controversial opinions about college

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:As someone with lots of experience teaching intellectually capable students who have failed only because their work and family responsibilities as first-generation, low income undergraduates left them without the time and space to concentrate on their studies, I would argue that until we can support these students in making the most of their abilities, public funding shouldn't be available to intellectually incapable students (e.g. people with Down Syndrome) who because they come from middle-class homes consider it their right to attend "college" (i.e. outrageously expensive programs like this one at Vandy: https://peabody.vanderbilt.edu/departments/nextsteps/)

WOW. The hate speech is really flowing on this forum today.

NP. This is not hate speech. The previous poster is 100% correct.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:There are two ways to fix the current college application crisis and let students really shine:

1. For each top private college, among all the applicants, have a cutoff of SAT at 1400 or something, then randomly select whatever number of students they want to admit. They can also put those students on the dean's list, donor's kids, etc in the same selection pool. I am pretty confident, that those randomly selected students will perform as well as those selected based on the current admissions standards in college as well as after college graduation.

or


2. For each top 10 private colleges, instead of admitting only 1000 students per year, admit 7,000 to 10,000 students per year.

Those 2 methods will immediately reduce the corruption in the college admission process. Kids also do not need to fake their ECs to go to colleges which reduces all those wasteful spendings in EC activities. As a result, kids can really work on things they really want to do.

Still, top colleges will lose their signaling effect a bit, however, they are still able to get the best students they can get.

Your step 1 only moves the chaos bubble down to the next level. There are plenty of kids who would achieve 1400 eyes closed, they’d for sure be freed from the frenzy. They’d be one and done. But the kids who are at 1320 will go bonkers with tutors, test prep, takes and retakes to try to surmount the 1400 threshold, competition would rise amongst those who currently are relatively placid and outside the fray throughout the college application process.

Well, the most obvious reason for people to want to go to top colleges is potentially lucrative job opportunities.

In a lottery admission, a hypothetical 1400 sends the same signal to potential employers as a top college degree. After all, how can you identify students' abilities if they are selected randomly? There are far more students who have 1400 than a top college degree. Students would need to work really hard in colleges to stand out. So they are really not one and done. This would also reduce the incentives to go to top colleges and push students to work harder on their potential. Of course, students can always retake SAT and put 1400 on their resume and claim they are equal to those who graduate from top colleges.

I always doubt whether anyone can identify thousands of talents among 18 years old, especially with parents' help. It is really a crap shot. It would be far better to identify talents when they are 22. College AOs have been faking that they can identify talents at 18 years old. With wealth so much concentrated on top private colleges, they of course need to fake it, but is it good for society?

You're putting too much emphasis on the SAT.

Colleges aren't.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:As someone with lots of experience teaching intellectually capable students who have failed only because their work and family responsibilities as first-generation, low income undergraduates left them without the time and space to concentrate on their studies, I would argue that until we can support these students in making the most of their abilities, public funding shouldn't be available to intellectually incapable students (e.g. people with Down Syndrome) who because they come from middle-class homes consider it their right to attend "college" (i.e. outrageously expensive programs like this one at Vandy: https://peabody.vanderbilt.edu/departments/nextsteps/)

WOW. The hate speech is really flowing on this forum today.

NP. This is not hate speech. The previous poster is 100% correct.

NP. Indeed. Not hate speech at all. The PP raises some serious questions about resource allocation.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:There are two ways to fix the current college application crisis and let students really shine:

1. For each top private college, among all the applicants, have a cutoff of SAT at 1400 or something, then randomly select whatever number of students they want to admit. They can also put those students on the dean's list, donor's kids, etc in the same selection pool. I am pretty confident, that those randomly selected students will perform as well as those selected based on the current admissions standards in college as well as after college graduation.

or


2. For each top 10 private colleges, instead of admitting only 1000 students per year, admit 7,000 to 10,000 students per year.

Those 2 methods will immediately reduce the corruption in the college admission process. Kids also do not need to fake their ECs to go to colleges which reduces all those wasteful spendings in EC activities. As a result, kids can really work on things they really want to do.

Still, top colleges will lose their signaling effect a bit, however, they are still able to get the best students they can get.

So your kid is a top scorer? I assume so if you think scores should play such a heavy role as in #1

Not really. I would prefer the 2nd method, expanding the number of seats. However, we are a unique country in which top schools are private colleges and have a lot of wealth and clouts. They don't want to expand the seats.

