Opening day of class
RW81233
Posts: 2,393
And this is what I get to read on the internet: http://www.boston.com/news/globe/editor ... ds/?page=1
At the elite colleges - dim white kids
By Peter Schmidt | September 28, 2007
AUTUMN AND a new academic year are upon us, which means that selective colleges are engaged in the annual ritual of singing the praises of their new freshman classes.
Surf the websites of such institutions and you will find press releases boasting that they have increased their black and Hispanic enrollments, admitted bumper crops of National Merit scholars or became the destination of choice for hordes of high school valedictorians. Many are bragging about the large share of applicants they rejected, as a way of conveying to the world just how popular and selective they are.
What they almost never say is that many of the applicants who were rejected were far more qualified than those accepted. Moreover, contrary to popular belief, it was not the black and Hispanic beneficiaries of affirmative action, but the rich white kids with cash and connections who elbowed most of the worthier applicants aside.
Researchers with access to closely guarded college admissions data have found that, on the whole, about 15 percent of freshmen enrolled at America's highly selective colleges are white teens who failed to meet their institutions' minimum admissions standards.
Five years ago, two researchers working for the Educational Testing Service, Anthony Carnevale and Stephen Rose, took the academic profiles of students admitted into 146 colleges in the top two tiers of Barron's college guide and matched them up against the institutions' advertised requirements in terms of high school grade point average, SAT or ACT scores, letters of recommendation, and records of involvement in extracurricular activities. White students who failed to make the grade on all counts were nearly twice as prevalent on such campuses as black and Hispanic students who received an admissions break based on their ethnicity or race.
Who are these mediocre white students getting into institutions such as Harvard, Wellesley, Notre Dame, Duke, and the University of Virginia? A sizable number are recruited athletes who, research has shown, will perform worse on average than other students with similar academic profiles, mainly as a result of the demands their coaches will place on them.
A larger share, however, are students who gained admission through their ties to people the institution wanted to keep happy, with alumni, donors, faculty members, administrators, and politicians topping the list.
Applicants who stood no chance of gaining admission without connections are only the most blatant beneficiaries of such admissions preferences. Except perhaps at the very summit of the applicant pile - that lofty place occupied by young people too brilliant for anyone in their right mind to turn down - colleges routinely favor those who have connections over those who don't. While some applicants gain admission by legitimately beating out their peers, many others get into exclusive colleges the same way people get into trendy night clubs, by knowing the management or flashing cash at the person manning the velvet rope.
Leaders at many selective colleges say they have no choice but to instruct their admissions offices to reward those who financially support their institutions, because keeping donors happy is the only way they can keep the place afloat. They also say that the money they take in through such admissions preferences helps them provide financial aid to students in need.
But many of the colleges granting such preferences are already well-financed, with huge endowments. And, in many cases, little of the money they take in goes toward serving the less-advantaged.
A few years ago, The Chronicle of Higher Education looked at colleges with more than $500 million in their endowments and found that most served disproportionately few students from families with incomes low enough to qualify for federal Pell Grants. A separate study of flagship state universities conducted by the Education Trust found that those universities' enrollments of Pell Grant recipients had been shrinking, even as the number of students qualifying for such grants had gone up.
Just 40 percent of the financial aid money being distributed by public colleges is going to students with documented financial need. Most such money is being used to offer merit-based scholarships or tuition discounts to potential recruits who can enhance a college's reputation, or appear likely to cover the rest of their tuition tab and to donate down the road.
Given such trends, is it any wonder that young people from the wealthiest fourth of society are about 25 times as likely as those from the bottom fourth to enroll in a selective college, or that, over the past two decades, the middle class has been steadily getting squeezed out of such institutions by those with more money?
A degree from a selective college can open many doors for a talented young person from a humble background. But rather than promoting social mobility, our nation's selective colleges appear to be thwarting it, by turning away applicants who have excelled given their circumstances and offering second chances to wealthy and connected young people who have squandered many of the advantages life has offered them.
When social mobility goes away, at least two dangerous things can happen. The privileged class that produces most of our nation's leaders can become complacent enough to foster mediocrity, and less-fortunate segments of our society can become resigned to the notion that hard work will not get them anywhere.
