Should College Admissions Be Audited/Regulated?

Thinking back on the college admissions scandal, there's apparently a huge underbelly of shady networks that help rich kids skate the system and get into top Ivy League schools. Whether that be neoptism, daddy's money buying buildings, cheating on SAT scores, having folks write their college essays and the like. It's clear more needs to be done to curb this problem. There needs to be more regulations on universities and more monitors to learn what exactly is going on. For instance, you can be in a coffee shop hearing someone "tutor" a rich college kid about how to get into college, they talk about some lame-ass coding project they did to show "a challenge in their life", and the tutor signs off on it and writes it for them. Over exaggerating pretty much everything in their life. The student agrees with the "tutor" and they part ways daddy's money exchanging hands...

IDK how, but colleges should make this sort of thing illegal. Help the middle class get ahead, not the rich kids who are already privileged. Maybe there should be independent councils that require college admissions to provide a document that requires a prospective student to document every piece of help/advice he got. College is hard enough to get into as it is, detailing this wouldn't be a burden on anyone. Have some weighted criteria internally like a credit score that measures the types of help a kid gets. If you're on welfare in a poor situation that should yield a better score than if daddy has excess of $1 million in income. Parents likewise have to stop treating their kids like little snowflakes who haven't grown up. If they can't articulate why a coding project will help in the real world. They aren't ready for it! Granted, I don't like the fact that lots of kids at pre-college age, don't have real real world experience, but again if the College has a credit score system, then the kids who DO have real world experience will in theory be ahead of the ones who do not.

Again the answer isn't go get a trade, because these days that means kids are stuck in the Uber/gig economy. Where people prey on kids to "make easy money." I also think senior year should be overhauled in preparation for college and job interviews. How to find a job and what you should do in college to get a job afterwards... Sure it's four years away, but it helps everyone even at that stage.

Private schools can do what they want. This has been happening since the founding of those schools, this is nothing new.

If it was a public university, then we would have a problem.

NeverTrump said:

There need to be more regulations on universities and more monitors to learn what exactly is going on.

Click to expand...

Once you mandate an agency with regulating some activity, you just created an entire cast of people whose influence and livelihood depends on demonstrating how much their work is needed. Even if the rationale behind their original creation falls apart, they will find ways to expand the scope of their activities. It's a no brainer that these people will never do their job correctly. Ideally, if you could get rid of the problem which justifies the existence, appropriations, and power of your agency, everyone agrees it's what you should do. If you cannot completely eliminate the problem, then maybe you can greatly reduce its scope. Either way, doing your job correctly means slowly putting yourself and all your coworkers out of work. It also means relinquishing the power and status that comes with occupying a high ranking position in a federal agency, if you are responsible for its management...

All federal agencies are like that. They create lies which they hide behind mazes of regulations, all of which expands the laws voted in Congress by virtue of the powers that have been delegated to them. The EEOC, for example, is supposed to look and intervene in case of discrimination in the workplace. Racism and sexism are less prevalent in 2019 than in 1970. I mean, Robert Byrd led a filibuster of some 80 plus days on the Civil Rights Act in 1964 and George Wallace ran on segregation against Nixon in 1968... So, yeah, different times. Yet, do you think the EEOC argues for it to be slowly defunded? No. They just became very flexible on what it considers to be evidence of racism and sexism. It doesn't matter if it is true because the point is to bully people into settling out of court, even if they did nothing wrong. Then, you get double benefits: you can claim legal fees for finding and working on legal cases and you can claim to settle out of court is evidence of rampant discrimination, therefore justifying a big budget.

Should admissions be regulated? Why?

Current practice among some universities is preferential admission. If you are Black, your SAT scores are bonified. If you are Asian, your SAT scores are penalized. The reality is that the cultural and social circumstances among Black and Asian aren't equal. One group tends to put a much bigger premium on discipline, work, and social status, while the other puts more weight on other things such as leisure. It's not surprising SAT scores differ on average: on average, they have different preferences and so make different degrees of commitment to getting good grades. So, what happens? You deny a perfectly good student entry because their skin is yellow, you grant entry to another less competent student because their skin is black. Unsurprisingly, the consequence is that a disproportionate number of black people in those elite colleges fail or drop out of college... Those black people might have been the best of the best at another school, would have graduated with honors and would be working off their debt at a good job, but they are now indebted, lost years of their lives and don't have anything to show for it.

Enough with the good intentions.