"Poison Ivy" - The Economist

[koooldavid]

I thought this was an interesting and true article about how top universities in the US choose their students.  I was surprised by the statistics it offered on the number of "legacy" spots these colleges held open for under-performing children of alumni.  When it talked about all the programs that seem like harmless scholarships but are really

Comments

[arturus]

Hampshire's not free of this sort of bias, although they don't encourage it like the other schools do. The sheer expense of this place is one factor, and a mostly unavoidable one, even with financial aid. Three of the other four colleges here are similarly expensive, and we still have a lower proportion of minorities than those schools, particually with regard to asians. I think the general feeling as to that is that it's a self-selection bias, that, following along with stereotypes of asian educational mores, they are less likely to choose a non-traditional school

[koooldavid]

Self selection is an interesting topic. Some people like to ignore it and get mad at you if you bring it up, but I would have to agree that the culture you grow up in can lead to self selection. For instance, take the business school that I go to . . . we have so many Asians that everyone else is literally a minority . . . and not just any Asians, either . . . I would guess that fully half the students in the finance department are Asian American from Northern New Jersey or a very specific area in the "San Francisco Bay Area." Northern New Jersey could almost be explained by the geographical proximity (although there is almost no one here from Connecticut, even though it is the same distance), but it seems very strange that such a huge chunk come from one little area of California, 3,000 miles away.

On the legacy thing, I wonder if it is better that the schools give legacy students an advantage, considering the amounts that their parents are probably willing to contribute . . . maybe it helps everybody?

[arturus]

It's a possibility, although it depends on what your focus is. Encouraging legacy students can be a good thing for the financial security of the school, which in turn allows for the school to better provide for other students. However, for a school like hampshire, that's still pretty unacceptable, given that every legacy student who gets in is one less more legitimate student who can be accomodated reasonably. Over-enrollment is a big issue here.

It's also largely the case that lack of money is not our primary issue, it's the way we handle the money. Unless reforms to the buracracy of my school are made, more money isn't going to improve the student experience here at all. Money just seems to dissapear once Hampshire gets a hold of it.

[koooldavid]

hahaha I hear that. I see some of the crappy classroms at NYU and I think . . . I'm giving them $33k a year for THIS? At least the dean's office is nice . . . in fact, all of the administrative buildings are relatively shiney . . . thank god for university administrative posts; otherwise some of these people might run for politics!