Posted on 07/19/2010 6:02:00 AM PDT by reaganaut1
...
Last year, two Princeton sociologists, Thomas Espenshade and Alexandria Walton Radford, published a book-length study of admissions and affirmative action at eight highly selective colleges and universities. Unsurprisingly, they found that the admissions process seemed to favor black and Hispanic applicants, while whites and Asians needed higher grades and SAT scores to get in. But what was striking, as Russell K. Nieli pointed out last week on the conservative Web site Minding the Campus, was which whites were most disadvantaged by the process: the downscale, the rural and the working-class.
This was particularly pronounced among the private colleges in the study. For minority applicants, the lower a family’s socioeconomic position, the more likely the student was to be admitted. For whites, though, it was the reverse. An upper-middle-class white applicant was three times more likely to be admitted than a lower-class white with similar qualifications.
This may be a money-saving tactic. In a footnote, Espenshade and Radford suggest that these institutions, conscious of their mandate to be multiethnic, may reserve their financial aid dollars “for students who will help them look good on their numbers of minority students,” leaving little room to admit financially strapped whites.
But cultural biases seem to be at work as well. Nieli highlights one of the study’s more remarkable findings: while most extracurricular activities increase your odds of admission to an elite school, holding a leadership role or winning awards in organizations like high school R.O.T.C., 4-H clubs and Future Farmers of America actually works against your chances. Consciously or unconsciously, the gatekeepers of elite education seem to incline against candidates who seem too stereotypically rural or right-wing or “Red America.”
This provides statistical confirmation for what alumni of highly selective universities already know.
(Excerpt) Read more at nytimes.com ...
Apparently there is also a bias against students interested in farming or the military. Who needs farmers or soldiers? Look at the wonders wrought by community organizers!
Some good news for a change. Decent people being kept out of these money pit indoctrination centers.
I can see it but it would be difficult to prove or force any change in policy.
Is the same bias true at lower tier universities?
How in the world did the NYT editors let this get into their publication?
Of course this form of racism is perfectly accepted and tolerated by the left.
Take back America. Take over your state government and fire all the state leftie professors. Put in Americans.
Well, this just proves what is wrong with the US Supreme Court. Not only is the Ag and the Military not represented at the Ivies, students at the Ivies don’t get to know kids from those backgrounds. Since all members of the USSC are grads of the Ivies, the USSC is not representative of the people.
That’s an interestingly positive take on the situation (that decent people are kept out of the liberal indoctrination centers).
I envision a time when people are admitted to colleges not by the color of their skin but by the intelligence of their mind. In other words, this racial spoils CRAP needs to stop.
The utility of attending a “highly selective university,” for a student who wants to be a farmer, escapes me.
Yep, but don't forget, racial criminal profiling is illegal as we are lectured over and over.
”Trying to get an education while white “ is a crime allowed by the Sandra Day O'Connor court.
It doesn’t stop with colleges...how often does one see a family going to church, farming, or having a child in the military on TV programs? For that matter, how many TV shows does one see the children respecting parents, siblings and policemen?
Cornell has a very large Ag school.
I expect that, if the data were examined more closely, they would find that admission to an Ag school was *not* negatively impacted by FFA membership or an intention to pursue farming.
Twenty years ago, when I was first out of college and working for AT&T in the Washington DC area, one of my co-workers was a woman who had just been transferred down from New Jersey. She and her husband had bought a house out in Nokesville, Virginia, which is (IIRC) about 45 miles outside DC on the backside of Prince William County. It may not be now, but in 1989, it was the middle of nowhere, out on the very edge of the expanding suburban fringe of DC.
She immediately began griping to me about the kids her kids were attending school with. One day she said, “I go to the junior high to pick up (her son), and there’s all these redneck kids walking around with FFA jackets on! How’s he going to get a decent education?”
I immediately said, “uh, Michelle, *I* went to Virginia public schools a lot more rural than the one out in Nokesville, with two hundred kids in the FFA in high school, and I turned out all right.”
Her reply? “Yeah, but you’re normal.”
The amount of snobbery some people have regarding rural schooling and organizations like 4-H and the FFA or FBLA is astonishing. Screw “highly selective colleges,” they’re better off going to community college or a state university anyway.
