Children of alumni no longer have admissions edge at Carnegie Mellon, Pitt • Hacker News Board

Re: Children of alumni no longer have admissions edge at Carnegie Mellon, Pitt

#301

Post by residentraspber » Wed, Jul 19, 2023, 5:56 PM UTC

ARandumGuy wrote: post #141

ahi wrote: post #73

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Most universities have really messy financials. A lot of money gets spent on projects and programs that don't directly benefit the education students receive, or the research output of the university. Things like sports investments, ballooning administration staff, or flashy construction projects. At the same time, TAs, grad students, adjunct professors, and other staff are frequently underpaid and overworked. There'…

The waste is unreal. When I was in Uni, I used to sit outside and work in a little side-of-a-building park area where, every spring, I'd watch the grounds crew pull up perfectly good looking flowers and plant slightly better looking ones in the days before a "parents weekend" or a big admissions event.

They would just toss the "old" flowers in the dumpster

Re: Children of alumni no longer have admissions edge at Carnegie Mellon, Pitt

#302

Post by ghaff » Wed, Jul 19, 2023, 5:56 PM UTC

HDThoreaun wrote: post #256

DaSHacka wrote: post #140

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'd assume it's because academic ability and knowledge makes more sense for determining admissions in an academic context, and has a higher chance of being relevant after the student graduates. This is unlike athletics where unless you go pro, the skill becomes functionally useless once you enter the workforce.

> the skill becomes functionally useless once you enter the workforce. This is laughably false and makes me think you've either never participated in organized athletics or have never had a job. The most important trait for success in the workforce is grit. The same is true for athletics at the highest level. Yes, some of the athletes made it on genetics alone but the vast majority had to work incredibly hard to beco…

And teamwork. (Which admittedly doesn't apply as much to some sports.)

Re: Children of alumni no longer have admissions edge at Carnegie Mellon, Pitt

#303

Post by jononomo » Wed, Jul 19, 2023, 5:57 PM UTC

jononomo wrote: post #150

lisper wrote: post #32

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

standardized tests are not biased.

Well, I'm getting down-voted even though I'm correct. This is one of the problems in our society generally -- people have decided that what they think is just must be correct because they assume that life is fair.

Re: Children of alumni no longer have admissions edge at Carnegie Mellon, Pitt

#304

Post by ethbr0 » Wed, Jul 19, 2023, 5:57 PM UTC

Brusco_RF wrote: post #296

ethbr0 wrote: post #167

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The US federal government should do the same thing to public universities (US definition) that they did to insurance companies via the ACA -- cap administrative overhead. For every dollar in tuition, >Y% must be spent on qualifying direct educational expenses. E.g. teaching faculty salary, etc. If a college fails to meet that threshold, and spends too much on non-qualifying costs, they are required to rebate the diff…

I stopped reading after the first sentence. Our current health insurance laws should NOT be a model for anything, ever!

What would you have done differently, in an attempt to evolve a complex, layered, and ossified industry that absolutely cannot stop providing service for even a day?

Re: Children of alumni no longer have admissions edge at Carnegie Mellon, Pitt

#305

Post by [deleted] » Wed, Jul 19, 2023, 5:58 PM UTC

infamouscow wrote: post #239

nancyhn wrote: post #214

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Spot on. I don't see why this is so hard for people to comprehend and why they are fighting the obvious. That very basic level of nuance tends to be missing from these conversations.

> I don't see why this is so hard for people to comprehend and why they are fighting the obvious. It's because these people only see the world through the one-dimensional lens of skin color. Further, it's an attractive way to view the world when you're a complete idiot with nothing of substance to offer society. It leads these people to infecting society with parasitic and fallacious ideas that you see manifested in…

[deleted]

Re: Children of alumni no longer have admissions edge at Carnegie Mellon, Pitt

#306

Post by ativzzz » Wed, Jul 19, 2023, 5:58 PM UTC

OO000oo wrote: post #211

nostromo wrote: post #161

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Agreed. So let's go solve those problems directly and stop pretending the solution is to put underachieving kids into top schools to make ourselves feel better.

I will only feel better when the working class controls the society it built.

Once they do that, they become the ruling class and the elites. Then their children are no longer working class, and are now the enemies.

Re: Children of alumni no longer have admissions edge at Carnegie Mellon, Pitt

#307

Post by Brusco_RF » Wed, Jul 19, 2023, 5:59 PM UTC

pc86 wrote: post #281

francisofascii wrote: post #250

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> university leadership that's choosing to make large capital expenditures SUNY Binghamton recently received a private donation of $60 million, with a rule from the person donating it had to be spent on a new baseball stadium. Do you think the university leadership should have declined the offer?

If it costs more than $60 million to build the stadium, sure. What good is a $60 million donation if it costs you $100 million on something you weren't going to buy in the first place?

Because now you have a $100M stadium that you only paid $40M for. That stadium generates revenue. You just need to make sure the numbers work

Re: Children of alumni no longer have admissions edge at Carnegie Mellon, Pitt

#308

Post by ben7799 » Wed, Jul 19, 2023, 6:00 PM UTC

HDThoreaun wrote: post #256

DaSHacka wrote: post #140

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'd assume it's because academic ability and knowledge makes more sense for determining admissions in an academic context, and has a higher chance of being relevant after the student graduates. This is unlike athletics where unless you go pro, the skill becomes functionally useless once you enter the workforce.

> the skill becomes functionally useless once you enter the workforce. This is laughably false and makes me think you've either never participated in organized athletics or have never had a job. The most important trait for success in the workforce is grit. The same is true for athletics at the highest level. Yes, some of the athletes made it on genetics alone but the vast majority had to work incredibly hard to beco…

This is the standard justification sales and MBA types use.

They are missing that it takes grit to get through a lot of tough degree programs as well. People in those degree programs constantly talk about those who move over to easier degrees in business as lacking grit.

Sports is mostly used as an in-club in the workplace. If you work in an engineering first company it's crazy to see the dichotomy from how sales values past athletic accomplishments versus how R&D does.

It is also beyond bizarre how often high school and college athletic success is not correlated with health & fitness once high school/college is finished.

Re: Children of alumni no longer have admissions edge at Carnegie Mellon, Pitt

#309

Post by OO000oo » Wed, Jul 19, 2023, 6:00 PM UTC

ativzzz wrote: post #306

OO000oo wrote: post #211

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I will only feel better when the working class controls the society it built.

Once they do that, they become the ruling class and the elites. Then their children are no longer working class, and are now the enemies.

In such a case, I won't feel better yet will I? So we'll try again...

Re: Children of alumni no longer have admissions edge at Carnegie Mellon, Pitt

#310

Post by Symbiote » Wed, Jul 19, 2023, 6:00 PM UTC

LegitShady wrote: post #218

simiones wrote: post #133

Earlier quoted context omitted.

How often does anyone donate millions of dollars with no strings attached, especially to a university?

If someone offers you $5m and in return you have to spend $25m, you can choose not to go -$20m by just not accepting the $5m under the terms proposed. Thats fiscal leadership.

Another option in this case is to find other donors to make up the rest. Maybe one can have the largest lecture theatre named after them, or the street renamed, or choose the art, etc.