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It’s time to break up the Ivy League cartel

chronicle.com

71–80 of 379 posts

Re: It’s time to break up the Ivy League cartel

#71

What would happen if Harvard were required to accept 40 percent of all applicants as before? I think it would be pretty amusing if they got 50000 applicants, admitted 20000, and then said "guess what Cambridge, we're building 200 new dormitories, here, there, and everywhere."

Or why do they have to be in Cambridge? Why not expand in Las Vegas or Houston or something?

You can’t row crew in Las Vegas and the sun it too hot for lacrosse.

Re: It’s time to break up the Ivy League cartel

#72

It’s time to break up the education system from all the extracurricular fluff. The universities are fostering identities around themselves: students join debate teams, sports teams, religious groups , orchestra, etc under the aegis of their universities and attach their personal identities to these things. To me personally it seems kind of ridiculous. What if you are a young adult who is interested in trades, but you…

You essentially want institutions to bend to your will?

Good luck with that...

Why don't you go out and build from the ground up/front money to building a place solely for those "just interested in trades"

Re: It’s time to break up the Ivy League cartel

#73

> recirculating resources among the most exclusive and wealthy while chanting social-justice keywords Indeed, Harvard aggressively defends its admissions program as "holistic" while rating Asians as having lower personal ratings that they define as measuring "likeability", "courage", and "kindness" [1]. You might ask yourself how an institution which claims to be anti-racist exhibits behavior of the opposite kind. [1…

So then the smart choice for any applicant would be to select whichever race checkbox on the form gives the greatest advantage. Since race is an artificial social construct with no clear objective definition there's nothing wrong with hacking the system to your advantage. Or just leave it blank.

Re: It’s time to break up the Ivy League cartel

#74
post #54

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What's telling is how similar the Asian admit percentage is between the top colleges except for Caltech. It wasn't always like this, but they've all (ex-Caltech) converged on almost the same number now. It appears to be collusion either of the sort discussed in the article or the informal sort where each college copies their competitors' quotas.

College admissions' treatment of Asian American applicants is the most explicit form of institutional racism in the US today. It's the kind of racist discrimination that, if applied against any other group, would get the perpetrator sued to oblivion.

Clearly you’ve never been pulled over by a cop for a DWB — Driving While Black.

Re: It’s time to break up the Ivy League cartel

#75
post #16

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That’s in the same article where they compare the value of an endowment (measured in dollars) against the GDP of three random countries (measured in a different unit: dollars per year [per country]). Analytic rigor is not high.

It's interesting to note that Harvard could fund an entire country for a year.

You know GDP and budget aren't the same, right?

Re: It’s time to break up the Ivy League cartel

#76
post #36

Earlier quoted context omitted.

But I bet the number of universities has increased by a lot.

I don't know for certain, but I bet the number of universities has decreased. There were thousands of small colleges in every small town. Many have gone out of business. The state colleges have really increased in size but many small colleges have disappeared.

Not really. "The number of colleges and universities grew from 1,851 in 1950 to 3,535 in 1990 to 6,900 in 2013."

https://college-education.procon.org/history-of-college-educ...

Re: It’s time to break up the Ivy League cartel

#77
post #64

What is the author's thesis? I skimmed and read and re-read, but didn't figure it out. It's well known that elite universities are elitist in their admissions and have over-large endowments. And the elite universities have acted on it, and many of their new classes are very different. And it's well known that the rest of the U.S. educational system is underfunded. > Sen. Tom Cotton, of all political leaders, suggeste…

> What is the author's thesis? I skimmed and read and re-read, but didn't figure it out. Same. I think they are hoping Biden will put more money into public schools and stop preferential tax treatments for the large endowments. > It's not a surprise. Cotton and his party see Ivy League universities as institutions of the political opposition, whom they attack and want to punish and diminish. Tom Cotton... Harvard Uni…

On that note, the liberal cry of student loan forgiveness will overwhelmingly favor people who went to expensive private colleges. Taxing big endowments seems pretty senseless and doesn't create any positive incentives either. More support and less stigma against state schools would probably do the most good.

Re: It’s time to break up the Ivy League cartel

#78

What would happen if Harvard were required to accept 40 percent of all applicants as before? I think it would be pretty amusing if they got 50000 applicants, admitted 20000, and then said "guess what Cambridge, we're building 200 new dormitories, here, there, and everywhere."

Were harvard required to accept 40% of applicants at some point? (Google fails me) I was part of an experiment where the physics department at my uni admitted everyone who applied. Even those without the required prerequisites. Most of the "extras" dropped out or transfered or failed etc. But about 20% graduated. I think in one way this proved the normal application system was mostly effective. But it also gave peopl…

Not required, but the clear implication of the article is that things were more "fair" when the admit rate was 40%, and thus I'm asking what if we mandated that Harvard accept a "fair" portion of applicants.

Re: It’s time to break up the Ivy League cartel

#79

What would happen if Harvard were required to accept 40 percent of all applicants as before? I think it would be pretty amusing if they got 50000 applicants, admitted 20000, and then said "guess what Cambridge, we're building 200 new dormitories, here, there, and everywhere."

Or why do they have to be in Cambridge? Why not expand in Las Vegas or Houston or something?

What if we built a Harvard campus in NC and called it Duke?

Re: It’s time to break up the Ivy League cartel

#80
post #54

Earlier quoted context omitted.

College admissions' treatment of Asian American applicants is the most explicit form of institutional racism in the US today. It's the kind of racist discrimination that, if applied against any other group, would get the perpetrator sued to oblivion.

I say this as an Asian person: surely black folks getting disproportionately policed and killed is a bigger manifestation of institutional racism, no?

> surely black folks getting disproportionately policed and killed is a bigger manifestation of institutional racism

Are they disproportionately killed & policed? It depends on how you cut the statistics for your narrative. As a % of population vs % of Violent Crime vs % of Homicides etc etc. This is not to say there are no benefits about going into an encounter White.

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