This was the main criticism of AA. The minorities admitted because of AA were usually neither poor or from the working class. Example of that: the Obamas.
AA was the only reason why the legacy entry system was still allowed to continue.
43% of white Harvard students are legacy, athlete, or donor/staff related (2019)
31–40 of 144 posts
Re: 43% of white Harvard students are legacy, athlete, or donor/staff related (2019)
#32Is Harvard not allowed to admit the students they want? It’s the same situation in my local prestige college… very disproportionately slanted towards local kids that have been attending summer programs and the children of staff and faculty. So what?
> So what?
they're funnels for the political and judicial elite. Eight out of nine of the current supreme court judges graduated from Harvard or Yale. A country being run by nepo babies rather than the most capable is kind of concerning
Re: 43% of white Harvard students are legacy, athlete, or donor/staff related (2019)
#33So I guess non-legacy white applicants were at an even greater disadvantage for their skin color then we might have assumed. Want to git rid of legacy preference? Great. Let’s be honest, though — this is just whataboutism.
I don't think the intent is "whataboutism" it is about outlining the structural inequality in the system that affirmative action and race based systems are supposed to attempt to mitigate. We can argue about discriminatory criteria on effectiveness, fairness or legality, but it certainly is an important date point in that discussion.
Re: 43% of white Harvard students are legacy, athlete, or donor/staff related (2019)
#34Is Harvard not allowed to admit the students they want? It’s the same situation in my local prestige college… very disproportionately slanted towards local kids that have been attending summer programs and the children of staff and faculty. So what?
Because despite being privately owned, universities enjoy many benefits due to their role as public institutions. An obvious one is their tax-free status.
Re: 43% of white Harvard students are legacy, athlete, or donor/staff related (2019)
#35Re: 43% of white Harvard students are legacy, athlete, or donor/staff related (2019)
#36So I guess non-legacy white applicants were at an even greater disadvantage for their skin color then we might have assumed. Want to git rid of legacy preference? Great. Let’s be honest, though — this is just whataboutism.
> Let’s be honest, though — this is just whataboutism.
This is classism. Shockingly, institutions can have both classist and racist discrimination - let's be honest, they're both bad and need to go.
Re: 43% of white Harvard students are legacy, athlete, or donor/staff related (2019)
#37This was the main criticism of AA. The minorities admitted because of AA were usually neither poor or from the working class. Example of that: the Obamas. AA was the only reason why the legacy entry system was still allowed to continue.
> AA was the only reason why the legacy entry system was still allowed to continue.
How so? Legacy admissions will continue.
Re: 43% of white Harvard students are legacy, athlete, or donor/staff related (2019)
#38> The study also found that roughly 75 percent of the white students admitted from those four categories, labeled 'ALDCs' in the study, “would have been rejected if they had been treated as white non-ALDCs,” the study said.
And 100% of affirmative action students would have been rejected otherwise. So this cohort is doing a little better by that standard.
What are you basing this conclusion on?
Re: 43% of white Harvard students are legacy, athlete, or donor/staff related (2019)
#39Is Harvard not allowed to admit the students they want? It’s the same situation in my local prestige college… very disproportionately slanted towards local kids that have been attending summer programs and the children of staff and faculty. So what?
I think they should be allowed to use whatever method they desire but that they should pay taxes like any other organization.
Re: 43% of white Harvard students are legacy, athlete, or donor/staff related (2019)
#40Is Harvard not allowed to admit the students they want? It’s the same situation in my local prestige college… very disproportionately slanted towards local kids that have been attending summer programs and the children of staff and faculty. So what?
Well, they pretend to care a great deal for certain groups of people, but numbers like this show who they actually care for. It’s the duplicity that bothers me personally. If they’d just be honest I’d have more respect for them.
I'd be more interested in what the numbers look like after they've accounted for admissions I would call "extra-academic". If they want to reserve 50% of their admissions for specific reasons, I'm fine with that. If the other 50% don't appear to be inline with their stated goals, then to me that's cause for concern.
Expecting Harvard to forego legacy and faculty admissions and scholarships to students that maybe wouldn't get in otherwise is expecting Harvard to not be Harvard, which may be expecting too much.