quote:

Originally posted by Shaql:
I wonder how these kids stayed in these schools. Faking admissions is one thing, but they still had to make the grades. So how far do the payoffs go?

Come on. You really think these college students nowadays have to worry about "making the grade"? As long as their checks don't bounce, they can stay in school indefinetly.

quote:

Come on. You really think these college students nowadays have to worry about "making the grade"? As long as their checks don't bounce, they can stay in school indefinetly.

^^^Nice timing and segue for this article, Balze:



Ocasio-Cortez’s ignorance proves admissions fraud is the symptom, not cause, of America’s education crisis

There is no evidence that New York Democratic Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez bribed her way into college or cheated on the SAT. By all accounts, Boston University admitted the freshman congresswoman on her own merits, which distinguishes her from the children of wealthy parents arrested on Tuesday for paying over $25 million to cheat their kids’ way into colleges across the country.

Harvard professor emeritus Alan Dershowitz called the enterprise “the worst scandal involving elite universities in the history of the United States.” Unfortunately, admissions fraud is the least of the nation’s academic problems – a symptom, rather than the cause, of the degradation of American higher education.

What unknown fact does the scandal expose? Wealthy parents have long relied on a properly timed donation to improve their children’s chances at admission to college. And it isn’t just the wealthy who play the system to gain an advantage. Legacies, athletes, and favored racial minorities all receive preferential treatment from admissions committees to the exclusion of academically better-qualified students.

American universities have never considered academic merit the sole criterion for admittance. The parents caught up in Tuesday’s sting simply exploited this reality to a criminal extreme.

An even more troubling question is not how the deficient students matriculated but how they graduated. Over his six-decade career at Harvard, Professor Harvey Mansfield has witnessed grade inflation reach such ludicrous heights that he now gives students two different grades: one that will appear on their transcripts and another that they deserve.

In 2017, Yale changed its course requirements such that an English major may now graduate without ever having read Shakespeare. A 2007 survey from the Intercollegiate Studies Institute showed that college students graduate with less knowledge of history, politics, and economics than they had before they entered. The admissions scam succeeded for so long because everyone knew once the sub-par students made it into these schools they were unlikely to encounter any real scholarly rigor.

So what is a college degree worth these days? Millennial congresswoman Ocasio-Cortez majored in Economics and graduated cum laude from a private university that costs nearly $70,000 per year. Since entering Congress, she has struggled to articulate even basic economic concepts.

Last month, AOC blocked Amazon from relocating tens of thousands of jobs near her congressional district because she failed to understand the difference between a tax incentive and a slush fund. On Tuesday, during congressional testimony, Ocasio-Cortez appeared bemused as Wells Fargo CEO explained the basic function of a bank. If Ocasio-Cortez represents the quality of an Economics degree from BU, the university should lose its accreditation.

The liberal arts enable us to understand and earn our liberty. Unlike professional and mechanical education, the liberal arts do not train students for any particular job. They are literally the arts of freedom, and no society that abandons liberal education can remain free for long. Unfortunately, the left’s decades-long effort to subvert liberal education through pseudo-academic disciplines, administrative bloat, and outright censorship have transformed even our nation’s most elite universities into little more than decadent indoctrination camps.

Compounding the problem, the leveling myth that every American regardless of aptitude or interest ought to receive precisely the same education has saddled an entire generation with a trillion and a half dollars of student debt and degrees worth less than the paper on which they were printed.

The wealthy parents who cheated their children’s way into college committed a relatively minor crime, akin to petty theft. The greater criminals are the academic arsonists who have burned down our institutions of higher learning. In a democratic republic, our legislators are as benighted or enlightened as our voters. As go the liberal arts, so goes our liberty.



https://www.foxnews.com/opinio...cas-education-crisis

Grade inflation, which is endemic, is worst at the Ivies. The average grade at Harvard is an A-. That is the average. Think about that.

The "prestige" schools are not about education. They are about credentialing, so that the graduates gain admittance to social clubs for which a degree from Yale, or Princeton, is required. The established "elites" map out the path for would-be "elites" to follow. It's about holding the credentials that show you belong.

Olivia, dumb twit that she is, actually had a good read on her future at USC when she said in the video that her main interests were game days and partying. Grade inflation and mommy and daddy's checkbook would take care of the rest.

