UC Berkeley inappropriately admitted students as favors to donors

Re:UC Berkeley inappropriately admitted students as favors t... by Upvoter33 on Tuesday September 22, 2020 @05:44PM (#24560304)

Here's the real problem: Universities are expensive places to run and need huge resources to build buildings, hire and retain faculty, and other costly endeavors. Hence, the need for donors. Once you have donors, it is VERY hard to avoid this sort of tit-for-tat deal.

The best way to get around the funny business: have a system where students are classified into bins. Be very clear with donors: if a student isn't in the "top bin", they will not get in. However, in that bin, allow the "donor connection" to influence admission.

Is this perfect? No, of course not. But it accepts the reality of the world without perverting it too much. And honestly: can you really predict if one student is going to do better than another because of 1pt on some standardized test?

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Re:UC Berkeley inappropriately admitted students as favors t... by curiousllama on Tuesday September 22, 2020 @06:29PM (#24560746)

I can't speak for Cal schools, but for most private schools, this is already what happens. If you're not already competitive, the required donation is truly immense (think "Kenneth C Griffin Department of Economics" big).

Most donation-influenced admits are borderline to begin with - it just eliminates the randomness of the admissions process. The issue here is that Cal is public, and so more laws apply.

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Re:UC Berkeley inappropriately admitted students as favors t... by mas3god on Wednesday September 23, 2020 @01:46AM (#24563396)

Im pretty sure universities only became expensive once student loans got subsidized and every 18 year old kid in America could jump 100k in debt at the taxpayers expense.

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