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UC Berkeley inappropriately admitted students as favors to donors

auditor.ca.gov

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Re: UC Berkeley inappropriately admitted students as favors to donors

#431

Post by Galanwe »

hombre_fatal wrote: post #407
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)

No, it's someone speaking the anglicised pronunciation which is correct in English just like for the other 1000s of borrowed French words in English. Though you'll be happy to know that where I grew up in Texas, everyone tried to pronounce "croissant" the French way when (and only when) ordering one at a deli counter. But we weren't far from Paris, Texas.

I did not say the audio clip pronunciation is wrong. I said it was pronounced with an English accent, which bounces a bit the vowels, though the sound of "è" is correct.

What I said is incorrect, is the parent poster saying it sounds closer to "é" than the sound of "best".

If you can't tell the difference, too bad for you, but that doesn't make you right.

"è" (or "et" in French) is pronounced /ɛ/. Wikipedia will confirm that this is indeed the same sound as in "best" (/ˈbɛst/). https://en.m.wiktionary.org/wiki/best

"é" is not the same sound. It's pronounced /e/ like in "fiancée" (/fiˈɑnseɪ/) https://en.m.wiktionary.org/wiki/fianc%C3%A9e

> anglicised pronunciation which is correct in English

All the links I have posted are for the anglicised version of the French words.

Re: UC Berkeley inappropriately admitted students as favors to donors

#432

Post by wegs »

Google234 wrote: post #99
selimthegrim wrote: post #80

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I absolutely agree. Did you know if you have an NSF GRF as a grad student at MIT it costs a PI more to employ you than if you were on TA support? MIT takes more overhead and assumes the PI will just suck it up as he/she/they is "riding off MIT's brand" anyway. Numerous complaints to NSF run into the brick wall of " MIT"

Yes but TAing might take 30 hours a week. Anyway, MIT professors should be the best in their field, if they can’t support the small amount more it takes for the grad student with the NSF grants that sounds like a problem

MIT students are a bit ahead of students at other schools. Faculty hiring is such that there are no substantial differences in faculty quality. The difference between an MIT professor and a state school professor is mostly random chance. Oh, and the MIT professor has a lower teaching load, a great brand stamp, and a huge PR department.

MIT overhead is roughly 2/3 of the money which comes into NSF. Perhaps this might not be a problem to raise (it's generally not), but that doesn't make it okay. The bigger problem is your tax payer dollar passing through overhead into graft. Your taxes are contributing to the MIT yacht club ("MIT Sailing"), million-dollar salaries, buildings costing a significant fraction of a billion dollars (MIT Stata Center), fancy faculty clubs, etc.

Is that good use of taxpayer dollars? Of tuition? Of donor dollars? That's ultimately where all this excess comes from.

Re: UC Berkeley inappropriately admitted students as favors to donors

#433

Post by brightball »

goodluckchuck wrote: post #344
brightball wrote: post #293

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I feel like this is being over thought. Making a donation to a university is certainly a direct way to apply money to the process, but we already see that through additional factors. You’ve got private K-12 schools that give many people a leg up, but even the best public schools have a similar effect through zoning. You want to get your child into a better public school, you move to a home that’s zoned for it. The ho…

You’re literally saying that studying and becoming more qualified is cheating.

I’m saying that financial advantages make those qualifications much easier to obtain.

Re: UC Berkeley inappropriately admitted students as favors to donors

#434

Post by mattnewton »

protomyth wrote: post #268
mattnewton wrote: post #124

Earlier quoted context omitted.

A large part of the prestige comes from being associated with the people who got in on merit. A school that did this would implicitly devalue that prestige for anyone from an obviously wealthy background. Instead they pretend this doesn’t happen to keep the prestige of “got into x school” valuable.

A large part of the prestige comes from being associated with the people who got in on merit. I can see that for UC Berkeley, but would that be true of somewhere like Harvard? I get the feeling it would devalue some of the perks of a Harvard education to accept on merit, when a lot of the students from low income backgrounds find the value in mixing with the legacy students.

Plenty of legacy students would get in anyways because of the incredible access to tutors, impressive sounding enrichment programs, and plain better schools wealth brings in this country, no need to stack the deck even further. "Got into harvard" is supposed to be a mark of a high achieving individual and would be devalued if they were more explicit about pay-to-play.

