261–270 of 815 posts
I'm amazed at how schools with legacy and donation-based admissions can maintain high rankings when you never know if someone with a degree from there just got it because their parents donated $5M. Before someone says "the student still has to graduate," Harvard has a 97% graduation rate.
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Sports programs at university pay for themselves. They pay for themselves because people buy tickets to games, which they do to see exceptional athletes.
> Sports programs at university pay for themselves. I don't see why this even matters (besides the fact that it's not really true except for the biggest sports at some of the biggest sport schools). The debate is over whether it's fair that some students get the benefits that come with being an Ivy League grad without having the academic prowess to otherwise be admitted. Whether or not they are able to cover their co…
In both athletics and the kids of rich donors cases, I'd be happy to defend that being a bad trade-off. The networking value of the rich kids going to the same university as me far outweighs the slight increase in average academic prowess of the university (emphasis on slight: remember, these are students who ranked below every other student in the merit-based application pool).
Athletics is a smaller effect size than the rich kids, but at the end of the day by providing very valuable labor to the university for approximately free, they completely pay for the sports programs (some of which the merit-admitted enjoyed, such as having a very large gym open 24 hours a day), in addition to feeding money back into the university, subsidizing everyone else's education. Couple that with the fact that these students are disproportionately NOT taking up seats in the most competitive programs, and it's still a net positive for the student body.
I'm amazed at how schools with legacy and donation-based admissions can maintain high rankings when you never know if someone with a degree from there just got it because their parents donated $5M. Before someone says "the student still has to graduate," Harvard has a 97% graduation rate.
I recently came across a somewhat provocative defense of legacy admissions. The argument is that the iveys are great because they bring together the children of the rich and powerful (legacy admissions with connections) with really smart and hungry students (children of the middle class, mostly). It's arguably a good deal for both. Smart kids get access to wealth and power and they get to learn how the world works. T…
Next 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.
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Yeah the SAT is the worst admissions metric, besides all the other ones. What would you use in its place? You think grades don't have bias?
Interviews, transcripts, (optional) test scores, letter of recommendation, a set of common essays across all schools, and an optional supplemental section or portfolio to showcase any personal achievements not covered by the other standard categories. Oh wait! That exists — it’s called the Common App, and it’s what most private colleges today use, from the Ivies to elite tiny liberal arts colleges with the largest sh…
I think the only good one out of those is the interview.
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Naming a building after someone doesn't have a financial aspect. If a gift requires further spending later and the overall benefit is net negative, its up to the university to negotiate terms or turn it down. It's all university leadership failing to steward their university.
It means a new building. And are you saying that if admitting a legacy kid or taking a restricted donation is net negative they shouldn’t do it? They just need to know in advance if the future donations from the family will be worth it? How simple!
Taking into account fictional future donations and communicating with donator and explaining the issue is called negotiation. Being convinced to make bad financial decisions in fear of losing a donator is again, a failure of leadership.
If someone offers you $10 if you spend $100 later you're better off not taking it, even if you could have bought something with that $10. That basic financial stewardship is the role of university leadership to deal with. They failed.
Don'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.
Large alumni donations can and often do increase the cost of education of all the other students. They frequently lead to large capital investments that then have uncovered operational costs. I used to work for one of the wealthiest universities with 100s of millions in capital improvements annually that couldn't provide functional HVAC and a fresh coat of paint to the buildings it had.
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Sports programs at university pay for themselves. They pay for themselves because people buy tickets to games, which they do to see exceptional athletes.
Do legacy admissions not pay for themselves?
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I personally could not think of a more boring way to curate a student body, but even more so than that, I think that’s completely unfair to the many, many way-more interesting people who make up top schools’ student bodies: why does Jimmy Also-Ran with the perfect score on a single test and nothing else get to go to college while track-star Olympiad with a 4.0 doesn’t?
Because universities are academic institutions, not track-and-field training facilities (or at least they are in countries that take education seriously, unlike the US). Who cares how boring it is?
Aside from the dedication of waking up to practice a sport every morning, think of how much time and discipline is it takes to balance being an amazing athlete with being a great student. They likely have all the mental fortitude and academic talent they need to succeed in college, no question, regardless of if they had a bad test day, or their pencil broke, or they had to use the bathroom and ran out of time, etc.
Someone with As and Bs, maybe a C, who did nothing else of note and managed to get a perfect test score one time doesn’t seem near as surefire a bet. If anything it shows you didn’t apply yourself.