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

#401

Post by svachalek » Wed, Jul 19, 2023, 7:22 PM UTC

hunson_abadeer wrote: post #385

julienchastang wrote: post #187

Good. With the end of affirmative action, legacy status in admissions becomes much harder to justify. [0] The number of kids entering elite universities via non-meritocratic avenues is incredible. > "[The researchers] examined four kinds of nonracial preferences—for recruited athletes, and for children of Harvard graduates, financial donors and members of faculty and staff. The researchers found that more than 43% of…

> With the end of affirmative action, legacy status in admissions becomes much harder to justify. I've heard this repeated nearly verbatim in a couple of places, and it's such a puzzling framing. Why was this practice any less ethically challenged prior to the SCOTUS decision?

The idea is that affirmative action gave a non-merit advantage to minority students, while legacy admissions gave a non-merit advantage to white kids. (Left out of course, are the white kids from non-elite backgrounds.) People want it to be "fair" by removing more non-merit policies since one has fallen. But I think this thread brings up a good point, as to what it is that places like Harvard are actually selling.

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

#402

Post by alephnerd » Wed, Jul 19, 2023, 7:23 PM UTC

numbers_guy wrote: post #58

I was just watching a podcast interview in which a British-German professor employed at an Ivy League university in the US, was talking about the elite universities in the US, and how there is no equivalent in Germany. [1] The interview is in German, but what he is basically saying is that the American attitude is to very openly and purposefully create and maintain this system of elitism and everyone is openly in com…

A buddy of mine at Stanford invited me to one of their CS/Eng Grad Student Socials a couple years ago.

There was a pretty large clique of Germans there. Over drinks, I came to find out all those Germans attended the same university (TU Munich), and more specifically, attended the same handful of elite private Gymnasiums.

Even though they all attended a public university which doesn't have legacy admissions, these children of the elite still networked and knew each other since grade school.

The same thing happens in the UK (did you attend an independent or comprehensive school?) as well, and even Canada to a certain extent though a lot of this was also driven by housing prices.

The US is probably going to revert to this kind of elite signaling.

P.S. all those Germans were blonde and blue eyed except for one Turkish German who was clearly uncomfortable and was chatting with us Americans and Asians instead.

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

#403

Post by MisterBastahrd » Wed, Jul 19, 2023, 7:24 PM UTC

julienchastang wrote: post #187

Good. With the end of affirmative action, legacy status in admissions becomes much harder to justify. [0] The number of kids entering elite universities via non-meritocratic avenues is incredible. > "[The researchers] examined four kinds of nonracial preferences—for recruited athletes, and for children of Harvard graduates, financial donors and members of faculty and staff. The researchers found that more than 43% of…

Harder to justify?

In an absolute vacuum, they were always the hardest to justify. There's absolutely no reason that they should have ever existed. I do still like the idea of employees of universities getting the benefit of their children attending for free, though... but then I also had no problem with affirmative action for many of the same reasons.

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

#404

Post by michael1999 » Wed, Jul 19, 2023, 7:25 PM UTC

xkcd-sucks wrote: post #285

julienchastang wrote: post #187

Good. With the end of affirmative action, legacy status in admissions becomes much harder to justify. [0] The number of kids entering elite universities via non-meritocratic avenues is incredible. > "[The researchers] examined four kinds of nonracial preferences—for recruited athletes, and for children of Harvard graduates, financial donors and members of faculty and staff. The researchers found that more than 43% of…

It's kind of begging the question to assume multigenerational family ties to a university are "not merit" when a big part of a university's value proposition is social networking: One doesn't go to Harvard just to take courses; one goes to Harvard to bump shoulders with the scions of dictators / diplomats / "captains of industry" etc. Personally I didn't understand that at the time, would have rejected the notion on…

The word "merit" is flexible, but not so flexible that it encompasses the mediocre children of well connected people. That's the entire point of "merit" based admission.

You are right that much of the value in Harvard is the network, but that's not the branding.

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

#405

Post by michael1999 » Wed, Jul 19, 2023, 7:28 PM UTC

kiba wrote: post #326

julienchastang wrote: post #187

Good. With the end of affirmative action, legacy status in admissions becomes much harder to justify. [0] The number of kids entering elite universities via non-meritocratic avenues is incredible. > "[The researchers] examined four kinds of nonracial preferences—for recruited athletes, and for children of Harvard graduates, financial donors and members of faculty and staff. The researchers found that more than 43% of…

We're still creating a meritocratic elite, based on capacity limit and price of admission. Not everybody get to have an elite education, or afford such an opportunity. Ideally, high quality education would be democratized and made accessible to anyone who want it regardless of their means to pay.

The word merit doesn't stretch so far as to include mediocre children of wealthy parents. You are welcome to call it an elite education. But the whole point of the word "merit" is to distinguish it from mere parental wealth and connections.

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

#406

Post by MisterBastahrd » Wed, Jul 19, 2023, 7:29 PM UTC

dionidium wrote: post #394

julienchastang wrote: post #187

Good. With the end of affirmative action, legacy status in admissions becomes much harder to justify. [0] The number of kids entering elite universities via non-meritocratic avenues is incredible. > "[The researchers] examined four kinds of nonracial preferences—for recruited athletes, and for children of Harvard graduates, financial donors and members of faculty and staff. The researchers found that more than 43% of…

> With the end of affirmative action, legacy status in admissions becomes much harder to justify. I just don't see this. In our society we believe it to be illegitimate to discriminate on the basis of race. We believe that to be a special kind of uniquely harmful prejudice, one that fractures the deepest structures of society, and that it therefore clears the very high bar required for limiting freedom of association…

We do not live in a perfect world.

