I can’t link from my phone, but voice of reason says that degrees In Engineering or BIOLOGY Leads to greater opportunities. that statement leads me to believe you have no idea what you are talking about. Show me the great opportunities that bio majors have…low working lab worker? engineering yes, bio no.
Do you understand what “let’s say” means? Apparently not.
It allows us to get to your real point. Waah they get more than me. You dint cares if they switch majors or why, you only cares that it seems unfair to you.
OHMom I do care that URM succeed. If racial preferences actually helped I would support it because I am for helping those that are disadvantaged. But the reality is in the context of elite schools, it does not in the vast majority of cases help those it is intended to help.
GAmom Here is a quote from Stanford Biology Dept.
“The Biology major can serve as a stepping-stone for a wide variety of career opportunities. For students planning to attend medical, dental, or veterinary school, or graduate school in biological and applied sciences, the biology major provides a strong foundation in the basic life sciences. This foundation of knowledge, plus laboratory experience, also prepares students well for research and technical positions in universities, government, and industry.”
Try to do that with an Ethnic Studies or French Lit degree. STEM degrees just opens more doors. If an Ethnic Studies or like degree graduate wants to pursue the types of opportunities of a STEM degree, they need to at minimum go back to undergraduate school to take those science and math courses. I understand your daughter is a Classics major, but she took high level math and science courses to satisfy her pre-med requirements. She did not have a problem excelling in those courses. She CHOSE to major in the Classics, she did not turn to the Classics because she could not cut it in STEM.
Great, the UG Bio major is a stepping stone to where? There are thousands of pre med hopefuls who think a Bio degree is the way to go…they don’t get into med scholll and as I said, end up as low paying lab techs. A STEM degree is not the holy grail that you think it is…it depends on the discipline, and a Bio degree is not one of them.
Hey, I just wanted to say that correlation doesn’t equal causation. So just because african American students are switching out of STEM more so than other students does not necessarily mean there is academic mismatch. It could be another variable. I’m not saying I know the variables though.
And just for the purpose of clarification, what exactly is “academic mismatch”?
GAmom There are thousands of pre med hopefuls with Bio degrees, but there are thousands of pre med hopefuls with other majors as well that also don’t get into medical school. But tell me a pre med who doesn’t take biology, chemistry, calculus, physics and organics that gets accepted to medical school? There are NONE. Your statements are just a distraction from what is an Academic Mismatch issue.
fr33 Academic Mismatch is when a student is given such a large admission preference that her level of academic achievement is much lower than the average of the student body. For instance, if a student is accepted with a SATM of 600 when the average of the student body’s SATM is 750. The greater the disparity, the greater the academic mismatch and more likely that the lower achieving student will be at the bottom of the class.
Voice of reason; I am well aware what the classes that are required for med school are, my daughter is a third year med student. I am saying you don’t need to be a STEM major to go to med school, and that bio major is going to be useless if you don’t. So how is being a bio major better than a humanities major?
Oh, I understand. It’s your face-saving way of admitting that you knew what I was talking about without having to actually admit it.
I would WELCOME an alternative explanation to mismatch…if you can actually come up with one. It should be obvious, but in case it’s not, “this is irrelevant” is not an explanation. Remember, whatever excuse you come up with has to explain BOTH facts, not just one of them.
Yes, my point is that racial preferences are nothing but a middle-class entitlement. And your attitude has made that patently obvious: “underrepresented” minorities are ENTITLED to the PRIVILEGE of choosing between schools where they are good fits academically and schools where, given their interests, they may not be able to pursue them all the way. But to obfuscate this, naturally you accuse me of not caring if they switch majors, even though you yourself have said “who cares?”
Just admit it: you want preferential treatment; you don’t want equal treatment. Plus, you think it’s racist for me to say that blacks and Hispanics whose academic backgrounds are similar to whites and Asians at “yeehaw directional state” should go to “yeehaw directional state.” And while we’re on that subject, I find your biases so very interesting: in your mind, “yeehaw directional state” is where blacks and Hispanics would go in the absence of racial preferences instead of “Flagship Public University of State X” or “Slightly-lower-ranked-but-still-very-good Private LAC or University that CC parents say Asian students should attend.” Seems like I have a more favorable view of the quality of blacks and Hispanics than you do.
But hey, I’m the spoiled, entitled person here for expecting that people should be treated equally. You’re not spoiled or entitled at all for demanding that “underrepresented” minorities be GIVEN PREFERENTIAL TREATMENT. That’s “equality.” You know April Fool’s isn’t here yet, right?
Sure, it could be another variable. Feel free to brainstorm on what you think it might be. Remember,
- without controlling for high school qualifications, blacks switch from STEM to non-STEM majors **at higher rates** than whites and Asians; and
- controlling for high school qualifications, blacks switch from STEM to non-STEM Majors **at the same rates** as whites and Asians.
The tactic employed by OHMomof2 and GA2012MOM has been to obfuscate this by bringing up a red herring: why is it a problem that blacks switch majors? It isn’t. It isn’t a problem that anyone switches majors. Some students, regardless of racial classification, will switch for a variety of reasons.
Why should these reasons differ at the group level? I have no reason to expect that holding qualifications constant, blacks as a group should have different switch rates than whites or Asians as a group. And hey, that’s exactly what happens: there is no difference once you control for qualifications. There’s only a difference when you DO NOT CONTROL for qualifications.