Given the challenges our nation faces, shouldn't its citizens be at least a little worried that the most selective public universities - state flagships - dominate the annual Princeton Review rankings of the nation's best party schools, as measured largely by drug and alcohol consumption and time spent skipping class and ditching the books?
Should Harvard, which annually turns away about 2,000 valedictorians and has an endowment of nearly $35 billion, be in the business of wasting its academic offerings on some students admitted on the basis of pedigree?
Peter Schmidt is a deputy editor of The Chronicle of Higher Education and author of "Color and Money: How Rich White Kids Are Winning the War Over College Affirmative Action."
At the elite colleges - dim white kids
By Peter Schmidt | September 28, 2007
AUTUMN AND a new academic year are upon us, which means that selective colleges are engaged in the annual ritual of singing the praises of their new freshman classes.
Surf the websites of such institutions and you will find press releases boasting that they have increased their black and Hispanic enrollments, admitted bumper crops of National Merit scholars or became the destination of choice for hordes of high school valedictorians. Many are bragging about the large share of applicants they rejected, as a way of conveying to the world just how popular and selective they are.
What they almost never say is that many of the applicants who were rejected were far more qualified than those accepted. Moreover, contrary to popular belief, it was not the black and Hispanic beneficiaries of affirmative action, but the rich white kids with cash and connections who elbowed most of the worthier applicants aside.
Researchers with access to closely guarded college admissions data have found that, on the whole, about 15 percent of freshmen enrolled at America's highly selective colleges are white teens who failed to meet their institutions' minimum admissions standards.
Five years ago, two researchers working for the Educational Testing Service, Anthony Carnevale and Stephen Rose, took the academic profiles of students admitted into 146 colleges in the top two tiers of Barron's college guide and matched them up against the institutions' advertised requirements in terms of high school grade point average, SAT or ACT scores, letters of recommendation, and records of involvement in extracurricular activities. White students who failed to make the grade on all counts were nearly twice as prevalent on such campuses as black and Hispanic students who received an admissions break based on their ethnicity or race.
Who are these mediocre white students getting into institutions such as Harvard, Wellesley, Notre Dame, Duke, and the University of Virginia? A sizable number are recruited athletes who, research has shown, will perform worse on average than other students with similar academic profiles, mainly as a result of the demands their coaches will place on them.
A larger share, however, are students who gained admission through their ties to people the institution wanted to keep happy, with alumni, donors, faculty members, administrators, and politicians topping the list.
Applicants who stood no chance of gaining admission without connections are only the most blatant beneficiaries of such admissions preferences. Except perhaps at the very summit of the applicant pile - that lofty place occupied by young people too brilliant for anyone in their right mind to turn down - colleges routinely favor those who have connections over those who don't. While some applicants gain admission by legitimately beating out their peers, many others get into exclusive colleges the same way people get into trendy night clubs, by knowing the management or flashing cash at the person manning the velvet rope.
Leaders at many selective colleges say they have no choice but to instruct their admissions offices to reward those who financially support their institutions, because keeping donors happy is the only way they can keep the place afloat. They also say that the money they take in through such admissions preferences helps them provide financial aid to students in need.
But many of the colleges granting such preferences are already well-financed, with huge endowments. And, in many cases, little of the money they take in goes toward serving the less-advantaged.
A few years ago, The Chronicle of Higher Education looked at colleges with more than $500 million in their endowments and found that most served disproportionately few students from families with incomes low enough to qualify for federal Pell Grants. A separate study of flagship state universities conducted by the Education Trust found that those universities' enrollments of Pell Grant recipients had been shrinking, even as the number of students qualifying for such grants had gone up.
Just 40 percent of the financial aid money being distributed by public colleges is going to students with documented financial need. Most such money is being used to offer merit-based scholarships or tuition discounts to potential recruits who can enhance a college's reputation, or appear likely to cover the rest of their tuition tab and to donate down the road.
Given such trends, is it any wonder that young people from the wealthiest fourth of society are about 25 times as likely as those from the bottom fourth to enroll in a selective college, or that, over the past two decades, the middle class has been steadily getting squeezed out of such institutions by those with more money?
A degree from a selective college can open many doors for a talented young person from a humble background. But rather than promoting social mobility, our nation's selective colleges appear to be thwarting it, by turning away applicants who have excelled given their circumstances and offering second chances to wealthy and connected young people who have squandered many of the advantages life has offered them.