Re: UC Berkeley inappropriately admitted students as favors to donors

#435

Post by TimTheTinker »

swores wrote: post #426
TimTheTinker wrote: post #341

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 thin…

Thanks, I appreciate the help.

Re: UC Berkeley inappropriately admitted students as favors to donors

#436

Post by arcticbull »

Galanwe wrote: post #429
arcticbull wrote: post #420

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 accura…

lol, I speak French. Québecois French, but still.

I'm not telling you how it's pronounced in French, I'm suggesting how I pronounce it in English using French as a reference. I don't really think an accent aigu sounds anything like an accent grave.

I don't pronounce "cachet" as "cachè" but rather "caché".

Re: UC Berkeley inappropriately admitted students as favors to donors

#437

Post by MiroF »

Galanwe wrote: post #431
hombre_fatal wrote: post #407

Earlier quoted context omitted.

No, it's someone speaking the anglicised pronunciation which is correct in English just like for the other 1000s of borrowed French words in English. Though you'll be happy to know that where I grew up in Texas, everyone tried to pronounce "croissant" the French way when (and only when) ordering one at a deli counter. But we weren't far from Paris, Texas.

I did not say the audio clip pronunciation is wrong. I said it was pronounced with an English accent, which bounces a bit the vowels, though the sound of "è" is correct. What I said is incorrect, is the parent poster saying it sounds closer to "é" than the sound of "best". If you can't tell the difference, too bad for you, but that doesn't make you right. "è" (or "et" in French) is pronounced /ɛ/. Wikipedia will conf…

> I said it was pronounced with an English accent,

Cachet is an english word in this context, so how could the English pronunciation be incorrect?

> "è" (or "et" in French) is pronounced /ɛ/. Wikipedia will confirm that this is indeed the same sound as in "best"

Yep.

> "é" is not the same sound. It's pronounced /e/ like in "fiancée"

Also yep. Nobody is disputing you on those.

The problem is when you're saying that the english pronunciation for an english word is incorrect." It can't be. Cachet, in this context, is an english word and this is the english pronunciation.

Re: UC Berkeley inappropriately admitted students as favors to donors

#438

Post by MiroF »

Galanwe wrote: post #429
arcticbull wrote: post #420

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 accura…

> "cachet" (phonetically "cachè")

Do you understand? This is the statement that we're saying is incorrect. The english word cachet is not pronounced phonetically "cachè" in english. There is another word, cachet, in french. It is not the same word. It does not mean the same thing. It has a common etymology, but that doesn't make you the authority on its pronunciation.

You are trying to argue with an American how an English word since the 1600s is pronounced!

Re: UC Berkeley inappropriately admitted students as favors to donors

#439

Post by sprafa »

dTal wrote: post #412
sprafa wrote: post #384

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It’s amazing that people don’t realise this. I always think back to the study that showed the amount of books in a household was a strong predictor for IQ. Background matters a whole lot, but high performance people don’t want to hear it, because they want to feel like it’s all their own credit. Nope. Just like money, there’s also an intellectual family bank that gets inherited. And it’s not genes, it’s access to kno…

>the amount of books in a household was a strong predictor for IQ. Background matters a whole lot... That doesn't follow at all. IQ is correlated with parental IQ, due to genetics. Equally plausible, if not more so, than "books cause high IQ" is "high IQ causes books". Smart people a) like to read, and b) have smart children. I don't think it's likely that kids are boosting their IQ scores by cracking open their pare…

Then you’re ignoring the whole study for Intellectual convenience.

Re: UC Berkeley inappropriately admitted students as favors to donors

#440

Post by ajkjk »

tehjoker wrote: post #358
ajkjk wrote: post #141

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm generally opposed to this kind of acceptance-of-bad-things but in this case I kinda agree. If people are willing to pay millions to go to college, that's potentially a great advantage to students who otherwise have trouble affording it -- let the rich kids subsidize it for everyone else. By not funneling the donations through weird under-the-table transactions it can be more directly used for a net good for the s…

"let the rich kids subsidize it for everyone else." This is also known as a progressive taxation system.

That's not correct. Taxation is one of many ways that some people's money support other people; we're talking about a different one.
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