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Colleges that ditched admission tests find it harder to fairly choose students

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141–150 of 602 posts

Re: Colleges that ditched admission tests find it harder to fairly choose students

#141
post #26

But...that was exactly the purpose? To be able to more freely select amongst racial and gender lines as desired

I think it’s more complicated than that because the students expect to get jobs after completing the degree, if they even can complete the degree. For example, Im not great at art and don’t really have a passion for it. Should an art school accept me even though I’ll never have a career as an artist? Keep in mind I’d be taking a spot from someone who could. I have no doubt they’ll be able to improve my abilities but…

I wonder what percentage of people work in the field their degree is in. I suspect it’s very high for some (law, pilot, doctor) and very low for others (history).

Re: Colleges that ditched admission tests find it harder to fairly choose students

#142

Who could have seen that coming? The whole point of ditching quantitative tests is to empower the bureaucrats who want to make qualitative judgements based on their personal whims and biases. "Holistic" my ass.

>We used racism, to fight racism. Only fascists subscribe to meritocracy.

-years later-

OH no, we're taking the pr hits for our disgustingly discriminative and biggoted admissions processes.

Re: Colleges that ditched admission tests find it harder to fairly choose students

#143
post #123

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> On Twitter, Reddit, and real life, the majority of people keep complaining about crime, drugs, homelessness. Maybe I’m misunderstanding your comment but in the US, these issues are the result of conservative politics.

Which is why there’s so much violent crime in conservative bastions like Philadelphia, Chicago, New York, and Baltimore.

And why rural Appalachia and small, highly religious towns across America are absolutely ravaged by meth and fentanyl and the crime around it, which you really should not ignore.

You’ll find a lot of “lock em up and throw away the key! … But not my son. Or my daughter. Or my nephew and his children and my former coworker. Or my pastor’s children. But everyone else, yeah”

Re: Colleges that ditched admission tests find it harder to fairly choose students

#144

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Maybe I'm in a bubble, but every anecdote I read online in the past year or two is someone royally fed up with liberal politics. On Twitter, Reddit, and real life, the majority of people keep complaining about crime, drugs, homelessness. Sounds like a perfect environment for a generation of conservatives to get elected. Hopefully they stay close to the center for a long time.

What solutions are the conservatives offering to crime, drugs, and homelessness?

The usual ones: effective policing and punitive justice. It works pretty well actually if your goal is to keep law-abiding citizens safe without much regard for the fates of criminals.

Re: Colleges that ditched admission tests find it harder to fairly choose students

#145

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That’s an interesting race to the bottom for those schools. They’d end up with kids who basically ditched studying advanced math, physics, research, etc and just a lot of kids who prepped for the SAT for four years.

The “advanced math, physics, research, etc” in high school is all just college admissions prep too. When you major in math you have to take an analysis sequence starting at the beginning because AP calculus isn’t actually math. It’s just memorizing and learning to execute some math related algorithms. It’s all just signaling. Let’s be open about that instead of hiding the ball.

Again there’s levels to this. Harvard Math 55 is filled with exceptionally strong math students. I’m a 1500 SAT student, but not a Math 55 student. Them not being able to differentiate these classes of students seems problematic.

Re: Colleges that ditched admission tests find it harder to fairly choose students

#146

I find it hard to believe there's a shortage of people capable of teaching 1st year students, so this seems like a problem of artificial scarcity.

> I find it hard to believe there's a shortage of people capable of teaching 1st year students, so this seems like a problem of artificial scarcity. reply The supply is short because at least in the US, entry pay is low in higher ed. - $25/hour w/ benefits for semi-skilled labor - $42k/year no benefits for adjunct

Sounds more like the supply is overflowing that they can charge factory rated for it. Same reason flight instructors are so cheap.

Re: Colleges that ditched admission tests find it harder to fairly choose students

#147

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Maybe I'm in a bubble, but every anecdote I read online in the past year or two is someone royally fed up with liberal politics. On Twitter, Reddit, and real life, the majority of people keep complaining about crime, drugs, homelessness. Sounds like a perfect environment for a generation of conservatives to get elected. Hopefully they stay close to the center for a long time.

What solutions are the conservatives offering to crime, drugs, and homelessness?

As a representative example, maybe arrest somebody when they assault a woman and kill her dog (https://www.nytimes.com/2022/10/07/nyregion/dog-attack-park-...).

Re: Colleges that ditched admission tests find it harder to fairly choose students

#148

It should be easy to make the student body reflect the diversity of applicants: select them at random.

I'd have them selected randomly from those that clear the standardized testing bar. Otherwise, without selecting for academic performance, universities become a continuation of highschool where high achievers are surrounded by riffraff who don't really want to learn but rather spend a few years partying with student loans before hitting the workforce.

The solution is to make high school more selective - which is done in some countries. Around 12 it is determined if you’re on the college path or the tradeschool path and you go from there

Then suddenly you have the ability to boot non-performers on the college path into something else.

Re: Colleges that ditched admission tests find it harder to fairly choose students

#149
post #123

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Which is why there’s so much violent crime in conservative bastions like Philadelphia, Chicago, New York, and Baltimore.

Think of it like climate change. The weather today is the result of poor decision making 30, 40, 50+ years ago. Additionally, politics and policies exist at the national level as well and can influence what happens in even liberal cities.

I'm not sure that's true at all. There have been many demonstrably effective short-term crime reduction strategies. Broken window theory being the most famous example. Shockingly, arresting and confining violent antisocial people reduces violence in society.

Re: Colleges that ditched admission tests find it harder to fairly choose students

#150
post #135
post #107

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Sounds like a perfect environment for a generation of conservatives to get elected. Hopefully they stay close to the center for a long time. The conservative groundswell is because generations of conservatives have already been getting elected, especially in less flashy positions that wield influence. Conservatives have really played the long game, at least since the New Deal.

I think people’s need to frame seemingly every issue and even their entire worldview as liberal vs conservative is the biggest problem in politics.

I think many things can be framed as "change things" or "leave them".
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