tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8078379512095504946.post7972273156882447328..comments2024-03-26T06:17:49.527-07:00Comments on Had Enough Therapy?: The Diversity Police at HarvardStuart Schneidermanhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12784043736879991769noreply@blogger.comBlogger4125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8078379512095504946.post-75724177338415958762016-10-16T14:03:59.815-07:002016-10-16T14:03:59.815-07:00There's also the "swimming pool" to ...There's also the "swimming pool" to consider: Are you able to swim in the ocean, or only in a swimming pool? Harvard is supposed to be a tough school (ocean), but due to govt. directives, has to meet diversity requirements/quotas and allows pool swimmers entry. Who flunk out, or do poorly enough they have to leave.Sam L.https://www.blogger.com/profile/00996809377798862214noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8078379512095504946.post-20836190844115077912016-10-16T13:45:15.610-07:002016-10-16T13:45:15.610-07:00The Diversity Clown Car amuses me to no end. Recen...The Diversity Clown Car amuses me to no end. Recently, Hong and Page published a paper, which received quite a lot of Proglodyte attention, with the risible claim that<br /><br />"We find that when selecting a problem-solving team from a diverse population of intelligent agents, a team of randomly selected agents outperforms a team comprised of the best-performing agents."<br /><br />To establish their bona fides, they even developed a maff model.<br /><br />I say maff, not entirely in jest, but to fully describe the embarassing stupidity of their work. <br /><br />The paper happened to attract the attention of Abigail Thompson, a math professor and topologist at UCal Davis. Dr Thompson responded with a devastating rebuttal in "Mathematical Notices", a flagship journal of the AMA. She observes that H&P's "theorem" is not, in fact a theorem; their data illustrate the effects of randomness, not "diversity" as they define it; and their attempt to equate mathematical quantities with human attributes is fantasy.<br /><br />Believing H&P's paper is tantamount to believing that a racially and sexually "diverse" group of people could have outperformed the physicists on the Manhattan Project. :-D<br /><br />Ares and his/it's/zir's/÷&#'s ilk can suck up to this nonsense all they want to, but the fact is that a diversity-driven process is a recipe for mediocrity.Trigger Warningnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8078379512095504946.post-65073058213390758922016-10-16T09:58:50.406-07:002016-10-16T09:58:50.406-07:00Colleges have been captured by administrators who ...Colleges have been captured by administrators who don't hesitate to charge elite prices for a certificate which cannot be verified as worth anything educationally, but is now a socially required signal.<br /><br />http://www.greaterexpectations.org/report/2c.html<br />=== ===<br />[There is] A dearth of meaningful assessment. By and large, colleges are unable to say with any certainty whether students have learned what the professors are teaching. This is particularly true of abilities like critical thinking that develop across the confines of individual courses. The absence of explicit descriptions of the desired outcome hampers assessment. So, too, do the independent treatment of individual courses and faculty unfamiliarity with meaningful assessment methods.<br />=== ===<br /><br />Colleges oppose any effort to measure the effectiveness and utility of what they teach.<br /> http://centerforcollegeaffordability.org/2014/04/15/how-not-to-criticize-college-rankings/<br /> <br />"Colleges resist transparency, especially for information about graduate earnings, and Payscale uses self-reported data. That’s problematic, but more useful than anything legally available at this point until higher education institutions provide the information."<br /><br />What is the special sauce at Harvard which is not available at Ohio U? Harvard admits only the most intelligent students by test and accomplishment, except for affirmative action students. It teaches for 4+ years, then takes credit for the further accomplishments and incomes of its graduates. We would expect these intelligent people to do well regardless of what they were taught. They would teach themselves absent Harvard.<br /><br />I think that there is no secret sauce. The evidence is in the performance of the affirmative action students. They feel exluded and frustrated rather than grateful for the elevating effects of the Harvard curriculum. They are regarded as too disbenefitted (dumb) to fully benefit from the curriculum.<br /><br />A huge benefit of Harvard vs Ohio U is that Harvard is a protected community with its own police force and disciplinary system. This insulates its high-value students from the scandals and misdemeanors of youth. Whatever Harvard teaches, this part alone is worth it, to keep the children of the wealthy out of trouble until they come to their senses.<br /><br />Why does the larger city and state grant this authority to a school? Because wealthy families support politicians and they want this protection from the law for their children.<br />Andrew_M_Garlandhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/02855052302054611917noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8078379512095504946.post-83191568916586540362016-10-16T09:56:39.317-07:002016-10-16T09:56:39.317-07:00Stuart: If he was right that civilizations compete...Stuart: If he was right that civilizations compete against each other, for prestige and dominance, some have done better than others. If students are being taught how best to compete in the world market, it would seem rational to want them to do their best.<br /><br />To be fair, we do need to consider what competition and talent really means. And there certainly is an "arms race" of test scoring, and some people are very motivated and skilled at taking tests, but that doesn't necessarily make them the best students.<br /><br />And we can't fully neglect resentment - it is a "fair" feeling, if you are excluded from a school because someone else came from a tougher background than you, and its even tougher when you're actually a bit short on the genetic advantages while growing up in the best schools, and you worked really hard to get that score, and you thought it would be enough, but it wasn't.<br /><br />Myself, I've never been that interested in competition, perhaps because of that zero-sum problem, but the world is a wide place, so why only try to do what everyone else wants to do as a measure of self-worth? And there are many goals that are possible, where our individualistic ego isn't the end-all be-all of human existence.<br /><br />Diversity can be a legitimate value, in whatever criteria you consider, and this MAY cause the problem of having some REALLY smart kids having to interact with LESS SMART kids, and wow, that's almost like regular life!<br /><br />My cousin talked about grad school, and he started drinking regularly because he needed to unwind at the end of a day competing with Asian students who think its perfectly natural to study 100 hour/week, and who consider themselves failures if they get below 98% on a test. Perhaps schools should only be filled with students who believe good grades are the only thing that is important?<br /><br />But that's not actually like regular life. Regular life is full of people who don't like smart-asses who need to compete all the time against everyone around them, and such people who find success that way in school will find something else when they get a job, when they have to show their communication skills, and show they can work well with others, and find common ground without making other people feel stupid.<br /><br />So whatever the diversity of skills it takes to make well-rounded human beings, probably it couldn't hurt to have some diversity of background of people to interact with, and even if you fail or get C's in class rather than A's, you might still be glad you had the chance to go to a best school.<br /><br />Apparently a lot of politicians didn't get great grades in school, and we could shame them for that, or we could be glad they didn't let that get them down.<br /><br />Ares Olympushttps://www.blogger.com/profile/09726811306826601686noreply@blogger.com