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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

#301

Post by trexmix »

MiroF wrote: post #299
rkique wrote: post #237

Earlier quoted context omitted.

* allow people to pay millions to go to college; allow this to fund student aid for other students. Explicitly stop using it to build buildings Most elite colleges (not the UCs though) offer 100% need-based aid to accepted students and are need blind in the admissions process. This comes directly from the endownment or the rich alumni and donors already. * stop having all of these overfunded and weirdly inappropriate…

> 100% need-based aid to accepted students With the little weird caveat that poor students at top institutions have to work doing things like cleaning the bathrooms of the richer kids as part of their "term-time work expectation" for receiving financial aid.

I have never seen or heard of that happening. My brother goes to an Ivy on a fully need based scholarship

Re: UC Berkeley inappropriately admitted students as favors to donors

#302

Post by lumost »

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.

A test that splits the top .1% of test takers vs. the top 1% likely isn't the best indicator of future career performance ( the source of university prestige ), or necessarily academic performance.

Re: UC Berkeley inappropriately admitted students as favors to donors

#303

Post by MiroF »

trexmix wrote: post #301
MiroF wrote: post #299

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 100% need-based aid to accepted students With the little weird caveat that poor students at top institutions have to work doing things like cleaning the bathrooms of the richer kids as part of their "term-time work expectation" for receiving financial aid.

I have never seen or heard of that happening. My brother goes to an Ivy on a fully need based scholarship

At Harvard at least, there is a "dorm crew", comprised mostly of poorer students meeting their term-time work requirements that come with finaid, that is responsible for cleaning the in-suite bathrooms.

I think I recall recently reading that some schools might have finally eliminated the requirement (maybe, Yale?) but I'm not sure. It was definitely the case at Harvard as of ~March 2020. (but probably not for this year for obvious reasons!)

Re: UC Berkeley inappropriately admitted students as favors to donors

#304

Post by ffggvv »

paulkennedy wrote: post #150
ffggvv wrote: post #119

Earlier quoted context omitted.

it’s been legal since the 70s outside of california and outcomes for minorities have steadily gotten worse not better.

You don't think it's possible that affirmative action isn't the only variable there?

i think the onus on someone who wants to propose a discriminative policy to prove that it works.

Re: UC Berkeley inappropriately admitted students as favors to donors

#305

Post by travisoneill1 »

clankyclanker wrote: post #280
strombofulous wrote: post #273

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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-...

Useless. They topped out the SAT buckets at 1100.

Re: UC Berkeley inappropriately admitted students as favors to donors

#306

Post by lotsofpulp »

ajkjk wrote: post #141
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'm generally opposed to this kind of acceptance-of-bad-things but in this case I kinda agree. If people are willing to pay millions to go to college, that's potentially a great advantage to students who otherwise have trouble affording it -- let the rich kids subsidize it for everyone else. By not funneling the donations through weird under-the-table transactions it can be more directly used for a net good for the s…

> If people are willing to pay millions to go to college, that's potentially a great advantage to students who otherwise have trouble affording it -- let the rich kids subsidize it for everyone else.

The correct way to do this is via marginal tax rates.

Re: UC Berkeley inappropriately admitted students as favors to donors

#307

Post by Galanwe »

clankyclanker wrote: post #283
arcticbull wrote: post #215

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You're looking for cachet ("the state of being respected or admired; prestige") not cache ("hidden away for future use").

Also not to be confused with Caché (apparently pronounced like cachet): https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/InterSystems_Cach%C3%A9

I will be the picky one: Caché, cache, cachette and cachet have a different pronunciation.

Cachet and cachait do have the same though. Same for caché and cacher.

Re: UC Berkeley inappropriately admitted students as favors to donors

#308

Post by travisoneill1 »

vkou wrote: post #142
travisoneill1 wrote: post #88

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

Is that the only result of affirmative action admissions, or are there a few you are leaving out? Do you have a better plan for dealing with systemic racism[1], that does not have the drawback you cite? Do you believe that systemic racism doesn't exist? Or do you believe that it does exist, but we shouldn't do anything about it? Which of those three options are you championing? [1] I understand that the mere mention…

> Do you have a better plan for dealing with systemic racism

Get rid of all the bullshit administrators to lower the cost of college back to what it was 50 years ago so that poor people can go without getting into a lot of debt.

Re: UC Berkeley inappropriately admitted students as favors to donors

#309

Post by MiroF »

Galanwe wrote: post #307
clankyclanker wrote: post #283

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Also not to be confused with Caché (apparently pronounced like cachet): https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/InterSystems_Cach%C3%A9

I will be the picky one: Caché, cache, cachette and cachet have a different pronunciation. Cachet and cachait do have the same though. Same for caché and cacher.

> Caché, cachet

I'll be honest I have no idea what the difference is between these two.

Re: UC Berkeley inappropriately admitted students as favors to donors

#310

Post by rmk »

awillen wrote: post #154
Balgair wrote: post #130

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Since when were Water Polo, Golf, or Volleyball rich person sports? Costs are pretty cheap at public courses. Beach Volleyball, I guess, kinda, but sand is pretty cheap even in cold weather climates. Crew, sure. The 'field' is hard to get things to, typically. Lacrosse, well, maybe 20 years ago, but it's everywhere now. Now, (horse) Polo and Dressage. Those are rich people sports.

Where on earth do you think inner city kids are playing water polo and golf? Just because golf courses aren't that expensive to play on doesn't mean they're accessible to poor people (plus there's the cost of clubs, obviously). And water polo... even if there are public pools near you, they probably aren't dedicating space for competitive water polo.

Inner city kids would be considered poor, particularly time-poor (parents/caregivers have to work multiple jobs to make ends meet). There are the rich, the poor and the (majority) middling sort. For the majority, wouldn't water polo be affordable? I don't know about golf, though, but given that most cities have public golf courses, perhaps golf is also in the reach of most folks who want to play.
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