"But if we increase the performance ceiling on years then race and gender differences will be more apparent and our ideology insists that there are no genetic differences that white liberal women teachers cannot fix (deny)"
I found interesting the bit about male college athletes in elite schools being more generous donors and more sentimental about the ol' alma mater than women athetes.
I went to a Catholic all-boys high school in the south side of Chicago in the late 70s (in some part because you had to be crazy, or really financially strapped to send your child to a Chicago public school in that area). My high school was made up of cops' sons, plumbers' sons, steelworkers' sons. My friends got a good education and have done extremely well in life. Extremely well.
My wife, not coincidentally, went to an all-girls Catholic high school in the same area.
We retain many friends from those circles, most went to college locally, everyone stayed in touch.
Even though these friends now reside in upper-middle class to upper-class suburbs, almost all of my (male) high school friends sent their children to private Catholics schools. And none of my wife's friends did. Not one. It's a thing.
I was going to ask why your parents hadn't fled to the burbs as my parents (and all sane parents) did at the time. The answer is city jobs and I guess the factory jobs. Was your neighborhood insular enough to feel safe at the time?
My neighborhood was fine, we were in the first ring of the suburbs. But all Chicago city workers - cops, firemen, street&san, even teachers - were required (and still are, I believe) to live within the Chicago city limits. They enforced this, too - we had a guy in our suburb, a fireman, who had to sell his house and move back into the city when he was sniffed out.
Anyway, because of this, there were slices of south side neighborhoods back then that were fine, but the public schools were absolute war zones.
Chicago has several lovely neighborhoods just within the city limits, like Jefferson Park in the northwest corner, where judges and fire captains live.
"almost all of my (male) high school friends sent their children to private Catholics schools. And none of my wife's friends did. Not one. It's a thing."
So none of your friends married any of your wife's friends despite common background/area? Seems somewhat unusual; why do you think that happened or, I guess, didn't happen?
One unintended consequence of making AP tests more finely graded: Our system would become more like China's gaokao entrance exam, with students competing to master large amounts of subject matter. Sounds good in a way, but China's better high school students live in misery, studying daily for hours on end. Their system has created a college application arms race that appears to have gotten out of control.
So on the one hand, Steve's idea is a very good one, as it better identifies top students. It's refreshingly meritocratic. But I wonder if the end result would be an even more cutthroat college admissions process, more akin to China's brutal system.
That one's alma mater should have such an outsized effect on life outcomes is a sure sign of a corrupt system. There are a lot of young grinds who prefer the obvious, well worn path (Harvard->Goldman Sachs->Summer house in the Hamptons->divorce->second wife->private jet). For most people it shouldn't matter. The same 150 IQ kid goes to MIT or goes to University of Illinois, the life outcomes should be about the same unless the overall society is lazy and corrupt.
As you say, Chetty found out for many career paths, which college you go to doesn't matter much, but for some of the most lucrative or influential careers, it does matter. A lot.
Plus, financial aid at the HYPS level is much more generous now than at the good private college level these days.
The fact that Harvard can give a full ride to anyone whose parents make less than (what is it now, 100k?) and that such people would find it difficult to pay for Harvard in the first place and that everyone would think it was worth the money...signs of a corrupt system.
Two cheers for jocks and legacies then. The three Ivies in my VA prep school class were all legacies, as was I (sort of), but the quarterback who later gave back several $million went to UVA.
Reasonable proposals for more elite schools, but the real problem is that huge number of mediocre to bad schools and their students. Student loans are far too easy to get and coupled with the current policy of forgiving them for completing 10 years in government or non-profit work incentivizes leveraging up, which is really just an operating subsidy for the higher ed system. Impose some kind of risk underwriting for student loans and reduce the amount forgiven for "public service" so that it cannot be fully discharged through a make-work NFP job and/or used as a mechanism to have someone else pay your loans until in year 11 you make the leap to a more lucrative private sector job. Obviously this would trigger the collapse of scores of schools, but it's hard to argue federal taxpayers should subsidize them indefinitely because that's what we have been doing for decades.
I have a nephew who is not academically inclined but good with mechanical things and learned to weld in HS. After graduation he is going into an apprenticeship program with a utility company and will have salary and benefits in the mid $100s by the time he is 20 and zero debt.
Beautiful. Someone should tell young people there is a tremendous advantage to being among the smartest and most initiative taking in their field. No shame in going one field down in status to be a star.
The size of the high school senior cohort will likely shrink sharply over the next 2 or 3 years. There was a high birth rate during the housing bubble of 2006, but it shrunk sharply by 2009.
