Archive link: https://archive.is/idbrA I think it's notable that when the title says "very rich", they mean very rich. The headline graph in the article is worth seeing - the intuition would...
I think it's notable that when the title says "very rich", they mean very rich. The headline graph in the article is worth seeing - the intuition would probably be that being rich is monotonically good for admissions, but it's actual bimodal (if the rightmost side could be called a mode).
The first peak on the graph is at ~11th percentile of income - that is to say, after this point, your likelihood of admissions goes down. The trough of the graph is at the ~90th percentile of income - if you're family makes >90% of the country, you have the worst chances of making it into prestigious universities given a certain test score.
It is not until the 99.9% percentile of income that it jumps back above the 11th percentile, and that point it jumps straight off the graph.
It's important politically to recognize the dynamics of the graph, since correct messaging is important to make sure people take up the issue correctly. If the messaging was just that it was biased towards the wealthy, the vast majority of americans that would be categorized as "wealthy" would have anecdotal experiences contradicting that - correctly, per this data. It is not until you get the uber-wealthy that it becomes more likely for you to attend.
edit: equally unintuitive is what the NYT found about academic vs non-academic ratings - the uber-wealthy are the only ones to score exponentially higher in non-academic ratings, with the rest of the income range scoring about the same on both academic and non-academic admission ratings.
Much has been made about using non-academic factors, and moving away from standardized scores, as a means of equalizing or boosting low income students, but it seems like it mostly benefits very wealthy students, who have more opportunities and resources to create "experiences" to put on their applications.
Something I've thought about for a while: could it be ideal to have the uber-wealthy at elite institutions, so that there's some meeting ground where smart, common people can mingle with the...
Something I've thought about for a while: could it be ideal to have the uber-wealthy at elite institutions, so that there's some meeting ground where smart, common people can mingle with the people who disproportionately hold power in society? Or is that also bad in some way?
That seems to imply that if the super wealthy didn't have an easier time getting into Harvard, they'd just not go to college instead, but at least in the present day they'd still go to college,...
That seems to imply that if the super wealthy didn't have an easier time getting into Harvard, they'd just not go to college instead, but at least in the present day they'd still go to college, since there's a baseline level of prestige that you wouldn't have if you weren't college educated. In that regard, since they'd disperse among a wider set of colleges, there'd be more "mingling".
Maybe if that continues, the wealthy would eschew college and make their own, new form of college that is once again elite-only but it's that's a longshot hypothetical.
This still exists outside the Ivy somewhat. Part of the reason is soliciting donations later. Part is being able to charge full price admission with no aid. At least some of the blame needs to be...
This still exists outside the Ivy somewhat. Part of the reason is soliciting donations later. Part is being able to charge full price admission with no aid.
At least some of the blame needs to be placed squarely on various government levels which don't keep pace with funding to insure that operational expenses are properly covered without needing to build a massive endowment.
I think more the problem is how bloated administrations have become in both compensation and number. Harvard tuition, adjusting for inflation, has roughly doubled over the last 40 years. The...
I think more the problem is how bloated administrations have become in both compensation and number. Harvard tuition, adjusting for inflation, has roughly doubled over the last 40 years. The current system that's been developed is essentially quasi-feudalism.
This is a problem affecting many sectors. Healthcare administration costs are excessive in the US, see this article. In 2016, as % of healthcare expenditure, administration comprises: 8.3% of...
I think more the problem is how bloated administrations have become in both compensation and number.
This is a problem affecting many sectors. Healthcare administration costs are excessive in the US, see this article.
In 2016, as % of healthcare expenditure, administration comprises:
8.3% of spending in the US
Compare to:
5.7% in France
3.9% in the Netherlands
1.6% in Sweden
I wonder why administration bloat is so acute in the US compared to other countries. It's a huge drag on our economy. Millions of Americans are employed pushing paper that shouldn't need to be pushed.
Anyone have any idea what's behind this phenomenon?
I work in Healthcare administration. My three person department is devoted entirely to making sure that we have the correct insurance information on file for each patient, making sure we're...