Think about it, in 1910, the number of high school graduates is 100,000, the ivies admitted roughly the same number of students then, say 20,000 as of today which has roughly 3,000,000 high school graduates. It was 20% selectivity then vs. 0.67% now. They can't keep up with students' demands and society's demands. They basically failed their basic educational function even though they have accumulated so much wealth.

They certainly can claim their enrolled students today are much much much better than their students in 1910. But I doubt it improves from 20% to top 0.67%. After a certain threshold, say top 5%, it would be extremely difficult to predict how two 18-year olders perform against each other in the future when they are 40 or 50 years old. If they can do it, then every single US President, SCOTUS justice, and Fortune 500 CEO would be from Harvard. In reality, it does not happen. They can't differentiate once students reach a certain level. For a society, the good strategy would be to expand the seats, and let those 18 year olders compete in colleges.

NP
This is a word salad of societal aspirations that are just pie in the sky.
You want US colleges to operate solely to ‘benefit society’ but you are failing to recognize and accept reality. The top colleges are Hedge Funds.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:As someone with lots of experience teaching intellectually capable students who have failed only because their work and family responsibilities as first-generation, low income undergraduates left them without the time and space to concentrate on their studies, I would argue that until we can support these students in making the most of their abilities, public funding shouldn't be available to intellectually incapable students (e.g. people with Down Syndrome) who because they come from middle-class homes consider it their right to attend "college" (i.e. outrageously expensive programs like this one at Vandy: https://peabody.vanderbilt.edu/departments/nextsteps/)

WOW. The hate speech is really flowing on this forum today.

Check your fragility. This isn't hate speech.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:As someone with lots of experience teaching intellectually capable students who have failed only because their work and family responsibilities as first-generation, low income undergraduates left them without the time and space to concentrate on their studies, I would argue that until we can support these students in making the most of their abilities, public funding shouldn't be available to intellectually incapable students (e.g. people with Down Syndrome) who because they come from middle-class homes consider it their right to attend "college" (i.e. outrageously expensive programs like this one at Vandy: https://peabody.vanderbilt.edu/departments/nextsteps/)

WOW. The hate speech is really flowing on this forum today.

Check your fragility. This isn't hate speech.

Not hate speech just stupid speech. We can do both. And should. That we don’t is not a reason to punish one. This is not an either or. Find a way to get this done if you care.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:As someone with lots of experience teaching intellectually capable students who have failed only because their work and family responsibilities as first-generation, low income undergraduates left them without the time and space to concentrate on their studies, I would argue that until we can support these students in making the most of their abilities, public funding shouldn't be available to intellectually incapable students (e.g. people with Down Syndrome) who because they come from middle-class homes consider it their right to attend "college" (i.e. outrageously expensive programs like this one at Vandy: https://peabody.vanderbilt.edu/departments/nextsteps/)

Not sure why you specified Down Syndrome. Many of the kids in these programs have high functioning autism, often socially awkward but with higher raw intelligence than many of heavily packaged kids. It’s telling that some of them sail into FAANG dev gigs that when so many parents of “normal” kids spend years unsuccessfully grooming their kids for those positions.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:DP - that’s just not hate speech. If you don’t have the intellectual chops to say why it’s wrong, just stay silent

The problem with many US colleges today is precisely that people without the intellectual chops have taken over them, transforming them into SJW factories.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:DP - that’s just not hate speech. If you don’t have the intellectual chops to say why it’s wrong, just stay silent

The problem with many US colleges today is precisely that people without the intellectual chops have taken over them, transforming them into SJW factories.

Plus, the process of full indoctrination is much more expensive than mere education, hence those obscene tuition fees.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:As someone with lots of experience teaching intellectually capable students who have failed only because their work and family responsibilities as first-generation, low income undergraduates left them without the time and space to concentrate on their studies, I would argue that until we can support these students in making the most of their abilities, public funding shouldn't be available to intellectually incapable students (e.g. people with Down Syndrome) who because they come from middle-class homes consider it their right to attend "college" (i.e. outrageously expensive programs like this one at Vandy: https://peabody.vanderbilt.edu/departments/nextsteps/)

Not sure why you specified Down Syndrome. Many of the kids in these programs have high functioning autism, often socially awkward but with higher raw intelligence than many of heavily packaged kids. It’s telling that some of them sail into FAANG dev gigs that when so many parents of “normal” kids spend years unsuccessfully grooming their kids for those positions.

"Students and parents often visit ThinkCollege.net looking for information about supports for students with autism. While many of the programs listed in the Think College Search do support students with both intellectual disability and autism, for students who want to pursue a degree and plan to apply to college through a typical admissions process, the programs in the Think College listing are not the best fit" (https://thinkcollege.net/faq).