Mismatch definitely explains this. I concede that there may be other explanations. But isn’t it telling that as much as OHMomOf2, GA2012MOM, and others despise the very notion of mismatch, they cannot come up with an alternative explanation? They can only obfuscate the point or say it doesn’t matter?
GAmom If you daughter did not go to medical school, what opportunities would she have with her Classics undergraduate degree? Would they be better or worse than those with a STEM degree? Further still would your daughter have been accepted into medical school if she did not take science and math courses which are not requirements of a Classics degree?
I am unsure why you take the position that I want everyone to do STEM. That is not my position. I would like all those who want to do STEM to be able to complete their goal and not have to opt out because of the effects of academic mismatch because the universities gave those students huge admission preferences.
Imagine if most of the URM that are given huge preferences to elite colleges eschewed those colleges for schools were the student body was closer to their achievement levels, how many more STEM URM graduates there would be. Yes we need some Ethnic majors and Music majors and Classics majors but we need many more STEM graduates in our society especially among URMs where generally the better paying jobs and opportunity are available.
The data also shows that the rise of URMs income discrepancy with whites stopped shrinking about the same time when colleges started giving huge racial preferences in admissions. This can’t be a coincidence. I believe this is the unintended consequence of racial preferences in the college admission process for those like you and OHmom who want to do what you think is helpful to URMs’ future for success. But the results have been terrible for the vast majority of those students who received huge preferences from college admissions.
Yep, that’s what I believe.
And I also believe it doesn’t matter if URMs start in Bio and switch to Econ, or whatever. I understand you think you know why they do that, I really do. But I still think it’s irrelevant.
Only because I find this aspect of the discussion interesting, not because I expect to engage the mind of a poster who was probably banned and returned with a new username…
I think the main reasons have to do with a mission to address racial inequality in society and a desire to have the campus community reflect the US community racially. Certainly the language used by colleges suggests that - “under-represented” meaning “lower % on this campus than in the US”.
It’s hard to deal with people of other races in any kind of normal (or professional) fashion if you don’t know any personally, and know them well. This doesn’t happen too much in society generally, so colleges have taken it as a mission to make this experience part of what they offer to students they educate.
If you’re being honest, good. Thanks for admitting that you demand preferential treatment and call it “equality.” Now we all know that your talk about equality is nothing but a farce.
If you’re being sarcastic, you know it’s pretty hard to detect sarcasm, especially when you combine it with a repetition of a comment that you have repeatedly made with no sarcasm and that repeatedly misinterprets the discussion. But don’t worry. I know full well that you are capable of understanding the correct interpretation; it is simply in your best interest to pretend that you don’t and obfuscate the discussion because you know, deep down, that you have no alternative to mismatch for explaining the facts. You can hate it as much as you want, but you can’t come up with anything better than “it’s irrelevant.”
Yes, you are really addressing inequality by granting preferential treatment to middle-class or higher “underrepresented” minorities. That totally makes sense. Not.
Racial preferences don’t guarantee that people actually form meaningful relationships with people of other racial classifications. Having nice photo ops doesn’t automatically translate to genuine interpersonal interaction.
I notice you spend an awful lot of your time in this thread trying to be “right” and somehow catch others being “wrong”. We all did it when we were young to a degree but @fabrizio - no one is keeping score.
I’ve never been anything but honest in this thread. I believe preferential admissions treatment addresses inequality. I am looking at a larger picture than you are, it seems.
“Hate”? You think i care enough about your opinion to “hate” it?
Edited to add: I WAS being sarcastic in the one post GAmom called me out on. That’s it though.
OHMom So you are saying that you want low paying jobs for URM. You want lower level of opportunity for URM and you believe that that is best way to help URMs achieve their goal of living the American Dream by disadvantaging them academically by pitting them against better prepared higher achieving students.
As to your comments on the benefit of diversity, you mean there should be diversity of URM in STEM courses that you continually state as being “irrelevant.” If you value diversity so much then shouldn’t there be diversity in STEM too or is just having URM around somewhere on campus all that is necessary? Not sure how the latter will accomplish your goal of having people interact, if URMs aren’t in all areas of study.
I am dying to respond to this with sarcasm but I fear it will be misinterpreted 
“Catch” would imply that I have to actually do something beyond simply reading what you write. I don’t. The flaws in your posts are incredibly transparent, whether it’s (deliberately) misunderstanding the discussion or unintentionally betraying how entitled you are while, naturally, accusing others of being spoiled.
You most certainly are not. How do middle-class entitlements address inequality? The very idea is absurd. As for “it,” I was not referring to my opinion; I was referring to the notion of mismatch. You can hate that all you want, but you can offer NO ALTERNATIVE EXPLANATION for the facts. You can only shrug your shoulders, say it’s “irrelevant,” and show that you feel nice photo ops are more important than students having a fair chance of succeeding at what they think they want to do.
OHMom That is what you are advocating by supporting huge racial preferences in college admissions. Every time you state that it is of no concern that URM students change from STEM to non-STEM at substantially higher rates than Asians and Whites and is irrelevant. These URM would have persisted in STEM had they gone to a school with a student body inline with their level of academic achievement.
We wouldn’t be having this discussion if non-STEM majors as a whole earned more than STEM majors, but that is not the case. If an URM switches out of STEM to non-STEM they will earn less than if they persisted in STEM. This is not conjecture but fact.