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You're completley correct. We should balance the system so that admissions allow more people of color and first-in-family admissions, instead of preferencing legacies so much
Better yet, base it on merit.
Do achievements under tougher conditions not have merit?
I never thought of it this way, that's a pretty good interpretation.
The toughness of the conditions aren’t the point of merit-based entry. The point is matching where someone is now, to where the school can take them.
Agreed.
And we should give extra points to people who grew up in disadvantaged situations but still had decent grades. A 'C' in AP History by someone working a job in high school, is just as good as someone who got an 'A' And didn't have to work.
Merit isn't just a good GPA. It takes into account all of the things that made it some more difficult for a person. Getting a decent score on an SAT exam when you went to a shit school, should be able to get you into a good college. But the reality is someone who lived in a zip code with better schools is more likely to get into that college purely by where they grew up. And you tend to grow up in a good neighborhood if you're parents were well off or had a degree themselves.
Purely looking at grades and scores is bad. Unfortunately, people of color tend (not always) be from worse neighborhoods. They tend to have a lot of disadvantages when it comes to getting good grades and good scores. Affirmative action is/was supposed to break the cycle. It's supposed to help give a little more merit to the situations surrounding grades Ultimately, it's supposed to diversify the nicer neighborhoods.
Better yet, expand universities and allow everybody in.
Or teach critical thinking in grade and trade schools. The fact that critical thinking skills are scoffed at as being "elitist" is an intentional devolution of our culture.
How do you decide what majors people should be allowed to take? If money was no object, there would be many many more liberal arts type majors that don't directly contribute monetarily to society nearly as much as other professions.
Doing what’s good for you and others is often very different from doing what’s good monetarily.
The monetary side helps match people where they're most needed. (Not exactly because capitalism is broken in some ways, but approximately) If education and money were entirely decoupled, there would be less of a way to get people where they're needed. Raising income wouldn't help much since you wouldn't need to think about that when choosing a major.
Distributing skilled labor to where it's needed is still good for others too. I agree money and morality aren't correlated, but it can help guide in the useful direction. I think there needs to be a balance between allowing people to do whatever they want and encouraging them to do what's needed.
Here's some more info on problems you can have with colleges. youtube.com/watch?v=Rqv0nuP4OAU
In my country university is free, some have a test you have to pass because there are so many people that want to go, but those are law and medicine. And most people drop out in the first year.
Otherwise it's not really an issue.
Dropping out seems like an issue, as you're paying for someone who isn't going to benefit very much from it. Most people overall, or most people in those majors?
I think most people in those mayors drop out, not overall. My guess is that people know you can make a lot of money there but then realize they don't actually like it.
I don't think it's a big issue though, some public money might be "wasted", but you give everyone a chance which find perfectly acce.
An issue is that lower income areas often have less focus on things like test taking skills, so genuine ability is really hard to distinguish from test taking practice.
Also, schools in lower income areas often aren't nearly as good, forcing a cycle of poverty since they can't get into college very easily at all.
We will be re-learning this lesson for the next fifty years along with why the voting rights act was necessary.
What is merit? How do you measure it?
You know what ISN'T merit? ...simply being born part of some special group that gets preferential treatment based on the most meaningless of things.
Merit could be anything from HS grades to SAT scores or placement in various scholarly competitions. Income level should be mixed in there as well.
Do we want to live in an equitable world? Then stop dividing people over stupid shit.
being born rich isn't merit either, but it has lasting inpacts on HS grades, SAT scores, and placement in scholarly competitions. How do you propose to ensure schools aren't full of people who just bought their way in?