to a mediocre high school. Except...getting good students to go to…

You think getting good students to go to crappy schools is a way to improve those schools? I'd say you don't know anything about schools then. And you think randomly selecting students instead of selecting them on the basis of merit is a way to find gems? This is all such wishful thinking without any evidence or even, I have to say, common sense.

If you're refuting based on lack of evidence, I'm interested in counter-evidence, beyond the anecdotal.

Re: Top colleges should select randomly from a pool of ‘good enough’ (2005)

#256

Post by tchaffee »

eanzenberg wrote: post #123
tchaffee wrote: post #73

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The concrete example I often give is that as a conference organizer we decide to be a meritocracy. Great! As a fair meritocracy, all else being equal between speakers a tie breaker is how many talks you have already done. Experience should count right? So let's look at it in detail. Fred and Sarah both submit great talk proposals. But Fred has done ten talks and Sarah has done nine, so he gets the slot. Looking back…

That’s a weird take though. >> a tie breaker is how many talks you have already done Why? That’s not a meritocracy, it is tenure based. Tenure does not always correlate with merit, so the basis of your example is moot.

It's easy enough to use my thought experiment to make it a meritocracy. We watch their latest talks. Fred is a better speaker. Thanks to more experience because he has done more talks. Thanks to confidence because he has never heard "no thanks". He got more talks and experience thanks to sexism.

Re: Top colleges should select randomly from a pool of ‘good enough’ (2005)

#257

Post by coldtea »

jonnypotty wrote: post #254
hardwaregeek wrote: post #130

One interesting example is the UT system. Because affirmative action was banned in Hopwood v. Texas, the UT system resorted to a program where they accept the top 10% of each high school's class into all UT schools. It's an interesting way of doing admissions, albeit not perfect. One critique that I'm anticipating seeing is that this encourages going to a mediocre high school. Except...getting good students to go to…

You think getting good students to go to crappy schools is a way to improve those schools? I'd say you don't know anything about schools then. And you think randomly selecting students instead of selecting them on the basis of merit is a way to find gems? This is all such wishful thinking without any evidence or even, I have to say, common sense.

>You think getting good students to go to crappy schools is a way to improve those schools? I'd say you don't know anything about schools then.

You'd say that, but it would be wrong.

>And you think randomly selecting students instead of selecting them on the basis of merit is a way to find gems

Totally. Especially since there's little about "merit" in the current system.

Re: Top colleges should select randomly from a pool of ‘good enough’ (2005)

#258

Post by coldtea »

flowerlad wrote: post #174
emddudley wrote: post #170

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> One critique that I'm anticipating seeing is that this encourages going to a mediocre high school. Where I live students don't have any choice in which high school to go to. You go to your local high school, unless your family is wealthy and you can afford private schools. I would assume this is the case for 95% of Americans. You must have had a different experience? My family was not wealthy so I did not get a cho…

> You go to your local high school Parents are often willing to move to areas where there are good schools.

In the top 10% of income brackets yes. Outside of it, not so much...

Re: Top colleges should select randomly from a pool of ‘good enough’ (2005)

#259

Post by MaxBarraclough »

hombre_fatal wrote: post #57
andrepd wrote: post #37

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Why can't philosophy knowledge be assessed in a test?

How would you do it? There isn't some generic "philosophy" curriculum. The works you study in such a course, including literature and the other arts, are arbitrary. Either the test's philosophy section chases down so many long-tails that you get most of them wrong just to get one right, or the entirety of your philosophy experience comes down to a few topical questions on a test that just miss the topics your courses…

> The works you study in such a course, including literature and the other arts, are arbitrary.

Not really. It's like any field of study. If you have N-many hundreds of hours in which to teach undergraduate-level math, ultimately you just have to pick the topics you think are most appropriate/beneficial. Same if you're teaching history, or graphic design, or engineering, or philosophy.

I don't see that it's particularly difficult to assess a student's grasp of philosophy. You can just ask exam questions to assess their understanding, and/or use long-form essays. Undergraduate philosophy courses seem to manage this ok. It's not like assessing an art project, which is inherently very subjective.

Re: Top colleges should select randomly from a pool of ‘good enough’ (2005)

#260

Post by 082349872349872 »

chrisseaton wrote: post #197
emddudley wrote: post #170

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> One critique that I'm anticipating seeing is that this encourages going to a mediocre high school. Where I live students don't have any choice in which high school to go to. You go to your local high school, unless your family is wealthy and you can afford private schools. I would assume this is the case for 95% of Americans. You must have had a different experience? My family was not wealthy so I did not get a cho…

> Where I live students don't have any choice in which high school to go to. People choose schools by moving house.

In the twenty-first century US as in thirteenth century china.

昔孟母，择邻处。

(I would claim that people, in the time of de Vos as in the time of Mencius' mother, don't vote with their feet to choose schools as much as choose their childrens' classmates, and perhaps especially the parents of their children's classmates, but I'm a cynic.)

"94027 children wear grey. They work much harder than we do, because they're so frightfully clever. I'm really awfully glad I'm a 94301, because I don't work so hard. And then we are much better than the 95112s and 95023s."

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