College Board Drops Plans For SAT Student 'Adversity Scores' (nbcnews.com) 131
The College Board is abandoning its plan to assign an adversity score to every student who takes the SAT college admissions test, after facing criticism from educators and parents. Instead, it will try to capture a student's social and economic background in a broad array of data points (Warning: source paywalled, alternative source). The new tactic is called Landscape and doesn't combine the metrics into a single score. The Wall Street Journal reports: The original tool, called the "environmental context dashboard," combined about 15 socio-economic metrics from a student's high school and neighborhood to create something college admission officers called an "adversity score." Landscape is designed to help colleges compare an applicant's test scores to other students in their high school and beyond, the College Board said. It also aims to give a picture of the quality of the school and relative wealth and stability of the neighborhood.
Six "challenge factors" provide the "summary neighborhood challenge indicator" and the "summary high school challenge indicator," according to the College Board. The six factors are college attendance, household structure, median family income, housing stability, education levels and crime. Colleges have long considered students' high schools and neighborhoods when making admissions decisions, but with more applications coming from more places, incorporating consistent information about every high school and neighborhood becomes difficult, according to college admissions officers. Colleges will receive more than 10 million applications form students attending more than 30,000 high schools. Admissions officers who tested Landscape estimate they lack high school information for about 25% of all applications, the College Board said.
Six "challenge factors" provide the "summary neighborhood challenge indicator" and the "summary high school challenge indicator," according to the College Board. The six factors are college attendance, household structure, median family income, housing stability, education levels and crime. Colleges have long considered students' high schools and neighborhoods when making admissions decisions, but with more applications coming from more places, incorporating consistent information about every high school and neighborhood becomes difficult, according to college admissions officers. Colleges will receive more than 10 million applications form students attending more than 30,000 high schools. Admissions officers who tested Landscape estimate they lack high school information for about 25% of all applications, the College Board said.
So.. (Score:2)
...so instead of synthesizing a single datapoint from multiple criteria, we will synthesize multiple data points. Problem solved.
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Makes sense to me! You aren't facing "adversity", just think of it as a "challenge". Your parents are drug addicts? What a challenge!
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It doesn't matter how many data points it includes, the result remains a lie.
Why should a college or employer care? They are trying to hire the best candidate and all this does is create the illusion that a lesser student did as well as someone who actually earned that score.
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...what? SAT scores have been a minor consideration in college acceptance for at least 20 years. A minor tweak to a minor factor is basically meaningless in the big picture of college acceptance... and more meaningless to success in college or a career. Whether you are for or against "adversity" adjustments, don't get bother getting worked up, it's irrelevant, much like the College Board's opinions on pretty much anything.
Hold that pencil properly, jeez (Score:2)
Is the stock picture an illustration of how to hold a pencil the worst way possible?
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And some people can't even write well when properly held. :O
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4 days ago I would have agreed with you. Turns out someone I know grips it a weird way that and he's an artist so everything he does looks much nicer than the wonky scrawl I get with a normal grip. Buzzfeed has some nice pictures:
https://www.buzzfeed.com/julie... [buzzfeed.com]
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Money potential (Score:3, Interesting)
Essentially grading how much the student can pay, their parent(s) can pay, and how many federal grants/loans they can expect.
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More likely, they don't like your politics but like the politics of an adversity student, guess what, you are screwed and there are a lot of poor to ensure the political active middle class is silenced, shut up or no school for you kids.
No adversity score? Leave that to reality TV (Score:5, Interesting)
Example: The Voice
Premise: Lets find great singers and showcase talent!
Who do you think the show producers pick:
1) Excellent singer, emotionally stable, wholesome upbringing, no difficulties growing up, comfortable living arrangements, working easy hours, adversity score: low
2) Mediocre singer, emotionally unstable, $parent died/dying of liver cancer, lost house in bush fires, lived on street for 6 months, adversity score: high
I thought so.
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The second one. Duh.
Singing can be fixed by autotune, emotion can be fixed by drugs but nothing, literally nothing, beats a good bleedin' heart sob story background.
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Robert Ford, is that you???
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That actually makes business sense in that case though. The contestants are essentially content for their show, and so a story is good business. For your average business hiring a worker bee though a "story" is pointless and serves no use.
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False. Every Voice contestant starts with a sob story.
False choices... (Score:2)
Every biased system needs to present false choices. Why give anyone the proper information to argue about?
