Affirmative Action
- Thread starter Darts
- Start date
I won't make any comments, I'll just put this out there.
ABORIGINAL EMPLOYMENT PREFERENCES POLICY (chrc-ccdp.gc.ca)
ABORIGINAL EMPLOYMENT PREFERENCES POLICY (chrc-ccdp.gc.ca)
"Education, especially STEM. Indian immigrants are among the most highly educated in the US;"
Opinion: 9 reasons the Indian CEO keeps coming to the rescue | CNN Business
Opinion: 9 reasons the Indian CEO keeps coming to the rescue | CNN Business
Ya because places like Waterloo Engineering, MIT and Chicago School of Business absolutely suck and contribute nothing to society right?
" I am an admissions consultant" - you could be, who knows. Without posting publicly available data, stories and anecdotes are useless for arguments like "lowest scoring ones also have the most interesting profiles and end up in some of the highest ranked schools.".
For example;
I am in charge of admissions at a one of the highest ranked schools in North America. Trust me, those with the lowest grades but good written essays end up failing 1st year and go no where. You believe me right? How could you not? I present the save level of evidence to support my opinion.
Last edited:
Post publicly available data .... I doubt it. The only reason these people are still able to stay at these top ranked schools is because no one fails any more. "where they won't let you fail"
"The coursework at the lowest ranked schools & highest ranked schools are pretty much the same". Patently false. There is a BIG difference is course work (depth and speed) between schools like Engineering at Waterloo and Engineering at Guelph. BIG differences. Even within Waterloo, there is a BIG difference is coursework between Mechanical Engineering and Electrical Engineering. HUGE difference in depth and pace. I see no reason why the US would be any different.
As for...
"I can even give you examples of profiles who got selected to top schools with lower scores and if you saw their profiles you yourself will pick them, instead of the guy with the higher score."
ASSUMING this is true (could be), you are
(1) using statistical outliers (for true leaders like you are using an example to reflect "the norm" are obviously rare) to argue your case that "marks don't matter" or "of less importance".
(2) You are also likely using confirmation bias as you don't remember (or don't provide data) those that failed or not accepted.
(3) Thirdly, as a consultant you cost a LOT of $. Thus, you are seeing (your data set) the very financial privileged and those that have the $ & time to support extra curriculars versus the lower income that lack the same opportunities and thus have depend on academic achievement.
An argument can be made that these written essays and profiles only serve to perpetuate the power the financial privileged, the Upper Classes, have at the expense of the Lower Classes. If they are as good as you say they are, they would have succeeded no matter what. That could not be said of the lower classes that cannot afford consultants right?
For many of the lower classes, high marks and high scores are all they have to advance. Once again, the Upper Classes are changing the rules to deny them opportunities.
You know the data on the % of lower classes that Harvard accepts even with racial preferences.
The plural of anecdotes is not data.
Last edited:
Yes, yes because determining admission based on skin color is not racist but ignoring race when determining admission is racist. The difference between Kendi & MLK.
[insert relevant 1984 prophetic quote here]
In the US, AA lightly benefits one race (black) by crushing the accomplishments of another race (Asians). Yet everyone forgets that.
But yet, it's not really all about race is it? It's also about changing the game to make sure the 'right' people still get in.
Why the Champions of Affirmative Action Had to Leave Asian Americans Behind
The original concept in pursuit of diversity was vital and righteous. The way it was practiced was hard to defend.
"Asian Americans, the group whom the suit was supposedly about, have been oddly absent from the conversations that have followed the ruling. The repetitiveness of the affirmative-action debate has come about, in large part, because both the courts and the media have mostly ignored the Asian American plaintiffs and chosen, instead, to relitigate the same arguments about merit, white supremacy, and privilege. During the five years I spent covering this case, the commentators defending affirmative action almost never disproved the central claim that discrimination was taking place against Asian Americans, even as they dismissed the plaintiffs as pawns who had been duped by a conservative legal activist.
Affirmative action, in my view, was doomed from that moment forward because it had been stripped of its moral force. It is one thing to argue that slavery, lynchings, Jim Crow laws, mass incarceration, and centuries of theft demand an educational system that factors
in the effects of those atrocities. If that principle were to express itself in, say, a Black student who was descended from slaves and had grown up in poverty in an American inner city receiving a bump on his application when compared with a rich private-school kid from the suburbs, so be it. But that is not, in fact, how affirmative action usually plays out at élite schools. Most reporting on the subject—including my own, as well as a story in the Harvard Crimson—shows that descendants of slaves are relatively underrepresented among Black students at Harvard, compared with students from upwardly mobile Black immigrant families. It is easy and perhaps virtuous to defend the reparative version of affirmative action; it is harder to defend the system as it has actually been used.
