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Research finds no gender bias in academic science

insidehighered.com

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Re: Research finds no gender bias in academic science

#61
post #52
post #40

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This you get the argument for child tax credits. Let the money follow the child instead of the school. In my area, private schools routinely offer much better education at a fraction of the expenditure per child. Loads of money simply disappears into the corruption of the school system, but private schools know doing that means students will leave and they’ll go bankrupt. Set a national number and stick with it (allo…

> Set a national number and stick with it (allowing states to add to that number to account for their own higher cost of living). Why do you even need to set a national number? Let states or even counties decide for themselves. (Make transfers to poor counties, if necessary. But don't tell them how to use the money.)

That’s what I said, but from the other end. I started with fixed Federal subsidies (which actually transfers money from wealthy states to poor states) then individual states can optionally set higher limits by adding their own money too.

Re: Research finds no gender bias in academic science

#62

Earlier quoted context omitted.

But then how do you define poor? I ask because you do enter a new identity politics discussion. Blacks tend to have much lower wealth, even when you control for income. So it’s in the interest of whites to push income and blacks to push wealth. I also think there’s an optics issue. As you note the poor white males may be getting passed over now. So many would say that it’s really convenient that NOW we want to help a…

You measure wealth and income?

You can, but the question is how is this split? What is the formula to measure it?

For example, my cousin does financial aid for a set of private high schools. There is a group that fights the use of wealth measures when determining need. It is typically upper middle class people who don’t want things like their real estate or investment portfolio to be a part of the equation.

The absolute richest oddly do tend to support these measures. I suspect in part because tuition isn’t a big deal to them anyways.

Re: Research finds no gender bias in academic science

#63
post #49

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Can you cite a source for the statement in second paragraph? I'm not from the states, but to my limited understanding, funding for school comes primarily from district and state level and in the form of property tax. Meaning rich areas have enormous advantage. Meanwhile the federal proportion of the funding for a school is less than 10% [1] [1] https://youtu.be/VZx-rLoV4do timestamp 3:00

See eg https://freddiedeboer.substack.com/p/education-commentary-is... > This has all had the unfortunate effect of deepening ignorance about American school spending. We know, for example, that majority-Black and Hispanic schools receive significantly more per-pupil funding than majority-white schools. This fact is so contrary to basic liberal assumptions that they often react angrily to hearing it. But this reality…

This guys argument is based on a meta-analysis which has nothing at all to do with the argument he is making. The meta analysis in question (https://files.eric.ed.gov/fulltext/ED610568.pdf) is talking about how different research techniques measure data in different ways and therefore can't be easily compared. He then takes a look at this data, determines that it means interventions don't work very well (he doesn't argue they don't work, just that they don't work that well) and therefore concludes that we shouldn't even try to close the gaps in educational outcomes. You can't read a study and completely change it's meaning, especially since the study he cites is from researches that clearly believe evidence based educational intervention can work. In other words, the people who the author cites, who looked at the data more closely then the author hold opposite beliefs from the author.

Re: Research finds no gender bias in academic science

#64

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I agree. Old school leftists were smart enough to understand that being rich is the ultimate privilege, nothing else comes close. Help the poor, and you will also help minorities which are poor due to historical racism, slavery and so on. Help people based on their skin colour/ethnicity, and you'll unnecessarily make all the poor, unprivileged people not included very bitter, increasing political divisions, racism an…

> It's not even that hard. Make taxation more progressive, and give extra funding to neighbourhoods and schools in poorer parts of the country/cities. The US already does this. Taxation is more progressive than Europe and large amounts of money are redistributed to poor and troubled schools, in some cases as much as twice the European average. It is not correlated with any of the outcomes you are imagining. Throwing…

Any large increase in the social programs of the US is going to have to tied to increased tax on the middle class. The tax-the-rich and spend politicians seem disingenuous by not telling their constituents what it would actually take to fund large social programs. That dishonestly guarantees those social programs will never come to fruition, so do they even want them?