}:-)4
Bigotry.
Probably not. I would guess that some of it would depend on how the admissions process works though. If there is a two tier acceptance process, acceptance to the university and to the particular college it might not help at the university level.
Well, duh. Of course they do.
MLK's dream of being judged by the content of your character, not the color of your skin, is becoming less and less likely to ever be fulfilled. And it's the paranoid fear of racism (and silly race-baiting) that is the problem.
That’s possible. It would be interesting to see the financial-aid data for attendees of the agriculture program.
I have a friend who got a degree in Agriculture at Georgia Tech, and later went to Harvard Divinity School. She did her PhD dissertation on ancient Babylonian bull iconography ;-).
I grew up in a city. My parents were both raised on farms.
When MY kids were growing up, I had them each talk to the grandparents about projects dealing with the “great depression.” My wife’s parents grew up in a city and talked about bread lines, unemployment, and CCC projects.
My parents talked about all the city folk coming up and trying to work on their farms. For food. My parents were financially strapped during the depression, but they had food and they worked. The worst thing that happened to either of them, is that my Mom had to give up her horse.
God bless the 4H and the FFA.
“Of course this form of racism is perfectly accepted and tolerated by the left.”
Gettin’ back at whitey, killin’ cracker babies, that’s not racism of course.
Uh, why not?
If you know much about agriculture; you understand the high skill levels needed. A 4 year ag degree from a quality university is very valuable.
Unless your post is referring to schools like Harvard or Yale which I then would agree with.
Where I grew up, pretty much every kid was involved in 4-H at some point. My sisters raised chickens and rabbits and I went with horticulture.
4H has programs for all kinds of activities and skills from agriculture to public speaking.
Years ago, the annual US News & World Report issue ranking graduate school programs listed the "Best Graduate School of International Business" as that of the University of South Carolina..... South Carolina? South Carolina? What do those yokels & racist rednecks know about International Business?
Really? Just drive down I-85 and take note of the Swiss and German factories transplanted to South Carolina. Look throughout the South at the Toyota, Hyundai, Mercedes Benz, Nissan & BMW factories. It seems that while the graduates of the "elite" universities were practicing their incestuous relationships with Washington, Wall Street and the Media, those "ROTC, 4-H and FFA" hardworking, well rounded students were bringing industry and higher paying skilled jobs to the South to replace all the textile jobs which have moved to Bangladesh & Indonesia.
Back when I was a young 1st Lt. in a USMC helo squadron, I worked "upstairs" in the hanger as squadron intelligence officer (time out for the oxymoron jokes), planning officer and nuclear, biological & chemical warfare officer. My buddy, Sam Helland, worked downstairs as a maintenance officer, dealing with broken aircraft, oil, hydraulic fluid and enlisted troops' problems. You know, all that "4-H and FFA" sort of stuff.
Last time I heard from him, Sam was Brigadier General Sam Helland. Sam was probably a better marine than I, but it also seems like the USMC, for one, values "lower tier" or "downstairs" experience.
The only “affirmative action” should be for CHILDREN OF NON-COLLEGE GRADUATES.
Forget the race or ethnicity.
Bill Cosby’s grandkids should not be selected over first generation Asian kids (who’s scores and skills are probably much better.)
One way to fix this is to mandate that all universities have to give their students a nationally standardized test to evaluate their academic achievements against other universities. When the Ivies get embarrassed time and again they will reconsider their criteria.
In 4-H, I learned how to manage a small business. In my case it was a chicken operation (400-600 chicks/year).
FFA was tied to our shop and my school had a cannary operation as well where we assisted the local farmers in canning produce. We learned how to work with wood, concrete, and metal. We took a small engine repair course. My shop project was to take a Ford rear end and make a trailer with a metal frame, and wooden floor and sides (removable). FFA offered leadership opportunities as well. I considered it real world experience.
One of our local 4-H programs was industrial machining. The kids went to a local machine shop in off hours and learned on CNC machines and various lathes.
That sort of thing is important for a farmer. It comes in awfully handy for a farmer who needs to make repairs and can’t waste time waiting for parts.
