<p>@voiceofreason66 - Actually yes, YOU said that. You said they were at the bottom of Harvard’s class. </p>
<p>I’d disagree that Harvard wants students to achieve the goals they set. I’d say it’s more likely Harvard wants students to achieve the goals HARVARD sets. And not shutting down the philosophy department is very likely one of those goals.</p>
<p>OHMom If “Harvard wants to students to achieve the goals HARVARD sets” is what you truly believe then Harvard is not the place most kids should go. In fact, I am unsure of any student who wants to fulfill a dream would ever want to go to Harvard if that is Harvard’s philosophy. No amount of data, no amount of logic will overcome such beliefs and as such I will respectfully agree to disagree with your point of view and leave it at that.</p>
<p>Best wishes to your daughter’s college search.</p>
<p>My daughter didn’t apply to Harvard and I agree - it is NOT the place most kids should go. I don’t understand the stampede to apply to it for undergrad.</p>
<p>FWIW
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<p>…was what I came into the thread to respond to and you said that in post 1186.</p>
<p>I also take issue with the idea that STEM subjects are the be-all end-all of a college education but that was largely a different point.</p>
<p>VoR, actually, I’d like to see a study or citation that shows Harvard URMs are outstanding as a whole. It could be true or it could not, there is no evidence. Conversely, there are numerous studies of grade inflation where URMs choose to major…which begs the question: are they really doing well or have grading standards been lowered to a ridiculous low degree? Are they really C and D students masquerading as A and B students due to lowering of standards?</p>
<p>The problem is not stratified only by elite schools, mid-tiered schools and low-tiered schools alone…rather, it also applies to even the historically black colleges and universities. When a professor tries to take a stand to raise standards to the bare minimum, s/he is fired. Why does a student deserve to pass when they don’t a) show up to class and b) don’t do the work? </p>
<p><a href=“https://www.insidehighered.com/news/2008/05/14/aird”>https://www.insidehighered.com/news/2008/05/14/aird</a></p>
<p>mavant I agree with much of what you state. I don’t know of any study that actually looks into your question, but since Harvard URMs do have SAT averages near 1300/1600 and high GPAs. I am inclined to think that as a whole they are outstanding. The problem is that the overall group of students in a Harvard class are even more outstanding than most URM.</p>
<p>Your issue of dumbing down the classes might also be happening. UNC fluff courses are there for Athletes, so why not fluff courses for lower achieving students. All universities have a motivation to achieve high graduation rates so it would not surprise me that colleges at all levels would provide such fluff courses. In fact, who’s to say that the UNC fluff course in African American studies were not designed for Athletes but for URM. </p>
<p>I hope that this not the case, but who knows. </p>
<p>the UNC courses were primarily taken by two groups, athletes, and frat members (who probably knew the tricks of the trades). </p>
<p>theanaconda I thought I read somewhere that less than half those who took the UNC fluff course were Athletes and majority of those who took the course were not Athletes and the fact that the course was in African American studies seems to smack at what mavant was questioning about grade inflation and graduation rates. If UNC is doing this it stands to reason that other institutions might also be doing it including the likes of Harvard.</p>
<p>Found it! </p>
<p>“The North Carolina scandal lingered for three years as the university tried to convince the NCAA this was not an athletic issue, but rather an academic issue because non-athletes also took the fake courses. (Athletes comprised 47 percent of the students in the bogus classes, compared to athletes representing 4 percent of the North Carolina student body.)”</p>
<p><a href=“http://www.cbssports.com/collegefootball/writer/jon-solomon/24765822/uncs-unprecedented-academic-fraud-case-will-test-ncaa”>http://www.cbssports.com/collegefootball/writer/jon-solomon/24765822/uncs-unprecedented-academic-fraud-case-will-test-ncaa</a></p>
<p>So per mavant theory, the UNC administration actually argued that the fluff course was for UNC students and that Athletes just happened to stumble upon the course.</p>
<p>well 47% athletes. … And I think there were frat groups involved, I remember reading it on the thread about the scandal. </p>
<p>theanaconda Don’t you find it curious that the fluff course was in African American studies given the many different departments at UNC? I’m starting to believe in mavant’s theory, the more I think about it.</p>
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<p>UNC’s business model depends heavily on sports, obviously basketball especially.</p>
<p>I don’t think Harvard has the same financial incentive.</p>
<p>OHMom Harvard’s incentive is the sky high graduation rates which you and xiggi have pointed to deflect the issue of racial quota etc. Now I am not making the allegation that any school is doing academic fraud on systemic basis, but this situation at UNC is a starting point to begin the discussion of mavant’s theory/questions.</p>
<p>Not sure what you mean the “UNC’s business model depends heavily on sports”? Can you clarify?</p>
<p>Regarding Bowen and Bok’s studies:</p>
<p>"Imagine two black males with identical SAT scores, both in the top 10% of their high-school classes, and both from middle-class families. Only their colleges are different. Bowen and Bok convincingly demonstrate that if the two have the same college major and similar grades, the one who attends Princeton will earn considerably more than the one who attends Penn State.</p>
<p>But what if they don’t have similar grades? By the authors’ own calculations, it is better to be a black male at Penn State in the top third of the class than in the bottom third at Princeton. The increased earnings the Penn State student gets from high grades are worth almost twice the increased earnings from attending Princeton. And the boost in earnings he would get from majoring in natural science rather than the humanities — a more achievable goal at Penn State — is a whopping $49,537 per year.</p>
