Varsity Blues
Mar. 17th, 2019 06:52 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
ndrosenVarious articles and opinions have come out in reaction to the story about prominent parents using bribery and fraud to get their offspring into prestigious educational institutions. One point that has been made is that other rich parents accomplish similar things in ways that are not illegal, whether by making large donations to colleges, or by enabling their children to attend prep schools, practice particular sports and musical instruments, go on supposedly altruistic missions to help poor villages in Africa, take preparatory classes for the SAT, or hire consultants to help them write their personal essays. Another point which various commentators have made is that we should not complain about affirmative action for members of favored minority groups when much greater injustices are committed through affirmative action for legacies and other children of the rich.
I agree that it is not fair for the children of the rich to have advantages getting into prestigious universities, but I see no way to abolish this form of unfairness entirely without doing greater wrongs in other ways. I do not want to see all incomes equalized, or no education permitted except that provided by the state authorities, or the family abolished. As to affirmative action, there are a number of arguments against it which are not refuted by pointing to the advantages of the children of the one percent. For example, I do not think that we should divide and categorize people by ethnicity; also, an affirmative action admission is more likely to be a black child from a middle class family than a slum kid from Detroit who was effectively denied any chance at getting a good elementary and secondary education. Affirmative action also produces mismatches, where the applicant who could do well at an average state university is admitted to an Ivy League institution where he has to compete against young men and women with better brains and educational backgrounds, and therefore flounders. Then, while there is a moral case for giving a descendant of slaves a boost in competing for a place in college against a descendant of the people who owned his ancestors, and then kept them down with Jim Crow, there is not such a case for discriminating against the child of Indochinese refugees, or of working class white ethnics whose ancestors immigrated to the U.S. after the Civil War. Discrimination against Asian Americans is another academic scandal.
What can be done? One thing might be to emphasize that college isn’t for everyone. If you are neither strongly interested in the life of the mind, nor pursuing a career that genuinely requires tertiary education, you should not be pushed to borrow tens of thousands of dollars to attend a college where you probably won’t learn much, and may drop out without a degree, but with debt. You might do better to learn a blue collar trade, or attend coding boot camp. This would have to be accompanied by decreased use of college as a filter and form of signaling required or strongly encouraged to be hired for jobs that don’t actually call for a college education.
It might also be a good thing if college admission offices tried to do less, and only sought to judge applicants by their test scores, high school grades, and other tangible factors, to determine whether they seemed to have brains, prerequisite knowledge, and self-discipline to benefit from college, and not try to assess their personalities, mandolin playing, canoe-rowing, or semi-ghostwritten personal essays. This might reduce the ability of the rich to assist their not especially bright teenagers in standing out. I wouldn’t attempt to force the same standards on every college, though; some could emphasize grades and test scores, while others would be free to offer admission to a mandolin prodigy, or a young person with other evidence of real accomplishment that could not be reduced to numbers.
I agree that it is not fair for the children of the rich to have advantages getting into prestigious universities, but I see no way to abolish this form of unfairness entirely without doing greater wrongs in other ways. I do not want to see all incomes equalized, or no education permitted except that provided by the state authorities, or the family abolished. As to affirmative action, there are a number of arguments against it which are not refuted by pointing to the advantages of the children of the one percent. For example, I do not think that we should divide and categorize people by ethnicity; also, an affirmative action admission is more likely to be a black child from a middle class family than a slum kid from Detroit who was effectively denied any chance at getting a good elementary and secondary education. Affirmative action also produces mismatches, where the applicant who could do well at an average state university is admitted to an Ivy League institution where he has to compete against young men and women with better brains and educational backgrounds, and therefore flounders. Then, while there is a moral case for giving a descendant of slaves a boost in competing for a place in college against a descendant of the people who owned his ancestors, and then kept them down with Jim Crow, there is not such a case for discriminating against the child of Indochinese refugees, or of working class white ethnics whose ancestors immigrated to the U.S. after the Civil War. Discrimination against Asian Americans is another academic scandal.
