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UC Berkeley inappropriately admitted students as favors to donors

auditor.ca.gov

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Re: UC Berkeley inappropriately admitted students as favors to donors

#101

Post by mellowdream »

TrackerFF wrote: post #42

In this day and age, with all the fierce competition, it's a real problem that elite universities are admitting rich kids on such unfair and uneven grounds. Going to the "correct" school can transform the life of some people, essentially pulling them up from the lower working classes, and opening up the doors to middle, or even upper-middle classes. And what's even worse, a lot of these rich kids could go pretty much…

Private schools can be and are as unfair as they want, only it's upsetting when they still maintain pretenses suggesting they are not.

It's nice that this sort of due diligence and review is even possible with public institutions.

Re: UC Berkeley inappropriately admitted students as favors to donors

#102

Post by golemiprague »

TrackerFF wrote: post #42

In this day and age, with all the fierce competition, it's a real problem that elite universities are admitting rich kids on such unfair and uneven grounds. Going to the "correct" school can transform the life of some people, essentially pulling them up from the lower working classes, and opening up the doors to middle, or even upper-middle classes. And what's even worse, a lot of these rich kids could go pretty much…

Why do you think high school marks should be the only factor? How is that fair more than other markers and signals? Is it fair that some Asian kids got parents who make them sit all day and study in order pass some not so indicative high school level tests while some other kid doesn't have this culture and environment? Why having a lot of money should not be a criteria? Why having great personality should not be a criteria, I don't want an elite of Asian semi autistic kids. I want some rich kids who can spend their time on pure research because they got no worries in the world and enough arrogance to discover new things and see life from a different perspective. Kids of big donors should certainly get a place because their family contribution help the institute over all. They should just make it formal rather than illegal or some back channels.

Re: UC Berkeley inappropriately admitted students as favors to donors

#103

Post by sudosysgen »

TimTheTinker wrote: post #87
sudosysgen wrote: post #85

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Do you actually believe that letting people pay for guaranteed enrollment is at all acceptable?

Not at all!! Not sure where you got that. I think this business of improper admission and bribes violates rule of law terribly. That's the point -- rule of law means everyone is subject to the same rules, without partiality.

Well no, that's not really what rule of law means. It would be perfectly within the rule of law to allow people to pay for admissions. If this wasn't a public institution, it would be perfectly legal, and I'm not even sure it's illegal here.

Rule of law is not sufficient, power also needs to be distributed correctly for rule of law to lead to good outcomes.

Re: UC Berkeley inappropriately admitted students as favors to donors

#104

Post by ihumanable »

centimeter wrote: post #82

Letting in a few subpar students to raise millions of dollars that can help more qualified students is a perfectly reasonable tradeoff.

Was it millions of dollars?

I saw one donor give a few thousand and one person get admitted for babysitting. Almost all the donations in the report went directly to athletic departments, which would only seem to help student athletes and not academically qualified students that were bumped.

Re: UC Berkeley inappropriately admitted students as favors to donors

#105

Post by fiftyfifty »

wegs wrote: post #28
adaisadais wrote: post #12

Upon close examination I think we would find the ALL schools do this. This is just a symptom of the underlying problem with our education system in the US. It’s no longer about educating but about $. When the almighty dolla gets in the way judgment is clouded. Come to think of it... maybe this happens in politics and medicine too? ;)

All schools do NOT do this. I went to MIT: * MIT wouldn't be caught dead with JUST 64 students admitted on the basis of connections and donations. * MIT wouldn't be caught dead letting external auditors look at this stuff. * MIT wouldn't be caught. None of this would be public for MIT. That's what NDAs and non-disparage agreements are for. I'm sorry, but all schools don't do this. Most are smart enough to stay out of…

That's the huge difference between private schools like MIT (Ivy League and Stanford too) and public schools like UC Berkley. Public schools receive a lot of funding from the state and they should be audited by the state and have some transparency in their admissions process. California clamped down on the UC schools years ago for admitting too many out of state students, and they had the authority to do that. I don't think it's unique to Berkley at all, all state schools have to answer to the state they serve.

Re: UC Berkeley inappropriately admitted students as favors to donors

#106

Post by thatfrenchguy »

TrackerFF wrote: post #42

In this day and age, with all the fierce competition, it's a real problem that elite universities are admitting rich kids on such unfair and uneven grounds. Going to the "correct" school can transform the life of some people, essentially pulling them up from the lower working classes, and opening up the doors to middle, or even upper-middle classes. And what's even worse, a lot of these rich kids could go pretty much…

It's time to end that stupid competition, and have UCs admit 10x as many students.

Re: UC Berkeley inappropriately admitted students as favors to donors

#107

Post by ladberg »

legerdemain wrote: post #90

Colleges and universities are corrupt dinosaur institutions that indoctrinate students in subjects that working devs basically never use, like calculus, Java, and recursion. COVID can't kill them off fast enough. People like Haseeb Qureshi[1] amply demonstrate that you don't need a fancy degree to break into the top echelons of FAANG. It's 2020, not 1920: just do a bootcamp, self-study using one of the free open-sour…

> subjects that working devs basically never use, like calculus, Java, and recursion

I don't know about you, but I've used all of those in real software. Additionally, I'm happy teaching myself skills needed for programming that I wasn't taught in college, but I'd much rather learn something like calculus from a teacher than on my own.

Re: UC Berkeley inappropriately admitted students as favors to donors

#108

Post by jbullock35 »

setgree wrote: post #84

If you had asked me yesterday what percent of students I thought got into UC schools due to personal connection or wealth, I would have estimated between 10-20%. But this report seems to suggest otherwise: > In Violation of University Policy, the Campuses We Reviewed Admitted 64 Applicants Because of Their Families’ Donations and Connections > UC Berkeley inappropriately admitted 42 other applicants the UC schools as…

> if you get recruited to play Water Polo, Crew, Golf, Volleyball, or Beach volleyball at UC Berkeley, and ~95% of kids who play those sports come from wealthy families, and recruiting gave them an edge in admissions, does that count as "inappropriate?" I would say so, but I doubt this report would.

The report comes close: "the average grade point average for the bottom quartile of applicants whom UCLA admitted for academic year 2019–20 was 4.15, but the average grade point average for its admitted student athletes was 3.74. Similarly, two‑thirds of the admitted student athletes whom UC Berkeley evaluated through its holistic review process for academic years 2017–18 through 2019–20 received the lowest possible rating from its application readers—which is equivalent to a recommendation that the applicant be denied admission."

Re: UC Berkeley inappropriately admitted students as favors to donors

#109

Post by strikelaserclaw »

TrackerFF wrote: post #42

In this day and age, with all the fierce competition, it's a real problem that elite universities are admitting rich kids on such unfair and uneven grounds. Going to the "correct" school can transform the life of some people, essentially pulling them up from the lower working classes, and opening up the doors to middle, or even upper-middle classes. And what's even worse, a lot of these rich kids could go pretty much…

I looked at DE Shaw's "philanthropy", the dude just gave top colleges a million dollars a year for like 5-6 years, which according to Wikipedia represented "60% of the Fund's philanthropy"

Re: UC Berkeley inappropriately admitted students as favors to donors

#110

Post by syspec »

60secz wrote: post #65

Don't know if I'm just jaded -- but I'm seriously not bothered by people making large donations to a university to have their kid admitted. It's a transaction which benefits the university and the student. Granted -- it should be above board and there should be formal policies. Not justifying the specific actions in this case just curious at the outrage.

The problem is that if we normalize it, then they will get addicted to the money and ONLY let in people who's parents can make a large donation. Finally what will be considered a large donation, will go up rapidly.
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