Asians: Too Smart For Their Own Good?

[Terralthra]

My understanding is that instructors have leeway for what books they may use in their courses,

Are you homeschooled?

In Los Angeles at least, instructors are provided with textbooks and books by the school, already purchased. Instructors can give students materials of their own choosing, but it would be an out of pocket expense. Districts, state, and federal organizations and departments create curricula and fund curricula.

That's in secondary school. In college classes, Haruko is quite correct.

As for banning the books...that's a somewhat misleading definition of "banned." You can still go to Arizona, walk into an appropriately well-stocked book store, and buy this book. It's "banned" in that it can't be listed as a course-required textbook by any publicly-funded university class.

It's still utterly ridiculous reactionary bullshit, but that doesn't make it quite the same as "Arizona bans x book!"

[Crown]

I still don't understand how 'extracurricular activities' are used to determine your suitability for higher education.

The justification Broomstick gave isn't totally empty. Looking at my own students, it's partly a measure of how well you can keep your academics going while simultaneously spending 5-20 hours a week on organized hobbies. Which is actually significant. I can tell a lot about a student by knowing whether they get C's without extracurriculars, C's with lots of extracurriculars, or A's with or without extracurriculars.

But your answer is complete bullshit. It doesn't actually justify why someone who did extra-carricular activity should be more 'worthy' of higher education than someone who didn't and got the same grades.

Two students could both get GPAs of 4.0 one worked with the deaf and blind and was a candy stripper and fed the homeless during thanksgiving, the other didn't.

WHY does the first example get preferential treatment for placements in higher education?

[Broomstick]

Because with a suck of a safety net the wealthy/gifted/most able are expected to take up the slack of providing just enough assistance to the poor and downtrodden to avoid outright rebellion?

(only slightly sarcastic, that)

I don't know, it's just been the standard for probably the last 50 years. High grades + extracurricular activities is valued more highly than high grades alone.

[Fingolfin_Noldor]

I always thought admission policies are more riddled with pure laziness in thinking rather than anything else. Admission officers need some excuse to throw a chunk of admissions out, while allowing the school to earn quite a bit of cash out of the whole lot.

[Pelranius]

My apologies to Haruko and Weemadando for butting in, but curiosity got the better of me.

It's all based on merit. The merit that your parents can bring via their wallet.

Yep. Along those lines, the following about "legacy admits," or students admitted because their parents are university alumni (or donors), is worth quoting again (emphasis mine):

The debate over preferential treatment of minorities continues even today. For many, the use of race as a criterion is a bogus argument, so the controversy will remain. On the other hand, Chicanos point out that other groups, such as veterans, the children of alumni, the children of donors to the university, or those over 65 years of age, receive preferential treatment. Today society has ramps for the handicapped, which some people would call preferential treatment. According to Alex Liebman, for Princeton's class of 2001 the overall acceptance rate was 13 percent; the statistic for "legacy admits" (children of alumni) was 41 percent; and that for minorities (which includes Asians) was 26 percent. The assumption was that Latinos and African Americans were not qualified and that the legacy admits were qualified, which was not always the case. At Harvard University during the 1990s, the children of alumni were almost four times more likely to be accepted than other prospective students. Harvard University admitted about 40 percent of its entering class using the criterion that the student was the son or daughter of an alumnus or donor. In the same period, 66 percent of children-of-alumni applicants were accepted by the University of Pennsylvania whereas the overall acceptance percentage was 11. Admissions officers saved 25 percent of Notre Dame's first-year class openings for the children of alumni. The preferential treatment given to legacy admits highlights the hypocrisy and racial bias of those who challenged affirmative action.

Source: Rodolfo Acuña, Occupied America: A History of Chicanos (p. 269), 7e Pearson Custom Library. San Bernardino Valley College.

This book is banned in Arizona, by the way. Just think that is interesting.

This passage gives interesting statistics then applies an overwrought analysis.

1. Disapproval of affirmative action doesn't imply approval of legacies.

2. It doesn't say how many legacies were actually admitted. If general admittances are 99% of the intake then doubling the proportion of non-whites admitted (presumably artificially) is much more significant than quadrupling the proportion of legacies admitted relative to white general applicants.

Umm, you might want to work on your reading comprehension. "Harvard University admitted about 40 percent of its entering class using the criterion that the student was the son or daughter of an alumnus or donor." And "Admissions officers saved 25 percent of Notre Dame's first-year class openings for the children of alumni."

