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US Supreme Court to weigh end to race-based college admissions

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Re: US Supreme Court to weigh end to race-based college admissions

#171

Post by kube-system »

hedora wrote: post #121
kube-system wrote: post #15

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There are plenty of liberal reasons to dislike race-based admission processes as well. I agree with the spirit of what these programs are trying to accomplish, but punishing Asian applicants for their race is a perfect example of what is wrong with this solution from a fundamental level.

I don't think that's the point. This court has been shredding the rule of law in this country for the last year, and is systematically replacing our democracy with fascism. Their ruling is definitely going to be more damaging to minorities than anything I can come up with. Hell, they banned abortion by eliminating the right to privacy in the US. They were even complete assholes about it. Despite being minority (and a…

I’m certainly not defending this court, their motivations, or any tangential effects their opinions might contain.

Purely on the merits of the topic: taking an admissions slot from an Asian student and giving it to someone of a different racial background is, plainly, racial discrimination.

If we want to help people of a disadvantaged background, we need to find a better way to measure that directly rather than using race as a proxy. Using race as a proxy in prejudging someone isn’t okay even if you think you’re right. Prejudiced people don’t think that they’re wrong.

Re: US Supreme Court to weigh end to race-based college admissions

#172

Post by tablespoon »

hedora wrote: post #121
kube-system wrote: post #15

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There are plenty of liberal reasons to dislike race-based admission processes as well. I agree with the spirit of what these programs are trying to accomplish, but punishing Asian applicants for their race is a perfect example of what is wrong with this solution from a fundamental level.

I don't think that's the point. This court has been shredding the rule of law in this country for the last year, and is systematically replacing our democracy with fascism. Their ruling is definitely going to be more damaging to minorities than anything I can come up with. Hell, they banned abortion by eliminating the right to privacy in the US. They were even complete assholes about it. Despite being minority (and a…

> This court has been shredding the rule of law in this country for the last year, and is systematically replacing our democracy with fascism.

If you think that, it's probably a sign you need to come up for air. What you write is simply not true unless you're examining things with a partisan funhouse mirror that shows myside as righteous and true and the otherside as cartoon villians. Admittedly, those mirrors are getting handed out right and left, because they're extremely useful for partisan GOTV efforts.

Re: US Supreme Court to weigh end to race-based college admissions

#173

Post by hot_gril »

JumpCrisscross wrote: post #135
thatfrenchguy wrote: post #119

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Compare say, Berkeley to Stanford, and you'll see why this could work.

> Compare say, Berkeley to Stanford Berkeley is highly exclusive [1], albeit 3x less so than Stanford [2]. The class-size difference, about 12,000, is noise against the millions of degrees conferred to Americans every year. Meanwhile, Stanford produces different graduate as a result of its process. Forcing homogenisation to one model for ideological purity is misled. [1] https://admission.universityofcalifornia.edu/c…

tl;dr Berkeley is still exclusive even after you're admitted

Berkeley has its own way of filtering students once they're admitted. This is most obvious with the computer science majors, of which there are two that involve almost the same coursework. EECS is super hard to get into to begin with. Whereas anyone in the school can intend L&S CS, but there's a rather high GPA cutoff (at like 30th %tile but don't quote me) for declaring, and you're effectively barred from most upper-div CS classes until you've declared, usually second year IIRC.

If you miss the cutoff for L&S or one of the other exclusive majors, you end up in an alternative. CS usually becomes the other CS: cognitive science. Yes it's a real field, but at Berkeley that just means you couldn't make comp sci. Cog sci has very few classes within its own major; instead everything is cross-listed with other majors, and you have a very hard time getting a spot in the class. The other common duo is Haas vs economics.

And many of the required lower divs are "weeders," huge classes with low average grades that students perceive mainly as obstacles to the upper divs.

I'm not saying this is a bad strategy, though.

Re: US Supreme Court to weigh end to race-based college admissions

#174

Post by jmull »

dongobongo wrote: post #4

I have a feeling that in hindsight, 30-40 years from now, this will seem like no brainer and that the period prior was heavily anti-meritocratic and counterproductive.

> anti-meritocratic

How do you measure merit, though?

People just leave this critical detail to our intuitions for some reason.

I think we want something good and fair... What's the measure of "merit" that's good and fair?

People who are good at the SATs usually want SAT scores to matter. People who get good grades in high-school want high-school grades to matter. Not unreasonable... but that's still just people defining "merit" in a self-serving way.

I think we want to focus on outcomes...

Let's suppose the college experience and fact of an elite university degree confers significant advantages of reach and power to those who get it... and that there are 10x more people able to take advantage of those advantages than there are spots available.

I think the question is: of those 10x people, who are the 10% we want to give a spot to?

I think we want to give them to the people who are most likely to benefit all the rest of us (completely fine by me if they benefit themselves as well -- In fact, I think it will work best that way, by a large degree.)

