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ESF RBA Essay (Cost (What decides the cost of education?, Why is college…
ESF RBA Essay
Cost
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In countries where education is cheaper, how does the quality of education compare?
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Online learning
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How effective are flipped schools, blended schools, and Massive Open Online Courses?
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Was the ruling in Students for Fair Admissions v. Harvard beneficial or harmful to Asian Americans overall?
You don't get a meritocratic admissions process by only considering grades and test scores. This is because our society isn't meritocratic.
Affirmative action exists because there are people from disadvantaged backgrounds who could never succeed in a purely meritocratic system.
Card argues that race-neutral alternatives have significant drawbacks (e.g. not feasible for a small, selective school; doesn't achieve a representative racial distribution; reduces the overall quality of the student body).
This is one reason why SFFA's statistical analysis is flawed. Sure, there may be a different racial distribution when you only consider academic factors, but that's because there are other factors we should consider.
The plaintiff (Blum) doesn't actually have Asian American interests at heart. If SFFA wins this case, Blum will continue challenging race-conscious approaches in all areas of policy.
Furthermore, many Asian Americans who support the lawsuit are being misguided.
However, this doesn't invalidate their frustration. Asian Americans still experience institutionalized racism. There's a need for Asian American struggles to be seen.
The statistical analysis proposed by SFFA is flawed. I'm convinced that Harvard's admissions officers aren't responsible for the fact that Asian Americans score lower on personality ratings. I don't see evidence of racial discrimination in their methodology.
Then again, there's this really damning graph from OIR's "Admissions Part II" that implies that the personal rating is suspiciously low compared to the scores given from teachers, guidance counselors, and alumni interviewers.
However, although their admissions methodology isn't biased, I'm not so sure about their recruit methodology. It's questionable that Asian Americans need to score higher on the PSAT to receive an invitation.
Harvard should be more transparent about its justification behind such a policy. It makes sense to target recruitment toward minority groups who wouldn't normally consider elite colleges (Asian American high-school students apply to elite colleges at higher rates).
In a pure meritocracy, Asian Americans would comprise 31% of the student body. However, it's very unlikely that the white people supporting this lawsuit are doing so because they want to see Asian American enrollment to rise.
Dismantling affirmative action for the benefit of Asian Americans at the expense of every other minority group isn't the right approach. Especially since the increase in Asian American admittance would be marginal, but the drop in AHO admittance would be significant.
Harvard (and other colleges) needs to be more transparent about their admissions process. They should define their admissions criteria more clearly.
The guidelines that admissions officers use to determine desirable traits should be redefined. "Effervescence" is too subjective a term.
Harvard has already tried to address this by writing new guidelines for the class of '23. The terms are still rather subjective though.
It's problematic that Harvard can't explain why Asian American applicants score lower on personality ratings. Harvard essentially shifts the blame to teachers, guidance counselors, and alumni interviewer.
I also think that the high acceptance rate of ALDC is more problematic than the personality score, but I won't go into that in this paper.
Although I also understand why admissions officers would want to keep their "Coke recipe" secret. Revealing too much information about the process would allow students to "game" the system.