40% and 25% are pretty significant numbers of the student population, wouldn't you say?

3. Legacies are a private policy adopted by autonomous universities. Affirmative action is public policy.

Still very much a question for public policy, even when done by "autonomous universities". Those "autonomous universities" received public funding and preferential tax treatment (see the Title IX business).

4. Since legacy admittance requires you to already have and pay far more money than the education is actually worth, it's unclear how this is entrenching racial advantages. Rather, it should be eroding them.

Care to explain the logic behind that?

Any reasonable person would realize that regardless of the "paying far more money than the education is actually worth" complete bullshit, a white legacy (presumably the vast majority of legacies at this time and day would be white) is taking an admissions spot that could otherwise have potentially gone to a minority. Thus, the legacy is more likely to continue preparation white advantages simply by being more likely to be admitted to said university than a minority.

[Broomstick]

Hmmm.... Although yes, the use of legacy admissions could sustain entrenched racial attitudes, in actual practice this may not be the case. Harvard was admitting Native Americans even before the US existed as a separate nation (a number of prominent Cherokee leaders and their offspring were Harvard graduates). I'm not entirely sure, but I think Obama might also have been a legacy admission. I realize, of course, that these may be exceptions, but Harvard, at least, has a long history of admitting people who aren't White Anglo-Saxon Protestants. I don't think the legacy system really got going until after WWI, but even so, non-whites such as Isoroku Yamamoto were admitted to Harvard in those years.

Of course, even if Harvard wasn't using legacy's strictly to promote a certain racial make up in the student body that doesn't mean other colleges weren't doing that. Even if Harvard's policy wasn't developed from a racist motivation the effect could have been negative in regards to certain groups.

[Pelranius]

Hmmm.... Although yes, the use of legacy admissions could sustain entrenched racial attitudes, in actual practice this may not be the case. Harvard was admitting Native Americans even before the US existed as a separate nation (a number of prominent Cherokee leaders and their offspring were Harvard graduates). I'm not entirely sure, but I think Obama might also have been a legacy admission. I realize, of course, that these may be exceptions, but Harvard, at least, has a long history of admitting people who aren't White Anglo-Saxon Protestants. I don't think the legacy system really got going until after WWI, but even so, non-whites such as Isoroku Yamamoto were admitted to Harvard in those years.

Of course, even if Harvard wasn't using legacy's strictly to promote a certain racial make up in the student body that doesn't mean other colleges weren't doing that. Even if Harvard's policy wasn't developed from a racist motivation the effect could have been negative in regards to certain groups.

Ah, I see (forgotten that Obama Sr. went to Harvard).

Out of curiosity, are legacies more common in undergraduate than graduate school?

[Stark]

Because with a suck of a safety net the wealthy/gifted/most able are expected to take up the slack of providing just enough assistance to the poor and downtrodden to avoid outright rebellion?

(only slightly sarcastic, that)

I don't know, it's just been the standard for probably the last 50 years. High grades + extracurricular activities is valued more highly than high grades alone.

Do you think this is some kind of positive attribute of a deliberate system? It looks to me like the outcome of a thoughtless lack of a system that has simply become a part of culture over time. If someone had been smart enough (well, honestly looking to reward merit enough) to use a decent ranking system instead it would probably never have emerged at all.

Now that it has, I guess people are contractually obligated to defend it as a 'good' system with 'benefits'.

[Broomstick]

Er... no, I wasn't defending it (this is the second time I've said it in this thread). Reporting how things are is not the same as defending them. I do wish people understood the distinction.

Never thought much about it. When I was going through the college selection system I was aware of it because it was on all the applications (both "list extracurricular activities" and "have any of your family members attended this college/university?"). Haven't thought much about it since because I don't have kids so I'm not involved in the educational system in this country. As far as the thread goes, I'm content to sit back and watch the debate.

[Hawkwings]

The thinking is that people who are academically excellent are a dime a dozen, and grades are no indication of actual success out in the workforce. Instead, you want to bring in people who are not only academically excellent, but also artistic, generous, entrepreneurial, vivacious, etc. The chances of them succeeding in the real world are higher, which brings more accolades and money to your school. It's really quite simple reasoning.

