I'm amazed it was ever legal in the first place. It's open nepotism.
If nepotism were illegal, we would have a 100% inheritance tax across the board.
There tend to be more laws pro-family than anti- for some reason . . .
Children of alumni no longer have admissions edge at Carnegie Mellon, Pitt
31–40 of 815 posts
Re: Children of alumni no longer have admissions edge at Carnegie Mellon, Pitt
#32The end of both legacy admissions and race-based admissions makes me feel hopeful that we're finally pivoting to a productive, merit-based approach.
I hate to burst your bubble but unfortunately this just kicks the can down the road. How do you measure merit? Because [EDIT] many measures of "merit" (was: standardized testing) can be (and often are) biased by race, cultural background, and economic status. For example:
Student 1 has built a fully automated chip manufacturing line in his basement.
Student 2 has build a robot that solves a maze in fifteen minutes (against the current state of the art which is a few seconds).
Which one would you admit?
Student 1 is the child of billionaires, and it's not clear how much of the work was actually done by him/her and how much was done by employees hired by the kid's parents.
Student 2 lives in Sudan and built their robot out of locally available materials, in the process inventing a new kind of motor built out of coconut fronds.
Now which one would you admit?
Re: Children of alumni no longer have admissions edge at Carnegie Mellon, Pitt
#33Don't legacy admissions often mean that their parents have donated significantly to the University? In a sense wouldn't that just mean that those students are essentially paying a very high premium to attend there and subsidizing the education of all the other students? I'm not against abolishing them but I do wonder if this will have any impact on alumni donations.
Honestly, relying on donations doesn't seem tenable without discrimination. The only way out is to treat it as a public good and fund it as one.
Carnegie Mellon is a private university, and obviously there's already a strong public commitment to college education through subsidizing the student directly.
Re: Children of alumni no longer have admissions edge at Carnegie Mellon, Pitt
#34The end of both legacy admissions and race-based admissions makes me feel hopeful that we're finally pivoting to a productive, merit-based approach.
I hate to burst your bubble but unfortunately this just kicks the can down the road. How do you measure merit? Because [EDIT] many measures of "merit" (was: standardized testing) can be (and often are) biased by race, cultural background, and economic status. For example: Student 1 has built a fully automated chip manufacturing line in his basement. Student 2 has build a robot that solves a maze in fifteen minutes (a…
How is that an example of standardized testing?
Re: Children of alumni no longer have admissions edge at Carnegie Mellon, Pitt
#35Don't legacy admissions often mean that their parents have donated significantly to the University? In a sense wouldn't that just mean that those students are essentially paying a very high premium to attend there and subsidizing the education of all the other students? I'm not against abolishing them but I do wonder if this will have any impact on alumni donations.
They’re more contributing towards enormous endowments than subsidizing others education.
Princeton can and does do this because of their donors:
https://admission.princeton.edu/how-princetons-aid-program-w...
Re: Children of alumni no longer have admissions edge at Carnegie Mellon, Pitt
#36Don't legacy admissions often mean that their parents have donated significantly to the University? In a sense wouldn't that just mean that those students are essentially paying a very high premium to attend there and subsidizing the education of all the other students? I'm not against abolishing them but I do wonder if this will have any impact on alumni donations.
>I do wonder if this will have any impact on alumni donations.
Wonder not. "[T]here is no statistically significant evidence that legacy preferences impact total alumni giving."
https://production-tcf.imgix.net/app/uploads/2016/03/0820191...
Re: Children of alumni no longer have admissions edge at Carnegie Mellon, Pitt
#37The end of both legacy admissions and race-based admissions makes me feel hopeful that we're finally pivoting to a productive, merit-based approach.
I fundamentally do not understand why merit is something you should focus on when it comes to admission into a university. The entire point of an education is to learn, may be you need the bare minimum to enroll but universities shouldn't be chasing the brightest students, they need an education the least.
Just because thats how it should work in some people's heads as the ideal doesn't mean it makes any actual sense if you really interrogate the idea. Meritocracy makes sense after you have an education, it doesn't make sense before it.
Re: Children of alumni no longer have admissions edge at Carnegie Mellon, Pitt
#38Don't legacy admissions often mean that their parents have donated significantly to the University? In a sense wouldn't that just mean that those students are essentially paying a very high premium to attend there and subsidizing the education of all the other students? I'm not against abolishing them but I do wonder if this will have any impact on alumni donations.
Honestly, relying on donations doesn't seem tenable without discrimination. The only way out is to treat it as a public good and fund it as one.
So... get rid of private universities entirely?
I'm sympathetic to your position, but that doesn't quite seem like the wisest course of action to me.
Re: Children of alumni no longer have admissions edge at Carnegie Mellon, Pitt
#39The end of both legacy admissions and race-based admissions makes me feel hopeful that we're finally pivoting to a productive, merit-based approach.
I doubt merit based approach is the only way of conducting admissions. Merits don’t count for as much as people think they do. A narrow pool of candidates come because of merit.
A more reasonable selection system wouldn’t just rely on the individual but also the support network. For example, I often hear “it takes a village to raise a _____ doctor”. And that truth speaks volumes.
Re: Children of alumni no longer have admissions edge at Carnegie Mellon, Pitt
#40Next step: Ending use of athletic ability in admissions.
Sports programs at university pay for themselves. They pay for themselves because people buy tickets to games, which they do to see exceptional athletes.