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Meanwhile, the same California government is trying to legalize discriminatory race-based admissions.
There is an argument to be made that the race-based admissions help make up for prior injustices.
Have a rule. Our republic, and the California state government, is based on rule of law. One group makes the laws, another enforces it, and a third interprets the conflicts. This works. What we have here is a 'no rules' set of actions. How about rules that say "we will take any student for $200K/year". This is enough money to supply extra supervision and also give a full scholarship to another student.
The idea of privilege first entered the public sphere in the prelude to the French Revolution. "Privilege" in Old French literally means "private law".[1] It was the idea that a different set of rules for each of the Estates (Clergy, Nobles, and Commoners) was both fair and natural. Are we are starting to see similarly different sets of rules for each class in the United States? Is such privilege in accordance with o…
In this day and age, with all the fierce competition, it's a real problem that elite universities are admitting rich kids on such unfair and uneven grounds. Going to the "correct" school can transform the life of some people, essentially pulling them up from the lower working classes, and opening up the doors to middle, or even upper-middle classes. And what's even worse, a lot of these rich kids could go pretty much…
The one that comes to mind was the study that compared long term outcomes of students who were accepted to Harvard and attended to those who were accepted but did not attend.
Average future incomes were not statistically different.
But the study did note that the starkest improvents in future incomes were found in poor and minority students.
If you incentivize "anti-social behavior" (this seemed like a reasonable middle ground word), what else does anyone expect to happen?
Meanwhile, the same California government is trying to legalize discriminatory race-based admissions.
re-leaglize. It was legal until the 90s. When it became illegal, the diversity on campus dropped significantly. There is an argument to be made that the race-based admissions help make up for prior injustices.
It's either to take the top students, bar none, or it is to educate and uplift poorer students (economically and educationally). Mixing these two doesn't work.
Both of my parents went to Cal, which at an Ivy might guarantee admission but in my case didn't affect my chances at all (which is a good thing!). I hope this doesn't taint the school's reputation too much.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
Colleges rarely if ever fail students. There’s a known phenomenon of grade curving (adding +x% to exams if it was difficult for some students) which I never understood during my time in higher education. Yet it makes sense because universities want to lessen liabilities and have rich alum give back (esp. the case with the children of wealthy donors).
I went to Berkeley and this wasn’t true for Berkeley. Popular majors were very competitive and were designed to filter students out of majors. Many classes were based on a curve such that effectively 1/3 of people ended up at least leaving the major. Sample popular majors: computer science, chemical engineering, molecular cell biology. I knew of at least one person who effectively failed out after one semester and of…
Definitely have my share of friends that did 6-8 year stints at the UC for a 4-year degree from constantly failing out of classes, but never forced out.