It would have been great if the article made clear to what extent these "legacies" would not have otherwise qualified to be admitted to the university
Children of alumni no longer have admissions edge at Carnegie Mellon, Pitt
741–750 of 815 posts
Re: Children of alumni no longer have admissions edge at Carnegie Mellon, Pitt
#742Earlier quoted context omitted.
Here's an interesting defense of racial preferences a mutual acquaintance wrote on HN some years ago: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=4758529
I do wonder to what extent Bangladeshis were impacted by these policies. A decade sure does change a person, especially when their kids start to demand college money in lieu of merit scholarships.
Remember, graduates of these institutions go on to run everything else, and take these ideas with them. Including bizarre conventions such as the people of color hierarchy, where Kenyans and Ghanaians are higher on the totem poll than equally poor Bangladeshis or Indians. All of us “people of color” have to live within this paradigm.
What pushed me over the edge was facing these policies from the receiving end. I now routinely have to explain my “diversity” to white decision makers in a business context. And my kids—I’ve had three since I wrote that post—are being encouraged to identify as “people of color.” So they can spend the rest of their lives writing diversity essays and trying to persuade white people to pick them.
College racial preferences aren’t the only problem here, but I’m convinced that—given how influential higher education is in American society—they’re the root of the problem.
Re: Children of alumni no longer have admissions edge at Carnegie Mellon, Pitt
#743Earlier quoted context omitted.
It seems that the only demographics that plummeted were whites and Native Americans per https://edsource.org/2020/freshmen-enrollment-csu-and-uc-by-...
It varies by school. https://www.npr.org/2023/06/27/1184461214/examining-the-impa... > Berkeley and UCLA, the most selective public universities in the state, saw a declines in Black and Hispanic enrollment of about 40% immediately the year after the Proposition was implemented. There was no net change in black and Hispanic enrollment at less selective California universities because while some black and Hispanic stu…
Certainly, specific demographics can vary by school. But the OP said that enrollment of MINORITIES plummeted in the California university SYSTEM. Asians are minorities. There are more schools than UCLA and Cal.
Moreover, we can examine the data directly at Berkeley and realize that the only demographic that has “plummeted” long term is whites. Immediate enrollment percentages may have dropped for black and Latino students but it has recovered and it seems like Berkeley has been able to somehow return to their previous highly consistent proportion of Latino and black students. UCLA is the same.
It’s almost uncanny how the racial percentages at top schools stay so consistent over the years.
https://www.universityofcalifornia.edu/about-us/information-...
Re: Children of alumni no longer have admissions edge at Carnegie Mellon, Pitt
#744Earlier quoted context omitted.
Then we might as well admit that "merit" is heavily influenced by starting conditions instead of pretending that everyone has "equal opportunity". How many times have I heard from people that the USA is about "equality of opportunity" and not "equality of outcome"? Legacy admissions is directly contrary to equality of opportunity, and undermines the idea of meritocracy in university admissions that people have been c…
I think the debate regarding affirmative action is very simple and not unexpected at all. Here's how I view it. To start, in America I believe that most of us believe that the "default" behavior should be to avoid unfair discrimination, especially for protected classes. I think most people would agree to at least this, it's a pretty generic and obvious statement. Therefore, when we deviate from this for some reason,…
>Using racism in this context to refer to the fairly strict definition of being related to beliefs about races rather than about discrimination.
A fairly meaningless distinction when beliefs about races drives the discrimination.
Affirmative action is just racist, it just is, it’s grounded on the idea that a racial group which outperforming another is in of itself proof of that group advantaging itself via racism and justifying racial discrimination to countervail this. People bought that for Whites, the same logic being applied to Asians broke the system because people find it appallingly racist and divorced from reality.
Re: Children of alumni no longer have admissions edge at Carnegie Mellon, Pitt
#745Earlier quoted context omitted.
"sheltered homelessness" is an important metric, but it's not the one I would to differentiate between levels of income/wealth redistribution, precisely because it affects such a small part of the population. the metric(s) I would use need to be ones that are meaningful (and meaningfully different) for more substantial parts of the population. So, some suggestions could be: * medical care induced bankruptcy * persona…
That's a typo its supposed to be "Unsheltered Homeless". I don't think you're understanding the broader point. Look at the economic data. The PPP median household income and PPP net wealth is much higher in the US. Yes, the income/wealth distribution curve is skewed to the right here... But the majority of Americans are wealthier than the majority of Europeans! A random sample of both populations would yield wealthie…
Policy changes:
return to a much higher upper marginal tax rate (there's no evidence that the reductions which started with Reagan have benefitted most Americans in any way).
reduce military spending (American's socialism) by at least 50%.
take the money from these two actions and use it on infrastructure and social support.
