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UC Berkeley inappropriately admitted students as favors to donors

auditor.ca.gov

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Re: UC Berkeley inappropriately admitted students as favors to donors

#81

Post by chaostheory »

60secz wrote: post #65

Don't know if I'm just jaded -- but I'm seriously not bothered by people making large donations to a university to have their kid admitted. It's a transaction which benefits the university and the student. Granted -- it should be above board and there should be formal policies. Not justifying the specific actions in this case just curious at the outrage.

Yeah, if one family donates millions to have their child admitted, those millions of dollars can help subsidize the university's costs for other students or it could be used for special projects like libraries. This is probably why many schools have buildings named after people who usually tend to be donors.

Re: UC Berkeley inappropriately admitted students as favors to donors

#83

Post by youeseh »

ipnon wrote: post #46
CharlesMerriam2 wrote: post #34

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…

Social classes and economic classes, while they have a lot of overlap, are fundamentally different.

Re: UC Berkeley inappropriately admitted students as favors to donors

#84

Post by setgree »

If you had asked me yesterday what percent of students I thought got into UC schools due to personal connection or wealth, I would have estimated between 10-20%. But this report seems to suggest otherwise:

> In Violation of University Policy, the Campuses We Reviewed Admitted 64 Applicants Because of Their Families’ Donations and Connections

> UC Berkeley inappropriately admitted 42 other applicants

the UC schools as a whole have ~226K students, and at Berkeley, it's ~17,000. I'm very surprised that the corresponding fractions are so small.

Then again, if you get recruited to play a sport that is all-but-exclusively a rich person's leisure activity -- Water Polo, Crew, Golf, Volleyball, and Beach volleyball are all played at Berkeley -- and recruiting gave you an edge in admissions, does that count as "inappropriate?" I would say so, but I doubt this report would. The line between corruption and "that's just how we do things around here" is not self-evident to me here.

Re: UC Berkeley inappropriately admitted students as favors to donors

#85

Post by sudosysgen »

TimTheTinker wrote: post #71
CharlesMerriam2 wrote: post #34

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.

Completely agreed. The idea that we have to "tear it all down" and institute Marxism is backward and self-contradictory. As you said, we need to identify where and how rule of law is lacking and fix it, making sure that representative government and separation of powers remains intact (or is put in place again).

Do you actually believe that letting people pay for guaranteed enrollment is at all acceptable?

Re: UC Berkeley inappropriately admitted students as favors to donors

#86

Post by s17n »

whiddershins wrote: post #77

I get that this is offensive to everyone. I’m not saying that world should work this way. But I’m not remotely surprised. Didn’t everyone in this thread, or basically everyone everywhere, kind of assume that donors get some sort of perks? Even if it is corrupt, isn’t it the most obvious and predictable corruption? Would donations drop without this corruption? Are the donations vital to the school’s budget? Should we…

We should do away with legacy admissions and quid pro quo. If people still want to donate, great, otherwise universities will have to find a different funding model.

Re: UC Berkeley inappropriately admitted students as favors to donors

#87

Post by TimTheTinker »

sudosysgen wrote: post #85
TimTheTinker wrote: post #71

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Completely agreed. The idea that we have to "tear it all down" and institute Marxism is backward and self-contradictory. As you said, we need to identify where and how rule of law is lacking and fix it, making sure that representative government and separation of powers remains intact (or is put in place again).

Do you actually believe that letting people pay for guaranteed enrollment is at all acceptable?

Not at all!! Not sure where you got that. I think this business of improper admission and bribes violates rule of law terribly.

That's the point -- rule of law means everyone is subject to the same rules, without partiality.

Re: UC Berkeley inappropriately admitted students as favors to donors

#88

Post by travisoneill1 »

jedberg wrote: post #51
google234123 wrote: post #16

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.

Yes, we need to rectify the injustices commited by Asian Americans by discriminating against them in college admissions.

Re: UC Berkeley inappropriately admitted students as favors to donors

#89

Post by mywittyname »

People are always going to use their money to buy status. So as long as these college offer prestige & status, people with money are going to use it to get in.

Much like doping in sports, you have two paths you can take: try to combat cheating, or accept the cheating as part of the game.

I think these universities should accept that they are providing an education, but they are selling prestige, and split their admissions into two pots: people who pay their way in and the other who earns it. And they announce ahead of time what the size of each bucket is. When you apply, you chose which path you will take and that's it, you're stuck.

The people who choose the merit path take the standard entry exams, have their grades review, etc. And the ones who do the best get in. Those who choose to pay for admission participate in a silent auction, and those willing to pay the most are admitted.

This system isn't "fair", but the outcome is effectively the same as our current setup. With the most notable difference being that, at least this system is transparent and acknowledges that X% of incoming students paid for their post.

Re: UC Berkeley inappropriately admitted students as favors to donors

#90

Post by legerdemain »

Colleges and universities are corrupt dinosaur institutions that indoctrinate students in subjects that working devs basically never use, like calculus, Java, and recursion. COVID can't kill them off fast enough. People like Haseeb Qureshi[1] amply demonstrate that you don't need a fancy degree to break into the top echelons of FAANG. It's 2020, not 1920: just do a bootcamp, self-study using one of the free open-source curricula,[2] and projects/a high-quality portfolio are all you actually need!

[1] https://haseebq.com/how-to-break-into-tech-job-hunting-and-i...

[2] https://github.com/ossu/computer-science

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