When I grew up in South Africa admission to college depended on, and only on, the grades you got in high school (assuming of course that you were white). No essays, no sports, no nothing
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Perhaps the first step should be, here, not for universities to change their sdmission standards but to be totally honest and open about what their admission standards are
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Replying to @EmanuelDerman
As always, the nub of the whole matter is money. If the survival of universities depends upon their income, and their income depends upon the donations of wealthy alumni, then universities will tend to admit those students they judge most likely to become wealthy alumni donors.
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Replying to @MathPrinceps @EmanuelDerman
This economically rational behavior is hard to acknowledge openly, however, without imperiling the (enormous) tax advantages universities enjoy as non-profit corporations (as well as the status they enjoy as disinterested sponsors of scholarship and learning.)
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Replying to @MathPrinceps
Yes, I kind of give up. I cannot see any solution except a societal change. Again, when I was in undergrad: an English degree was s route to a high school teacher; sociology to a social worker; math to PhD rarely, or to math teacher. Etc. college wasn’t a route to status per se
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Replying to @EmanuelDerman
I would maintain, again, that at the heart of the whole business is simply money. Is higher education a public good, like the interstate highway system? Or is it a luxury? For the past forty years, state and federal budgets have implicitly defined higher education as a luxury.
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Replying to @MathPrinceps @EmanuelDerman
In response, universities have become ever more like luxury brands, and ever more dependent upon income from alumni donations; students become ever more like customers, and customers (especially the wealthiest ones) are always right; if you have your hand out, you can't moralize.
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I think it's all quite simple, really. We get what we pay for, and reap what we sow. By failing to support higher education, we've left its support to the rich. And the rich aren't disinterested; they demand (and get) preferences. And these grease a slippery slope of corruption.
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