Instead, we live in a world where a collection of individuals has had the fruits of their labor stolen from them for most of the past 400 years, served in wars where promises were made and not kept upon their return, and are still being discriminated against in representative democracy.

And when someone enumerates all the reasons that these people have been harmed, financially, spiritually, democratically, and physically... the people who are against attempts to rectify the situation given the tools available also have nothing but "fairness" to fall back on when attempting to justify their positions, because they'd rather sweep it under the rug and pretend like it's something that we should never address.

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

#407

Post by jchw » Wed, Jul 19, 2023, 7:29 PM UTC

xkcd-sucks wrote: post #285

julienchastang wrote: post #187

Good. With the end of affirmative action, legacy status in admissions becomes much harder to justify. [0] The number of kids entering elite universities via non-meritocratic avenues is incredible. > "[The researchers] examined four kinds of nonracial preferences—for recruited athletes, and for children of Harvard graduates, financial donors and members of faculty and staff. The researchers found that more than 43% of…

It's kind of begging the question to assume multigenerational family ties to a university are "not merit" when a big part of a university's value proposition is social networking: One doesn't go to Harvard just to take courses; one goes to Harvard to bump shoulders with the scions of dictators / diplomats / "captains of industry" etc. Personally I didn't understand that at the time, would have rejected the notion on…

What that sounds like to me is that we give (/continued to give) national accreditation to elite clubs that care more about status than genuine merits.

Obviously organizations that want to do this should be free to in some form, but does it really have a place anywhere in the education system?

Not all universities seem to be this way. While any measure of merit will definitely be flawed in some way, there are certainly universities that live and die not on elite status but on elite results. In some ways, it's going to be a proxy, because people who are better off will naturally perform better. But on the other hand, at least selecting people literally based on how well they perform academically is more meaningful to the function of education than selecting people because they're related to someone of high status.

I never felt like university was for people like me anyways, but there are DEFINITELY some kinds of organizations that get a sort of special status, e.g. churches, universities, etc. where it feels like we should be scrutinizing them more.

Maybe I just don't understand, though. But, that's what it feels like to me.

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

#408

Post by te_230349493 » Wed, Jul 19, 2023, 7:30 PM UTC

dionidium wrote: post #394

julienchastang wrote: post #187

Good. With the end of affirmative action, legacy status in admissions becomes much harder to justify. [0] The number of kids entering elite universities via non-meritocratic avenues is incredible. > "[The researchers] examined four kinds of nonracial preferences—for recruited athletes, and for children of Harvard graduates, financial donors and members of faculty and staff. The researchers found that more than 43% of…

> With the end of affirmative action, legacy status in admissions becomes much harder to justify. I just don't see this. In our society we believe it to be illegitimate to discriminate on the basis of race. We believe that to be a special kind of uniquely harmful prejudice, one that fractures the deepest structures of society, and that it therefore clears the very high bar required for limiting freedom of association…

Legacy admissions discriminate by class (if you are well off to be part of a donor family, you get a leg up) or by birth right (if you were a lucky enough sperm to be part of the family of a prior attendee, you get a leg up).

How is the principles of giving preference to a particular class or birth right any different than giving preference to race? All three fly in the face of meritocracy. Yet to not allow this means that one has to invoke government interference of private criteria.

So it seems logical that there are two reasonably argued sides. It seems that if you want to follow a more libertarian model and allow a private learning institution "the right to form elite social clubs" as you put it (surely there is more function to a university than networking!), you would likewise allow it to set other policies as they may, such as allowing preferences for race. Conversely, if meritocracy is the goal, enough to force a private university to change their criteria for admissions, then all three admission practices would be problematic.

The cherry-picked groupings don't make sense to me. Class and birth right favoritism is okay but race based favoritism is not? Why? On the surface, this smacks of protection of elitism and a class based society, which pretty much nulls all commentary from various peanut galleries arguing that ending affirmative action is about meritocracy.

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

#409

Post by shadowgovt » Wed, Jul 19, 2023, 7:32 PM UTC

importantbrian wrote: post #375

tekla wrote: post #346

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Not necessarily true. The more prestigious schools have more budget to hire better professors, but more importantly, can fund top class research that costs ALOT of money. Your random college probably can't afford a research nuclear reactor, but MIT sure as hell can if they want. Getting a position as a undergrad on those research projects is incredibly competitive.

> The more prestigious schools have more budget to hire better professors Better by what metric? It has not been my experience that instructional quality is in any way correlated with budget or prestige. > Your random college probably can't afford a research nuclear reactor, but MIT sure as hell can if they want. Idaho State has a research reactor. As does Kansas State, Missouri S&T, NC State, Ohio State, Oregon Stat…

> Better by what metric?

Sometimes, by material.

If the class can be taught from a textbook, the instructor may be irrelevant. The best classes at my alma mater were being taught by professors who handed out paperback copies of their as-yet-unpublished textbook, or had us work from the first-print editions they authored, or who's "textbook" was the aggregation of notes they'd collected over the years.

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

#410

Post by MisterBastahrd » Wed, Jul 19, 2023, 7:32 PM UTC

gizmo wrote: post #109

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…

People who are born at a level tend to stay at that level throughout their entire lives. This is just as true for the rich as it is for the poor. It doesn't mean that the rich are good and the poor are bad, it's that people tend to go through the lives they've had prepared before them.

Given that this is the case, legacy admissions should be relics of the past. People who are born with extraordinary access to capital don't need more help.