No one trusts the system to do people right. The system is far from fair. If there is enough money to go around, why keep anyone out of college? Everyone learned in college that to get what you want, you exaggerate and then meet in your perceived middle. Why would any system be different?
This system is entirely setup for certain people. You want to live in a certain neighborhood? You better
colleges for football and Basketball don't give an (Score:2)
colleges for football and Basketball don't give an dam how bad your SAT is If you can make the team. Yes this is at the D1 level.
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Re "No one trusts the system to do people"
The person doing the test can show they can be trusted to study.
Re "why keep anyone out of college?"
What would people who can't/won't learn do all day at college? 3 to 10 years of leisure time?
Re "entirely setup for certain people. "
People with the IQ needed to study? People who have shown they can study? The conscientious?
At a place for eduction?
Re "This stuff is just built in."
For average people who
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Knowing the work expected is not a biased system.
Re "No one trusts the system to do people"
The person doing the test can show they can be trusted to study.
Yes. People always represent themselves the most fairly.
Re "why keep anyone out of college?"
What would people who can't/won't learn do all day at college? 3 to 10 years of leisure time?
I'm talking about the people that would like to study that are denied because they are sold the idea that if it takes you longer to learn, you're inferior. I suppose I could have made that more clear.
Re "entirely setup for certain people. "
People with the IQ needed to study? People who have shown they can study? The conscientious?
At a place for eduction?
And legacies......and spelling. Society can run on those that take 5 or 6 years to study something. They may have to take care of Grandma. Society can run on people that got their degree at 50. They may have had a different path than you. If
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"We wouldn't need gimmicks in the system if the system was really open to all and there were opportunities for everyone."
You would if you were just of lesser intelligence or fucked off playing basketball, working on beats, or playing gangbanger instead of studying.
The soft bigotry of low expectations (Score:5, Insightful)
"It's okay that you didn't score very well; we figured you wouldn't, since you are part of the [$underrepresented] demographic."
Maybe this isn't the same kind of [$group]-ism as running around with signs saying "No [$underrepresented]s Need Apply", but it is injurious and it needs to be stopped. People rise...or fall...to the level of expectations placed upon them.
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I mean, I expect people raised in a poor neighborhood to do worse than people who went to a school that had SAT tutors on staff. And that definitely should be taken int account. I don't know why you jumped straight to underrepresented demographics, it takes into account class, etc. And doesn't care hor rare they are but account for things like being able to afford private school.
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I think you hit the nail on the head. The problem with demographics is that it's too encompassing. I still don't see how it's low expectations.
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I don't agree that this will cause people to aim lower. They still need to be exceptional among their peers, and capable of completing the course if they are admitted.
People do rise up to take these opportunities when offered, and end up excelling. I'm not seeing any evidence of consistent failure at the university level due to people joining the course when they aren't really qualified.
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Their peers include people who aren't "disadvantaged."
My first issue is that this is an academic benchmark, nothing but academics should factor in the score. This test is intended to show the "bottom line" of the balance sheet. Second is that schools and grants already target diversity recruitment. At this stage that is the whole point of anything calling for an essay, the best diversity sob story wins. Finally in the previous proposed metric they gave scores for higher crime which serves no purpose but to
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Concerning colleges ending up full of people of Asian heritage, it's the same question as how many Asian player made it into the NBA playing basketball. There were a few, But I'd be surprised if there were more than 10.
The real question nobody discusses: Is college - or the NBA - essential for a productive and satisfying life?
What gives me better career prospects: A Bachelor in American Literature Bachelor or being a craftsman like a roofer or an AC-technician?
makes sense (Score:3, Insightful)
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You got an alternative? Particularly at the college level?
Harvard does not have the power to change how High Schools are funded, which means the people with official qualifications for Harvard tend to be either from fairly high in the Anglo-Saxon elite or in non-Anglo-Saxon groups (Jews, Nigerian-Americans, most Asians, etc.) that have mastered the art of school. Either Harvard's not going to get anyone from another background, and they're gonna be sending the same relatively elite families through the Univ
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"You got an alternative? Particularly at the college level?"
Not implementing discrimination? This measure targets urban criminal cultures. If you are the good apple family, MOVE and stop focusing on whether or not people look like you. You can actually find decent schools in cheap and poor rural areas. If you refuse to move then become part of the effort that might take a couple generations to reform your culture. Stop focusing on non-functional racial characteristics altogether.
