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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

#191

Post by MiroF »

setgree wrote: post #84

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…

> 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%

I don't think it's in the double digits for any school. You need large amounts of wealth to donate your way in.

Re: UC Berkeley inappropriately admitted students as favors to donors

#192

Post by SpicyLemonZest »

ghaff wrote: post #157
MiroF wrote: post #137

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Cal doesn't have a "diversity quota."

Every competitive school has a diversity goal (though perhaps not outright quota) at some level for many dimensions of diversity. Many/most schools have academic floors but are then looking to blend in other factors other than pure academic achievement.

The UC chancellors would certainly like to blend diversity goals into their admissions process, but they're prohibited from doing so by state law, and most commentators I've seen believe the prohibition is reasonably effective.

Re: UC Berkeley inappropriately admitted students as favors to donors

#193

Post by centimeter »

ihumanable wrote: post #104
centimeter wrote: post #82

Letting in a few subpar students to raise millions of dollars that can help more qualified students is a perfectly reasonable tradeoff.

Was it millions of dollars? I saw one donor give a few thousand and one person get admitted for babysitting. Almost all the donations in the report went directly to athletic departments, which would only seem to help student athletes and not academically qualified students that were bumped.

Yeah usually the donations at a school like Berkeley are a couple mil at least. Some schools are a lot more

Re: UC Berkeley inappropriately admitted students as favors to donors

#194

Post by hatmatrix »

scandox wrote: post #164
mywittyname wrote: post #89

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 admis…

I went to a boarding school in the UK that followed this model. Ultimately you lose the prestige. Not necessarily quickly enough for any individual to care. But that's the path. Lots of boys sitting in their rooms smoking weed and ordering pizza and having to be edged out over 2 or 3 years because their parents paid for a swimming pool...

Probably depends on the portion of donor vs. merit positions though doesn't it? As long as the overwhelming majority is merit-based, the academic reputation of the school should be maintained.

Re: UC Berkeley inappropriately admitted students as favors to donors

#195

Post by rhizome »

_pd19 wrote: post #115
mywittyname wrote: post #89

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 admis…

The problem is that you can only sell prestige if there is strategic ambiguity between the two categories.

And that ambiguity is an economy: the rich slackers are seen as smart by association with the achievements of (past) students admitted by merit, and the rabble students acquire aristocratic social cache by the same token. I'm not an economist, but I wouldn't be surprised if this is a self-powering machine.

Re: UC Berkeley inappropriately admitted students as favors to donors

#196

Post by morpheuskafka »

barkingcat wrote: post #111

I don't think it's inappropriate and also not unexpected. It is inappropriate to pretend to have an impartial process when money drives the admission process for as long as the American universities (either public or private alike) have existed. It's a part of the nature of these schools that money/donors get kids into school. That's the way it's always been, and it's worth saying it up front. That's the first step.…

It violated the policy of the Board of Regents which is the democratic governing board of the taxpayer funded UC System.

If they want to establish a policy of selling seats to raise money, there's nothing inherently unconstitutional about that. But, they need to change the policies, and if necessary, state law to allow this to happen legally and with the consent of the taxpaying citizens.

Re: UC Berkeley inappropriately admitted students as favors to donors

#197

Post by curiousllama »

jjeaff wrote: post #136
asdfasgasdgasdg wrote: post #73

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Do you have a cite for this? Not saying you're wrong as it's my prior that selection bias is the most important factor in any difference in educational outcomes. But I'd love to have something solid to point to. I will say I don't totally understand how future income differences can be not statistically significant and also be "stark" between lower income students at the same time.

This article appears to reference both the original study and a more recent update to the study. https://www.usnews.com/education/blogs/the-college-solution/... The no-difference in financial outcomes was based on comparing the average incomes of the two groups. So naturally, you will have outliers on both sides. They found that minority students tended to be the outliers. Part of that probably has to do with the mor…

Environment and options, too. The Finance Path, Consulting Path, Tech Path, Startup Path - the implicit assumptions of school A to Company B to Grad School C to Company D is objectively super weird (why is I-Banking > MBA > Consulting so standard a path?), but often critical to making a certain salary.

Re: UC Berkeley inappropriately admitted students as favors to donors

#198

Post by [deleted] »

lacker wrote: post #55

This is bad, but 64 students isn't all that much. It pales in comparison to private colleges. For example, Harvard accepts about 1/3 of its students as "legacy". If you believe the lawsuits about Harvard's anti-Asian discrimination, that also affects hundreds of potential Harvard students every year. Once you consider that UC Berkeley is about five times larger than Harvard, and that there are at least a dozen top-ti…

[deleted]

Re: UC Berkeley inappropriately admitted students as favors to donors

#199

Post by curiousllama »

syspec wrote: post #110
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.

The problem is that if we normalize it, then they will get addicted to the money and ONLY let in people who's parents can make a large donation. Finally what will be considered a large donation, will go up rapidly.

Good point - before long, tuition will be something ridiculous like $50k a year!

:)

Re: UC Berkeley inappropriately admitted students as favors to donors

#200

Post by hatmatrix »

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.

Like first class passengers footing a large share of the bill so economy passengers can pay less.
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