21–29 of 29 posts
So just tell them to get better final exams marks?
It's more complex than this. A helpful analysis to start: http://archive.wilsonquarterly.com/essays/explaining-black-e... Many don't get the info they can apply: https://www.theatlantic.com/education/archive/2013/09/no-poi...
If the goal is to evaluate possible university-driven under-representation, an honest statistic would be comparing application rates to acceptance rates per race. Or if the objective is measuring social mobility, examining the percentage of college-age persons attending technical schools, working as skilled labor, earning a certain percentage above the poverty line (or a reasonable percentage of median household income), or attending university, would reveal differing career choices while also showing which percentage of each race falls outside of a normal path to upward mobility.
Maybe I am cynical, but I think white over-representation has more to do with economic disparity, which results in cultural disparity between rungs of the economic ladder, such that upper-middle class society (within which whites are over-represented) overvalues university as the de facto path to prosperity and success. But even among whites, there are still a lot of first-generation university students. This is not driven by race, but by socioeconomics - parents who worked blue collar jobs without an education, earned their way into middle/upper-middle class circles, which then inculcated either their children, them, or both with the expectation of university attendance. Measuring those realities, their causes and effects, is where real solutions to these disparities will be sought.
The presentation of these statistics is misleading and reads like a common case of "find some numbers to support this great narrative I want to write." Comparing total college-age population with final enrollment assumes that all groups apply to these universities in equal proportion, and that all races/cultures hold the same assumptions about the value of a university education for prosperity/success/happiness. The…
No, it doesn't. It simply measures underrepresentation. Variations on those axes aren't assumed away, because while those may explain some or all of the underrepresentation (at least, intermediate mechanisms, if not root causes), they do not negate it's existence.
> Maybe I am cynical, but I think white over-representation has more to do with economic disparity, which results in cultural disparity between rungs of the economic ladder
In terms of race issues, that's exactly the polar opposite of cynicism, and well into pollyannaism.
The presentation of these statistics is misleading and reads like a common case of "find some numbers to support this great narrative I want to write." Comparing total college-age population with final enrollment assumes that all groups apply to these universities in equal proportion, and that all races/cultures hold the same assumptions about the value of a university education for prosperity/success/happiness. The…
> Comparing total college-age population with final enrollment assumes that all groups apply to these universities in equal proportion, and that all races/cultures hold the same assumptions about the value of a university education for prosperity/success/happiness. No, it doesn't. It simply measures underrepresentation. Variations on those axes aren't assumed away, because while those may explain some or all of the u…
Earlier quoted context omitted.
> Comparing total college-age population with final enrollment assumes that all groups apply to these universities in equal proportion, and that all races/cultures hold the same assumptions about the value of a university education for prosperity/success/happiness. No, it doesn't. It simply measures underrepresentation. Variations on those axes aren't assumed away, because while those may explain some or all of the u…
Sorry, I think in editing I deleted my intermediate sentence. You are right, it measures under-representation, but the narrative and assumption is that under-representation in university is problematic, worrisome, an issue. I think that assumption is false, and assuming that under-representation is an issue that can be fixed, or should be fixed, relies on assuming that there is some cause that does not originate with…
Sure, but even if the mechanisms you suggest are assumed away (they aren't) are part of the mechanism of underrepresentation, it would still be all those things. In fact, I would see increasing racial divergence in either the perceived value of college or the rate of application independent of the perceived value of college and extremely worrying signs.
But, really, before people accept the value of explaining the trend toward increasing black/hispanic underrepresentation, they need to understand that the exists; in case you haven't noticed, there is a very powerful (if entirely non-factual) narrative exact opposite is the case, driven by an increasingly powerful political faction, including the leadership of the executive branch of the US government.
This sounds like an issue with the public elementary and secondary education systems more than anything else -- affirmative action can only do so much for those that qualify, but if eligibility does not increase in lock step with population then there are some basic problems that need to be addressed. Perhaps college endowment funds[1] should invest in supporting elementary and secondary education systems rather than…
The problem is it isn't primarily the schools, it's the whole environment. A poor student has no time to study because he's busy raising his little sister while his single mother is working two jobs. His neighbors at home try to sell him drugs or recruit him into a gang instead of suggesting that he join the lacrosse team with them. We keep focusing programs on the very bottom as if the solution is to get literally e…
There's more to the situation than microeconomic theory and approaching it from a purely economic point of view is dangerous.
If we're going to be serious about why fathers are in prison then it stands to reason that we focus on keeping families together, the vast majority of women that enter single motherhood fall into poverty and welfare. Not only that but they never get out of it and they have to endure mental illness (eg: depression, obesity, addiction) which further complicates family life.
Telling these young women that they're better off alone, that they can find better relationship opportunities, and other pie-in-the-sky ideological claptrap is reckless and negligent. It is truer now more than ever that the traditional family unit is the best institution for ensuring a child's future is secure.
No I'm not saying women should endure abusive relationships but for heaven's sake we have to be honest about the fact that they're better off settling down early than "finding themselves" which we all know is primarily promiscuity, alcoholism, and drug abuse.
From the article: > The share of black freshmen at elite schools is virtually unchanged since 1980. Black students are just 6 percent of freshmen but 15 percent of college-age Americans Leading to an "underrepresentedness" figure of -9 (or -10 on the graph in the article, which is probably due to rounding). But that's a stupid way of calculating underrepresentedness. E.g. if a group has 8 % of the population but none…