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Ivy League Schools Sure Look Like a Cartel

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Re: Ivy League Schools Sure Look Like a Cartel

#141

Post by blitzar »

caddemon wrote: post #128
tophi wrote: post #97

Earlier quoted context omitted.

A university is not just a place to go to learn anymore. It’s a big club that happens to be a place where you study. You bond and make lifelong friends. Also a great place to find a partner for life. Athletic departments are vital to the university system in American schools and their local economies.

I get the value of the major D1 college sports teams in the university experience, but honestly who gives a shit if Harvard is good at golf or not? I don't imagine anyone outside of people on the e.g. squash team are impacted by squash at Harvard. Same goes for non-elite (in the socioeconomic sense) sports like track and field. I love sports and I think we need more opportunities for recreational play of sports after…

How will Chad Chaddington III become a Harvard man if they dont have a good Lacrosse team?

Re: Ivy League Schools Sure Look Like a Cartel

#142

Post by Fomite »

bee_rider wrote: post #133
coldtea wrote: post #110

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> A university is not just a place to go to learn anymore. It’s a big club that happens to be a place where you study. Yes. That should stop. > Athletic departments are vital to the university system in American schools and their local economies. That too.

You could learn most things in a library for free. One of the big advantages of a University is being around other ambitious people at the same point in their career. The “big club” aspect is an important part of the value proposition. We should definitely dump athletic departments, though, they are completely unrelated to the mission.

As a faculty member at my institution put it: "Where in the land-grant university mission is giving our students traumatic brain injuries?"

Re: Ivy League Schools Sure Look Like a Cartel

#143

Post by fsckboy »

pyuser583 wrote: post #135
fsckboy wrote: post #117

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The post WWII period was a golden age for social progress. Along with the final collapse of colonial empires ruled over by royal families came a corresponding breaking down of class and overt ethnic/racial barriers in the West and America, with universities using test scores to open their doors to students of merit regardless of background or gender. but that golden age, having achieved remarkable success, is over. I…

Did life improve in the post-colonial world? There don’t seem to be too many 1950s era success stories in this regard.

life has generally improved for everybody, everywhere in the world, as it was also the time of the green revolution, antibiotics, etc., and many former colonies revel in their self governance even while their politics seem even more dysfunctional than western politics. But you might be making the point that some former colonies would have been better off remaining as colonies, a hill I am not willing to defend, let alone die on.

America, Canada and Australia benefited from being English colonies, but that's sort of tautological because they were originally colonies settled with English people, apart from indigenous peoples and later arrivals.

Hard to say if indigenous people are better off, certainly particular indigenous people have been worse off, and there's certainly the enduring popular romantic notion that being a hunter gatherer is peak evolution for us/them and the tiny sustainable populations of the nomadic invaders and such of several continents were entitled to be left alone to battle each other for supremacy while collectively hogging those resources for themselves, free from having to battle anybody else for them.

But personally, while descended from hunter gatherers, I'm glad I'm not a hunter gatherer myself (he said, typing on his silicon dream machine) though considering it, I would have made a great one tempermentally.

Re: Ivy League Schools Sure Look Like a Cartel

#144

Post by rjsw »

fsckboy wrote: post #126
whakim wrote: post #58

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Having competed in The Boat Race, this is unequivocally false at Oxford and Cambridge.

I know nothing about crew, who wins, etc. but: it may be the case that the wealth and elitism of "growing up rowing", like "growing up sailing, horseback riding, and playing polo and squash" is sufficient to to keep out the riffraff and the highly athletic boats crewed with also academically gifted rowers; but humans both group identify and are athletically highly competitive, even as spectators, and there's no way y…

> nobody rows outside Oxford Cambridge and some other similarly elitist schools

For the UK it is this.

Re: Ivy League Schools Sure Look Like a Cartel

#145

Post by arlort »

whimsicalism wrote: post #53
krigath wrote: post #35

Earlier quoted context omitted.

College application essays for undergraduate degrees vary a lot by country. The UK UCAS admission system used for all undergraduate admissions requires an application text. It is much freer in its form than how I understand the US system with a very specific prompt. As for Norway, to pick another random example, there is no requirement to submit any piece of writing to explain your motivation. Your grades do all the…

The difference between UCAS and US system is that UCAS is universal essay whereas US “common app” has both universal and school specific essays. Honestly i much prefer the US system to my exposure to the british system, much easier to apply to multiple schools in the US

> much easier to apply to multiple schools in the US

I think discouraging blanket applications to multiple universities is the point of the UCAS system in the UK

Re: Ivy League Schools Sure Look Like a Cartel

#146

Post by FireBeyond »

slg wrote: post #130
Godel_unicode wrote: post #105

Earlier quoted context omitted.