When social mobility goes away, at least two dangerous things can happen. The privileged class that produces most of our nation's leaders can become complacent enough to foster mediocrity, and less-fortunate segments of our society can become resigned to the notion that hard work will not get them anywhere.
Given the challenges our nation faces, shouldn't its citizens be at least a little worried that the most selective public universities - state flagships - dominate the annual Princeton Review rankings of the nation's best party schools, as measured largely by drug and alcohol consumption and time spent skipping class and ditching the books?
Should Harvard, which annually turns away about 2,000 valedictorians and has an endowment of nearly $35 billion, be in the business of wasting its academic offerings on some students admitted on the basis of pedigree?
Peter Schmidt is a deputy editor of The Chronicle of Higher Education and author of "Color and Money: How Rich White Kids Are Winning the War Over College Affirmative Action."
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Comments
MOOCs are just the "eye opening point" of this whole process and paradigm shift, but in the next 10 years, we will see the tidal wave of change upon us of which MOOCs themselves are just the preliminary tremors.
But this mindset of a course anywhere at "anytime", with no obligations and\or requirements, combined with a re-jiggering of the credit\certification process will *finally* bring us to a close approximation of that great non-graded constantly-matriculating and entirely open university that Jefferson originally had in mind when he conceived the plans for UVA (a school now so rigid and class divided i wouldn't shit at it).
Students will soon find the value of their "traditional" college degrees all but null in value (i would argue many already have) with the exception (hopefully to change soon, too) of the traditional "professions" (law, engineering, medical, etc) which typically *require* a "degree" to sit for the "exam" which otherwise bars entrance to the "profession".
If I opened it now would you not understand?
Ummm, are the kids still going to get to party for 4 years?
"Kids" "party" for 4 years because they are at school for the wrong reason.
They developed NO critical thinking abilities in primary school, and were led like sheep to the financial slaughter of lifetime debt slavery for a worthless piece of paper that says they took a ride which they were barely cognizant of taking.
Only when "kids" are properly educated in to being young MEN and WOMEN ... and not overgrown vacuous children... will they be competent enough to make PROPER decisions FOR THEMSELVES and not because some authority figure tells them to go to college, at which point, being the overgrown vacuous idiot-children that they are, they will waste four years boozing and fucking the rest of their very small underutilized brains out, because they never truly grasped the enormity of the decision which they all but had MADE-FOR-THEM.
You go to school because YOU ***WANT*** TO LEARN.
Not because someone tells you to.
Just waiting for Inlet to jump in here and start railing on how government inflation in the student loan markets has ruined higher education for everyone.
If I opened it now would you not understand?
Umm, I'm thinking of a "leader" we had not too many years ago... you know, what's-his-name?
-Eddie Vedder, "Smile"
Heard a quote at lunch today "College is the new high school.....except it's not free"
...are those who've helped us.
Right 'round the corner could be bigger than ourselves.
Ummm...I went to college, got 2 degrees, left with no debt, parents only paid about $3000 total for me. And I got a good job working in my field of choice. Not worthless paper to me and no debt.
But I guess to each their own. To all you kids that don;t want a higher education out there....yes, yes I do want fries with that!!!
Toward the end of my first semester in college three or four of my new friends got together to fill out a form we had all received from the college which, among other things, asked the student's race. One of these friends, J.G., was a black guy. As we we're filling out the form, J.G. started to laugh and we asked him what was so funny. He said, "They want to know my race." One of us asked, "So what did you put down, J.?" He said, "I checked 'other' and wrote in 'nigger'".
J. is one of the coolest guys I've ever know. Here's to you J., wherever you are!
-Eddie Vedder, "Smile"
have fun indoctrinating them kids you lefty, liberal elitist, marxist, socialist...
"Well, you tell him that I don't talk to suckas."
-Eddie Vedder, "Smile"
"Well, you tell him that I don't talk to suckas."
So true. Once upon a time I had no idea what it meant to be a college graduate. Now I are one.
-Eddie Vedder, "Smile"
And getting education - perhaps the most important kind, the kind that DOES teach what it is to be a "man" or "woman" - needs to be given at home too.
As for cincy - "Ummm...I went to college, got 2 degrees, left with no debt, parents only paid about $3000 total for me. And I got a good job working in my field of choice. Not worthless paper to me and no debt."
