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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

#271

Post by wegs »

barkingcat wrote: post #121
wegs wrote: post #28

Earlier quoted context omitted.

All schools do NOT do this. I went to MIT: * MIT wouldn't be caught dead with JUST 64 students admitted on the basis of connections and donations. * MIT wouldn't be caught dead letting external auditors look at this stuff. * MIT wouldn't be caught. None of this would be public for MIT. That's what NDAs and non-disparage agreements are for. I'm sorry, but all schools don't do this. Most are smart enough to stay out of…

You want money? You gotta do something to earn it. You either accept in some riched and money folk, or you get it from rapists https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2019/aug/23/jeffrey-epst... What I'm trying to say is that it's a world of greys and putting things in black and white terms doesn't do any good. MIT doesn't get money from selling spots, but they misstep and get money from other even less savoury places. Y…

I feel less bad about MIT taking money from Epstein, than the cover-up around it. People and institutions make mistakes. That's okay. It's a question of what you do about them. MIT has a history of hiding stuff like this, and of intimidating anyone who would talk about it openly.

MIT shut down the entire CSAIL mailing list -- whose legacy dates back to the old AI Lab days -- because someone had the nerve to raise the question of Epstein, asking what MIT's attitude should be towards a faculty member who visited the island. The list had been through horrible flamewars, thick and thin, over it's many-decade existence, and it finally took the whole Epstein cover-up to shut it down. MIT did the equivalent of a shadowban, collecting all emails sent to the list, but not forwarding them to the community for two days, to see what people send BEFORE announcing it was shut down. A lot of people sent a lot of stuff they wanted to share with the community but not the leadership.

To give a slight bit more context, the question was about a faculty member who had visited Epstein's island. We were promised that'd be answered in MIT's so-called fact-finding report. Naturally, it wasn't. It got shut down before anyone publicly put 2 and 2 together.

Re: UC Berkeley inappropriately admitted students as favors to donors

#272

Post by pvg »

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 University of California is a public university. It's also huge and doesn't really suffer from the artificial scarcity of something like 'an undergrad spot at Harvard'. There are lots of ways to get in. What you're describing sounds at once cynical and naive to me and that's a questionable starting place for thinking about public policy in a country-sized state.

Re: UC Berkeley inappropriately admitted students as favors to donors

#273

Post by strombofulous »

solveit wrote: post #247
closeparen wrote: post #238

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Sufficiently prestigious schools are drowning in perfect applicants. You don’t even need to admit any rich slackers. Just let some of the qualified substitute money for luck.

> Sufficiently prestigious schools are drowning in perfect applicants. This is by design. There exist tests that can distinguish between the merely very good and the outstanding. Elite US universities go out of their ways to not use them, precisely so they can admit the merely very good legacies.

If you're talking about the SAT and ACT, I would challenge the idea that they can accurately distinguish between the good and outstanding. At most they provide a rough indication. I know this because I got a much higher score than I deserved to on the ACT because you can read the test pretty easily if you put yourself in the shoes of the people making it (I got a 31 overall and a near-perfect 35 on the science portion without studing)

Re: UC Berkeley inappropriately admitted students as favors to donors

#274

Post by wegs »

samatman wrote: post #169
wegs wrote: post #35

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The vast majority of people are doing the right thing. The vast majority of people in highly-competitive positions are not doing the right thing. * A statement like "all politicians are corrupt" is to a first order accurate. You can't get elected without money, and you can't get money without doing donor bidding. * A statement like "all executives are psychopaths" is not accurate, but becomes pretty close to accurate…

I wouldn't have expected a detailed elucidation of the maxim "power corrupts" to be so unpopular, but, here we are.

It's been analyzed in much greater depth. Pfeffer's "Power" and de Mesquita's "Dictators Handbook" are treatments from a psychological and game-theoretic point of view, respectively. Both are well-researched scholarly tracts from top professors in the field. Pfeffer is controversial, while de Mesquita is pretty accepted organizational psychology.

Where we run into problems is that most people from any demographic are basically good, and people extrapolate from that. But power isn't a demographic; there's a selection process.

I didn't think what I posted was overly controversial, but as of now, it's a -3, with no one posting why they disagree. The only time that's happened before was the (now many times) I hit a nerve with the Google astroturf crowd. And I don't even dislike Google. But them's the taboos.