I think you friend probably got her degree in Agriculture at the “Clark County Cow College”, as the University of Georgia is known to those of us from the Georgia Institute of Technology (known to the UGA folks as the “North Avenue Trade School”).
Kind’ve makes you wonder how long the schools racist and indoctrination policies would be able to last if these kids were allowed to attend in droves. These kids with Parents who question. And check back. And have enough spine to make a stink if they hear of problems with indoctrination in the schools.
Kind’ve makes me think of the “gates of Hell will not Stand against us” verse.....
Its amazing what a LOT of good people can do when they show up and ask questions.
4-H is an awesome organization that involves parents with children. I have shared some great times teaching my children skills and watching them grow. In Texas the 4-H Scholarship program makes all the time and effort worthwhile if the youth maintain a good academic record. There are 70-$10,000, 70- $15,000, 12-$16,000 and numerous other scholarship amounts awarded every year to graduating seniors. Colleges with any common sense would want the youth brought up in such organizations. I think I have found the answer to the problem. Common sense...as Fred Thompson says,”Why do they call it common sense when it is just so rare?”.
We now live in a color coded anti-white male feminized society that has been rubber stamped by the Supreme Disappointment. A Constitution not followed is worse than no Constitution at all. This state of affairs breeds contempt for the government in the intelligent, and a sentimental belief in the phony protections it was supposed to have in the weak minded. As such, the Constitution now provides a fig leaf for the naked aggression of the socialist statist agenda.
Well, I live in the northeast. And most of us are shut out of the elite colleges as well. Having an Irish Catholic surname is a negative. In Boston the majority of the college students are from out of state with a high precentage coming from out of the country. The days are long gone of seeing a mass of college students riding the subway to class.
“Is the same bias true at lower tier universities?”
Yes...most Universities like Ivy League credentials for their faculty. They tend to promote their group to prove their superiority. They continue the process.
I don’t know what 4-H is like today but when I was a kid we had programs for just about anything the local individuals wanted to volunteer their time to teach.
There was even one group that worked on a sprint car during the week and went to the dirt track on saturday night to help out and act as a crew.
If you had even a remote idea of the size and complexity of many large farms today (even family farms), you might think differently. Besides which, who determines the "utility" of college attendance other than the attendee??
A while back, I saw a video of the 4-H national convention on RFDTV and was very impressed with the youngsters and the entire organization.
I was. I agree that college education in agriculture can be extremely valuable, and there are many universities with excellent programs in the subject.
Oddly, almost twenty years before that, AT&T became the incubator for today’s EEOC and Affirmative Action.
Thanks, you’re probably right. I’m not up on the details of Georgia universities.
I liked the 2 1/2 years I spent at AT&T, but it’s also where I learned to despise the United Way. Despite there being laws against such things, it was made clear to whoever the poor sod was that got stuck as the group United Way coordinator (me, one year) that the percentage of United Way “love share” participation would be considered during annual salary reviews. I did a crappy job on the UW and a great job everywhere else, and got a miniscule raise. I’ve never given a penny to the UW since.
}:-)4
My father was a farmer. I am familiar with modern agriculture. However, education in agriculture and related business functions does not necessarily require attendance at a "highly-selective" university, which I was viewing as Ivy League liberal arts, in general. The article doesn't identify the universities they analyzed, so I was just guessing.
Besides which, who determines the "utility" of college attendance other than the attendee?
Nobody. I didn't say the utility didn't exist, only that it escaped me. If a future farmer wants to get a degree in Marxism at Harvard, that's his call to make.
Almost my entire working career was spent in the Bell System and its post divestiture remnants. As lowly “craft”, we would give 25 cents/week to the UW. That way our foreman could claim “100% participation” and get his raise.
I think the only real utility in such universities these days is if one contemplates a career in politics or "deep bureaucracy". Some farm boys "do" aim for that.
But one can certainly be successful with other backgrounds. I went to LSU, and ended up with a PhD in chemistry and a satisfying and reasonably successful career in science. My cousin went to LSU and got a degree in ag business. He recently retired as one of the VP's of Monsanto.
the academia is the same but the competiton to get in less
bttt
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