<p>If one’s class rank and major were unrelated to the selectivity level of one’s college, then it would be perfectly sensible for the authors to celebrate the finding that, all other things being equal, black males get an earnings boost from attending Princeton rather than Penn State. But they are not unrelated. For students who would not have been admitted but for racial preferences, the chances of being in the top third of the class are remote."</p>
<p>So how can black students attain a higher salary? Implement a system where their grades at Princeton would be as high as grades at Penn State by changing the grading criteria for courses chosen by black students at Princeton.</p>
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<p>Scroll down to UNC (#30 on list). $82,792,342 in athletic revenue for 2013.</p>
<p>Sorry, forgot link: <a href=“NCAA Finances: Revenue & Expenses by School - USA TODAY”>http://www.usatoday.com/sports/college/schools/finances/</a></p>
<p>Here’s an article from…Harvard…on the subject of student athletes using UNC as an example: <a href=“Cash Madness | Opinion | The Harvard Crimson”>http://www.thecrimson.com/column/homo-economicus/article/2014/3/31/Harvard-cash-madness-zhou/</a></p>
<p>OHMom you do realize athletics has expenses. In 2008 UNC generated $66Million but spent $65Million, netting only $1Million to the University. $11.5 million was spent on coaches salaries most of that went to two coaches, you can probably guess which two coaches. This is all to common even with the most revenue generating school, the University of Alabama generating $123.8Million and it spent $123.3 million for an incredible net to the school of $0.5 million. Not much in terms of a business model. The football coach alone earns many times more than a school nets.</p>
<p><a href=“College Athletics Revenues and Expenses - ESPN”>http://espn.go.com/ncaa/revenue</a></p>
<p>Athletics is trophy for an university administration for university presidents that earn seven figures, not a revenue stream for the academic departments. Not by a long shot.</p>
<p>As to your article in the Crimson, not sure what your point is about it other than Athletic departments have an interest in keeping student athletes eligible.</p>
<p>mavant you make a very good point and it would be nice if these so called experts in economics and social sciences would do a longitudinal study comparing similar students based upon race, SES, parents, culture etc vs. earnings and job satisfaction for those students who go to mismatch schools vs match schools. Let the data collection begin.</p>
<p>BTW mavant Maybe the fluff courses were created to kill two birds with one stone. Boost GPA for URM students and for revenue Athletes who also happened to be mostly URM. This would raise overall graduation rates plus help maintain student athlete eligibility</p>
<p><a href=“The Harvard Crimson | Class of 2017”>http://features.thecrimson.com/2013/frosh-survey/makeup.html</a></p>
<p>“Students of white or African-American ethnicities are overrepresented among recruited athletes. While white students make up 62 percent of the freshman student body, according to the survey, they make up 79 percent of freshman recruited athletes. Similarly, while African-American students constitute 10 percent of freshmen, they represent 13 percent of recruited athletes in the class. On the other hand, recruited athletes of Asian descent are an underrepresented demographic. While Asian students constitute 25 percent of the freshman population, they make up just 13 percent of recruited athletes in the freshman class.”</p>
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<p>I thought kids from India were generally put in the “Asian” category? I see Harvard doesn’t do that. Almost 30% there.</p>
<p>That website specifically says it’s numbers are SELF-REPORTED numbers and not everyone took part in the survey. They go on to mentioned that the numbers were not controlled for biases.</p>
<p>So why did they do this? Perhaps by tilting the survey more full of Asians, they can proudly report higher SAT scores which show that the average Asian was a 2299 (~2300). The same skewing occurs to eliminate low-scoring students. Note that previous studies have shown that Black students at Harvard had SATs closer to the 2000 mark and Latino students had closer to the 2070 mark but this survey recorded their averages as 2107 and 2167, respectively.</p>
<p>mavant I was talking to my brother in law about the Harvard discrimination case. He asked what would happen to a student who checked Black and/or Latino who was not either of these ethnicity on the Harvard application. I thought about it and couldn’t give him an answer. One the one hand, misrepresenting ethnicity is violation of honesty in filling the application, but on the other hand, since Harvard claims not to have quotas or discriminate by race, the misstatement of ethnicity would have, at least based upon Harvard’s claim no effect on admission decision, so the misrepresentation would be deminimus or have no ill effects to the school so the applicant should be able to correct this error after acceptance and remain eligible for admission. </p>
<p>If Harvard pursued to rescind the admission decision based upon something that allegedly has no effect on admission decision, wouldn’t Harvard have exhibited a more serious violation of ethics, the intentional discrimination of Asians in the admission process.</p>
<p>As to the article, there seems no way that Harvard’s URM have SAT average anywhere near the reported scores in the Crimson article based upon the numbers reported by the SAT and ACT. The numbers that I have seen are about a 100 points lower for URM. The Asian numbers were a bit low, I recall that the average SAT for Asians were just over 2300.</p>
<p>I asked questions but I did not get answers from this group.</p>
<p>Harvard accepts students from all 50 states and 80 countries. I don’t know the international makeup of Harvard students. I don’t know if taking international students helps Asians or not. That info may exist,</p>
<p>Taking students from 50 stares probably hurts Asian acceptance rates.</p>
<p><a href=“Demographics of Asian Americans - Wikipedia”>http://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Demographics_of_Asian_Americans</a></p>