On the other hand, the decline in fertility was sharpest among the kind of parents not likely to have kids cut out for elite colleges: e.g., there was sharp decline in the number of kids born to unmarried foreign-born Hispanic women in 2006 to 2009 as construction jobs evaporated. Fertility for white married women declined less.
That’s a good point, and a reason to not be a total demographic doomer. On the other hand it probably means even more foreign competition for American students as universities look to shore up their finances absent a reduction in student visas.
Also, although there is a lot of attention paid to administrative bloat increasing the cost of education, less is paid to the arms race of the last 20 years to add shiny new buildings for classes, lifestyle amenities, and housing to compete with high end private student housing. It would be interesting to know how much bond and private debt for higher ed is out there, the terms and how much is fully amortizing or not.
Is it a supply or demand problem? If colleges are currently selecting students for reasons other than academic achievement, will making tests more selective change admission policies?
We need more trade schools and a culture that values value creation.
I have a friend who has participated in the MIT admissions process for decades. I asked him what I could do to help my nephew get in and he told me MIT is one of the few schools where it doesn't help at all to have a relative who is an alum.
I look that 14% number they were all consciously targeting and wondered why they would go for more than there are in the US population. Turns out the number of people who identify as African American shot up from 11% to 14% while I wasn't looking. That strikes me as implausible but I guess the white fertility rate went down and immigration didn't go up enough to keep it stable.
There must be a lot of barely black students at MIT.
The big universities aren't going to abide by the Supreme Court ruling on Affirmative Action.
So be it. What should a conservative care about how Harvard and MIT cheapen their institutions by enrolling minorities of mediocre intelligence.
Actually, I hope conservatives begin disobeying the courts, including the Supreme Court. Round up the illegal aliens, toss them out, and thumb noses at the courts. The Supreme Court- thanks Roberts and Kavanaugh- forced second Democrat districts on Louisiana and Alabama. Have Congress run through a law keeping the courts out of redistricting, have Trump sign it, and allow Louisiana and Alabama to redistrict however they wish. Give the courts of America the Andrew Jackson treatment.
I like the idea of taking AP tests in December from the POV of admissions but the reality is that the tests are a cumulation of a years worth of effort in the classroom. I have a kid taking 3 of these classes right now and in order to learn the material, they need January, February, March, and April. I don't think it work to start the classes the previous year and pick them back up in the fall.
The kid I have is really bright but not THAT bright and works hard but not THAT hard so while I'm in the middle of all of this, this kind of thing isn't our worry. Which is nice. Choosing between the Jesuit schools with good basketball and pretty girls and an ultimate price point in the mid-40K is actually a really pleasant experience. I highly recommend it. Wish we made a little more money and we could afford the Mid 70K of a high-end Jesuit or nice private school like Wash U but we don't. He'll be fine.
I do read these stories about the 1500 SAT 4.5 GPA and think you shouldn't have tried so hard. AI is going to take your job anyway.
Sailer isn't proposing starting the course early. Right now, only the first half of AP courses has any effect on admissions (in the GPA) because the test is in May. Giving a standardized mid-term test in December lets colleges control for varying HS grade inflation. Spreading out the scores helps the top schools distinguish between the top students better (likewise for the SAT/ACT).
He's proposing to take the AP test in December so that the results can be used in application evaluation is he not?
Honestly mostly doesn't matter because with early applications which most of these types of people are using, they are applying in September with acceptance in November/December.
It's all about what you have done through your junior year for these Tier 1 schools.
Maybe this is already known, but an acquaintance in admissions mentioned some time ago that international students- particularly Asian- barely contribute as alumni after graduating. Maybe that’s a quiet reason to keep avoiding bumping their numbers up.
My vague impression is that Indians are pretty generous toward schools but Chinese aren't. But, once again, I'd like to have some data. Research universities have no doubt researched who donates, but none of their professors ever seem to publish the numbers.
While this would need some kind of antitrust expemption, limiting the number of schools (six?) students could apply to would be beneficial to the process. Rich kids toss in huge numbers hoping for the big fish and poorer kids do the same with universally granted fee-waivers. Schools like it because the large pool inflates the perception of exclusivity. It also creates a kabuki dance where admissions committees spend time weighing the likelihood that the offer is accepted as part of their admissions decision as they look to maximize their yield (share of accepted students enrolling).
Fewer, more individualized applications would enable serious students to demonstrate thier particular interest in a school and also allow the admissions staff to seriously evaluate the application.
Schools must have long waitlists these days to avoid getting swamped by enrollees. Is Early Decision still possible, and could it be encouraged somehow?