Powell’s decision gave schools like Harvard—where, according to a study published in 2017, only four and a half per cent of the student body came from the bottom twenty per cent of the nation’s income earners and fifteen per cent of students came from families who make more than six hundred and thirty thousand dollars a year—the leeway to corrupt the original spirit of affirmative action and turn it into a counting game for rich kids."
Last edited:
Good post. You've yet again confirmed you're an outlier on TERB (in a good way).
Fine, it's an extreme example but I never said "never" unionize. Just an opinion that it's not needed and makes them 'less' of a professional. ...and yes, I understand for many it's a requirement with no choice.
Bad example, off the top of my head, Bill Gates mother was on the board of IBM. I'm sure others (Musk - emerald mines) have similar inroads that are not always publicized.
Besides, the examples you are using are outliers. Stop confusing outliers and using them to determine what's true for the vast majority of the population, it's not a good argument and doesn't "prove" anything.
The argument is NOT "marks be the only determining factor", the argument is the WEIGHT placed on marks to determine school/jobs etc.. Many think that a large amount of weight should be placed on marks because it is one of the sure (despite grade inflation) measures of achievement that combine intelligence & grit.
"your unique profile"
Dog whistle for the right race, the right family, the right social connections, the right religion, the right social clubs...the list goes on and on. Just another word for excluding people we don't like.
VERY VERY tough to 'buy' your way into University when academic achievement is the largest determining factor now isn't it? THUS, if you want to be 'fair', you use academic achievement.
Before you argue, "but poverty", I give you Asians/Income.
This is the 2011 SAT dataset. Asian Americans from families with household incomes below $20k per year score higher on the SAT than African American families with incomes above $200k and Hispanic families above $100k. It's not financial straits alone that determines achievement. Guess who has the toughest time getting into Harvard?
This is why 'other criteria' is used other than marks. To keep out people we don't like. Things never change, only the language does.
For those that advocate for "non-Academic achievement", that is, extra curriculars, the New York Times has an excellent article on this. Guess what!!! The wealthy have more time and opportunity for extra-curriculars so guess who succeeds more..
The wealth have no significant advantage in academic ratings...however, extra curriculars? BINGO!
Who knew placing an emphasis on non-standards would benefit the rich?
The wealth have no significant advantage in academic ratings...however, extra curriculars? BINGO!
Who knew placing an emphasis on non-standards would benefit the rich?
I've heard the argument made (though I don't know how convinced I am) that the move towards non-academic factors in admissions was in part an attempt to hard working minorities from getting too many admission spots. Whether it was intentional or not, it's much easier to get prestigious certification like the Duke of Edinburgh when you don't have to work a part time job.
I'm slowly being convinced of that Conspiracy Theory (for lack of a better term). Alternatively, white kids weren't getting the marks they needed so well-meaning white parents decided to add in non-academic factors. Something the poor couldn't really compete with. Referring to the Jefferson high school science and technology fiasco that seemed to be about fewer Asians.
Last edited:
Do some research on class mobility. Especially in the U.K. The land of the aristocracy and blue bloods. Not much has changed……
I am not quite sure why, people can’t figure out that in the end, it’s not about pigments. Those with money make the rules. At its simplest, consider how many options nuclear families have to shelter money from taxation. Then consider how many of the peons can find two nickels to shelter money…Then consider……….
As far as academia goes. These days? “Really? All kinds of studies on devaluing education, and what is increasingly become watered down pedigrees.
But one.
Credential inflation.
academic.oup.com
I am not quite sure why, people can’t figure out that in the end, it’s not about pigments. Those with money make the rules. At its simplest, consider how many options nuclear families have to shelter money from taxation. Then consider how many of the peons can find two nickels to shelter money…Then consider……….
As far as academia goes. These days? “Really? All kinds of studies on devaluing education, and what is increasingly become watered down pedigrees.
But one.
Credential inflation.
Credential Inflation and Decredentialization: Re-examining the Mechanism of the Devaluation of Degrees
Abstract. Sociologists have long used credential inflation theory to explain the devaluation of tertiary education degrees as the consequence of the excess
academic.oup.com
Last edited:
Agreed and familiar with this. The theory though is a cabal of white people with stupid kids recreating the system to benefit their own, oh wait…..It's not a Conspiracy Theory
In the 1920s, as a report of the Center for Equal Opportunity notes, Harvard changed its admissions process away from an exclusive focus on academics to considering the whole person, which allowed it to reverse an unwelcome run-up in Jewish admissions and keep the percentage of Jews in the student body at about 15 percent for decades.
Harvard’s secret system to avoid ‘too many Asians’
The Harvard University admissions process appears to be an ongoing micro-aggression against Asian-Americans. A group called Students for Fair Admissions is suing the school for alleged racial discr…nypost.com