[Pelranius]

The thinking is that people who are academically excellent are a dime a dozen, and grades are no indication of actual success out in the workforce. Instead, you want to bring in people who are not only academically excellent, but also artistic, generous, entrepreneurial, vivacious, etc. The chances of them succeeding in the real world are higher, which brings more accolades and money to your school. It's really quite simple reasoning.

*Takes a break from Shrooming a Nazi Han Chinese on another forum* Yes, those (or more accurately, one) actually exist.

Indeed.

For example, you could simply prepare a person by repetitive learning, given enough time and money, to improve their SAT scores without necessarily raising their other intellectual capacities.

A lot what makes for successful persons is social skills, skills that often don't translate very well into academic performance (especially at the secondary level). And colleges like to shape people's worldviews and challenge to think of how they can change society. Extracurricular can often be annoyingly academically irrelevant, but they do bring another layer for gauging an applicant's personality and goals.

[Nephtys]

The thinking is that people who are academically excellent are a dime a dozen, and grades are no indication of actual success out in the workforce. Instead, you want to bring in people who are not only academically excellent, but also artistic, generous, entrepreneurial, vivacious, etc. The chances of them succeeding in the real world are higher, which brings more accolades and money to your school. It's really quite simple reasoning.

This sadly, also is the case.

I'm an Electrical Engineer, and it was one of the harder undergraduate degrees around. There's lots of people who could do it. Did it make them capable engineers? Nope.

Likewise, while I was at Graduate School working on engineering projects. Many were academically excellent. But did this make them good and capable engineers? No way in hell. I've never seen as terrible and unproductive group as that, save one job in Government/Military R&D. There certainly is a lot to be said for 'soft' stats, ambition and initiative that don't make themselves apparent in simple grades and academic achievement.

[Iron Bridge]

Umm, you might want to work on your reading comprehension. "Harvard University admitted about 40 percent of its entering class using the criterion that the student was the son or daughter of an alumnus or donor." And "Admissions officers saved 25 percent of Notre Dame's first-year class openings for the children of alumni."

40% and 25% are pretty significant numbers of the student population, wouldn't you say?

No, this is a trick reading comprehension question. It gives admit stats for some universities and legacy proportions for others, but never both for the same university. It comes closest with Harvard, but even there obfuscates by measuring one as children of alumni and donors and the other as just children of alumni.

I don't know if this guy is deliberately data mining or just not that competent, but from the information he gives it's impossible to conclude that legacy admits are significant. What we would rather want is, say, total % of admits that are legacies, total % of legacy applications that are admitted, and total % of all applications that are admitted for the top ~50 ranked universities.

But even then we would also need to compare the paper qualifications of legacy and non-legacy admits. It's implied that they should be comparable but we don't know that either.

The whole thing is a horrendous use of statistics to push a pre-conceived point.

3. Legacies are a private policy adopted by autonomous universities. Affirmative action is public policy.

Still very much a question for public policy, even when done by "autonomous universities". Those "autonomous universities" received public funding and preferential tax treatment (see the Title IX business).

I agree that state funding for eg. loans (though not research which is not done by ugrads) could be made contingent on not having legacy policies.

Otherwise, it's just free association. If Harvard wants to turn itself into a hereditary club then fine. We will quickly see that Harvard ceases to be a place serious people aspire to go, though.

4. Since legacy admittance requires you to already have and pay far more money than the education is actually worth, it's unclear how this is entrenching racial advantages. Rather, it should be eroding them.

Care to explain the logic behind that?

Any reasonable person would realize that regardless of the "paying far more money than the education is actually worth" complete bullshit, a white legacy (presumably the vast majority of legacies at this time and day would be white) is taking an admissions spot that could otherwise have potentially gone to a minority. Thus, the legacy is more likely to continue preparation white advantages simply by being more likely to be admitted to said university than a minority.

Maybe we just value a Harvard education differently - did you attend an elite university?

But my point is that for an unqualified candidate to plain buy a place at Harvard (which, from what I have heard, is probably possible) costs more than the actuarial value of a Harvard degree in terms of increased earnings.



e: although, all this is off the point. Opposition to affirmative action doesn't imply support for legacy policies (I oppose both, at least in so far as they are enforced or subsidised by the state), and affirmative action still fails as a counter to legacy policies because it still double-punishes poor white and asian kids who are just as unlikely to be legacies as poor black and hispanic kids.