UC Berkeley inappropriately admitted students as favors to donors • Hacker News Board

Re: UC Berkeley inappropriately admitted students as favors to donors

#421

Post by Balgair » Wed, Sep 23, 2020, 3:38 PM UTC

maccard wrote: post #397

Balgair wrote: post #292

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Not always true. One of the girls at one of the schools near us didn't have any of that (most likely). I think they shared their pool with a few teams though. I know they didn't have their own coach, and I know that she was the stand-out star of the team. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Melissa_Seidemann Their demographics are white, but not majority, with ~30% hispanic. I don't know the demo in 2006 though: https://ww…

> Not always true. > One of the girls at one of the schools near us didn't have any of that (most likely). I think they shared their pool with a few teams though. I know they didn't have their own coach, and I know that she was the stand-out star of the team. Of course it's not always true. However your rebuttal actually proves the point of this discussion. You can name one outlier, who is exactly that, an outlier. T…

I'm not so sure, but I'd need to see the actual data on how Pac-12/Olympic/NCAA/whatever break down in terms of economics.

Re: UC Berkeley inappropriately admitted students as favors to donors

#422

Post by jeffe » Wed, Sep 23, 2020, 3:44 PM UTC

godelski wrote: post #357

solveit wrote: post #300

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm specifically not talking about the SAT and ACT since they're widely used by elite universities. Those tests top out way too early and can't reliably distinguish between the top 1% and the top 0.1% (The fraction of perfect scorers is much smaller than 1% but the standard error of measurement is way too large). The exams I have in mind are those like the science olympiads and the Cambridge STEP. STEP in particular…

Are you trying to get students that can pass specific kinds of tests or students that will be successful? The two aren't strongly correlated. I'd argue successful builds more prestige for the university. And let's be real, everyone knows these tests are purposefully tricky. In the real world people don't give you multiple choices and try to trick you into picking the wrong answer and then laugh at you when you picked…

At the extreme end of the spectrum with quant hedge funds this actually becomes somewhat true. They expect strong academic understanding of math and make a killing by hiring those who do.

Re: UC Berkeley inappropriately admitted students as favors to donors

#423

Post by btilly » Wed, Sep 23, 2020, 3:54 PM UTC

kooshball wrote: post #383

btilly wrote: post #32

I have failed to be outraged. 1/3 of them were admitted as student athletes. Everyone knows that it is official policy at most schools to accept people with athletic ability who would not qualify academically. Why? Because those athletic programs make the university a lot of money! How is admitting someone because their family gave a lot of money any different in principle? It is just a question of reducing how many…

Totally false that athletics makes the school money. The exceptional cases are the top 10 division 1 basketball/football programs that people talk about. The vast majority of college athletics programs do not make money. Just think about it, you think a UC school is making money from a student golf or tennis player? Also these students admitted as "athletics" did not actually qualify and were never part of the team.

My understanding is that participating in a range of athletics programs is required to be a member of an organization like the National Collegiate Athletic Association (NCAA), which is required to participate in the most profitable sports (primarily football).

Therefore the fact that individual sports and athletes do not make money doesn't mean that money isn't a reason for student athletic programs.

Re: UC Berkeley inappropriately admitted students as favors to donors

#424

Post by corin_ » Wed, Sep 23, 2020, 3:57 PM UTC

rmk wrote: post #279

mywittyname wrote: post #89

People are always going to use their money to buy status. So as long as these college offer prestige & status, people with money are going to use it to get in. Much like doping in sports, you have two paths you can take: try to combat cheating, or accept the cheating as part of the game. I think these universities should accept that they are providing an education, but they are selling prestige, and split their admis…

This is fairly common in India in private institutions, especially professional schools such as for Engineering, Medicine, Dentistry and Business Administration. A certain percentage of places are designated 'Management Quota', i.e., the management is free to do with them as it wishes. They are used in many ways. For example, if a certain religious community/sect/order runs the place, it may set aside a large chunk o…

I'm curious - here in England, calling a person or a group of people "backward" would be rude/demeaning. Is that different in India, or is it a case or mixed wires in translating terms to English? Or do the people being called that find it demeaning but it's still socially acceptable among other people?

Re: UC Berkeley inappropriately admitted students as favors to donors

#425

Post by btilly » Wed, Sep 23, 2020, 4:04 PM UTC

wyxuan wrote: post #186

btilly wrote: post #32

I have failed to be outraged. 1/3 of them were admitted as student athletes. Everyone knows that it is official policy at most schools to accept people with athletic ability who would not qualify academically. Why? Because those athletic programs make the university a lot of money! How is admitting someone because their family gave a lot of money any different in principle? It is just a question of reducing how many…

If you read the report, a lot of the student athletes aren't actually athletes, but have been designated as such to overcome poor scores in the admissions process. In any case, it might be negatively impacting the school's athletic program because real athletes have spots taken by opportunists.

If I hadn't read the report, how could I have known that 1/3 of the students involved were designated as student athletes?