We have in this country a ruling class of super rich Leftists who are totally disconnected from the life of the rest of us. They are in gated communities, walled mansions, with private security, untouched by any of the travesties that they inflict on us or support: open borders, environmental bullying, gun control, "hate speech," and so on. They are the equivalent of the corrupt, debauched, "Let them eat cake" French aristocracy of the 18th century.

When I was in college, I read Jefferson's quote about the tree of liberty needing to be watered with the blood of tyrants every twenty years. I didn't get it. It seemed exaggerated in the extreme.

Now I get it.

quote:

Originally posted by parabellum:
Already posted in this thread.

Guys, please read the thread.

You're gonna see an unhappy admin if I have to keep saying this. Don't just come in here and post something. Read the thread first.

I didn't see it, Para.

I've deleted my dupe post.

quote:

The average grade at Harvard is an A-. That is the average. Think about that

Not sure what that proves, unless your position is Harvard should grade on a strict curve for all classes.

It's possible that the group of folks admitted there are already self-selected from the smartest of the smart (scandals notwithstanding). If so, and if grading material against a right-or-wrong solution for as much of the courses aren't subjective isn't this what you'd expect?

quote:

It's possible that the group of folks admitted there are already self-selected from the smartest of the smart (scandals notwithstanding).

If that were true, those who buy their way in would flunk out immediately. But they don't. And the parents who spend hundreds of thousands of dollars to buy their way in would not waste their money.

The sleazeball who ran this scheme has been doing it for 24 years. He "took care" of 800 families.

quote:

Originally posted by Balzé Halzé:

quote:

Originally posted by Shaql:
I wonder how these kids stayed in these schools. Faking admissions is one thing, but they still had to make the grades. So how far do the payoffs go?

Come on. You really think these college students nowadays have to worry about "making the grade"? As long as their checks don't bounce, they can stay in school indefinetly.

In some ways, that is nothing new. Big donors can always get their kids in to college. Very few universities are immune to that. This was different in that it wasn't just a straight up donation of a million dollars (or whatever it takes), but was all the trickery and violations of the tax code.

quote:

Originally posted by justjoe:

The "prestige" schools are not about education. They are about credentialing, so that the graduates gain admittance to social clubs for which a degree from Yale, or Princeton, is required. The established "elites" map out the path for would-be "elites" to follow. It's about holding the credentials that show you belong.

They are about both. You do get an education at Harvard, and a better than average one, at that.

You also get the extremely valuable credential.

I can talk about this for lawyers only: There have been studies done that show that graduates from prestigious law schools (Harvard, Yale, Chicago, Stanford, etc.) get better jobs and much higher pay than average right out of law school. This effect lasts for about 4 or 5 years. After that, the school that gave you a law degree does not correlate very highly with the amount of money you make very much at all. After four or five years, it is your performance that determines your success. So that valuable credential is only valuable for a certain amount of time, and will not carry you through a career.

Not everyone who gets into an elite college due to things like their minority privilege ultimately graduates. That may be true of those who get there because of their wealth privilege, but one of the videos above points out that most of the blacks who were admitted to elite schools due to the frauds perpetrated on the schools (and on the students themselves) failed to graduate.

As for those who do graduate without being prepared or even fundamentally qualified to pursue a field requiring true professional knowledge and skills, Thomas Sowell pointed to the consequences decades ago. As an example, he noted that blacks (and others) who graduate from low level medical schools here and abroad end up working in medical facilities serving poorer communities, and therefore the patients at such facilities tend to receive less competent care. And of course my observation is that whenever there’s a study or other claim that poor minority groups suffer from poorer overall health in general, one factor that never gets mentioned is the most fundamental of all: The health care providers who work with those groups are likely less qualified.

Although this present gang of miscreants managed to commit a slew of crimes by the way they got their offspring carefully placed on the proper paths for their social positions, I consider the consequences to be relatively minor. Except for harming the truly deserving applicants who weren’t given the opportunities, it’s unlikely that the children of people who can afford hundreds of thousands of dollars in bribes will ever end up in positions where their fraudulent credentials put others at immediate physical risk. The same cannot be said for other privileged groups.

