These elite colleges are non-profit institutions, not government-funded. I'm not surprised they occasionally want to "waste their academic offerings" on billionaire's children with middling resumes. The situation is much better than in years past, but you'll never escape it.
Quite simply, Harvard didn't come by that $35 billion endowment on the basis of SAT scores alone. Everyone else in that stratus has to compete with that figure as well. This is simply an economic problem, compounded by wealth concentration. Who's going to make a college turn down a potential huge bequest in return for a handful of slightly-less-meritorious admissions? They can admit everyone alphabetically if they want to.
If anyone you know is surprised by this, tell them that you just found out that politicians listen to the people who write the biggest checks instead of the people who have the best ideas! They'll be appalled!
Actually a good chunk of their operating budgets comes from government grants. And a requirement of tenure is ability to the get said grants. That's the cudgel the government holds - follow our regulations or get government funds cut (see stem cell research). Meanwhile, don't you think it's a tad weird that you could be considered non-profit and carry a $35 billion "endowment"? Or earn a few million in salary (as some football coaches do) and work for a "non-profit"?
And I don't think anyone would naively argue against all nepotism. But would you have guessed that twice as many non-qualified students get in based on their family than on their race? The popular debate has made the latter seem much more prevalent, as if minorities were solely responsible for squeezing out qualified whites.
"The larger question on the senators' minds was whether private colleges and universities are abusing the public trust. After all, they pay no taxes on tuition revenue or on the income from their endowments, of which Harvard boasts the largest -- $35 billion, which has lately been earning around $5 billion a year. In order to keep their tax-exempt status, other nonprofit institutions (charitable foundations, for example) are required to give away a hefty percentage of their money. Hospitals are required to care for indigent patients. But what, exactly, are colleges doing to justify their public subsidies?"
So they judged whether a student was qualified based on their school's "advertised requirements in terms of high school grade point average, SAT or ACT scores, letters of recommendation, and records of involvement in extracurricular activities." Specifically, they looked at students who failed every single test.
And then the next paragraph says "A sizable number are recruited athletes..."
How can a recruited athlete fail at having an extracurricular activity? That doesn't even make sense. It's clear the author is just mixing and matching random studies with his preconceived conclusion.
I don't see how getting into college because of social connections is a problem.
People seem to think the smartest people academically should succeed but it is those people who utilize social connections best that succeed. Hence the pointy hair boss.
It's bad because "ability to use social connections" is not going to cure any diseases or solve any hard technical problems and make the world a better place for everyone.
It's basically corruption, and corruption often leads to bad things. Really the only reason it's remotely acceptable is that the money donated by the parents of these kids is partly why the college is so good to begin with, and many people do benefit from that.
The other thing is that one of the main criticisms of affirmative action revolves around the example of the poor white boy who didn't get into the school he wanted because a lesser qualified minority got preference. "Reverse discrimination!" People cry.
Let's drop the conspiracy theories about the evil "white" man.
Anyway. Rest assurred that all inefficiency has to be paid for. When a valuable resource is given to one group that doesn't deserve it (blacks/hispanics/whatever through affirmative action) it has to be paid for by another undeserving group, rich idiots, who reasonably expect an ROI.
And so Harvard segments the market, giving away some degrees for politics reasons, and giving away others for economic reasons.
AA was actually instituted to counter discrimination against Jews. Later, it was expanded to include other minorities who had been systematically disadvantaged (by those in power).
The justification for it is that minorities are still reeling from the effects of previous discriminatory policies, and AA used as a balancing force. Personally, I think if that's the issue, then we should use income based measures, not racially based ones.
Also, as someone else already pointed out, many racial groups are artificial. For example, there is a huge difference between a Filipino American and an international Chinese student, yet both are "Asian". There is also a huge difference between most Chinese Americans and Vietnamese Americans, who are mostly refugees from the Viet War. How can you classify all these diverse people with diverse backgrounds into one category? How does it help anything?
So yea, I agree some valuable resources are given to out undeservedly so, but only because we're using the wrong categories to measure who has been disadvantaged. I still agree with the spirit of AA, but not in its current form.
>AA was actually instituted to counter discrimination against Jews.
Well, the Jews were systematically discriminated against in college admissions with quotas, but I don't think affirmative action was a result of this. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jewish_quota
Yeah, I think I remember reading the "problem" the Ivies were facing in the 30's were that the Jewish immigrants were outperforming the good ole boys that they were supposed to be admitting, so they started digging into 'lineage' as an additional qualifier for admission. Can you imagine not admitting someone like Feynman so that Bush could get in?!?
I REALLY appreciate the fact that a forum poster actually took the time to go out and get the numbers relevant to a subject s/he is posting on!
A few nit picks:
The population numbers for Asians, Blacks, and Latinos DO INDEED include far larger numbers of foreign students than the other numbers, as you were wondering. Not that it makes a difference to the point you were attempting to make. I'm just pointing out that the 'representation' numbers you gave imply that the Asian, Latino or Black populations at Harvard are composed exclusively of native born Americans, I wanted to make clear that they are not. Though I suppose anyone familiar with Harvard would find that to be obvious.
With that, I wanted to say that if wealthy, British educated, Africans are more qualified than African-Americans, then why should Harvard not admit them. Same with whites. If Jews are more qualified than non-Jewish whites, then they are the ones who deserve the spot at Harvard.
I realize that wealthy people get a pass, and while that is unseemly to me, I cannot claim to find it entirely unexpected.
All of this is coming from a Christian Midwesterner from the under-class and a farm state. So conservative that when I'm running the banks they won't pay any interest at all. But if we live in a meritocracy, then we live in a meritocracy. The fact of the matter is that if Harvard and other schools did not make 'allowances' there would be far fewer whites at Harvard than there are right now. I know that it's hard to hear, but there it is.
Even at second-tier schools, 'allowances' are made far too often. At the University of Wisconsin, they cut off foreign and out-of-state admissions so that less qualified Wisconsin residents can get some of the spots. As a conservative, I find this EXTREMELY distasteful.
The problem that middle-class whites have is two-fold: (a) they're poorly equipped to game the system, and (b) that's not well-recognized by colleges.
The point (I hope) of affirmative action is that colleges understand that minorities are relatively disadvantaged at jumping through the right hoops (private school pedigree, solid extracurriculars, SAT prep classes, etc.), so the colleges try to compensate for that. Rich idiots get a leg up simply by virtue of their being rich and well-connected, which makes explicit legacy favoritism their second layer of advantage.
Your numbers support the increasingly popular (and very well-founded) idea that race-based affirmative action makes much less sense than that based on socioeconomic class.
Quite simply, Harvard didn't come by that $35 billion endowment on the basis of SAT scores alone. Everyone else in that stratus has to compete with that figure as well. This is simply an economic problem, compounded by wealth concentration. Who's going to make a college turn down a potential huge bequest in return for a handful of slightly-less-meritorious admissions? They can admit everyone alphabetically if they want to.
If anyone you know is surprised by this, tell them that you just found out that politicians listen to the people who write the biggest checks instead of the people who have the best ideas! They'll be appalled!