My coworkers kids are both Harvard alum and would classify as legacies but they were also top students their whole lives. My coworker makes the point that legacy status matters most when you’re rich because donations trump grades.
this is correct. Legacy families’ donations to university endowments continue to fuel underprivileged students’ tuition to a significant degree. This is also why universities continue to tolerate the Greek system despite all of its problems.
Universities are developers masquerading as educators. Many institutions endowments, at least for the bigger universities, could completely pay for their student bodies tuition with just a portion of the dividends they earn. But they need more buildings.
that number--what you're calling "many"--is probably on the order of only 4-6 institutions, nearly all Ivy; and they wouldn't be able to pay for every student's tuition. (There are currently only a handful of medical colleges who pay 100% of every student's tuition.) The sad and generally unremarked-upon truth of the matter is that rich people pay the way for poor people to attend college. This is why universities place so much emphasis on recruiting foreign students who generally pay their own way. This is also reflected in the growing number of universities who have abandoned needs-blind admission: they simply cannot afford to pay for all students' tuition. This is a problem that will only get worse.
Random example of Swathmore. They have an endowment of 2.7 billion and 1600 students. Their tuition is 61k/student. 98 million in tuition. And assuming 3% rate of return 81 million in gains on endowment. Universities always have these big rainy day funds but will never tap into them even if it monsooning.
Rice has 7.8 billion endowment 8300 students, half under grad tuition is 57210 so tuition brings in 474 million if every student paid Endowment would make 234 million at 3%.
...well I wouldn't be giving Mike Pence too much credit myself. Believe me, the last person's backside he was looking to save was yours or mine. He knew what was going on, because he'd been around everybody cooking up fake electors and looking for Venezuelan voting machines and Chinese ballots and everything else. He maybe found out, right at that last moment, just how serious they were about this coup attempt of theirs. Probably about then where his christian values shook him to whatever senses he has left, and reminded him that even though self-sacrifice is supposedly some kind of pillar of his faith... ...his life wasn't worth all this $h!t. Don't know if anybody would've done anything more than just keep Pence from presiding over the Senate that day. Murder wasn't out of the realm of possibility, obviously, but as is being repeatedly proven, most of them really didn't have the stones they continuously lob at other people when the time came to pay up on all this. ...and to another point made by your comment here, sir... ...we Negroes are a pretty ungrateful bunch, if you ask anybody else. We spend all our time complaining about getting crumbs from the table...when what we really ought to be doing is being thankful that we're anywhere close enough to that table in the first place. You know, when you get right down to cases, I'm a pretty arrogant S.O.B. Reverse-racist indoctrination does that to you, I suppose. I still like to think that I'm a pretty smart guy. And there have been black people before me that have been smarter than me, and there will be black people long after I'm gone that will be smarter than me. Black people have always been as smart as anybody else in this country. Which is why the legal standard and definition of that has had to change, and the goalposts have had to move periodically, from a societal perspective. As long as black people think that reaching for whatever standard of behavior and intellect white people (or anybody else) sets is the answer, then we'll go on being as dumb as the vast majority of Americans have always believed we are. Look at some of those ignoramuses in the House of Representatives. How "smart" did any of them have to be to get those jobs that they aren't qualified to do? What it means for black people to be smart is to know which side of their biscuits are buttered. You're plenty smart enough if you think like somebody else tells you or expects you to think. You dissent or have a different opinion or viewpoint, you're some rabble-rousing ingrate Negro who wants to be paid for being stupid, like a lot of white people get paid for being rabble-rousing insurrectionists who want to secede or burn down the government. If we're going to be thankful for anything, @Andre0087, it may be for the law of unintended consequences...