I work in Healthcare administration. My three person department is devoted entirely to making sure that we have the correct insurance information on file for each patient, making sure we're collecting the correct amount at each visit (some insurance companies make this extremely difficult) and making sure that we're contracted with that patient's insurance (again, sometimes very difficult.) We're also not the only people at our practice who do this. We're a multi-specialty private practice with 17 doctors, an MRI department, a PT department and DME services. About 85% of what the other departments do is insurance verifications. The rest is scheduling and dispensing items. The billing department also has to do quite a bit on the back end. None of this would be necessary in a single payer system. In a roughly 150 person company, I can think of at least 10 people who would not be employed at our practice, or would be employed in a different capacity, if Healthcare coverage was simple and didn't require multiple phone calls to confirm.
I'd blame big tech somewhat for tech-related positions. You've got to have sysadmins to keep your systems online. You're competing with Amazon, Microsoft, Google, and Apple to retain your talent....
I'd blame big tech somewhat for tech-related positions. You've got to have sysadmins to keep your systems online. You're competing with Amazon, Microsoft, Google, and Apple to retain your talent.
But almost all of those differences in administrative healthcare spending for the USA can boil down to the terribleness that is private healthcare insurance. My pediatrician has 6 people manning the front desk, and at least 2 of them are constantly dealing with insurance-related bullshit.
My health insurance arbitrarily decided to reject paying for a strep-test culture for my kid. I had to pay $6 separately to another company because the pediatrician couldn't work it out between the insurance, the lab, and themselves.
They say that...but you gotta look at the whole picture. Half of the administrative bloat is due to having functional computers. And few would disagree that we want our college's to be teaching...
They say that...but you gotta look at the whole picture.
Half of the administrative bloat is due to having functional computers. And few would disagree that we want our college's to be teaching the bleeding edge of technology, and not stuff 10 or 20 years outdated. Keeping current, especially with staff to properly leverage and maintain it, is expensive.
I work in IT for a large college, with more than 10,000 undergrads. They pay over 30% less for an equivalent job in the private sector. You could save a few million by not offering internet to the students outside of computer labs. By eliminating the helpdesk staff, card swipe unlocks for old-fashioned keys, e-learning resources.
Many faculty would be happy to return to the days of paper. I've met so many that despise having to deal with computers. But I feel the students would not respond so positively.
And even that.... you could save just as much, if not more...by firing the top medical staff in the country from the medical school (the tops can earn upwards of $750k) and the sports (especially american football) coaches, which is its own can of worms. It still arguably makes the experience worse for incoming students.
An aside, the debate over college admissions has been pretty interesting, because at the core is the question: what is the purpose of a top-tier university? Being argued are: What does meritocracy...
An aside, the debate over college admissions has been pretty interesting, because at the core is the question: what is the purpose of a top-tier university?
Being argued are:
What does meritocracy mean in America?
How do we achieve racial equity? Should we?
How important is a good college to life outcomes?
And, maybe above all else, there is a matter of social engineering. Implicit in the discourse is the unspoken knowledge that top colleges will form and mold the future elite class. So, in a sense, top colleges have an outsized role in shaping our nation's future.
Archive link: https://archive.is/idbrA
I think it's notable that when the title says "very rich", they mean very rich. The headline graph in the article is worth seeing - the intuition would probably be that being rich is monotonically good for admissions, but it's actual bimodal (if the rightmost side could be called a mode).
The first peak on the graph is at ~11th percentile of income - that is to say, after this point, your likelihood of admissions goes down. The trough of the graph is at the ~90th percentile of income - if you're family makes >90% of the country, you have the worst chances of making it into prestigious universities given a certain test score.
It is not until the 99.9% percentile of income that it jumps back above the 11th percentile, and that point it jumps straight off the graph.
It's important politically to recognize the dynamics of the graph, since correct messaging is important to make sure people take up the issue correctly. If the messaging was just that it was biased towards the wealthy, the vast majority of americans that would be categorized as "wealthy" would have anecdotal experiences contradicting that - correctly, per this data. It is not until you get the uber-wealthy that it becomes more likely for you to attend.
edit: equally unintuitive is what the NYT found about academic vs non-academic ratings - the uber-wealthy are the only ones to score exponentially higher in non-academic ratings, with the rest of the income range scoring about the same on both academic and non-academic admission ratings.