Re: UC Berkeley inappropriately admitted students as favors to donors

#275

Post by angel_j »

jjeaff wrote: post #54
TrackerFF wrote: post #42

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…

And just in case anyone thinks the idea that an elite school won't help a rich kid, there have been studies indicating that is the case. 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…

Garbage in, garbage out. If you admit dummies, they are not going to become a genius. The bigger issue for all of us is, now we are not supporting the students who could really move the needle. So the needle doesn't move.

Re: UC Berkeley inappropriately admitted students as favors to donors

#276

Post by myself248 »

scandox wrote: post #217
hatmatrix wrote: post #194

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

This also completely ignores the effect on the other pupils. It's like any form of corruption, it lowers morale and makes people view their situation in a reductive and transactional manner. Ultimately it fosters an attitude which is characterised by a desire to game, control and exploit as opposed to learn, understand and engage.

I went to a school that had essentially this system in place. There wasn't a reverse auction, but rather, full tuition was a significant chunk of change, and as a result, a significant chunk of the student body was there on various merit-based scholarships.

You could usually tell which group a given individual was from, and saying so was a common insult. Either "Your folks may have money, but you're dumb as a post", or "You might be smart but you're poor". There were a select few students where the circles seemed to overlap...

Re: UC Berkeley inappropriately admitted students as favors to donors

#277

Post by happyjack »

_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.

This.

Re: UC Berkeley inappropriately admitted students as favors to donors

#278

Post by dannykwells »

I know I'm out of sync with the mainstream here but I think it should be fine to buy your way in to a school like UCB. The price tag should be so high that it would support say 10 or even 20 low income, highly talented students. Say 1M/year. If a family can pay, fine.

If they cant, well, they can get in line like everyone else.

This really just makes the process transparent and put a price tag on it. And now, if a professor or dean takes a lower donation for admittance, they're stealing from the school and would be put in jail, not given some wrist slap or administrative leave.

Re: UC Berkeley inappropriately admitted students as favors to donors

#279

Post by rmk »

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…

This is fairly common in India in private institutions, especially professional schools such as for Engineering, Medicine, Dentistry and Business Administration.

A certain percentage of places are designated 'Management Quota', i.e., the management is free to do with them as it wishes. They are used in many ways. For example, if a certain religious community/sect/order runs the place, it may set aside a large chunk of the management quota to admit students from its community/sect/order; if a (non-sectarian) charitable trust runs the place, as is very common, it may set aside some percentage of the management quota for indigent students who would otherwise not had the chance to attend the institution. Additionally, almost invariably, some part of the management quota is sold to the highest bidder in a pure cash transaction. In this way, rich students end up subsidizing a reasonable number of otherwise deserving students.

There is a significant number of (relatively much less deserving) candidates that all institutions (private or public) are required to admit, such as those coming from the so-called "Scheduled Castes", "Scheduled Tribes", "Other Backward Classes" (from communities that have been lagging in privilege and access to economic opportunities because of their caste/religion), and candidates that have done most of their prior schooling in (massively underserved) rural areas (IOTW, "Reservation" aka Affirmative Action candidates). In fact, the chunk of places allotted (by Government Order) to Affirmative Action candidates is much larger than Management Quota, and even 'Merit Quota' (i.e., candidates who sit competitive examinations in order to gain admission).

As far as subsequent success is concerned, though, it's sink-or-swim for all the candidates who are admitted: they are not given any preference in tests, exams, etc. In some specific cases, for a small initial period, affirmative action candidates may be allowed to advance with lower scores, but that is very much a small exception, not the norm.

Re: UC Berkeley inappropriately admitted students as favors to donors

#280

Post by clankyclanker »

strombofulous wrote: post #273
solveit wrote: post #247

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Sufficiently prestigious schools are drowning in perfect applicants. This is by design. There exist tests that can distinguish between the merely very good and the outstanding. Elite US universities go out of their ways to not use them, precisely so they can admit the merely very good legacies.

If you're talking about the SAT and ACT, I would challenge the idea that they can accurately distinguish between the good and outstanding. At most they provide a rough indication. I know this because I got a much higher score than I deserved to on the ACT because you can read the test pretty easily if you put yourself in the shoes of the people making it (I got a 31 overall and a near-perfect 35 on the science portio…

Further, the only thing that the SAT claims to be able to predict is a student’s first semester performance, and wasn’t found to be a better predictor than other factors on other measures.

Of course I can’t find a reference for that right now, but it certainly doesn’t predict college graduation rates best.

https://www.forbes.com/sites/prestoncooper2/2018/06/11/what-...

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