good examples, but endowment income does a lot more to sustain basic university operating expenses than it does to pay student tuition. Obviously it's one big juggling act--again the point being that there are really only a small handful of universities (such as Princeton; I don't remember if Yale now does this) that can guarantee tuition for students whose parents make under a certain dollar amount. on edit:
That was a great f'n post. I don't really have anything to disagree with on it, but just some minutia or twists to add. It isn't even about reparations or getting what anyone deserves for unfair imposed obstacles (That stuff can definitely be debated, though). But as I was trying to say, knowledge can be power. I am not really fond of calling things Black history, because it is simply true and real history, that has been ignored for too long. It is good for every person to learn that knowledge. The broader knowledge might help to color all people's peeception. The knowledge that this history has been censored might help paint a more complete picture and lead to greater understanding for all involved. So while I don't believe in color-blindness (I beleive colors and cultures should not only recognized but celebrated and appreciated.), when it comes to history, I almost do beleive in color blindness. Every person should learn it. College is a place where people can gain some of that knowledge and be exposed to different folks from a wide array of backgrounds at a time when that exposure is happening. I feel like it's a win for everyone regardless of their culture.
...this is my favorite part here. Of course, this objective truth, again, runs afoul of the political and relative truth of the actual chronicling of "American" history. It's not the historical truth that matters at all. It's the truth that's widely accepted and disseminated and curated that matters. Anything a Negro does or achieves is relegated to simple guilt by white Americans, who got to choose which Negroes they got to sponsor or chaperone. Something to be said about getting noticed by the right people. I remember the story of how the Brooklyn Dodgers owner, Branch Richey, wanted to integrate Major League Baseball. It didn't matter to him if the black player he chose was the "best" player in the Negro Leagues at the time (and there seemed to be a lot of arguments about that), but whether or not that player had the will to withstand the abuse and rejection he was going to encounter during the attempt. Turns out, given the climate at the time, Jackie Robinson was one of the only people alive who could have pulled that off. One thing I think I should also say (at the risk of scurrilous, disingenuous, and contemptible people running off with it to misuse it and hide behind), is that the last thing any Black American should be opposed to, is eradicating discrimination against any marginalized groups of people in this country. Nobody that's black should be upset with Asian Americans gaining a victory with this latest ruling on affirmative action. It was never really about giving Asian-Americans, or anybody else for that matter, fair treatment in regards to ivy league school admissions. It was always about getting unworthy Negroes away from the trough. It stings to be willing and capable enough to routinely put yourself in a position to be recognized, only to have that effort undercut by the supposition that the standards were always lowered for you anyway, and gifted to you by some misplaced sentimentality. As long as a lie is more important than the truth is, doesn't really matter at all whose lie it is or who benefits from it. The only truth that matters to anybody is the truth that matters to them. The only people that are really racist are the black people. And we'll show you how and why right over here...
[Premium Post] It's astonishing to me the lengths that people will go to in order to rationalize underperformance. Look to see which cultures are prioritizing education and you'll understand why groups are over- and underrepresented at elite schools. It's folly to expect students from cultures that do not prioritize education to have the same academic results as those who do. Affirmative action or the process that universities use to select students is not what's causing the problem with underrepresented groups. It's their culture. Their family values. Their priorities. If you don't prepare and follow a long term plan, then you should not expect equal results. If you practice basketball more than you practice math, you should not expect to score higher on a math test than a student who dedicates himself to math. Nor should you expect a college admissions officer to treat you better than a student who dedicates himself to learning. MERIT, not race, should drive the decision making. A merit-based society is one that promotes hard work and achievement. This is what we should strive for.
Elite schools are not selecting solely on any single metric. They’re just looking for signals that a person is top tier and for places like Harvard, Yale, Princeton, and Stanford that means people who’ll be leaders in their fields. Whether those students go onto become prestigious scientists with major publications and grants, successful writers and thought leaders, politicians, lawyers, physicians, you name it: if the come to one of the elite schools the expectation is that they will go on to carry that schools name and propel its reputation. Standardized tests are just one metric and not necessarily the best one for predicting future success. If I were admitting undergraduates, scores would be a screen to not interview but not a reason to admit.
is there a better argument against affirmative action than Joy Reid taking someone else's spot at Harvard?
How much did thomas take in free vacations, paid mortgages, and family member tuitions to troll those people?
Joy Reid, Harvard, Althouse, And Affirmative Action https://ethicsalarms.com/2023/07/03/joy-reid-harvard-althouse-and-affirmative-action/