There is no functional advan
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If you are saying no to anyone you are, by definition, engaging in discrimination. You have simply switched from discriminating against people who don't fit Harvard's complex algorithm to discriminating against people who test poorly.
And in countries where the discriminate against poor test-takers tend to be dystopian hellscapes in High School, particularly if you're the poor kid who reads slow because he's dyslexic, so this is not a good idea.
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"If you are saying no to anyone you are, by definition, engaging in discrimination. You have simply switched from discriminating against people who don't fit Harvard's complex algorithm to discriminating against people who test poorly."
Against people who are unable to demonstrate academic achievement. That is a much better plan than discriminating against people based on race and this measure is designed to target areas that strongly correlate with race.
"And in countries where the discriminate against poor
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This is exactly what they do in most of Asia. It does not result in meritocracy, it results in rich people who can afford to pay for their little darlings into 13-hours-a-day test prep getting whatever they want. It's so bad that the only way India gets it to work is by giving each caste a different target score to get into each University.
So you're still looking for a solution that works.
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It's not a great tool, but it's one of the few we have.
There was a study done years ago that looked at children who were adopted. Black children adopted by white families tended not to come up to the same level as white kids (on average, with various caveats). By the time they are 2-3 years old it's already too late for them to recover from the disadvantage they suffered without intervention.
Ideally the fix would be to address the problem right from conception. Make sure their mothers are eating properly an
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Seems to directly fly in the face of studies showing that black children relocated with white families to complete high school in white areas ended up showing comparable achievement.
There is no functional advantage or disadvantage to the criteria typically used for discrimination. There is no upside to "fixing" the racial distribution of wealth so why do it? If you have three bowls of M&Ms and one bowl is mostly blue while the other two are mostly red and green because of some previous effort to sort th
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There is no upside to "fixing" the racial distribution of wealth so why do it?
Because it's the morally right thing to do.
But actually there are many up-sides. Decreased poverty and inequality benefits everyone in society. It also helps the economy by expanding the talent pool and raising the average level of ability among employees.
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"Because it's the morally right thing to do."
Why? Doing something that gains us nothing on the basis of criteria that don't matter is morally right how?
"Decreased poverty and inequality benefits everyone in society."
We aren't talking about decreased poverty and economic inequality we are just talking about shifting it around to people who have the skin color that makes you morally happy.
"It also helps the economy by expanding the talent pool and raising the average level of ability among employees."
Everyone
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"Most people (I hope) feel that being disadvantaged by the circumstances of your birth is unfair and morally repugnant."
Life isn't fair. Some people are born stronger, smarter, taller, better looking, etc. That is just how life works. But you are talking about criteria like race and gender that don't have any significant advantage or disadvantage at all. Being born poor or to a broken home, etc. Sure that offers disadvantages, it also offers an advantage to the right person.
What is morally repugnant is clas
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But you are talking about criteria like race and gender that don't have any significant advantage or disadvantage at all.
Race is often used as a substitute for doing background checks on every applicant to ensure that they really are poor and disadvantaged. Sucks but there is a very strong correlation in some places.
Sure that offers disadvantages, it also offers an advantage to the right person.
Right, but clearly they are the exception and it's a big much to blame other people for not being exceptional enough to overcome what more affluent kids don't even have to worry about.
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"Right, but clearly they are the exception and it's a big much to blame other people for not being exceptional enough to overcome what more affluent kids don't even have to worry about."
If being affluent had anything to do with race/gender that might be relevant but it isn't.
"Race is often used as a substitute for doing background checks on every applicant to ensure that they really are poor and disadvantaged."
Applicant for what? Here is a secret, you don't need to do checks to see if people are really poor
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Fighting discrimination with discrimination never made any sense to me.
This isn't discrimination, it's multi-variate decision making to attempt to change the practice of picking the guy who scored best on an arbitrary test to someone who actually achieved something undertaking that same test.
Uh Oh! Here it comes to America! (Score:4, Interesting)
Re: Uh Oh! Here it comes to America! - Paranoia s (Score:5, Funny)
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Google did not create China's Social Credit Score system, or contribute to it in any way. Your link doesn't even mention Google.
You have a legitimate concern, we definitely don't want that kind of thing here. But lying about it just detracts from your point and makes you look like the kind of ranting paranoid nutjob that doesn't help our cause at all.
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What if the purpose is to pepper forums with "evil Google!" ideas to tear at it for financial or other reasons?
