<p>Many people have been taken in by Sowell, that's why he is successful.</p>
<p>Patuxent,</p>
<p>Graduation rates must be interpreted carefully if you want to use them to decide who to admit. They are highly correlated with income. So should colleges explicity favor higher income applicants? They are reliably predicted to graduate at higher rates.</p>
<p>People majoring in science, technology, engineering and mathematics graduate at lower rates than social science and humanities majors. Should colleges favor the the hum and ss people?</p>
<p>Athletes graduate at higher rates than non athletes. Should they get even more preferences in admissions than they do already?</p>
<p>At most selective colleges women graduate at higher rates than men. Should women be given preferences in admission for this reason? At some colleges men graduate at higher rates than women, should men be given preferences at these places?</p>
<p>At some places Asians have considerably lower graduation rates than whites. Should these schools take this into account when considering asian applications?</p>
<p>The graduation rates of a large group- like an ethnic group- will reflect the mix of family incomes (lower for african american students), athletic participation (lower for african american students), choice of major (somewhat less likely to be in STEM fields), and gender make up (much more female at the graduation level, closer at matriculation). So race may be a proxy for these other effects.</p>
<p>again, social-economics status should NOT be brought in to college admission process.</p>
<p>why am i attending a top 25 school in Fall? coz i want to get a great education and get a great job and have "more-than comfortable" life, and.................SO THAT MY OWN SON WOULD HAVE TROUBLE GETTING IN TOP COLLEGES COZ WE ARE RICH....</p>
<p>If you become rich, your kids will have a much better chance of getting in a top college. That is why the student bodies at HYP come from families with incomes well above the national averages.</p>
<p>the arguments brought forth by some pro-AA people that point to high black graduation rates at elite colleges are severely flawed. those colleges have sky high graduation rates in general and go out of their way to ensure that every student graduates, regardless of race. it is therefore impossible to make a conclusion either way based on the graduation rates by race at those schools because they are so high that differences either way would not be statistically significant compared with the total class size. it is just bad logic</p>
<p>
[quote]
those colleges have sky high graduation rates in general and go out of their way to ensure that every student graduates, regardless of race.
[/quote]
</p>
<p>At the end of the day (or atleast 4 years) isn't it the ultimate goal of a student that attends that college and to graudate (this would also be regardless of rate)? Very few attend with the mindset that I am going to start and drop/flunk out, run out of money, have a life altering experience that revents me from going back "x" number of years into the process. </p>
<p>Given a choice wouldn't you want to attend to school that gave you the greatest chance of graduating? If you beleive that this defies logic, it would just ass the common sense test.</p>
<p>If you had to choice between harvard with an over 90% graduation rate and Berkley with a 65% graduation rate which would you choose?</p>
<p><a href="in%20regards%20to%20internationals%20at%20elites">quote</a> Many of them get full rides.
[/quote]
</p>
<p>I don't think this is true. Where did you acquire this information?</p>
<p>
[quote]
How does the administration of the University of California system justify expending scarce public monies on students with a 74% chance of graduating when there is an ample supply of students with an 85% chance of graduating?
[/quote]
</p>
<p>It's never been clear to me that the mission of a public institution (or system) demands it admits people with the highest predicted graduation rate. I disagree with this assumption, not just personally, but as a scholar of higher education. I think this would be a minority view.</p>
<p>I will also point out that a graduation rate of 80% does not mean that 20% failed out or dropped out. This is both a naive and wrong interpretation of those numbers.</p>
<p>simba, that's very useful, but I don't take the same conclusions away from that table. At some of the top places, less than half of the international students get any financial aid--note the absences of some schools. Futhermore, the average award is less than the full cost of attendance. So it's hard to determine exactly how many are getting a full ride. </p>
<p>I guess maybe we differ as to what constitutes "many" and whether these data suggest many of them <em>are</em> getting free rides.</p>
<p> Given a choice wouldn't you want to attend to school that gave you the greatest chance of graduating? If you beleive that this defies logic, it would just ass the common sense test. </p>
<p>That would be true if graduation relied on pure random probability. But that's not true. Graduation is usually in the control of the individual. Failing to graduate is not usually caused by flunking out because it's too hard, but rather dropping out voluntarily either because someone can't do the work or they have extenuating family situations, etc. A big factor that adds to failing to graduate is transferring out of a college. Choosing a college based on graduation rates is somewhat illogical for that reason.</p>
<p>afan - I believe that public universities because they expend public money have an obligation to select all of their students without regard for race, creed, color, ethnicity, sexual orientation, or political point of view based on the best available predictors of aptitude and liklihood of graduation. Those would be a combination of grades, GPA, standardized test scores, class rank, and strength of courses taken as in high school. Preferring on group of citizens over all others based on race makes about as much sense as basing it on the amount of ear wax you can produce. </p>
<p>The taxpayers invest in these students because the public needs workers with degrees to do the jobs that grow the economy and keep the nation competitive.</p>
<p>
[quote]
the public needs workers with degrees to do the jobs that grow the economy and keep the nation competitive.