So that's the "merit" I'm looking for.

(I think when left to intuition, people tend to image "merit" as something that would favor people like themselves and their families... usually, in effect, something quite narrow with a heavy self-serving bias.)

Re: US Supreme Court to weigh end to race-based college admissions

#175

Post by silisili »

thelock85 wrote: post #138
silisili wrote: post #74

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That's only part of the equation. The fact is, generally, anyone in the US who has a capable brain and really tries can excel. There's no shortage of examples of people growing up poor who did excellent in school and/or careers. Do they have a disadvantage in not having the same resources as a wealthy family? Definitely. But it's only a disadvantage, not a roadblock. I feel like a lot of the argument is little more t…

> The fact is, generally, anyone in the US who has a capable brain and really tries can excel. This is a great populist message but not sure it can be backed up with enough data at any meaningful enough scale to enact policies. Just like if I posited, "Generally, there are a lot of smart, capable and hardworking people who are just surviving check to check." It feels good and there are plenty of anecdotes to back it…

Well it's easier for me to say, having grown up relatively poor in a relatively poor area. The kids who listened, took notes, participated, for the most part all did well in school and went off to college. Most kids did not, they were disruptive, asleep, rude, violent, etc. Public school was very frustrating to me for that reason, so I guess it struck a nerve.

The equity vs equality is hard to square. Imagine someone who came from real poverty who worked 2 jobs while studying to give his family a better life. He or she makes it, finally, only for them and their kids to be punished for it come admissions time. Is that fair? I don't have great answers, I just feel like everything they try today isn't right, either.

Re: US Supreme Court to weigh end to race-based college admissions

#176

Post by eli »

kube-system wrote: post #171
hedora wrote: post #121

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't think that's the point. This court has been shredding the rule of law in this country for the last year, and is systematically replacing our democracy with fascism. Their ruling is definitely going to be more damaging to minorities than anything I can come up with. Hell, they banned abortion by eliminating the right to privacy in the US. They were even complete assholes about it. Despite being minority (and a…

I’m certainly not defending this court, their motivations, or any tangential effects their opinions might contain. Purely on the merits of the topic: taking an admissions slot from an Asian student and giving it to someone of a different racial background is, plainly, racial discrimination. If we want to help people of a disadvantaged background, we need to find a better way to measure that directly rather than using…

"Taking an admissions slot from an Asian student" is a very opinionated way to describe the situation and strictly speaking it isn't true.

Re: US Supreme Court to weigh end to race-based college admissions

#177

Post by adastra22 »

eli wrote: post #157
adastra22 wrote: post #134

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Judges are NOT political appointees. Within the civil service a political appointee is one that can be and usually is dismissed in a change of government. Heads of agencies and such. Supreme Court justices serve lifetime appointments specifically so that they are not subject to political interference.

This is needlessly pedantic. They are appointed by politicians.

Words have meaning, even if that meaning is not clear from the direct composite words used, as in this case. The word “political appointee” has the technical meaning I stated.

Re: US Supreme Court to weigh end to race-based college admissions

#178

Post by josh_fyi »

kevinsundar wrote: post #124
kennend3 wrote: post #86

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Socioeconomic status is a much better goal if you want to "even the playing field" but it has serious flaws. The most obvious is it is incredibly easy to game: https://www.theglobeandmail.com/news/british-columbia/income... Any ideas on how students with no income managed to own $57 million in houses? Would these people qualify for a socio-economic advantage when applying for school?

Race is easy to game too, in fact far easier. I know people who were around 5% Hispanic who would then write Hispanic on college applications. They're technically not lying. There's also just plenty of people that just straight up lie about their race on college applications. It's not like its being verified at all. I went to high school with a lot of White - Asian mixed kids. None of them wrote Asian on their colleg…

How do American colleges police the statement of race?

Re: US Supreme Court to weigh end to race-based college admissions

#179

Post by adastra22 »

arberx wrote: post #148
adastra22 wrote: post #84

Earlier quoted context omitted.

So it causes parents to optimize their kid’s education. I fail to see the problem here?

Imagine if our meritocracy valued basketball skills above anything else.

If it were a basketball training program you were applying to, that would make sense. I fail to see your point regarding universities using academic merit as admission criteria.

Re: US Supreme Court to weigh end to race-based college admissions

#180

Post by adastra22 »

danenania wrote: post #166
adastra22 wrote: post #134

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Judges are NOT political appointees. Within the civil service a political appointee is one that can be and usually is dismissed in a change of government. Heads of agencies and such. Supreme Court justices serve lifetime appointments specifically so that they are not subject to political interference.

Appointed by politicians = political appointee in my book. But yes, they are lifetime political appointees. "Supreme Court justices serve lifetime appointments specifically so that they are not subject to political interference." I also think this is naive. In my view, they serve lifetime appointments because they don't want to give up power, and no one's been able to force them to so far.

It’s written into the constitution.
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