How would one map these trolls to find their goals?
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Research into that kind of thing on Twitter looked for common attributes. Stolen/fake profiles and images, the time of day that they post at (e.g. Moscow office hours), shared material like memes, links and phrases.
I don't think that's what's happening though. There are just plenty of people around here who honestly think that Google is Evil Corp and run by Dr. Evil, constantly scheming to take over the world. They just assume that ever action is malicious and that ever bad thing that happens is somehow Goo
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Common sense? Basic morality?
You do know that laws are made by politicians, right? What do those two have to do with them?
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Oh for fuck's sake. If you believe, in some warped reality, that the Constitution forbids equality of result, I offer you the challenge
Find the quote from the Constitution forbidding restriction on business practice
Any real American knows the proper formation of government is granting the government powers, not in assuming it has them unless restricted.
Equality (Score:4, Insightful)
Re:Equality (Score:5, Insightful)
There will never be equality of opportunity or equality of outcome. Both are utopian pipe dreams. It would be better to look for equality under the rule of law and leave it at that. This requires a merit (capitalist) based society and not a socialist based one.
Equality of opportunity -- At 5'4" I will never play for the MBA -- Give everybody equal amounts of sand and only a few will figure out how to become successful with it. Made worse when you account for population growth... Your amount of sand will continually decrease.
Equality of outcome -- The Democratic Socialist dream -- Unfortunately, the rule makers will do well, everybody else will live in equal poverty. History has shown this lesson many times. Oddly enough, this is also true with our current system of Cronyism. Brought about because the Socialist keep injecting their ideology into what was our capitalist society.'
So if Colleges switched over to a merit based enrollment, the Asians would take the majority of slots at Harvard. I am ok with that. They work hard to prove themselves. Our society will improve overall with the people who can do the best being allowed to flourish in the best colleges. The rest of us can still be successful in State Colleges, or even just a trade school.
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There will never be equality of opportunity or equality of outcome. Both are utopian pipe dreams. It would be better to look for equality under the rule of law and leave it at that. This requires a merit (capitalist) based society and not a socialist based one.
There will never be no crime. A crime-free society is a utopian pipe dream. We should just privatize the cops, let the market decide what an appropriate price for police protection is.
We have seen that a capitalist system creates vast inequality and actively works against equality of opportunity. People with money use it to ensure that their children have an advantage, while simultaneously ensuring that other kids don't. If capitalism was running schools, what do you imagine schools in less affluent areas w
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You mean like what happens in Socialist and Communist systems?
You mean like what happens in Socialist and Communist systems?
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Those are capitalist nations. Jfc what do they teach kids nowadays?
The argument is how much tax burden should be placed on industry and individuals, while otherwise leaving industry free to be the unparalleled generator of economic might modern, wealthy societies achieve.
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The Nordic model [wikipedia.org] is a kind of capitalist-socialist hybrid. Again, by US standards it's far left - socialized healthcare, a strong welfare state, high levels of unionization that is encouraged by the government, strong worker protections, strong focus on human rights and social justice, relatively high levels of taxation etc.
Business is of course very highly regulated, and taxed.
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Those countries are also among the most racially and culturally homogeneous populations on the planet.
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How do you know that? Sweden doesn't even publish statistics on its ethnic make-up, for example.
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Equality of opportunity does not mean making everyone equal. If you want that, read Harrison Bergeron for why it's a bad idea: The only way you can even people out is by lowering whoever sticks out to the lowest common denominator.
What you can do, though, is take away artificial limitations. Giving everyone the same chance to enter a college means that the only thing that determines success is their own ability to master the curriculum.
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At 5'4" I will never play for the MBA
Don't sell yourself short. They aren't generally known for their athletic ability.
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Isn't this equality of opportunity, as in the opportunity to study at university? Some people have less opportunity to do that under a purely SAT based system, so other factors can be taken in to account to see if they meet the standard needed to take advantage of that opportunity.
Same as things like scholarships which provide equality of opportunity for those without the financial means.
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Two students with an equal IQ* but one has a private tutor and goes to a really good school, while the other goes to a crap school, do not have an equal opportunity to learn and eventually go to university.
In other words, by the time they get to apply for a place at university they already have a systemic disadvantage.
*IQ is BS but you take my point here.
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(a) Equality of opportunity (b) Equality of outcome.... Pick one
Everybody's always talking about equality of of opportunity or equality of outcome, but you seldom ever hear about equality of effort.