> These are lawyers, doctors, engineers, oil rig workers, underwater welders,
These are not the people who earn the most in our society. They might be the top 10%, but they are not the top 5% let alone the top 1%. The way you make the most money in our society is overwhelmingly by playing games with money. And before you cite someone like Bezos ... well, I worked with him. Bezos is an exception that proves the rule (and is surrounded by people who played games with money in order to make money).
> Dude. Its literally a government run wealth distribution scheme. It's the basis for most citizen's retirement.
If I am hired for a job, and the job pays $X/year and contributes $Y/yr to a pension, with the promise that in retirement I will be paid $Z/yr, there is no possible way to construe that as a government run wealth redistribution scheme, even if I am employed by the government. Wealth redistribution schemes consist of taking money in taxes from people with more money and (in some way) giving it to or spending it on people with less.
> The technological innovation that comes out of the US blows Europe out of the water.
Certainly there is a particular kind of technological innovation that the US is very good at. But ... I would first question the extent to which this innovation is necessarily a force for good, and secondly I would point out that this prowess does not extend to micro-electronics (where Asia dominates overwhelmingly) or mechanical engineering (where Europe is generally still ahead of anything in the USA. There's a reason German designed and built equipment is still so prized). Even with pharma, its not entirely who is doing the best work (rather than the most work).
> But the majority of Americans are wealthier than the majority of Europeans! A random sample of both populations would yield wealthier individuals on the US side.
In terms of income (even adjusted for PPP), sure. But as I tried to explain, that's a silly way to measure wealth, at least if it is the only way you use. As an American, I am forced to spend more of that increased wealth on things that would be free-at-point-of-service or just cheaper in Europe. Granted, there are Americans (mostly wealthy Americans) who like things that way; I understand that, but I think it's a sub-optimal approach to social organization if egalitarianism is the goal.
Re: Children of alumni no longer have admissions edge at Carnegie Mellon, Pitt
#746Earlier quoted context omitted.
Consider two extremes: positions in the next generation's "elite" are randomly selected vs auctioned off. In the latter case, you quickly develop the problem of a parasitic elite who uses that elite power to extract wealth to buy places for their kids in the next generation. The essential reason America exists was we said "hell no" to a parasitic, hereditary elite, the British "nobility". So I think it's very in keep…
> The essential reason America exists was we said "hell no" to a parasitic, hereditary elite, Is it avoidable having a hereditary elite? It seems like every society develops one. It even happened in the supposedly classless USSR and they had a name for it the nomenklatura https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nomenklatura . Even in the US there has existed groups with hereditary and elite status but there has been a lot of s…
It is avoidable, and the US has done a reasonably good job of avoiding it. It's notable how little current political and economic leaders are the grandchildren of previous major figures. We could do better, of course. And we should.
Re: Children of alumni no longer have admissions edge at Carnegie Mellon, Pitt
#747Earlier quoted context omitted.
This is a straining of the issue with discrimination, which cannot be divorced from its history. Corrected: It is illegitimate to discriminate on the basis of race to the advantage of those previously, explicitly advantaged by their race. We believe that to be a special kind of uniquely harmful prejudice, one that fractures the deepest structures of society, because part of the country's attempt to uphold this prejud…
Affirmative action was voted down even in California when it came on the ballot, so an argument to democracy here goes against you.
California is not the country.
Re: Children of alumni no longer have admissions edge at Carnegie Mellon, Pitt
#748Earlier quoted context omitted.
Affirmative action was voted down even in California when it came on the ballot, so an argument to democracy here goes against you.
California is not the country.
It's the most liberal state in the country so it would get voted down even harder everywhere else.
Re: Children of alumni no longer have admissions edge at Carnegie Mellon, Pitt
#749Earlier quoted context omitted.
Because they want to become a CEO and not a baseball player? Competing at athletics at the highest level is a good preparer for the executive world. Certainly having a high standardized test score doesn't make you a better CEO candidate.
I'd rather have an engineer or an economist than someone who can hit a ball really well. Also we don't do this in the rest of the world, the athletic scholarships thing is almost uniquely American.
That's fine, but you're not the one running harvard admissions. And they figure top high school baseball players bring something to the table that engineers and economists don't.
Re: Children of alumni no longer have admissions edge at Carnegie Mellon, Pitt
#750Earlier quoted context omitted.
I'd rather have an engineer or an economist than someone who can hit a ball really well. Also we don't do this in the rest of the world, the athletic scholarships thing is almost uniquely American.
That's fine, but you're not the one running harvard admissions. And they figure top high school baseball players bring something to the table that engineers and economists don't.
The Ivy Leagues famously don't give athletic scholarships. It's always news when they have a team that doesn't suck in sports people care about. Someone getting into a school on merit that has a serious hobby isn't the point of this discussion.