What can be done? One thing might be to emphasize that college isn’t for everyone. If you are neither strongly interested in the life of the mind, nor pursuing a career that genuinely requires tertiary education, you should not be pushed to borrow tens of thousands of dollars to attend a college where you probably won’t learn much, and may drop out without a degree, but with debt. You might do better to learn a blue collar trade, or attend coding boot camp. This would have to be accompanied by decreased use of college as a filter and form of signaling required or strongly encouraged to be hired for jobs that don’t actually call for a college education.
It might also be a good thing if college admission offices tried to do less, and only sought to judge applicants by their test scores, high school grades, and other tangible factors, to determine whether they seemed to have brains, prerequisite knowledge, and self-discipline to benefit from college, and not try to assess their personalities, mandolin playing, canoe-rowing, or semi-ghostwritten personal essays. This might reduce the ability of the rich to assist their not especially bright teenagers in standing out. I wouldn’t attempt to force the same standards on every college, though; some could emphasize grades and test scores, while others would be free to offer admission to a mandolin prodigy, or a young person with other evidence of real accomplishment that could not be reduced to numbers.
no subject
Date: 2019-03-19 01:23 am (UTC)Note that a couple of the top-level colleges in the US have not had people trying to bribe their way in.
no subject
Date: 2019-03-19 02:05 am (UTC)As to making the coursework hard enough, I’m a little dubious. You have a point, but hard enough for whom? Some people who aren’t at the top end of the bell curve for brains and work ethic should still be able to attend a second or third tier college and get an education, so long as they’re not complete morons or Everclear majors. Some people who do have qualifications and a work ethic may have to work part time or more to pay for college. Some people who run into problems for various reasons at some point in their college years should not necessarily be drummed out of school altogether; they may be able to recover.
Northern Virginia Community College, near where I live, seems to provide some useful education to those who are interested, even though it isn’t MIT, and isn’t trying to be.
no subject
Date: 2019-03-19 02:34 am (UTC)Harvard students should not find the wait for the acceptance letter to be the most stressful part of their time there, but it seems that's how it is for many of them now. If they have to work for their degrees there'd be less interest in sneaking in.
no subject
Date: 2019-03-19 03:30 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2022-10-07 12:36 am (UTC)I think there are many cases where these 3 variables or factors have no relation to each other and/or are mutually exclusive.
For me personally, I’m not sure I was ever really “qualified” for any job which I have been hired; most of my coursework, for me, was not difficult (but the same can’t be said for exams); and if you saw me sometimes doing office work in pajamas or in between cooking or gardening or taking care of my cats, at least “questioning” my work ethic could be justified. 😂😂
Someone else could look at the same set of facts as they pertain to me, and arrive at a different outcome. It’s all very subjective.
I also look at universities as businesses (they are more than they are not) and never expected to learn anything in college, per se. Instead, my degree (anyone’s degree) is more like a membership card, or union card, to gain entry into certain types of employment.
If I hit rewind, I would tell my younger self to attend the *best* HVAC, woodworking, construction or vo-tech school you can find (or all of the above) …. When you get older you’ll thank yourself and not be at the mercy of electricians, plumbers and contractors, have very useful skills, and probably be employed for the rest of your life. ☺️👍🏼🤷🏻♀️😄
no subject
Date: 2022-10-07 02:16 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2022-10-07 12:15 pm (UTC)I sincerely hope for your kids immense success in their futures ☺️👍🏼🙏🏻 . And that they never believe anyone or anything that tries to tell them they can’t (*insert*), and try anyways. ☺️ Because they can. ☺️☺️☺️
I used to speak to high school classrooms about the subject of life after graduation, and one of the things I mention is what a job search can look like:
No no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no yes.
You just need to stay engaged to get to that last “yes” - which will come, 🙏🏻☺️ even if it feels like you’re treading water in torrential storm and bobbing for air. ☺️👏🏻 Attitude is (almost) everything. ☺️🐾🐾🐾🐾🐾
no subject
Date: 2019-03-19 08:06 pm (UTC)YES. You may be interested in my review of Lower Ed (also at https://50books-poc.dreamwidth.org/411335.html ).