College athletes who are going pro are studying their chosen field just as studiously as any other field (and more than most business/communications majors). Athletes who aren’t going pro, which is most of them, do better than average academically. Being an athlete isn’t particularly different than getting a minor or a dual major. Just because there’s sweating involved doesn’t make it not a scholarly pursuit, we shou…

>Being an athlete isn’t particularly different than getting a minor or a dual major. Just because there’s sweating involved doesn’t make it not a scholarly pursuit, we should stop being such gatekeepers. From a certain perspective there is little that separates sports from a lot of arts majors. Someone studying acting is very unlikely to turn that into a profession just like a football player. Why does running around…

The NBA sends letters to D1 college basketball players, emphasizing to them the value of their studies, as less than 1% of them will make it to the NBA.

I expect that most arts majors have at least 1% doing that thing.

They may not be rock stars, but I expect that 1% of music majors are at least playing, be it local orchestras or bands or live or canned music (jingles, etc.).

Re: Ivy League Schools Sure Look Like a Cartel

#147

Post by Dylan16807 »

fsckboy wrote: post #120
pinewurst wrote: post #90

Earlier quoted context omitted.

FYI it’s “The Third Reich in the Ivory Tower”

there may be something good in the book(?) but talk about a title that makes the author sound unhinged how about "vestiges of old fashioned bias remain in the ivory tower" or something

It wasn't "vestiges" for there to be support for the third reich while it was gaining power.

I could see your point if the book wasn't talking about the 30s, but it was talking about the 30s.

Re: Ivy League Schools Sure Look Like a Cartel

#148

Post by realjhol »

fsckboy wrote: post #143
pyuser583 wrote: post #135

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Did life improve in the post-colonial world? There don’t seem to be too many 1950s era success stories in this regard.

life has generally improved for everybody, everywhere in the world, as it was also the time of the green revolution, antibiotics, etc., and many former colonies revel in their self governance even while their politics seem even more dysfunctional than western politics. But you might be making the point that some former colonies would have been better off remaining as colonies, a hill I am not willing to defend, let a…

We have more trinkets yes, but in exchange we've been reduced to a deracinated blob with no hope or future, now in a state of terminal decline

Re: Ivy League Schools Sure Look Like a Cartel

#149

Post by mihaaly »

tophi wrote: post #97
coldtea wrote: post #80

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> the lack of athletic scholarships are one of the few things they do absolutely right. The thing is that athletics are less, not more democratic as a distribution mechanism for admission slots A more basic problem with "athletic scholarships" is that being an athlete has absolutely nothing to do with being an academic/scholar/student of something else. It might be a good way to bring some publicity to the school, an…

A university is not just a place to go to learn anymore. It’s a big club that happens to be a place where you study. You bond and make lifelong friends. Also a great place to find a partner for life. Athletic departments are vital to the university system in American schools and their local economies.

Every human groups can be also a place where you "bond and make lifelong friends. Also a great place to find a partner for life". Regardless of activity and regardless if that group, like a chess club or drama society, has athletic scolarship level favoritism or not.

No, athletic departments are not vital for the above social secondary benefits of an education, just one of the hundreds others out there providing bonds and lifelong friends without this level of special treatment. For educational and academic purpose of universities it is even less vital, a tiny tiny fraction of the educated people rely vitally on this receiving good education throughout the history and around the world. If it was gone it was not missed much, mostly by athletics not graduates, academics and educators.

Re: Ivy League Schools Sure Look Like a Cartel

#150

Post by slg »

FireBeyond wrote: post #146
slg wrote: post #130

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>Being an athlete isn’t particularly different than getting a minor or a dual major. Just because there’s sweating involved doesn’t make it not a scholarly pursuit, we should stop being such gatekeepers. From a certain perspective there is little that separates sports from a lot of arts majors. Someone studying acting is very unlikely to turn that into a profession just like a football player. Why does running around…

The NBA sends letters to D1 college basketball players, emphasizing to them the value of their studies, as less than 1% of them will make it to the NBA. I expect that most arts majors have at least 1% doing that thing. They may not be rock stars, but I expect that 1% of music majors are at least playing, be it local orchestras or bands or live or canned music (jingles, etc.).

Seems like your measures of success are rather uneven. There are plenty of jobs related to sports that don't include playing professionally. If playing in a local orchestra counts as success, why not coaching the local high school team?
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