Colleges that ditched admission tests find it harder to fairly choose students
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Re: Colleges that ditched admission tests find it harder to fairly choose students
#2USA is rich in universities. I wish people would focus less on the rankings and looking good credential aspect of college, and more on using it as an opportunity to learn / actually getting good at something. If we did the latter, we’d realize that people could go to pretty much any university (or coursera!) and get a high quality education here.
Re: Colleges that ditched admission tests find it harder to fairly choose students
#3I find it hard to believe there's a shortage of people capable of teaching 1st year students, so this seems like a problem of artificial scarcity.
Re: Colleges that ditched admission tests find it harder to fairly choose students
#4Was this not obvious from the outset? Do these people not consider the consequences of their actions beforehand?
Re: Colleges that ditched admission tests find it harder to fairly choose students
#5Alternate headline:
"Colleges that ditched admissions tests have to actually holistically evaluate applicants rather than reduce them to two numbers"
Re: Colleges that ditched admission tests find it harder to fairly choose students
#6USA is rich in universities. I wish people would focus less on the rankings and looking good credential aspect of college, and more on using it as an opportunity to learn / actually getting good at something. If we did the latter, we’d realize that people could go to pretty much any university (or coursera!) and get a high quality education here.
You are absolutely missing one of the primary points of US universities, which is to maintain a social hierarchy.
I mean, if you just want to learn stuff and get a good education, there are loads of resources where you can do that, often for free or near free. College is about much more than just learning new things, and if that's the only framework through which you value a college education, you'll be doomed to misunderstand the institution.
Re: Colleges that ditched admission tests find it harder to fairly choose students
#7I find it hard to believe there's a shortage of people capable of teaching 1st year students, so this seems like a problem of artificial scarcity.
It's all about margins. They want to squeeze teachers and get minimum-wage adjuncts to teach 1st years. At the same time, they want future rich people to be students, so they will donate back.
Harvard, MIT, and Oxford have no problem finding future rich people. Random schools can't compete for smart people, so it makes sense for them to try to find prospects based on alternative criteria.
Re: Colleges that ditched admission tests find it harder to fairly choose students
#8Alternate headline: "Colleges that ditched admissions tests have to actually holistically evaluate applicants rather than reduce them to two numbers" No doubt that it's more subjective and more difficult; human beings are complex, multi-dimensional entities and I find it sad that in many of these selection processes, they are reduced to a few numbers for the sake of low effort filtering.
There is plenty of evidence to doubt the whole "holistic evaluation" line of thought, which is often a tool for subtle discrimination. And pretty much all of these schools already did "holistically evaluate" students; test scores were just one part of that evaluation.
Besides, at the end of the day everything boils down to a single number - applicants are ranked and those that make the cutoff get in, those that are below the cutoff don't.
Re: Colleges that ditched admission tests find it harder to fairly choose students
#9I find it hard to believe there's a shortage of people capable of teaching 1st year students, so this seems like a problem of artificial scarcity.
far from a shortage, there’s a surplus of phds in almost every discipline. despite charging the highest tuition ever and sitting on massive endowments, the mbas in university administration don’t want to have to pay for them
Re: Colleges that ditched admission tests find it harder to fairly choose students
#10I find it hard to believe there's a shortage of people capable of teaching 1st year students, so this seems like a problem of artificial scarcity.
far from a shortage, there’s a surplus of phds in almost every discipline. despite charging the highest tuition ever and sitting on massive endowments, the mbas in university administration don’t want to have to pay for them
Why would they even need phds at all. Teaching first year student should be more of a side job thing.