Re: Research finds no gender bias in academic science

#65
post #61
post #52

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Set a national number and stick with it (allowing states to add to that number to account for their own higher cost of living). Why do you even need to set a national number? Let states or even counties decide for themselves. (Make transfers to poor counties, if necessary. But don't tell them how to use the money.)

That’s what I said, but from the other end. I started with fixed Federal subsidies (which actually transfers money from wealthy states to poor states) then individual states can optionally set higher limits by adding their own money too.

I'm saying that federal subsidies for poor states should not be earmarked for specific projects like education.

There's no reason to involve the federal level more than necessary. See https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Subsidiarity

Re: Research finds no gender bias in academic science

#66
post #3

“It’s important to get a grip on what’s going on today and not what was going on in 1985,” Amen. Some don’t agree though. They say we should favor historically mistreated groups because it’s important context. Yet, in higher ed this often entails favoring the child of doctors who will help diversity numbers over the poor white male. I believe the culture wars would decrease dramatically if we’d drop the identity poli…

I agree. Old school leftists were smart enough to understand that being rich is the ultimate privilege, nothing else comes close. Help the poor, and you will also help minorities which are poor due to historical racism, slavery and so on. Help people based on their skin colour/ethnicity, and you'll unnecessarily make all the poor, unprivileged people not included very bitter, increasing political divisions, racism an…

There's no reason to think that the European style model works in Europe. Most of Europe is facing dire demographic issues.

Re: Research finds no gender bias in academic science

#67

Man that is not a great headline from Inside Higher Ed. In the discussion section the authors explicitly layout that this is a specific slice they are looking at not all of Academic Science. "Before we summarize our findings below, we reiterate a caveat noted throughout this article: The failure to support specific claims of bias does not deny the possibility that broader, systemic barriers against women in the acade…

That reads largely like a standard academic paper disclaimer. It’s standard to include a statement about things the authors didn’t explore as a way to set the context and also head off trivial objections. It’s unreasonable to expect them to have surveyed everything everywhere, so highlighting the boundaries of where they stopped is reasonable.

The part at the end hints that they did find bias, but in the opposite direction of what was assumed:

> But when it comes to specific claims about biased grant reviewers, search committee members, journal editors, and letter writers, the claims of antifemale bias were not supported, and in one case (tenure-track hiring), the data actually supported the opposite conclusion—that of pro-female hiring bias. This pro-female hiring advantage has continued after the closing of our inclusionary period, 2020 (Henningsen et al, 2021; Solga et al., 2023)."

Re: Research finds no gender bias in academic science

#69
post #3

“It’s important to get a grip on what’s going on today and not what was going on in 1985,” Amen. Some don’t agree though. They say we should favor historically mistreated groups because it’s important context. Yet, in higher ed this often entails favoring the child of doctors who will help diversity numbers over the poor white male. I believe the culture wars would decrease dramatically if we’d drop the identity poli…

> I believe the culture wars would decrease dramatically if we’d drop the identity politics and simply say: let’s help the poor.

That's a wonderful idea, but the elites need sexism and racism as perennial bogeymen as they can always protest, "I'm not racist, I'm not sexist" But the elites cannot reasonably say, "I'm not biased against poor people."

Have you listened to any recent Planet Money episodes? It's racism all the things. They hardly blame the rich or the elites--don't want to irritate your customers.

Re: Research finds no gender bias in academic science

#70
post #65
post #61

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That’s what I said, but from the other end. I started with fixed Federal subsidies (which actually transfers money from wealthy states to poor states) then individual states can optionally set higher limits by adding their own money too.

I'm saying that federal subsidies for poor states should not be earmarked for specific projects like education. There's no reason to involve the federal level more than necessary. See https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Subsidiarity

There’s merit to this view, but it lacks wisdom.

Why send money just because?

People are then going to ask why they are sending the money instead of lowering federal taxes and increasing state taxes.

The truthful answer “we’re taking money from your state and giving it to another state to subsidize them” is going to tick off the rich states and lead to resentment.

Further, they will still be left asking “why do they need my money?” and “what are they spending my money on?”

Saying “we’re making sure all kids get a decent education” Is much more palatable than “whatever they feel like” even though the money no longer allocated to education is then spent on whatever they feel like.

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