VOODOO IN UNIVERSITY ADMISSIONS

Every year about this time, high school students get letters of admission — or rejection — from colleges around the country. The saddest part of this process is not their rejections but the assumption by some students that they were rejected because they just didn't measure up to the high standards of Ivy U. or their flagship state university. The cold fact is that objective admissions standards are seldom decisive at most colleges. The admissions process is so shot through with fads and unsubstantiated assumptions that it is more like voodoo than anything else.

A student who did not get admitted to Ivy U. may be a better student than some — or even most — of those who did. Admissions officials love to believe that they can spot all sorts of intangibles that outweigh test scores and grade-point averages. Such notions are hardly surprising in people who pay no price for being wrong. All sorts of self-indulgences are possible when people are unaccountable, whether they be college admissions officials, parole boards, planning commissions or copy-editors.

What is amazing is that nobody puts the notions and fetishes of college admissions offices to a test. Nothing would be easier than to admit half of a college's entering class on the basis of objective standards, such as test scores, and the other half according to the voodoo of the admissions office. Then, four years later, you could compare how the two halves of the class did. But apparently this would not be politic.

Among the many reasons given for rejecting objective admissions standards is that they are "unfair." Much is made of the fact that high test scores are correlated with high family income. Very little is made of the statistical principle that correlation is not causation. Practically nothing is made of the fact that, however a student got to where he is academically, that is in fact where he is — and that is usually a better predictor of where he is going to go than is the psychobabble of admissions committees.

The denigration of objective standards allows admissions committees to play little tin gods, who think that their job is to reward students who are deserving, sociologically speaking, rather than to select students who can produce the most bang for the buck from the money contributed by donors and taxpayers for the purpose of turning out the best quality graduates possible. Typical of the mindset that rejects the selection of students in the order of objective performances was a recent article in the Chronicle of Higher Education which said that colleges should "select randomly" from a pool of applicants who are "good enough." Nowhere in the real world, where people must face the consequences of their decisions, would such a principle be taken seriously.

Lots of pitchers are "good enough" to be in the major leagues but would you just as soon send one of those pitchers to the mound to pitch the deciding game of the World Series as you would send Randy Johnson or Roger Clemens out there with the world championship on the line? Lots of military officers were considered to be "good enough" to be generals in World War II but troops who served under General Douglas MacArthur or General George Patton had more victories and fewer casualties. How many more lives would you be prepared to sacrifice as the price of selecting randomly among generals considered to be "good enough"?

If you or your child had to have a major operation for a life-threatening condition, would you be just as content to have the surgery done by anyone who was "good enough" to be a surgeon, as compared to someone who was a top surgeon in the relevant specialty?

The difference between first-rate and second-rate people is enormous in many fields. In a college classroom, marginally qualified students can affect the whole atmosphere and hold back the whole class. In some professions, a large part of the time of first-rate people is spent countering the half-baked ideas of second-rate people and trying to salvage something from the wreckage of the disasters they create. "Good enough" is seldom good enough.


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COLUMBIA'S ROTC BIGOTRY

Columbia University, only a few miles north of Ground Zero, treats young people who are training to defend this nation as second-class citizens. You might think that, at a university where virtually every student and faculty member was directly affected by 9/11, there'd be respect and gratitude for ROTC. Reserve Officer Training Corps students, after all, seek to serve and protect their country and their community. Instead, President Lee Bollinger (who's also under fire over alleged anti-Semitism in his Mideast Studies Department) has said he allows ROTC recruiters at the Law School only "with regret," and ROTC itself is banned on the Columbia campus.....

At other schools, ROTC students receive regular course credit for their ROTC classes and conduct their other ROTC activities on campus. At Columbia, ROTC is barred; students who wish to add these activities to already demanding schedules may do so - but elsewhere, please. Columbia banned ROTC in 1969, a few months after the height of the famous campus demonstrations against the Vietnam war and all things military. Yet that knee-jerk anti-military attitude doesn't apply to today's Columbia students: Two years ago, a student referendum to bring ROTC back to campus passed with 65 percent of the vote.

The faculty is another matter. It took a year after the referendum before the faculty-dominated University Senate would even form a task force to study the isssue. After a year of town halls, email exchanges and committee meetings, the committee is deadlocked, 5 to 5, over whether to change the existing policy. The full Senate is set to decide on May 6.

ROTC opponents claim that they're not anti-military - that their opposition is solely related to the military's "Don't ask, don't tell" policy. That's supposedly the one issue that has the committee deadlocked, because the policy doesn't match with Columbia's own non-discrimination policy. One can only wonder: If (God forbid) terrorists launched an attack at Columbia, would these critics block the gates of 116th and Broadway to prevent the military from entering the campus because "Don't ask, don't tell" violates Columbia's anti-discrimination policy?

Keep in mind that ROTC students have their tuition partially paid by Uncle Sam; checks are sent directly to Columbia from the "Don't ask, don't tell" U.S. Army. Columbia has yet to send any of those checks back. But the hypocrisy gets worse.

An official Columbia group, the Columbia Law School Center for the Study of Law and Culture, recently hosted a "teach-in" on this subject. Professor Michael Adler, who supports the return of ROTC, hoped the center would allow for a debate on the issue. In an email (provided to me by an ROTC supporter) to Professor Kendall Thomas, the center's co-director, Adler noted: "The fact is that most of us who support the return of ROTC to Columbia would be willing to make common cause with the law students" on certain aspects of the "Don't ask, don't tell" issue.

Professor Thomas replied, "A teach-in is being planned, which I believe will be a more productive use of the law school's resources, and its members' time." Thomas failed to explain how three hours of one-sided military-bashing would be "more productive" use of resources at a center of higher education. Debate is apparently inappropriate for the education of future lawyers......

More here




Tennessee: Teachers resist incentives: "The long-standing, contentious issue of incentive pay for Metro teachers is at a stalemate after the teachers union again opposed the idea last week. All nine Metro school board members say it's a good idea, especially for enticing teachers to schools with many low-income students. Those schools have grappled for years with low academic achievement by students and high turnover among teachers. While they haven't set a definite dollar amount, school board members want to offer a salary bonus to lure the best teachers to those schools. But salaries and all other teachers pay must be negotiated with the teachers union, which has declined further discussion. Among the objections: Teachers who don't get the bonus would feel slighted. 'We just think there's a better way to tackle the problem, that incentive pay is a political Band-aid that sounds good,' said Ralph Smith, Metro Nashville Education Association president."

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For greatest efficiency, lowest cost and maximum choice, ALL schools should be privately owned and run -- with government-paid vouchers for the poor and minimal regulation.

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