Great comment -- limiting the number of applications would make a tremendous difference. See my comment below about admissions in Hong Kong and the UK. In the latter, for example, students can only apply to five universities, and the best students can only apply to either Oxford or Cambridge, but not both. This strips away much of kabuki you so acutely identify in the US system.
If it already has successful application in other countries, that's all the more reason we should do it here too. American universities are deeply damaging and destructive institutions, in every direst need of reform so they can perform their intended function of providing crystallized intelligence and élite networking opportunities to our best and brightest. Making them into political indoctrination centers and race-communist reparations is a gross national perversion that will be remembered with deserved scorn and bafflement by our descendents.
Yes, much of this could be readily fixed. You have to figure the colleges don't really want to fix it, right? No doubt they maintain some cognitive dissonance - on the one hand they really do want to enroll excellent students, but on the other hand they greatly prefer to enroll black and transsexual students.
Also, how much do the admissions committees affect long-term career paths? Clearly, if you are a tech wiz, you can take a Thiel Fellowship or something, skip college, and do just fine... those guys can probably ignore the woke college admissions committees. On the other hand, for law, medicine, and academia itself, there is no choice but to get the credential, so you are utterly dependent on the admissions committees.
But what about all those careers that are somewhere in between? For example, for Wall Street, MBA, finance-type jobs, you need some combination of credentials, gatekeeper approval and skill. In the Current Year, which of these is becoming more important relative to the others? For example, does the internet mean that great skills can rise to the top, regardless of the gatekeeping? Or does something about geography and economics mean that those with the wrong parents and wrong hometown face ever-worse odds?
Aaron Renn reflected on his experience as a rural / Big Ten kid as opposed to a coastal elite:
What should be done? Reduce college places between a third and a half. Financial support (not loans) to bright-but-poor kids.
College progression rates of the 1970s were about right.
"But if we increase the performance ceiling on years then race and gender differences will be more apparent and our ideology insists that there are no genetic differences that white liberal women teachers cannot fix (deny)"
Stop Federal funding of Student loans and let the Universities decide who to fund out of their own endowments.
What if we restricted federal loan guarantees and Pell grants to public university attendees?
Let private universities figure out their own methods for funding students.
We clearly have far too many students attending universities for lifestyle reasons rather than educational purposes.
Many universities should close or shrink.
"it’s freshman class" should be "its freshman class". You can delete this comment!
I appreciate this comment.
I found interesting the bit about male college athletes in elite schools being more generous donors and more sentimental about the ol' alma mater than women athetes.
I went to a Catholic all-boys high school in the south side of Chicago in the late 70s (in some part because you had to be crazy, or really financially strapped to send your child to a Chicago public school in that area). My high school was made up of cops' sons, plumbers' sons, steelworkers' sons. My friends got a good education and have done extremely well in life. Extremely well.
My wife, not coincidentally, went to an all-girls Catholic high school in the same area.
We retain many friends from those circles, most went to college locally, everyone stayed in touch.
Even though these friends now reside in upper-middle class to upper-class suburbs, almost all of my (male) high school friends sent their children to private Catholics schools. And none of my wife's friends did. Not one. It's a thing.
I was going to ask why your parents hadn't fled to the burbs as my parents (and all sane parents) did at the time. The answer is city jobs and I guess the factory jobs. Was your neighborhood insular enough to feel safe at the time?
My neighborhood was fine, we were in the first ring of the suburbs. But all Chicago city workers - cops, firemen, street&san, even teachers - were required (and still are, I believe) to live within the Chicago city limits. They enforced this, too - we had a guy in our suburb, a fireman, who had to sell his house and move back into the city when he was sniffed out.
Anyway, because of this, there were slices of south side neighborhoods back then that were fine, but the public schools were absolute war zones.
Chicago has several lovely neighborhoods just within the city limits, like Jefferson Park in the northwest corner, where judges and fire captains live.
"almost all of my (male) high school friends sent their children to private Catholics schools. And none of my wife's friends did. Not one. It's a thing."
So none of your friends married any of your wife's friends despite common background/area? Seems somewhat unusual; why do you think that happened or, I guess, didn't happen?
It just didn’t work out that way. Some of my buddies gave it their best shot, though.
One unintended consequence of making AP tests more finely graded: Our system would become more like China's gaokao entrance exam, with students competing to master large amounts of subject matter. Sounds good in a way, but China's better high school students live in misery, studying daily for hours on end. Their system has created a college application arms race that appears to have gotten out of control.
So on the one hand, Steve's idea is a very good one, as it better identifies top students. It's refreshingly meritocratic. But I wonder if the end result would be an even more cutthroat college admissions process, more akin to China's brutal system.
