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Earlier quoted context omitted.
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And this is how we get trump as president. "Oh, Hillary is not a PERFECT candidate, I'm going to punish the Democratic party because of it and vote for Trump". Or, one of my favorites, "Those jerks, they totally passed on Berny! I'm going to vote for Trump!" Idiots that vote against their (and everyone else's) own interests just because they can't have THE PERFECT candidate is why things are such a mess right now. Al…
I can guarantee you that way more men applied to Caltech than women did. That means the most talented and impressive young man who applied and didn’t get in is objectively more talented and impressive than the least talented and impressive (though still extremely talented and impressive) woman who applied and got in.
This also means that on average, a man on campus is more qualified to be there than a woman on campus (the top 100 of say 20000 is going to be more qualified than the top 100 of say 7000). In pursuing equality, the admissions group has achieved the greatest inequality in school history from a different perspective.
I submit this also is unfair to women. Imagine yourself with a case of impostor syndrome and having the mathematical understanding to back it up. I’d want to know I earned it and deserve to be there just as much as anybody else there. Some do and have, and there’s no way to know who those some are.
Is it worth sacrificing merit for optics? Maybe it is, but we ignore this double-edged sword (even and especially one of its edges) at our peril.
Until equal numbers of men and women apply, deviating from the application gender percentages will disadvantage everybody.
The overall gender imbalance in American higher education is now just as bad as when Title IX was first implemented, only in the opposite direction. What's interesting is this is deliberately excluded from many metrics of gender inequality, eg the UN defines inequality as "fewer women in college than men" so even 100% women and 0% men would be graded as "more equal" than 51% men and 49% women. Pretty Orwellian.
Most colleges and university are majority women. The one I went to had 2 women for 1 man. This was unambiguously a mistake.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
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And this is how we get trump as president. "Oh, Hillary is not a PERFECT candidate, I'm going to punish the Democratic party because of it and vote for Trump". Or, one of my favorites, "Those jerks, they totally passed on Berny! I'm going to vote for Trump!" Idiots that vote against their (and everyone else's) own interests just because they can't have THE PERFECT candidate is why things are such a mess right now. Al…
Not sure how this got derailed into a "trump vs harris" discussion. The comment I was replying to was arguing about the "power" of the presidency/vice-presidency. That's entirely orthogonal to whether you think harris is a good candidate or not. Indeed, you could even argue harris is a good candidate for not being powerful, because she's doesn't narcissistic and will defer to staffers/experts rather than sticking to her agenda to the bitter end.
I think The Last Psychatrist wrote, when women move in, it's a sign that power has moved on. [Edit] Found the quote: "when more women enter a field, it means less men did, and if the men stopped going there, where did they go? [...] I don't want to be cynical, but boy oh boy is it hard not to observe that at the very moment in our history when we have the most women in the Senate, Congress is perceived to be pathetic…
Do you reference that quote to imply that Caltech has somehow become diminished? What is the intent of your comment?
My guess is that the school has trouble finding capable students of any gender that want to pay the expensive tuition. State schools like Michigan, Maryland and Berkeley have top notch programs that cost a fraction of Caltech's.
Are parents of girls more likely to buy into the Caltech dream? Perhaps. I suppose this batch of statistics might be said to prove that claim. But in general, females are much more risk averse and so are their parents. This suggests that Caltech is a "safe" choice. Not a bad thing to be, but it's not where the innovation and the exploration happens.
The overall gender imbalance in American higher education is now just as bad as when Title IX was first implemented, only in the opposite direction. What's interesting is this is deliberately excluded from many metrics of gender inequality, eg the UN defines inequality as "fewer women in college than men" so even 100% women and 0% men would be graded as "more equal" than 51% men and 49% women. Pretty Orwellian.
> eg the UN defines inequality as "fewer women in college than men" Do you have a reference for that definition? I can't find it.
I misremembered World Economic Forum as a part of the UN but it's a separate agency.
But many reports have that bias. For example a report on gender inequality in European Union makes no mention of multiple EU countries conscripting only men.
This is a third rail of conversation, regarding gender equality and equity, so please hold your downvotes if you differ from my positions. Some might value the perspective, and I feel we all could learn something here. I can guarantee you that way more men applied to Caltech than women did. That means the most talented and impressive young man who applied and didn’t get in is objectively more talented and impressive…
> I can guarantee you that way more men applied to Caltech than women did.
lead to this conclusion:
>That means the most talented and impressive young man who applied and didn’t get in is objectively more talented and impressive than the least talented and impressive (though still extremely talented and impressive) woman who applied and got in.