US Supreme Court to weigh end to race-based college admissions • Hacker News Board

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

#241

Post by jimbokun » Mon, Oct 31, 2022, 6:10 PM UTC

kennend3 wrote: post #140

thatfrenchguy wrote: post #123

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is pretty easy to bypass by looking at parents' tax returns from the past 20 years, plus their assets.

Because no one has ever worked for cash and lied about it? Do you suspect that someone who launders dirty money for a living did their taxes and listed "money launderer" as occupation and reported their income? Assets like this are often hidden behind shell companies to prevent law enforcement from taking them under "proceeds of crime" charges.

Then it's no longer an issue for college admissions officers to police, but the IRS.

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

#242

Post by thelock85 » Mon, Oct 31, 2022, 6:14 PM UTC

silisili wrote: post #175

thelock85 wrote: post #138

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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…

I empathize with your experience having also grown up in relative poverty. But now that I have kids of my own and see other kids being disruptive, asleep, rude, violent, etc. I'm looking at those kids' parents and guardians like WTF?

So just like it's not fair for the person working hard and studying to get their family a better life (equality of opportunity), it's also not fair to penalize minors who don't have those types of parents or can't outlast their broken environment to reach a better life (equity in opportunity).

I don't have the answers either but think we should keep trying rather than accept some large number of kids can work hard and still fail due to circumstance beyond their reach. Especially when at the same time, some large number of kids can just be kids and eventually figure it out due to circumstance beyond their reach.

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

#243

Post by marcusverus » Mon, Oct 31, 2022, 6:20 PM UTC

legitster wrote: post #197

marcusverus wrote: post #155

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> They admit quite a number of conservative people... Nope. Fewer than 10% of students are conservative.[0] > and even their more left people are pretty center-right... Nope. ~65% self-identify as "Very Progressive" or "Progressive"! [0] There is no pretending that this is an accident, given that conservatives outnumber liberals by ~40% in the general population! [1] [0] https://features.thecrimson.com/2022/senior-su…

> There is no pretending that this is an accident, given that conservatives outnumber liberals by ~40% in the general population! Age and conservatism are largely linked, so I would take this with a grain of salt as your average college class is going to be very young.

You are entirely correct.

I found a Pew study[0] that breaks down the political leanings of Millennials, and it tracks very closely to the Harvard numbers:

57% fall into either "Consistently Liberal" or "Mostly Liberal", while only ~12% fall into "Consistently Conservative" or "Mostly Conservative".

[0]https://www.pewresearch.org/politics/2018/03/01/the-generati...

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

#244

Post by awb » Mon, Oct 31, 2022, 6:22 PM UTC

nradov wrote: post #67

awb wrote: post #48

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> What ever happened to access based on merit? It’s a complex problem. If the process of evaluating someone’s merits is biased or restricted in some way, then the merits are an inaccurate way of evaluating them. We’ve seen this exaggerated throughout history. If you deny groups the opportunity to learn how to read then they appear less competent based on their “merits”. When you then take those groups and give them t…

How do you define a group, and determine whether an individual is inside or outside that group?

Right, it can be tricky and no method would be perfect.

Sometimes courts when faced with an inherently ambiguous problem use a “reasonableness test”, which is basically taking it on a case by case basis and deferring to the current cultural climate to call BS on suspect claims.

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

#245

Post by JamesBarney » Mon, Oct 31, 2022, 6:23 PM UTC

btown wrote: post #151

legitster wrote: post #34

> Institutions like Harvard say they consider an applicant's race as one of several factors - including economic status and religious belief - in order to build classes that accurately represent the racial and ethnic diversity of the country. I mean, this is all kind of window dressing for elite institutions to be elite, right? There are millions of people qualified to attend these university, Harvard gets to hand se…

Expanding the size of enrollment isn't just something that can flipped like a switch. One cannot simply build a high-rise dormitory without increasing the capacity of all other facilities in lockstep - and a university designed to be fully walkable can only accommodate so much simultaneous construction. And more generally, you have the use of applicants' race backwards - the entire point of affirmative action is to t…

> relative to the opportunities they received growing up

There are so many better ways to do this than race, and they have zero interest in looking at any them. Measures that are both more accurate and more objective like.

