Harvard Report Shows the Problems of College Admissions

[Samm]

If trying to shift away from only high test scores and metrics for college admissions, then it follows many kids will compete about seeming more altruistic -- itself a vainglory competition.  A more jaded view might be that schools (particularly state schools subject to lawsuits) are simply creating a black hole in acceptance criteria.  Plus does anyone believe high numbers (whether test scores or the number of donation dollars) will ever be unimportant to schools like Harvard?   Thoughts on this ?

 

http://bostinno.streetwise.co/2016/01/21/harvard-report-shows-the-problems-of-college-admissions/

[MarkT]

see this College Board post (typically a better place for this type of thread)

http://forums.welltrainedmind.com/topic/584963-article-on-potential-change-of-emphasis-in-college-admissions-nyt/

[momacacia]

I love the ending...people come out of less-than-top-tier schools leading very successful lives, even monetarily. I know several individuals without college degrees who do very well in business. Just talking out loud as this is something I struggle with thinking about for my kids.

[daijobu]

 I know several individuals without college degrees who do very well in business. Just talking out loud as this is something I struggle with thinking about for my kids.

 

It's a struggle for me as well.  On the one hand, I know someone without a college degree who now a VP level in a technical position at a technology company.  But he's pretty brilliant.  

 

OTOH, there's an article just today in the WSJ about voters without college degrees who are anxious about staying in the middle class:

 

"Some 62% of Trump supporters, including Mr. and Mrs. Ellis, have no college degree, compared with 45% of those backing Jeb Bush or Sen. Marco Rubio.

 

The Ellises, both registered Republicans who consider themselves independent, have survived hard times. In 2010, Mr. Ellis, was laid off after 19 years at a billboard company. A job working logistics during the Gulf of Mexico oil-spill cleanup paid well but lasted just a few years. He soon was servicing vending machines for barely above minimum wage.

Last summer, he landed a job running the shipping department at an international company for $14 an hour. Mrs. Ellis earns less than that as assistant director of a day-care center.

For six years, they lived in a double-wide mobile home, while they scrimped and borrowed to build a small, three-bedroom house. It has porches in front and back, an aboveground pool and a trampoline for their children, Jade, an eighth-grade soccer player, and Zach, a high-school senior who plans to enlist in the Army.

Still, the Ellises haven’t been able to relax into the middle class.

They had to raid their retirement fund when floodwaters destroyed their furniture in 2014. Eggs from their chickens help cut down on the grocery bill; a fireplace cuts electricity use from a heating system the Federal Emergency Management Agency replaced for free after the flood.

The financial trade-offs—and the fact that Mr. Ellis’s company laid off some workers last fall—makes the prospects of a lost job and strained accounts never seem distant. “Everybody’s afraid to go out and buy anything because we don’t know what the future holds,†Mr. Ellis said."

 

Of course the same could be said about graduates who do get a degree but also find themselves in crushing debt.  I think in the absence of a college degree, it behooves a student to at least learn a trade.