"Trisomy 21 (T21) or Down syndrome (DS) is a chromosomal disorder resulting from the triplication of all or part of a chromosome 21. It is a common birth defect, the most frequent and recognizable form of intellectual disabilities (ID), appearing in about one out of every 700 newborns. The average intelligence quotient (IQ) of children with DS is around 50, ranging between 30 and 70. Remarkably, a small number of patients have a profound degree of ID, whereas others have a mild degree despite the absence of any genetic, cultural or familial favoring or disfavoring causes" (https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3798834/)

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:There are two ways to fix the current college application crisis and let students really shine:

1. For each top private college, among all the applicants, have a cutoff of SAT at 1400 or something, then randomly select whatever number of students they want to admit. They can also put those students on the dean's list, donor's kids, etc in the same selection pool. I am pretty confident, that those randomly selected students will perform as well as those selected based on the current admissions standards in college as well as after college graduation.

or


2. For each top 10 private colleges, instead of admitting only 1000 students per year, admit 7,000 to 10,000 students per year.

Those 2 methods will immediately reduce the corruption in the college admission process. Kids also do not need to fake their ECs to go to colleges which reduces all those wasteful spendings in EC activities. As a result, kids can really work on things they really want to do.

Still, top colleges will lose their signaling effect a bit, however, they are still able to get the best students they can get.

Your step 1 only moves the chaos bubble down to the next level. There are plenty of kids who would achieve 1400 eyes closed, they’d for sure be freed from the frenzy. They’d be one and done. But the kids who are at 1320 will go bonkers with tutors, test prep, takes and retakes to try to surmount the 1400 threshold, competition would rise amongst those who currently are relatively placid and outside the fray throughout the college application process.

Well, the most obvious reason for people to want to go to top colleges is potentially lucrative job opportunities.

In a lottery admission, a hypothetical 1400 sends the same signal to potential employers as a top college degree. After all, how can you identify students' abilities if they are selected randomly? There are far more students who have 1400 than a top college degree. Students would need to work really hard in colleges to stand out. So they are really not one and done. This would also reduce the incentives to go to top colleges and push students to work harder on their potential. Of course, students can always retake SAT and put 1400 on their resume and claim they are equal to those who graduate from top colleges.

I always doubt whether anyone can identify thousands of talents among 18 years old, especially with parents' help. It is really a crap shot. It would be far better to identify talents when they are 22. College AOs have been faking that they can identify talents at 18 years old. With wealth so much concentrated on top private colleges, they of course need to fake it, but is it good for society?

You're putting too much emphasis on the SAT.

Colleges aren't.

No, you can replace SAT with any sort of threshold, any holistic thing, the lottery idea remains.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:There are two ways to fix the current college application crisis and let students really shine:

1. For each top private college, among all the applicants, have a cutoff of SAT at 1400 or something, then randomly select whatever number of students they want to admit. They can also put those students on the dean's list, donor's kids, etc in the same selection pool. I am pretty confident, that those randomly selected students will perform as well as those selected based on the current admissions standards in college as well as after college graduation.

or


2. For each top 10 private colleges, instead of admitting only 1000 students per year, admit 7,000 to 10,000 students per year.

Those 2 methods will immediately reduce the corruption in the college admission process. Kids also do not need to fake their ECs to go to colleges which reduces all those wasteful spendings in EC activities. As a result, kids can really work on things they really want to do.

Still, top colleges will lose their signaling effect a bit, however, they are still able to get the best students they can get.

So your kid is a top scorer? I assume so if you think scores should play such a heavy role as in #1

Not really. I would prefer the 2nd method, expanding the number of seats. However, we are a unique country in which top schools are private colleges and have a lot of wealth and clouts. They don't want to expand the seats.

Think about it, in 1910, the number of high school graduates is 100,000, the ivies admitted roughly the same number of students then, say 20,000 as of today which has roughly 3,000,000 high school graduates. It was 20% selectivity then vs. 0.67% now. They can't keep up with students' demands and society's demands. They basically failed their basic educational function even though they have accumulated so much wealth.

They certainly can claim their enrolled students today are much much much better than their students in 1910. But I doubt it improves from 20% to top 0.67%. After a certain threshold, say top 5%, it would be extremely difficult to predict how two 18-year olders perform against each other in the future when they are 40 or 50 years old. If they can do it, then every single US President, SCOTUS justice, and Fortune 500 CEO would be from Harvard. In reality, it does not happen. They can't differentiate once students reach a certain level. For a society, the good strategy would be to expand the seats, and let those 18 year olders compete in colleges.

