Earlier quoted context omitted.
Ones French, and is the past tense of the verb cacher, “to hide”
No, I meant the pronunciation!
Haha it’s should be the same - but maybe that’s because I learned French in Canada.
UC Berkeley inappropriately admitted students as favors to donors
321–330 of 456 posts
Re: UC Berkeley inappropriately admitted students as favors to donors
#322Earlier quoted context omitted.
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.
What makes it 'correct'?
Re: UC Berkeley inappropriately admitted students as favors to donors
#323People 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…
That would probably be illegal for a public university. Elite private universities frequently defend themselves against the criticism that they reinforce social hierarchy and class privilege. They would incur significant reputational damage if they had official policies that did just that.
What do you mean? We just had a huge lawsuit where Harvard produced detailed evidence that they have exactly those policies, and it was never a secret before then.
https://google.com/search?q=harvard+legacy
Other private schools are no different.
Re: UC Berkeley inappropriately admitted students as favors to donors
#324People 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 would completely erode any public perception of prestige of any University that implements it.
We just had a huge lawsuit where Harvard produced detailed evidence that they have exactly those policies, and it was never a secret before then.
https://google.com/search?q=harvard+legacy
Other private schools are no different.
Re: UC Berkeley inappropriately admitted students as favors to donors
#325Earlier quoted context omitted.
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 ye…
Yale has a `student income contribution`, where students on finanical aid are expected to work in some term-time jobs. However these jobs are virtually all administrative (doing paperwork, making calls, etc.), research or teaching assistant-ships. I have not heard of poorer students doing any cleaning.
Here's a brief article on the practice https://www.thecrimson.com/article/2019/4/8/dorm-crew-tweets...
Re: UC Berkeley inappropriately admitted students as favors to donors
#326Earlier 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.
I suspect the schools are trying to curate their student body so it doesn't turn into a freak show, which would itself reduce prestige. It would be like a zoo that contains exactly one species of animal. This is the dilemma. Taking the top 1000 scorers on some particularly difficult exam, and putting them all together in one place, would be a freak show. Not because they are freaks per se, but because any monoculture of an extreme trait will turn itself into a freak show.
Re: UC Berkeley inappropriately admitted students as favors to donors
#327Have 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.
This is already the way education works. You’ve heard of “needs-blind” admissions? Anywhere they don’t say that, it means the ability of students to pay full price is part of the admission process.
Even "need-blind" admission uses proxies for (non-)need, like "legacy" and "celebrity".
Re: UC Berkeley inappropriately admitted students as favors to donors
#328Earlier 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?
I do. It's absurd that _anyone_ with a high school diploma is refused enrollment at a public college.
Re: UC Berkeley inappropriately admitted students as favors to donors
#329Don'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.
It would be better to just directly tax the rich to pay to educate the poor.
Re: UC Berkeley inappropriately admitted students as favors to donors
#330Earlier 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.
I suspect the schools are trying to curate their student body so it doesn't turn into a freak show, which would itself reduce prestige. It would be like a zoo that contains exactly one species of animal. This is the dilemma. Taking the top 1000 scorers on some particularly difficult exam, and putting them all together in one place, would be a freak show. Not because they are freaks per se , but because any monocultur…
Perfect students are not “freaks”.