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Top colleges should select randomly from a pool of ‘good enough’ (2005)

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Re: Top colleges should select randomly from a pool of ‘good enough’ (2005)

#231

Post by d3nj4l »

secondcoming wrote: post #222
hardwaregeek wrote: post #130

One interesting example is the UT system. Because affirmative action was banned in Hopwood v. Texas, the UT system resorted to a program where they accept the top 10% of each high school's class into all UT schools. It's an interesting way of doing admissions, albeit not perfect. One critique that I'm anticipating seeing is that this encourages going to a mediocre high school. Except...getting good students to go to…

> Except...getting good students to go to mediocre high schools sounds like an excellent way to improve the average quality of schools. Have you never been to school?

If you have a point you're driving at, it would've been better to state it than to ask a leading question.

Re: Top colleges should select randomly from a pool of ‘good enough’ (2005)

#232

Post by dhosek »

tyingq wrote: post #172
samatman wrote: post #169

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm curious how the Montgomery GI Bill changes that calculus. My distant understanding is that a not-insignificant number of people join the military because this will give them a full ride in college. They can't make much more than the Army pays with a high school diploma, and they can't afford college without either crippling debt or something like the GI Bill. But I don't have any facts here, just going off what a…

Sure. It's just those scores (or the implied intelligence) could probably get you into programs like the one where the Navy pays you a stipend while at college, and pays for college...before you join the military, as an officer. The other branches have similar programs. There's quite a lot of crap to go through before you get to use that GI bill money :)

That lot of crap was why I didn't follow through on enlisting—I was looking for funding for the next semester which I had hoped enlisting in the army reserve would do, but it turned out it would be at least six months before I saw any college benefits and after six months, I could do just as well on my own.

It's just as well because had I done this, I would have been in the reserve for the first gulf war and been sent to Iraq, something that I would have had no desire to do (in general, army reserve would have been a very poor fit for me).

Re: Top colleges should select randomly from a pool of ‘good enough’ (2005)

#233

Post by dhosek »

docbrown wrote: post #178
tyingq wrote: post #163

Earlier quoted context omitted.

They weren't claiming. Your scores are all posted on the wall in basic training. I walked the dorms and saw ~5 aces or very near aces out of maybe 200ish total people's scores. It's just somewhat odd because starting out as an E1 isn't terribly lucrative. It doesn't surprise me that 5 of 200 do that well. It surprises me that 5 of 200 that do so well actually enlist.

> It surprises me that 5 of 200 that do so well actually enlist. I’m generalizing here, but: No matter what their score was (high or low), most people are going to take the ASVAB because they want to join the military and reap the benefits of it (i.e. TRICARE, GI bill). We can’t forget that military granted health insurance covers around 3-4% of the total insured (US Census, 2019, p.3)[1]. It is also a heavily road t…

Not to mention that even with ROTC, you're still going to be facing some stiff economic headwinds to go to college full-time.

Re: Top colleges should select randomly from a pool of ‘good enough’ (2005)

#234

Post by stale2002 »

murgindrag wrote: post #196
stale2002 wrote: post #195

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> What about the rest of us? The rest would have significantly less spots in college, if this funding method was gotten rid of. So less people would be educated. If rich people going to an elite college results in significantly more spots at that college being funded, then that is a benefit.

It's not significantly more people. The US has 5000 universities and colleges, and perhaps a dozen really elite schools, depending on where you draw the line. Those schools have more money. No one else does. And only some of that money comes from donations. Much of it are your taxpayer dollars at work. The direct way is to donate money. The indirect way is to swing government funds.

> It's not significantly more people.

Ok, well it is more people than the amount of spots that they take up.

> Those schools have more money. No one else does.

Ok, so if an elite person takes up one spot, but the extra money allows 2 more spots to open up, then that is a net increase in total number of slots. So that is still a benefit to the extra people who can go to that college.

Re: Top colleges should select randomly from a pool of ‘good enough’ (2005)

#235

Post by tjroawuahdh »

atlgator wrote: post #210
buerkle wrote: post #207

Earlier quoted context omitted.

UT Austin is allowed to accept only the top 6%. It also creates weird incentives for students. A friend of mine works in the front office of a local high school and she knows a lot of students who have dropped electives such as band because it lowers their grade point. In Austin area schools AP courses are weighted on a 6.0 scale which makes the problem worse if you want broaden your education and take non-weighted c…

That is an incentive regardless of UT's policy. The top 10 are always fighting to be number 1 or 2 and weighted classes make all the difference.

Yeah this is a serious defect in the high school system. Other than our valedictorian with an Eidadic memory got too marks in all classes, the rest of us who did band, a non honors course, all 4 years suffered from not getting a the weighted boost and ended up ranked a few places lower than our peers who got the same 1 or 2 Bs but took honors theatre or honors debate even if they actually liked band or track team better.

