31–40 of 157 posts
Meritocracy for thee, but not for me. As the upper echelons continue to cordon off segments of the economy and education for just themselves, will the "Bootstraps and Personal Responsibility" mythology finally start to die out?
I can't find work because, ... you know ... ... ...
the rich!
This is why, to me, the entire debate about affirmative action at elite colleges is a complete red herring. The amount of kids, regardless of race, who can be considered "deserving" of a spot has been reduced more so by legacy admissions and these bribes than by any effort of individual institutions to even out racial or gender demographics.
That is why it stings for poor or working class Asians and non-Jewish Whites...you don't get the affirmative action or legacy leg up...
A smaller subset of this problem is paying people to take standardized tests for you. I graduated from an ivy and had a couple peers who got a perfect score on their SAT's but could only speak broken English. If you're willing to pay someone to cheat on standardized tests, I'm not surprised you're willing to bribe someone to gain admissions also.
The SATs are also stupidly easy compared to entrance exams in any other place on the planet. If you are gifted and study seriously for a week you can get yourself a very good score no problem
I’m sure that there are cheaters, but if your reference is “bad spoken English” that’s not at all conclusive
This is why, to me, the entire debate about affirmative action at elite colleges is a complete red herring. The amount of kids, regardless of race, who can be considered "deserving" of a spot has been reduced more so by legacy admissions and these bribes than by any effort of individual institutions to even out racial or gender demographics.
There are tons of universities, but it's hard to say anyone "deserves" a spot over someone's family who helped build it.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
That is why it stings for poor or working class Asians and non-Jewish Whites...you don't get the affirmative action or legacy leg up...
Oi. What's with the antisemitism?
This is why, to me, the entire debate about affirmative action at elite colleges is a complete red herring. The amount of kids, regardless of race, who can be considered "deserving" of a spot has been reduced more so by legacy admissions and these bribes than by any effort of individual institutions to even out racial or gender demographics.
These universities don't have the prestige without the legacy admissions (and alumni donors). There are tons of universities, but it's hard to say anyone "deserves" a spot over someone's family who helped build it.
[1] In the sense that they're not academically or athletically at the top of the heap.
Just reinforces my belief that an ivy league degree is much more an indicator of socioeconomic class than it is intelligence or aptitude.
Anecdotally, I have heard of places that refuse to hire Harvard grads for this reason.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
The first is for the benefit of all the other students in the form of reduced tuition grants, a new library, lab equipment etc. The other is for the benefit of the bribe taker. There are lots of situations that elevate X over accomplishment, but this seems like one with actual benefit on a large scale. That said, I hope they all get punished for it.
I dont think a monetary donation means a new lab or a library for all students to use that otherwise would have not been built. these universities have excess budget and easily afford to carry out new construction and procurement as planned regardless of donations. Im sure if the said parent had not donated the 2.5 million dollars, not a single thing would have been different for the students. not one.
That's definitely false. Most universities tie annual endowment spending to total endowment size. Just because you can't directly tie the dollars to a specific project, doesn't mean it didn't contribute to the general student body's quality of education.
My company foolishly donated data to Stanford for nearly a decade. We asked them for an 'in kind' license to OpenNLP and were basically completely rebuffed. They're taking in money hand over fist. We need to stop thinking of these as universities anymore. They're cash cows...
What do you mean a license for OpenNLP?
https://github.com/stanfordnlp/CoreNLP/blob/master/LICENSE.t...