NYT: Freebies for the Rich [Students]

Parents Forum
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<p>Agree strongly here…especially considering how this practice among directional colleges with such “have a pulse” admission standards means either high numbers of flunkouts or those who take far longer than 4-5 years to graduate due to underpreparation which makes parents/society unhappy because it’s “elitist”, “unfair”, or “due to bad teaching”* or lower standards to have high graduation rates…but have graduates so lacking in basic academic skillsets that employers end up being wary of hiring students from such colleges**.</p>

<p>*A.K.A. Not teaching to the LCD. </p>

<p>** Knew of several employers who were wary of hiring graduates from many local lower-tier directionals and in the case of one of my former employers…refused to hire undergrad b-school majors from all except the elite tier of undergrad b-school programs like Wharton, NYU-Stern, etc precisely because they were burned previously by graduates from lower-tiered undergrad b-school programs so lacking in basic math and written communication skills to the point of being embarrassed in front of senior executives and clients.</p>

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<p>It should be mentioned that this isn’t an issue solely limited to those colleges. My HS classmates and I have encountered a disturbing number of such students at my LAC and other top 30 colleges/universities. </p>

<p>Only difference between them and those who attend the “admit-almost-anyone-with-a-pulse colleges” is that their parents were really loaded and they had exceedingly strong legacy connections of some kind.</p>

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<p>But I also know plenty of hiring folks who feel the local lower tier college grads are just fine, just what they want, just the sorts who will fit there and do what’s needed. I’m referring to the vast numbers who, themselves, are grads of modest schools- and who don’t really know (and thus can’t truly value) what’s gained in a more rigorous environment.</p>

<p>I think you are perilously close to the “need to go to a better school” issue, the idea a kid has to go to the best name. Or else. Or else, those employers won’t think well of him, will be obsessed with some low luster kids they knew. (I agree with the benefits of a more strenuous ed experience- but that’s simply not how all the world works.)</p>

<p>And, this thread started around the question of: is it “fair” for a U to prize the better student? As if there’s something wrong with that.</p>

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<p>The issue isn’t necessarily one of a strenuous ed experience or not as the issues complained about were lacking basic academic skills usually covered in late elementary school or at the very latest, middle/high school. </p>

<p>It also isn’t necessarily an issue with all lower-tiered directional colleges, either. Especially if they’re willing to suffer lowered graduation rates due to higher flunkouts or students taking much longer than 4-5 years to graduate because they maintain a reasonably high academic standard. </p>

<p>If the companies concerned were like some of the ones I worked for or heard about from friends employed in similar type companies, they do tend to track performance of entry-level fresh graduates by school to see if most/all graduates on average are good/excellent employees, struggle/flounder due to lacking basic academic skill sets they’d expect from college graduates, etc. </p>

<p>If the first, they’d be more inclined to hire more of their graduates in the future and be willing to give them the greater benefit of the doubt. If the second, they’re likely to be wary about hiring graduates from those colleges unless the candidate proves through resume, interview(s), and possibly some testing that they’re a positive exception to the pattern perceived by HR/hiring managers.</p>

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<p>My employer over the decades has preferred to hire grads of the in-state flagship university because they come out with practical experience, in our specialty field. One grad we hired from an Ivy in the same field was way too theoretical and didn’t know how to do anything practical. </p>

<p>My brother has been involved with managing his large law firm for decades, and he says many of their best attorneys have been from the flagship public university law school - because they have practical training.</p>

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<p>So is there a growing trend by employers to break college degrees into two tiers --acceptable and questionable? Flagships and the top-300 schools in one bucket and the rest in the other? Will resume-scanning filters one day be programmed to ignore everyone who is not in the upper tier, effectively making lower-tier diplomas useless for getting decent paying jobs?</p>

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<p>Re: #105</p>

<p>Probably depends on the employer. Investment banking, consulting, and law are generally thought to have very small lists of acceptable schools. Other employers may have a much wider range of acceptable schools, although an employer with a wide range of acceptable schools probably does not make recruiting visits at all of them (especially for small employers for whom visiting even a single non-local school is a hassle).</p>

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<p>The tracking I’ve seen and heard about isn’t divided simply on flagships and top-300 vs all the rest. It’s more colleges whose graduates when hired in groups on average performed satisfactorily/well within a given firm versus those whose graduates on average when hired in groups floundered or were complete screwups there. </p>

<p>Many of the colleges falling into the former include colleges which aren’t flagships and top-300 and depending on employer…some of the colleges on the wariness due to the latter do include some flagship/top-300…including some within the top 30. </p>

<p>It is much more nuanced and fluid depending on companies, requirements of the company concerned, and HR/hiring managers as charlieschm has illustrated.</p>

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<p>Cobrat, my primary career (before I got involved with the U I work for,) was also related to CS/engineering. They were very happy to hire plenty from Cal State Long Beach and the local cc. What they aimed for were bright, focused kids who would put in the hours it took- and who had the special “vision” this side of CS needed. Individuals. Not from tally sheets of “acceptable” schools. Most not from any sort of privileged SES that would have provided advantages. No one kept an official record- eg, LB grads versus our employees/programmers/designers/engineers from UCLA or Michigan, Stanford or CMU. Or plenty of schools across the country I barely know, to this day- or international U’s no one recognized. Granted, that’s a while ago. </p>