The similar issue repeats itself in college where employers lkke McKinsey and Goldman prefilter for the 3.8+ gpa kids as a proxy for intellect/hard work. But this discourages the career minded students from going for the hardest classes with tough but intellectually stimulating professors and comes again down to who can figure out how to best cherry pick for easy grades.

Re: Top colleges should select randomly from a pool of ‘good enough’ (2005)

#236

Post by dhosek »

tyingq wrote: post #163
dhosek wrote: post #158

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Really? I took the ASVAB when I was looking for ways to fund my college education and considered doing Army Reserve. The only question I had to pause on was one about manual transmissions (I'd never driven stick before and couldn't remember how the gears were numbered on my Schwinn). The recruiter claimed to be blown away by the fact that I scored so high on the test. I was never actually given my score. I wonder if…

They weren't claiming. Your scores are all posted on the wall in basic training. I walked the dorms and saw ~5 aces or very near aces out of maybe 200ish total people's scores. It's just somewhat odd because starting out as an E1 isn't terribly lucrative. It doesn't surprise me that 5 of 200 do that well. It surprises me that 5 of 200 that do so well actually enlist.

5/200 is 97th percentile, roughly speaking. But I would guess that acing the test is something that general population would be able to do at 80th percentile, maybe 90th (although I'm a bad judge of such things and a quick google search reveals nothing elucidating).

Re: Top colleges should select randomly from a pool of ‘good enough’ (2005)

#237

Post by pontus »

I think the points here are pretty interesting.

Related to this, I feel like there's a missed opportunity for the federal government to create a national public online university.

There's a lot of talk about online education being the future of education on the one hand and a lot of talk about "College For All" / cost of education / inclusivity on the other hand, but it seems like the people who care about the two things are disjoint.

I used to teach physics, and every semester it was the same thing: confusion about the right-hand-rule, rotational motion, Gauss' law, ..., and every year I explained things the same way (and so did all the other teachers in the classrooms next door.) Why not record these lectures in some ridiculously high-end way, blowing $10M on that one course, make it epic, and then just be done with it? Imagine the amount of money that's spent every year teaching stuff over and over again...

The federal government should allocate something like $1B-$5B toward building out a virtual course catalog and open it up for free to the public. I feel like it could fill the need of community colleges / public four-year institutions quite well. In fact, I could see community colleges basically transition into a set of distributed testing facilities where you go to take your final exams or something.

Re: Top colleges should select randomly from a pool of ‘good enough’ (2005)

#238

Post by DuskStar »

tjroawuahdh wrote: post #235
atlgator wrote: post #210

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That is an incentive regardless of UT's policy. The top 10 are always fighting to be number 1 or 2 and weighted classes make all the difference.

Yeah this is a serious defect in the high school system. Other than our valedictorian with an Eidadic memory got too marks in all classes, the rest of us who did band, a non honors course, all 4 years suffered from not getting a the weighted boost and ended up ranked a few places lower than our peers who got the same 1 or 2 Bs but took honors theatre or honors debate even if they actually liked band or track team bet…

On the other side of things... I went to a high school that didn't weight AP courses - Calc 2 counted the same as PE.

There tended to be ~10 valedictorians out of a class of 300 - all with perfect GPAs.

Re: Top colleges should select randomly from a pool of ‘good enough’ (2005)

#239

Post by doktorhladnjak »

dcolkitt wrote: post #155
mikeyouse wrote: post #138

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The AMA doesn't restrict the number of people in medical school, you're thinking of residency slots, and they don't restrict that either. They're in favor of expanding the number of residencies available since everyone knows there is a shortage of doctors. The restriction comes from funding since it's all Federal dollars to pay for the training. https://www.ama-assn.org/press-center/press-releases/ama-bui... Congress…

> The AMA doesn't restrict the number of people in medical school, you're thinking of residency slots, and they don't restrict that either. There's a very simple solution to this problem that requires nothing other than the stroke of a pen: allow residents from OECD nations to practice medicine in the US. There's nothing magical about an American residency. Countries like France, Britain, Israel, Korea, New Zealand,…

Only problem is American medical students take on massive student loans while those in other countries often have their tuition subsidized by their governments. Instead of paying for medical education via taxes, we pay via employers, insurance premiums, deductibles and Medicare taxes.

Re: Top colleges should select randomly from a pool of ‘good enough’ (2005)

#240

Post by doktorhladnjak »

pontus wrote: post #237

I think the points here are pretty interesting. Related to this, I feel like there's a missed opportunity for the federal government to create a national public online university. There's a lot of talk about online education being the future of education on the one hand and a lot of talk about "College For All" / cost of education / inclusivity on the other hand, but it seems like the people who care about the two th…

When I took physics in community college, we joked that we were getting a Caltech education for $13 per credit hour because the instructor would just show videos of some famous physicist lecturing there.
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