Do your parents have a college degree? What's you family income?

What opportunities that affect GPA/SAT are going to be denied to anyone because of their race?

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

#246

Post by [deleted] » Mon, Oct 31, 2022, 6:49 PM UTC

petilon wrote: post #47

ajsnigrutin wrote: post #25

About time. The whole idea behind it is stupid and racist... "if you're a certain skin color, you're too stupid, to compete on merit"... then when people complain, they add the "socioeconomic" factors: "if you're a certain color, you're too poor to compete on merit, but instead of looking at your family income, we'll look at your skin color". I have no idea how something like this gets support in developed western co…

> "if you're a certain skin color, you're too stupid, to compete on merit" Hold on. You realize Harvard's policies have historically been designed to favor Whites, right? The whole "holistic review" process was invented to favor Whites. See https://www.theatlantic.com/education/archive/2019/03/histor...

[deleted]

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

#247

Post by nereye » Mon, Oct 31, 2022, 6:54 PM UTC

Overtonwindow wrote: post #169

kevinsundar wrote: post #124

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

There was even a United States senator who claimed to be Native American, was awarded academic positions based on that, but a DNA test proved her native ancestry to be so minuscule as to not even be measurable.

The part about 'was awarded academic positions based on that' is debatable, e.g. this claim was investigated by a newspaper (article below is titled 'Ethnicity not a factor in Elizabeth Warren's rise in law'):

https://www.bostonglobe.com/news/nation/2018/09/01/did-claim...

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

#248

Post by whimsicalism » Mon, Oct 31, 2022, 7:00 PM UTC

godelski wrote: post #203

thatfrenchguy wrote: post #108

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Notice that they don't care about diversity of viewpoints or politics Ever talked to someone from Harvard? (they'll usually tell you in the first 4 minutes you meet them telling you they went to school in Boston). They admit quite a number of conservative people if that's what you're worried about, and even their more left people are pretty center-right, as in they really don't want to pay more taxes. > they could…

> Really the feds could (and imo should) force them to do so, given a ton of their money come from federal grants. People frequently tell me I don't understand what endowments are for. Harvard has $51 billion. If we take an average of 5% per year and this assuming they make a $2.5bn return on that investment each year (and raise zero money in addition to it), that would allow them to pay for 25k students (at $100k ea…

Harvard already effectively pays for the entire tuition if you can't afford it. They have decided that preserving the endowment for future crises as well as funding other aspects of a college (running a research university actually costs a ton of money, around if not more than $100k per student) is a more important goal than ensuring that students who have families making $300k+ a year go free.

Also 5% is not a safe spending rate.

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

#249

Post by thatfrenchguy » Mon, Oct 31, 2022, 7:03 PM UTC

marcusverus wrote: post #155

thatfrenchguy wrote: post #108

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Notice that they don't care about diversity of viewpoints or politics Ever talked to someone from Harvard? (they'll usually tell you in the first 4 minutes you meet them telling you they went to school in Boston). They admit quite a number of conservative people if that's what you're worried about, and even their more left people are pretty center-right, as in they really don't want to pay more taxes. > they could…

> They admit quite a number of conservative people... Nope. Fewer than 10% of students are conservative.[0] > and even their more left people are pretty center-right... Nope. ~65% self-identify as "Very Progressive" or "Progressive"! [0] There is no pretending that this is an accident, given that conservatives outnumber liberals by ~40% in the general population! [1] [0] https://features.thecrimson.com/2022/senior-su…

Reread my previous message, what those people identify as and their actual politics and views on policies are very very different.

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

#250

Post by whimsicalism » Mon, Oct 31, 2022, 7:33 PM UTC

tonystubblebine wrote: post #125

I look at this through the lens of the San Francisco public schools. When I went to the magnet high school there, Lowell, they had explicit race based standards. We all got scores out of 70 based on our standardized tests and middle school grades. The differences were pretty stark. Chinese kids needed a 68, which could mean they got just one B. White kids needed a 62, black and latino even lower. So I totally get why…

At least since 2007, that sort of explicit race based discrimination undertaken voluntarily is not legal in public school districts, see PICS v. Seattle.