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It's about freedom to pursue happiness, said freedom being a novelty historically, and still denied to most on Earth.
Go, you are unburdened from dictatorship and corruption squashing your endeavors. Live long and prosper.
If some idiot politician, pursuing equality of outcomes destroys freedom and brings it under the yoke of politicians, all is lost. Evidence: history
Re: Equality (Score:2)
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Equality of opportunity means that getting into college is equally easy or hard, no matter your background, upbringing, ethnicity, religion, social status or any other factor you may choose.
Equality of outcome means that getting through college is equally easy or hard, no matter if you are able to grasp the subject or have just enough IQ to not crap on the rector's dinner table.
See the difference?
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Adversity score masks underlying issues (Score:2, Interesting)
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Is anyone prevented on the day from taking the test? The test for everyone all over the USA?
Re "purely merit-based" would be the same test that everyone did?
Re "often slant against" Its the same test. On average people who did their set academic work for years will not find the test unexpected on the day.
Re "readiness for college" is all about the ability to study for years and to show some past ability to study.
Re "stud
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The US is money driven. Plain and simple. You can have the IQ of a doormat, if you have money, you're in. Not only in some relevant college, but also in the relevant circles to be handed around from one cushy job to another.
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Capitalism and Communism have a lot in common, the differences are mostly in the details. In both systems, your success in the higher echelons depends on how well connected you are, the difference is only in who the "elite" is. Otherwise, for the grunts it's pretty much the same shit, work your ass off for them or get your ass handed to you.
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Except with capitalism you can work your ass off, save your money, and buy a new car.
With communism, your neighbors will suspect that you're a criminal and shun you, or report you to the party officials.
My source is my wife, who grew up in Poland.
"Adversity Score" (Score:2)
“You think our chief job is inventing new words. But not a bit of it! We’re destroying words—scores of them, hundreds of them, every day. We’re cutting language down to the bone You don’t grasp the beauty of the destruction of words. Do you know that Newspeak is the only language in the world whose vocabulary gets smaller every year?”
“Syme will be vaporized. He is too intelligent. He sees too clearly and speaks too plainly. The Party does not like such people. One day he will disappear. It is written in his face.”
The problem was that they were being too direct, too transparent with their racism.
Re: "Adversity Score" (Score:2)
Or maybe they ran the numbers ten different ways, and found that children of working poor deplorable families scored higher on adversity than the intended beneficiaries of this program. So program gets dropped. Gotta keep those filthy deplorables from getting uppity.
Ya know, I'm old school and maybe old fashioned (Score:3)
Back in my days (when the snow was this high and we had to walk to school (and back!) uphill without shoes and all that) admission to colleges was based on whether or not you had the brain power to do it. And behold, our colleges and universities still work that way.
There's no tuition fee (ok, there is, IIRC about 300 bucks a year or something to discourage people from signing up just for the benefits some stores and banks offer to students), and there is literally thousands of people trying every year. Dropout rates are insane (in some programs as high as 90%) simply because nobody gives a fuck about you. If you're not up to it, step aside, there's 10 others that want your spot. Nobody is holding your hand, nobody is "guiding" you and nobody cares if you're black, white or green-purple polka dotted, what matters is can you meet the curriculum criteria. Can you understand what is taught, can you get your shit together, get organized, be prepared and ready, because nobody cares whether you actually go to tests or whether you don't. If you don't want to or cannot or must really go to a protest today, well that's fine, it's your choice alone. Step aside, there's... you know.
Who gives a fuck where you come from? I am all for giving everyone equal chances to get into a university, but equality means that EVERYONE gets EQUAL chances to get in. Whether you get through should depend only on whether or not you can actually grasp the subject and master the degree requirements. Otherwise, the degree becomes utterly worthless and even worse, you actually penalize those students who come from a rough background who actually master the subject, because whoever supposedly hires them will look at their degree, look at their background and immediately think that the reason they got it was due to their background, not their merit.
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This is bad news for the CollegeBoard that runs the SAT tests because colleges are looking for those high graduation rates and good jobs for their students. If the SAT isn't a good predictor of that (i.e. colleges have to fa
An Affirmative Action Leg Up May Hurt Your Chances (Score:2)
Want to Be a Doctor? A Scientist? An Engineer? An Affirmative Action Leg Up May Hurt Your Chances [ssrn.com]
This is 21st century affirmative action (Score:2)
Can't wait to see a court battle after some kind of bitter disgruntled applicants and their parents find out that their college admission was rejected despite having better school grades and sat score than others who were admitted.