[/quote]
</p>
<p>There are some who argue that perpetuating inequities in schooling up through the postsecondary level will HARM the economy and the nation's competitive ability.</p>
<p>Some also argue that these workers will be better workers if they are exposed to a wider variety of college classmates, including those who come from different schools, geographic areas, socioeconomic background, religions, ethnicities and so forth. (There is some research to back up this claim, although to the best of my knowledge no one has added earwax production as a comparative variable).</p>
<p>Both of these are reasons one could give for abandoning a simple formula based solely on students' likehood of graduation.</p>
<p>My point is someone can agree with you almost 100% ("public dollars should be invested in higher education because it helps the economy and the nation") and yet believe that a different method will best attain that goal.</p>
<p>
[quote]
Many people have been taken in by Sowell, that's why he is successful
[/quote]
</p>
<p>Well, I think a lot of Sowell, and I attended a top school in the Ivy and Big 10 league. Maybe he "took me in" but it simply seemed to me that what he says often rings true. He's willing to confront the lockstep dogma that pervades the questions of exactly how to go about treating people differently because of race, and how to attempt to acheive equal "performance" by complaining about level playing fields when what is happening is that the playing fields are being tilted as far as possible in an apparently futile attempt to acheive equal outcomes. </p>
<p>
[quote]
If you become rich, your kids will have a much better chance of getting in a top college. That is why the student bodies at HYP come from families with incomes well above the national averages.
[/quote]
I expect we'll have to add lottery winners and their progeny to that list of fortunates taking places from the merely meritorious.</p>
<p>BTW, the KKK analogy wasnt' called for, and was a bit crude, speaking politely.</p>
<p>sybbie i dont think you understood the point</p>
<p>it is IMPOSSIBLE to make a conclusion about whether blacks graduate at higher or lower rates compared to other races based on data from elite schools</p>
<p>the reason is that these schools have such high graduation rates AS IS that any dropouts are statistically insignificant</p>
<p>to draw an analogy, let's say there's a dinner party of 100 single people. one black and two whites leave. you see that no asians left. you say, look how no asians left! asians are 100% more likely to stay at dinner parties. this is the logical equivalent of what some pro-AA people are saying in this thread.</p>
<p>
[quote]
It's never been clear to me that the mission of a public institution (or system) demands it admits people with the highest predicted graduation rate. I disagree with this assumption, not just personally, but as a scholar of higher education.
[/quote]
</p>
<p>What the heck do you think public institution should do? They are in the business to make sure people are educated, ie graduated. In fact I just read recently that CSU are asked to do what they can to increase the rate of graduation. As a tax payer I demand that and I think it's the best use of my money as well. Think real hard what is the real mission of a public university, it is to educate the mass, and there is nothing more tangible to prove that than the rate of graduation.</p>
<p>Ehh, I don't quite understand this 'minorities graduate at a lower rate so they're dumb so dont' admit them and admit me instead' thing that's going on in some currents of this discussion. A failure to produce a high graduation rate I think reflects more on the flaws of the school not the student. I don't think the difference in quality between Harvard and MIT are that worse, I think it's a failure on the latter school's part to adjust to meet their needs as well as the other's that's more of the problem. I could easily run an institution that runs down, say, international student's graduation rates by offering no remedial english courses and requiriing a high humanities core. I could drive down low-income graduation rates for technical majors by requiring they buy all their supplies from my over-priced school stores. I could make tutoring too few and too infrequent to be useful and make teachers inacessible. Certain groups need certain things in general to help them along in college, no two people are exactly the same. Just because a program works for the majority (whites+asians) doesn't mean you label the minority as defective in some way for not keeping pace.</p>
<p>And as I've said many times, the Princeton reject doesn't end up bagging groceries at Buy for Less. Most likely he's at Duke or somewhere that will provide him a great education that will lead to a great career and life. And if a Princeton reject does give up and spend his life whining about 'if only I'd gotten into Princeton I'd be so much more successful' I think that's more a reflection of the person's problems than the schools.</p>
<p>note: the schools mentioned above are merely examples off the top of my head, not throughly researched analogies.</p>
<p>I am going to Harvard thanks to taxguy. My father wore blue shirts all the time. That, of course, was until Hurricane Affirmative took action to blow our house away leaving us homeless. We started to smell a little bit but it was good smell, sort of like the smell of a rich American sewer. Unfortunately, one day we walked too close to a smoker and my father caught on fire because of the gases he was exposed to from the sewer. He was blinded and couldn't hear me yelling "Smoking causes cancer". While in the hospital, he learned of Dave Chappel and decided to start smoking crack. Being the smart business man that he was he decided to start making and selling crack. Well that was sort of like Jed Clampet. All of a sudden we were billionaires. The police did not seen to understand that my Dad was a business man and not a criminal. They arrested him and put him in jail. Fortunately, the jailors put my Dad in a cell for right handed criminals. Since my Dad is left handed, he was able to escape and be with us again. We celebrated by eating Vietnamese and Cambodian food. It was wonderful. There is actually more to the story, but I won't tell it all because that is why call me the King of Underrepresentation.</p>
<p>chartwell, as you correctly mentioned, and I mentioned before, that as you go down in universities, the difference between white and black students grows. Then there is an increasing mismatch between white and black students. These students arent dumb by any means, just that they arent on par with their respective institution. Had they gone to a slightly easier university they wouldve been competitive with whites.</p>
<p>Therefore, AA hurts minorities at times, because they simply are not par for the course. By definition AA selects less qualified, at least by traditional indicators, candidates.</p>
<p>how is 2% v. 4% statistically significant? what test are you using? it is a variation of ~32 out of ~1600. that is well within the range of characteristic random fluctuation. my point is that it is quite true that there is discrepancy between black and white grad rates, but that one would be intellectually pathetic to reach that conclusion by looking at the grad rates of elite schools with 96%+ grad rates.</p>
<p>Uhh, so we should stick them in community college so they can have even less opportunities and some more well qualified white person can take their place? That's wonderful</p>
<p>If this issue truly concerns you, crusade against predominately black ghettos being zoned together so they can put the least money possible in the already crappy schools a lot of these kids attend. Until early education is fixed the gap will remain and the only compensation is AA. Name t he real problem for what it is: ignoring of poor and predominately minority school districts and not the favorite excuse: they're just naturally underqualified, give me that Princeton spot! Honestly</p>