Fuckin a! It CAN be done. Good on ya, sir.
Like the OP, I teach at a university and see many of the problems of higher education first-hand. The one thing that really irritates me is the idea that college is a given; i.e., even if you have subpar grades and show no desire to learn/educate yourself, you are likely headed to college. This is especially true of the middle and upper class of society. My girlfriend is German, and the system is quite different over there. Not all students move on to a four-year institution. Their education system has more options, such as vocational schools and trade schools. In fact,t hey still have apprenticeship-type programs. And yes, we have that here, but it is not a focus.
Some kids just don't care about school, which is sad, because they are wasting their parents money.
The system, at all levels, needs significant changes; but, I also feel that parents have a very, maybe the most, important role to play here. Parents need to talk to their children about what their interests are and where they see themselves with respect to a career. Parents should support their children if they decide to go to a comm. college or a trade school, and not push them to a four year institution just to keep up with the Joneses.
On another note (since I was talking about the Joneses): We have to remove the social stigma (for lack of a better phrase) related to comm. colleges and trade schools, or even to "only" having a high school degree. Not everyone is cut out for college, and not everyone needs to go to college. According to my girlfriend, in Germany there is no false hierarchy with respect to college degrees. In other words, people re all on the same level, and a blue collar worker at an Audi pant is on the same level as an attorney in many respects (Obviously, not with respect to income, but they do receive the same medical care; unless the attorney opts for the private market).
I feel no less intelligent and no less successful - not just financially either - than anyone who did pursue a degree.
And I absolutely support trade/vocational schools. Those can provide the skills, if one is so inclined, that can be relied upon not only to help yourself, but others too, not to mention decent and fairly-consistent income.
(also a big fan of learning as you go, provided you're willing to get down and dirty in the process!)
There are a lot of educated people in the world, but what sets them apart is often hard work and a passion for what they do.
I support trade schools as well. My brother went that route and is successful in his field. My SIL got a college degree and is now going back for a trade in an area she loves and will probably make more money doing that.
I loved school - it was a good fit for my learning style and I couldn't do what I do without that education. However, the important bits of what I learned largely came from internships and on-the-job training. I've also embraced that my learning has to be ongoing and I'm happy for that.
It frustrates me to sometimes see kids pushed into college because it's what they're "supposed" to do and it's clearly just not a good fit for them; not for their learning style, their skills or their gifts. In the end they often come out with a big debt and no degree. I've seen some students directed into graduate programs that have easy entrance requirements, but they are programs that won't lead to a career at the Master's level...and many of the students in that program don't know why they are even in it, other than they weren't ready to leave school yet and wanted to defer on their loans. I'm supposed to work to "retain" students, but ethically I am going to encourage them to pursue the direction in which they are likely to be most successful.
And as for the partying...considering the number of alcohol poisoning transports we had this weekend...it's safe to say the partying isn't letting up. After today I'm exhausted and I need a drink. :lolno:
"I need your strength for me to be strong...I need your love to feel loved"
Seems my preconceptions are what should have been burned...
I AM MINE
And if that's pom pomming-
-Eddie Vedder, "Smile"
I will say, too, that teachers aren't necessarily found only in schools.
I'm grateful for the ones I've had - still have - both inside and beyond those structures.
All precious pages, to me.
The good book tells me all I need to know.
Can't afford it and don't think it's a good investment, get a different job.
Find you can't do either, look at the faded Obama stickers on the Prius driving by your bus stop and say "well I'll be damned, I really am a Republican".
Like waking up from a bad dream and realizing you have a choice.
whining about gas prices......
No doubt. I worked 30-40 hours per week along with a full load of classes and basically living in some very poor accommodations.
If I had it to do over - combined with the cost of tuition which has far, far, far outpaced inflation and the cost of living - I wouldn't go to college. I also wouldn't encourage anyone to go now, either.
...are those who've helped us.
Right 'round the corner could be bigger than ourselves.
This is true. Life isn;t one size fits all. And those schools or other on-the-job training can provide some critical skills to people that can use them to better their loves and the lives of those around them.
I had to take a > full time load to keep my scholarship & work 2-3 jobs at a time to pay my bills - and I yet I still managed to party the whole time! Ah... I miss undergrad. :P