Much has been made about using non-academic factors, and moving away from standardized scores, as a means of equalizing or boosting low income students, but it seems like it mostly benefits very wealthy students, who have more opportunities and resources to create "experiences" to put on their applications.
Something I've thought about for a while: could it be ideal to have the uber-wealthy at elite institutions, so that there's some meeting ground where smart, common people can mingle with the people who disproportionately hold power in society? Or is that also bad in some way?
That seems to imply that if the super wealthy didn't have an easier time getting into Harvard, they'd just not go to college instead, but at least in the present day they'd still go to college, since there's a baseline level of prestige that you wouldn't have if you weren't college educated. In that regard, since they'd disperse among a wider set of colleges, there'd be more "mingling".
Maybe if that continues, the wealthy would eschew college and make their own, new form of college that is once again elite-only but it's that's a longshot hypothetical.
This still exists outside the Ivy somewhat. Part of the reason is soliciting donations later. Part is being able to charge full price admission with no aid.
At least some of the blame needs to be placed squarely on various government levels which don't keep pace with funding to insure that operational expenses are properly covered without needing to build a massive endowment.
I think more the problem is how bloated administrations have become in both compensation and number. Harvard tuition, adjusting for inflation, has roughly doubled over the last 40 years. The current system that's been developed is essentially quasi-feudalism.
This is a problem affecting many sectors. Healthcare administration costs are excessive in the US, see this article.
In 2016, as % of healthcare expenditure, administration comprises:
Compare to:
I wonder why administration bloat is so acute in the US compared to other countries. It's a huge drag on our economy. Millions of Americans are employed pushing paper that shouldn't need to be pushed.
Anyone have any idea what's behind this phenomenon?
I work in Healthcare administration. My three person department is devoted entirely to making sure that we have the correct insurance information on file for each patient, making sure we're collecting the correct amount at each visit (some insurance companies make this extremely difficult) and making sure that we're contracted with that patient's insurance (again, sometimes very difficult.) We're also not the only people at our practice who do this. We're a multi-specialty private practice with 17 doctors, an MRI department, a PT department and DME services. About 85% of what the other departments do is insurance verifications. The rest is scheduling and dispensing items. The billing department also has to do quite a bit on the back end. None of this would be necessary in a single payer system. In a roughly 150 person company, I can think of at least 10 people who would not be employed at our practice, or would be employed in a different capacity, if Healthcare coverage was simple and didn't require multiple phone calls to confirm.
I'd blame big tech somewhat for tech-related positions. You've got to have sysadmins to keep your systems online. You're competing with Amazon, Microsoft, Google, and Apple to retain your talent.
But almost all of those differences in administrative healthcare spending for the USA can boil down to the terribleness that is private healthcare insurance. My pediatrician has 6 people manning the front desk, and at least 2 of them are constantly dealing with insurance-related bullshit.
My health insurance arbitrarily decided to reject paying for a strep-test culture for my kid. I had to pay $6 separately to another company because the pediatrician couldn't work it out between the insurance, the lab, and themselves.
They say that...but you gotta look at the whole picture.
Half of the administrative bloat is due to having functional computers. And few would disagree that we want our college's to be teaching the bleeding edge of technology, and not stuff 10 or 20 years outdated. Keeping current, especially with staff to properly leverage and maintain it, is expensive.
I work in IT for a large college, with more than 10,000 undergrads. They pay over 30% less for an equivalent job in the private sector. You could save a few million by not offering internet to the students outside of computer labs. By eliminating the helpdesk staff, card swipe unlocks for old-fashioned keys, e-learning resources.
Many faculty would be happy to return to the days of paper. I've met so many that despise having to deal with computers. But I feel the students would not respond so positively.
And even that.... you could save just as much, if not more...by firing the top medical staff in the country from the medical school (the tops can earn upwards of $750k) and the sports (especially american football) coaches, which is its own can of worms. It still arguably makes the experience worse for incoming students.
An aside, the debate over college admissions has been pretty interesting, because at the core is the question: what is the purpose of a top-tier university?
Being argued are:
What I find funny is that research isn't really being discussed as one of the things which is the purpose of a top-tier university.