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Who wants to fly a plane with a challenged pilot? (Score:2)
If a business wants the absolute best candidate for a given job, it is now facing increasing opposition and additional items to consider other than performance for the job they're hiring them for.
Imagine if airline companies would follow that hiring practice by not hiring the most competent pilot, but the most "challenged" pilot from an "adverse" background who was able to pass the grade.
Faced with the choice of two airlines, who would fly "adversity airlines" instead of "most competent pilots airline"?
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You sound bitter. You will almost always do better in your career with a college degree than without one. *IF* you can afford the degree that is, and I do understand that college degrees are much more expensive than they used to be even after accounting for inflation. But I feel that if you can afford the degree then it is generally better to get one than to do with out. You'll go further, get more promotions, and likely be more adaptable to changing job demands. Even if you learn nothing at all in colle
Re:US colleges have turned to shit (Score:5, Insightful)
Sure, the piece of paper has value, but the empty experience of modern education remains firmly irksome.
Re:US colleges have turned to shit (Score:5, Insightful)
If you only signed up for shit that you already knew and didn't challenge you, well who the fuck can you blame but yourself?
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I know VERY few people that actually do what they do in real life jobs, that have much directly to do with their college degrees.
It seems for most I know, that college was a piece of paper to get your foot in the door for first jobs, but after that, it is just resume experience and networking.
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I find knowledge to be highly fungible. Meaning, there is a symmetry to life, a consistency across fields, concepts, and applications. I blend knowledge of military strategy, computing, sociology, economics, biology, physics, history, and etc in my approach to addressing technical problems.
It's a matter of abstraction.
Re:US colleges have turned to shit (Score:5, Insightful)
YYou will almost always do better in your career with a college degree than without one.
True for useful degrees like engineering or medicine.
However what happens if you compare a degree in women's studies or American literature to becoming a craftsman like a mechanic, electrician or roofer?
Here the college degree is in nearly all cases a worse choice, even if Starbucks will prefer for the job as barista the candidate with the liberal arts degree. The craftsman can apply for better paying jobs.
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Career is not the first job. So what, you have a degree in Women's Studies. But you also took other classes. Now when it's time to hand out promotions, do they pick the person with only the GED, or the person with a college degree? Plus one that's had to do a lot of writing at college level, probably had to do advanced math, and definitely had to dive in head first into complicated stuff and learn it quickly and not the slow intros like high school classes.
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Now when it's time to hand out promotions, do they pick the person with only the GED, or the person with a college degree?
In my experience, once you're past the entry level, for promotions it matters more how you sell yourself to those in power than what kind of degree you have. Sure, they often tell you the other guy was chosen because he had a degree, but those are just white lies to make it look fairer why they chose the other guy they liked better. If you're the one with the degree and the chosen guy didn't have it, it'll be his experience, his drive, his attitude, his visions, his broader background knowledge. These reaso
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Career is not the first job. So what, you have a degree in Women's Studies. But you also took other classes. Now when it's time to hand out promotions
Maybe for a doctor or lawyer? But for most people whatever you did last week has more relevance to a potential promotion than a college degree.
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So, Aiice, Bob, and Charlie are all being considered for the same job or promotion, but one of them does not have a college degree. Then...?
Now I know in the past that often your maximum pay might depend upon whether you had a degree or not. I had a manager once who was very competant and an expert, but she was pushed out of her job because she didn't have a degree and thus didn't fit the corporate mold. I don't know of companies still do this, but I suspect some will.
I'm not saying that any of this is fa
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Also, while the manual labor guys brag about hourly wage, you've also gotta consider the things they don't like talking about, like getting hurt, exposure to environmental hazards and physical discomforts, layoffs, and the damage your body accumulates after a lifetime of labor.
Not saying that everyone should be white collar, just that there are more considerati
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However what happens if you compare a degree in women's studies
Why would you compare a degree which can't crack a single digit thousands to something normal and popular? People love using Women's Studies as a sign of what is wrong with education today, but fail to point out it makes up something like 0.1% of actual education. A true rounding error and well within the margin of people award "proper" degrees who will none the less fail to do anything of use.
Re: (Score:2)
You forgot the golden rule.