NP
This is a word salad of societal aspirations that are just pie in the sky.
You want US colleges to operate solely to ‘benefit society’ but you are failing to recognize and accept reality. The top colleges are Hedge Funds.

Nope, they are family offices, they could expand client base and asset sizes, but choose not to.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:As someone with lots of experience teaching intellectually capable students who have failed only because their work and family responsibilities as first-generation, low income undergraduates left them without the time and space to concentrate on their studies, I would argue that until we can support these students in making the most of their abilities, public funding shouldn't be available to intellectually incapable students (e.g. people with Down Syndrome) who because they come from middle-class homes consider it their right to attend "college" (i.e. outrageously expensive programs like this one at Vandy: https://peabody.vanderbilt.edu/departments/nextsteps/)

Not sure why you specified Down Syndrome. Many of the kids in these programs have high functioning autism, often socially awkward but with higher raw intelligence than many of heavily packaged kids. It’s telling that some of them sail into FAANG dev gigs that when so many parents of “normal” kids spend years unsuccessfully grooming their kids for those positions.

"Students and parents often visit ThinkCollege.net looking for information about supports for students with autism. While many of the programs listed in the Think College Search do support students with both intellectual disability and autism, for students who want to pursue a degree and plan to apply to college through a typical admissions process, the programs in the Think College listing are not the best fit" (https://thinkcollege.net/faq).

"Trisomy 21 (T21) or Down syndrome (DS) is a chromosomal disorder resulting from the triplication of all or part of a chromosome 21. It is a common birth defect, the most frequent and recognizable form of intellectual disabilities (ID), appearing in about one out of every 700 newborns. The average intelligence quotient (IQ) of children with DS is around 50, ranging between 30 and 70. Remarkably, a small number of patients have a profound degree of ID, whereas others have a mild degree despite the absence of any genetic, cultural or familial favoring or disfavoring causes" (https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3798834/)

The Down Syndrome kids who would be interested in going to college would be on the very high end of the IQ range. Community colleges and lower end state schools are full of lower IQ kids.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:As someone with lots of experience teaching intellectually capable students who have failed only because their work and family responsibilities as first-generation, low income undergraduates left them without the time and space to concentrate on their studies, I would argue that until we can support these students in making the most of their abilities, public funding shouldn't be available to intellectually incapable students (e.g. people with Down Syndrome) who because they come from middle-class homes consider it their right to attend "college" (i.e. outrageously expensive programs like this one at Vandy: https://peabody.vanderbilt.edu/departments/nextsteps/)

Not sure why you specified Down Syndrome. Many of the kids in these programs have high functioning autism, often socially awkward but with higher raw intelligence than many of heavily packaged kids. It’s telling that some of them sail into FAANG dev gigs that when so many parents of “normal” kids spend years unsuccessfully grooming their kids for those positions.

"Students and parents often visit ThinkCollege.net looking for information about supports for students with autism. While many of the programs listed in the Think College Search do support students with both intellectual disability and autism, for students who want to pursue a degree and plan to apply to college through a typical admissions process, the programs in the Think College listing are not the best fit" (https://thinkcollege.net/faq).

"Trisomy 21 (T21) or Down syndrome (DS) is a chromosomal disorder resulting from the triplication of all or part of a chromosome 21. It is a common birth defect, the most frequent and recognizable form of intellectual disabilities (ID), appearing in about one out of every 700 newborns. The average intelligence quotient (IQ) of children with DS is around 50, ranging between 30 and 70. Remarkably, a small number of patients have a profound degree of ID, whereas others have a mild degree despite the absence of any genetic, cultural or familial favoring or disfavoring causes" (https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3798834/)

The Down Syndrome kids who would be interested in going to college would be on the very high end of the IQ range. Community colleges and lower end state schools are full of lower IQ kids.

Nope, not even close. The thousands of students I taught within an inner city public university system may not have been able to hack it at Swarthmore as an aggregate group, but with only a few exceptions they all had the intellectual ability to put together argumentative essays and research papers evaluating the validity of certain theories/complex ideas, and whatever issues they had in their writing that undermined the strengths of their arguments were within the realm of what I'd expect to find in papers written by undergraduates at any college, including the very competitive one at which I currently teach. Many of my students were majoring in some sort of engineering, so literary analysis may not have been suited to their strongest skill sets, but they definitely didn't have low IQs.

[Anonymous]

Community college students complete courses that often fulfill core requirements and thus can be transferred for credit at 4-year schools. Compare with the schedule at the link below:

https://peabody.vanderbilt.edu/departments/nextsteps/programoverview/sampleschedule.pdf