That one's alma mater should have such an outsized effect on life outcomes is a sure sign of a corrupt system. There are a lot of young grinds who prefer the obvious, well worn path (Harvard->Goldman Sachs->Summer house in the Hamptons->divorce->second wife->private jet). For most people it shouldn't matter. The same 150 IQ kid goes to MIT or goes to University of Illinois, the life outcomes should be about the same unless the overall society is lazy and corrupt.
As you say, Chetty found out for many career paths, which college you go to doesn't matter much, but for some of the most lucrative or influential careers, it does matter. A lot.
Plus, financial aid at the HYPS level is much more generous now than at the good private college level these days.
What is HYPS? Harvard, Yale, Princeton, ?
Stanford.
Thanks!
The fact that Harvard can give a full ride to anyone whose parents make less than (what is it now, 100k?) and that such people would find it difficult to pay for Harvard in the first place and that everyone would think it was worth the money...signs of a corrupt system.
Two cheers for jocks and legacies then. The three Ivies in my VA prep school class were all legacies, as was I (sort of), but the quarterback who later gave back several $million went to UVA.
Reasonable proposals for more elite schools, but the real problem is that huge number of mediocre to bad schools and their students. Student loans are far too easy to get and coupled with the current policy of forgiving them for completing 10 years in government or non-profit work incentivizes leveraging up, which is really just an operating subsidy for the higher ed system. Impose some kind of risk underwriting for student loans and reduce the amount forgiven for "public service" so that it cannot be fully discharged through a make-work NFP job and/or used as a mechanism to have someone else pay your loans until in year 11 you make the leap to a more lucrative private sector job. Obviously this would trigger the collapse of scores of schools, but it's hard to argue federal taxpayers should subsidize them indefinitely because that's what we have been doing for decades.
To people on this comment section it is obvious that far too many people go to college in the US. Young men have already caught on.
I have a nephew who is not academically inclined but good with mechanical things and learned to weld in HS. After graduation he is going into an apprenticeship program with a utility company and will have salary and benefits in the mid $100s by the time he is 20 and zero debt.
Beautiful. Someone should tell young people there is a tremendous advantage to being among the smartest and most initiative taking in their field. No shame in going one field down in status to be a star.
The size of the high school senior cohort will likely shrink sharply over the next 2 or 3 years. There was a high birth rate during the housing bubble of 2006, but it shrunk sharply by 2009.
On the other hand, the decline in fertility was sharpest among the kind of parents not likely to have kids cut out for elite colleges: e.g., there was sharp decline in the number of kids born to unmarried foreign-born Hispanic women in 2006 to 2009 as construction jobs evaporated. Fertility for white married women declined less.
That’s a good point, and a reason to not be a total demographic doomer. On the other hand it probably means even more foreign competition for American students as universities look to shore up their finances absent a reduction in student visas.
Also, although there is a lot of attention paid to administrative bloat increasing the cost of education, less is paid to the arms race of the last 20 years to add shiny new buildings for classes, lifestyle amenities, and housing to compete with high end private student housing. It would be interesting to know how much bond and private debt for higher ed is out there, the terms and how much is fully amortizing or not.
Is it a supply or demand problem? If colleges are currently selecting students for reasons other than academic achievement, will making tests more selective change admission policies?
We need more trade schools and a culture that values value creation.
I have a friend who has participated in the MIT admissions process for decades. I asked him what I could do to help my nephew get in and he told me MIT is one of the few schools where it doesn't help at all to have a relative who is an alum.
I look that 14% number they were all consciously targeting and wondered why they would go for more than there are in the US population. Turns out the number of people who identify as African American shot up from 11% to 14% while I wasn't looking. That strikes me as implausible but I guess the white fertility rate went down and immigration didn't go up enough to keep it stable.
There must be a lot of barely black students at MIT.
The big universities aren't going to abide by the Supreme Court ruling on Affirmative Action.
So be it. What should a conservative care about how Harvard and MIT cheapen their institutions by enrolling minorities of mediocre intelligence.
Actually, I hope conservatives begin disobeying the courts, including the Supreme Court. Round up the illegal aliens, toss them out, and thumb noses at the courts. The Supreme Court- thanks Roberts and Kavanaugh- forced second Democrat districts on Louisiana and Alabama. Have Congress run through a law keeping the courts out of redistricting, have Trump sign it, and allow Louisiana and Alabama to redistrict however they wish. Give the courts of America the Andrew Jackson treatment.