I’m most familiar with the incompetent Army officers who reached their ranks and positions of responsibility due to factors that had nothing to do with their abilities. Even though they were usually shuttled off to branches like the MP corps where they were less likely to get their subordinates killed in combat, they still degraded the overall mission.

I didn't even read the article. I just like the title of it:

Olivia Jade’s Comment Section Is a Hellscape

quote:

Originally posted by parabellum:
I didn't even read the article. I just like the title of it:

Olivia Jade’s Comment Section Is a Hellscape

I understand that when the newest edition of Webster’s dictionary is published, Oliva Jade’s picture is the illustration for the word, “vacuous.”

quote:

Originally posted by jhe888:


I can talk about this for lawyers only: There have been studies done that show that graduates from prestigious law schools (Harvard, Yale, Chicago, Stanford, etc.) get better jobs and much higher pay than average right out of law school. This effect lasts for about 4 or 5 years. After that, the school that gave you a law degree does not correlate very highly with the amount of money you make very much at all. After four or five years, it is your performance that determines your success. So that valuable credential is only valuable for a certain amount of time, and will not carry you through a career.

Same with High Tech. Everyone wants to hire from MIT, Caltech, Stanford, Berkeley, etc., but after a few years it's about "what skills do you have, and how well do you use these skills"

The exception seems to be academia. It's difficult to become a tenured professor at a top school if you did not graduate from a top school.

Gotta love it- Binging on a budget, from just two weeks ago.

Little Miss Spoiled Brat wouldn't recognize a budget if it came wrapped in hundred dollar bills. What a farce

It's funny- the rest of Hollyweird seems to be pretty tight lipped about the whole affair...as does the entire elite establishment. I wonder why that might be? They are usually frothing at the mouth to tell America what to do, say, or think.

quote:

Originally posted by sigfreund:
I’m most familiar with the incompetent Army officers who reached their ranks and positions of responsibility due to factors that had nothing to do with their abilities.

Think "floors" in promotion boards, especially for minorities. Saw the sad results of those.

Perhaps they will choose trial by combat. I would watch that.

quote:

Originally posted by Shaql:
I wonder how these kids stayed in these schools. Faking admissions is one thing, but they still had to make the grades. So how far do the payoffs go?

When I was on a teaching assignment from IBM I was teaching at Hampton U. In 1990-91.

The accounting department caught some flak for grading "on the curve".

Best test score got an "A" regardless of how many questions were incorrectly answered, and the rest of the papers were "measured" against that "best paper".

Had one other teacher approach me about the grade I had given one of my students. The student deserved, and got, an "F". Her score on the test was 30%.

The teacher who approached me wanted me to fake the grade because the girl student was on the tennis team and could not play tennis because of her shitty score. Other teachers routinely handed out acceptable grades for what ever reasons, not counting scholastic integrity, honesty, ethics, etc.

This shit going on in colleges today is not new, just has taken on epidemic proportions.

These children of the elites remind me of Monty Pythons "Twit Olympics"

https://www.dailymotion.com/video/x2xt6cq

RMD

quote:

Originally posted by Shaql:
I wonder how these kids stayed in these schools. Faking admissions is one thing, but they still had to make the grades....

Alan Dershowitz, Professor Emeritus, Harvard School of Law, noted in a recent contribution on Fox News.com, that many "Ivy League" universities, including Harvard, have eliminated grades as detrimental to the development of their students. The disdain dripped from each syllable as he said it.

I agree. Had it not been for the requirement to achieve a minimum grade point average in order to be reimbursed by my employer, I might have been less diligent in my studies. Instead I busted my balls to earn a 3.89 GPA in my full-time Master of Science program from Virginia Polytechnic and State University. And I did it while working full time, plus tutoring, and moonlighting as a grocery store cashier.

I hope a metric shit ton of these people go to prison, and the universities involved lose corporate, federal, and state funding for say... a millenium.

quote:

Originally posted by Sigmanic:
...
Last month, AOC blocked Amazon from relocating tens of thousands of jobs near her congressional district because she failed to understand the difference between a tax incentive and a slush fund. On Tuesday, during congressional testimony, Ocasio-Cortez appeared bemused as Wells Fargo CEO explained the basic function of a bank.

https://www.foxnews.com/opinio...cas-education-crisis

I looked up 'bemused' because I wasn't totally confident I understood its usage.