<p>Of course, hiring folks can’t help but recall their prior experiences with certain schools. But, if there were a formula, something hard and fast to cling to, we could all package it and sell it, so to say.</p>

<p>And, remember, you may know of some companies with professional HR staff, doing all their parsing and recruiting- many kids get their first opportunities in far less structured environments. Or where the decision falls more to the actual working managers than the HR crunchers. Then they move on to prove themselves, or not. Except for my first job in the industry, no manager who ever hired me came from any sort of elite- I doubt many knew much about them, at all. That’s one of the reasons I occasionally insist, you have a better chance of your school being known if it has a state name or a winning sports team.</p>

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<p>Not necessarily as the “preferred schools graduates” and “schools whose graduates should be regarded with more wariness in the hiring process” lists are very different and fluid depending on company, geographic region, and field the company’s involved in.</p>

<p>Not to mention going to a top 30 LAC/university may not necessarily be a guarantee of being in the former group as some companies may have some such institutions’ graduates in the latter list due to past experiences, perceptions, prejudices, etc of the HR/hiring managers involved. </p>

<p>Heck, one financial firm I interviewed with had a hiring manager who probably had my LAC and others like it on the latter list considering his sudden change of demeanor once he noticed where I went for undergrad on my resume within the first 5 minutes of the interview. Once that demeanor change occurred, it was pretty obvious the interview was going to go south and it did.</p>

<p>Similarly, several Ivy/elite college graduate friends/acquaintances encountered HR staff/hiring managers with serious chips on their shoulders because of where they went for undergrad as well.</p>

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<p>What does exactly mean does freebie for rich guys? I don’t get it. They shouldn’t get such freebies since that they are rich. It would be much better if they are going to give freebies to poor people or poor students rather than giving to someone else who doesn’t really need it since they are rich. I don’t get it.</p>

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<p>One of the main differences between a selective university vs. a non-selective university involves writing skills. At many selective universities, students are expected to write essays as part of most tests and to regularly submit written reports. The students receive regular feedback on their writing, and are encouraged in their critical thinking. </p>

<p>At less selective universities, on average, more of the tests typically involve multiple choice questions, fewer writing assignments are required, and there is less feedback provided to individual students regarding their writing. There may be less emphasis on critical thinking and discussion, and more emphasis placed on memorizing a textbook.</p>

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<p>Actually, LF, my concern is exactly that in the desire to enhance productivity, a “good enough” formula will be devised and automated by software rules. There is plenty of precedent for this: Typography used to be a fine craft and most published content was carefully proofread for typos, grammar and consistency before going out to the public. With the advent of desktop publishing, the quality of both declined dramatically, but so did the price of production – it was deemed “good enough.”</p>

<p>So now we have a situation where an online job posting can result in 1000 applications. The cost of reviewing all 1000 applications manually by paid personnel is prohibitive and the company does not need to hire the very best in most cases, just someone “good enough.” The specialty positions are generally not advertised directly anyway, but farmed out to headhunters.</p>

<p>Once you have these 1000 applications in a database (each uploaded by the applicant) and the company has decided to only review, say, the top 30 applicants, then which applications get looked at is almost entirely decided by the programmer who tweaked the relevance settings in the search box.</p>

<p>So let’s say human resources tells the programmer that where a student graduates from is a relevant detail. OK, so the programmer adds relevance points to certain school name keywords, leaves many alone, and perhaps even deducts relevance points if certain school names appear.</p>

<p>So if I were designing such a system for resale to multiple companies (and actually my sons do web development for small businesses), how would I implement this feature? I would probably extract the US News ranking list (quick and easy), put it in a database, add +2 for the top 50 schools, +1 for the next 250, zero for the midrange and perhaps -1 for those below the median and -2 for those at the bottom.</p>

<p>Of course, there would be regional variations, so we would add an administrative form where you could list your preferred schools and boost their relevance score. But I’d guess that most companies would either go with the default settings or only add one or two nearby schools.</p>

<p>Any business with a website could very likely add such an online job application and analysis package and quickly boost HR productivity. But if and when such job application portals become near-universal, how will the kid from an average school with no social network even have his resume seen?</p>

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<p>The algorithm is much more nuanced than just the name of the school. My company uses screening software not to tell us who to interview but just to whittle the pile down to people who are even remotely qualified for a job. It is astonishing that you can post a job which requires a degree in engineering and three + years experience, and get hundreds if not thousands of responses from people who have neither.</p>

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<p>Of course it is, Blossom; I didn’t mean to imply otherwise. But if you have 1000 records (job-targeted applications) in your database, it’s possible that 100 of them will match most or all of your requested keywords and at that point the relevance ranking of the school will play a major role in whether your resume will be viewed or not. Consider a Google search: with 10 results per page, it doesn’t much matter if you are on page 10 or page 100 – almost no one will look that deep into the choices.</p>

<p>It all depends on whether your company is willing to look at every candidate who matches the keywords or just the 30 or 40 top results. Pressure to increase profits or reduce costs over time will eventually force many companies to settle for letting the software do some of that decision making.</p>