I like the idea of taking AP tests in December from the POV of admissions but the reality is that the tests are a cumulation of a years worth of effort in the classroom. I have a kid taking 3 of these classes right now and in order to learn the material, they need January, February, March, and April. I don't think it work to start the classes the previous year and pick them back up in the fall.
The kid I have is really bright but not THAT bright and works hard but not THAT hard so while I'm in the middle of all of this, this kind of thing isn't our worry. Which is nice. Choosing between the Jesuit schools with good basketball and pretty girls and an ultimate price point in the mid-40K is actually a really pleasant experience. I highly recommend it. Wish we made a little more money and we could afford the Mid 70K of a high-end Jesuit or nice private school like Wash U but we don't. He'll be fine.
I do read these stories about the 1500 SAT 4.5 GPA and think you shouldn't have tried so hard. AI is going to take your job anyway.
Sailer isn't proposing starting the course early. Right now, only the first half of AP courses has any effect on admissions (in the GPA) because the test is in May. Giving a standardized mid-term test in December lets colleges control for varying HS grade inflation. Spreading out the scores helps the top schools distinguish between the top students better (likewise for the SAT/ACT).
He's proposing to take the AP test in December so that the results can be used in application evaluation is he not?
Honestly mostly doesn't matter because with early applications which most of these types of people are using, they are applying in September with acceptance in November/December.
It's all about what you have done through your junior year for these Tier 1 schools.
Maybe this is already known, but an acquaintance in admissions mentioned some time ago that international students- particularly Asian- barely contribute as alumni after graduating. Maybe that’s a quiet reason to keep avoiding bumping their numbers up.
My vague impression is that Indians are pretty generous toward schools but Chinese aren't. But, once again, I'd like to have some data. Research universities have no doubt researched who donates, but none of their professors ever seem to publish the numbers.
While this would need some kind of antitrust expemption, limiting the number of schools (six?) students could apply to would be beneficial to the process. Rich kids toss in huge numbers hoping for the big fish and poorer kids do the same with universally granted fee-waivers. Schools like it because the large pool inflates the perception of exclusivity. It also creates a kabuki dance where admissions committees spend time weighing the likelihood that the offer is accepted as part of their admissions decision as they look to maximize their yield (share of accepted students enrolling).
Fewer, more individualized applications would enable serious students to demonstrate thier particular interest in a school and also allow the admissions staff to seriously evaluate the application.
Schools must have long waitlists these days to avoid getting swamped by enrollees. Is Early Decision still possible, and could it be encouraged somehow?
Great comment -- limiting the number of applications would make a tremendous difference. See my comment below about admissions in Hong Kong and the UK. In the latter, for example, students can only apply to five universities, and the best students can only apply to either Oxford or Cambridge, but not both. This strips away much of kabuki you so acutely identify in the US system.
If it already has successful application in other countries, that's all the more reason we should do it here too. American universities are deeply damaging and destructive institutions, in every direst need of reform so they can perform their intended function of providing crystallized intelligence and élite networking opportunities to our best and brightest. Making them into political indoctrination centers and race-communist reparations is a gross national perversion that will be remembered with deserved scorn and bafflement by our descendents.
Yes, much of this could be readily fixed. You have to figure the colleges don't really want to fix it, right? No doubt they maintain some cognitive dissonance - on the one hand they really do want to enroll excellent students, but on the other hand they greatly prefer to enroll black and transsexual students.
Currently, black beats excellent every time.
I hope there will be further discussion of some of the other dimensions of college admissions, beyond pure merit.
For example, college is to some extent a marriage market, so there is affirmative action for men (outside the very top tier).
https://www.nytimes.com/2023/09/08/magazine/men-college-enrollment.html
Also, how much do the admissions committees affect long-term career paths? Clearly, if you are a tech wiz, you can take a Thiel Fellowship or something, skip college, and do just fine... those guys can probably ignore the woke college admissions committees. On the other hand, for law, medicine, and academia itself, there is no choice but to get the credential, so you are utterly dependent on the admissions committees.
But what about all those careers that are somewhere in between? For example, for Wall Street, MBA, finance-type jobs, you need some combination of credentials, gatekeeper approval and skill. In the Current Year, which of these is becoming more important relative to the others? For example, does the internet mean that great skills can rise to the top, regardless of the gatekeeping? Or does something about geography and economics mean that those with the wrong parents and wrong hometown face ever-worse odds?
Aaron Renn reflected on his experience as a rural / Big Ten kid as opposed to a coastal elite:
https://www.aaronrenn.com/p/ladders
https://x.com/aaron_renn/status/1846569960505557214
Right, Aaron Renn is correct: at the high end, the HYPS path pays a lot better than the Big Ten path.