My point remains. Once you've opened the door to accepting students for non-academic reasons, you've opened it to accepting them for other non-academic reasons.

(In this case I don't care about the impact on "real athletes" because I don't think that athletic programs are important to the university's core mission.)

Re: UC Berkeley inappropriately admitted students as favors to donors

#426

Post by swores » Wed, Sep 23, 2020, 4:17 PM UTC

TimTheTinker wrote: post #341

TimTheTinker wrote: post #71

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Completely agreed. The idea that we have to "tear it all down" and institute Marxism is backward and self-contradictory. As you said, we need to identify where and how rule of law is lacking and fix it, making sure that representative government and separation of powers remains intact (or is put in place again).

I know this may be against the guidelines, but does anyone know why the above comment was downvoted? Do people really favor Marxism, or is something else wrong?

It could be because:

a) It's not uncommon these days for the term "Marxism" to be used as a brush to paint anyone "too left wing" (despite not being close to actual Marxists)

b) "Cultural Marxism" has become an antisemitic term https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cultural_Marxism_conspiracy_th...

Plus, yes there are still some people in the world who believe in Marxism, although often just in a broad sense rather than thinking everything about it is right. But I doubt many on HN.

And while complaining about downvoted may be against the rules, personally I think it's completely fine in the context of wanting to understand something like your question, rather than "this shouldn't be downvoted".

Re: UC Berkeley inappropriately admitted students as favors to donors

#427

Post by corin_ » Wed, Sep 23, 2020, 4:21 PM UTC

gowld wrote: post #328

sudosysgen wrote: post #85

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

I do. It's absurd that _anyone_ with a high school diploma is refused enrollment at a public college.

But the question is also: which college?

It's a fine view that nobody should be denied great education, but if an entire country's annual cohort of high school diploma recipients all applies to the public college considered to be the best one they obviously couldn't all attend that one.

Re: UC Berkeley inappropriately admitted students as favors to donors

#428

Post by corin_ » Wed, Sep 23, 2020, 4:34 PM UTC

habosa wrote: post #385

This should be considered tax fraud for the donors. The donations they made are charitable contributions, which they surely deducted from their income taxes. When you donate to charity you can only deduct the amount in excess of the benefit provided to you. For instance if you buy a $50 ticket to a charity dinner where they give you $50 of food and drinks, you can't deduct that at all. So these people donated and the…

I'm not familiar with the American tax system, but couldn't they just not claim that charitable donation when filing their tax returns? Surely it's not illegal not to tell the IRS about a charitable donation you made, and therefore not get any tax deduction for it, regardless of whether or not you received benefits from the organisation you donated to?

(Of course, that wouldn't mean that nobody ever does report this sort of thing to make tax savings, in which cases I would assume you're right it would be tax fraud but again I'm not the person to answer that.)

Re: UC Berkeley inappropriately admitted students as favors to donors

#429

Post by Galanwe » Wed, Sep 23, 2020, 4:45 PM UTC

arcticbull wrote: post #420

Galanwe wrote: post #401

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Then you don't pronounce it well :D The link you gave me looks like someone with a strong English accent trying to pronounce French (which make sense for an AI)

The link is right, it's pronounced "cash, eh?". Which is basically the same way you'd pronounced "caché" in French.

> Which is basically the same way you'd pronounced "caché" in French

Just... No.

I don't get it, what is wrong with you people for trying to teach a French how a French word is pronounced?!

"é" is pronounced /e/ https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Close-mid_front_unrounded_vo...

"è" is pronounced /ɛ/ https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Open-mid_front_unrounded_vow...

The Wikipedia page contains audio samples which are accurate.

"cachet" (phonetically "cachè") is definitely pronounced differently than "caché".

The difference may seem subtle and inexistant for English speakers, but for native French speakers it's definitely different sounds...

I don't understand what is the point of arguing when a native speaker + Wikipedia tell you that you're wrong.

Re: UC Berkeley inappropriately admitted students as favors to donors

#430

Post by usaar333 » Wed, Sep 23, 2020, 4:51 PM UTC

kepler1 wrote: post #359

MiroF wrote: post #264

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's racism against white people to automatically admit everyone to UC (not Cal) who is in the top 9% of their class?

No, it's racism against everyone who is displaced from otherwise being admitted, so that the UC can under-the-table enact a policy designed to increase the number of black and Hispanic admits without saying it's affirmative action.

Well and classism against more affluent students displaced when some poor kid of any color at some rural school gets an advantage. Or favoring kids that are first to attend college is displacing kids with better-educated families.

I don't have a moral problem with this. It's not a good strategy in life to voluntary switch to a poorer performing school to give yourself a leg up in UC admissions while taking the cost of having less academically competitive high school classmates. It is a reasonable metric to view students through the lens of "how much have they accomplished given the opportunities afforded to them" -- the issue with something like Prop 16 is that it engages in statistical racial discrimination (mostly against racial minorities for that matter) to make that consideration.