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Cheating: An Insider's Report on the Use of Race in Admissions at UCLA
Because of California's Proposition 209, public universities such as UCLA cannot use race as a factor in admissions. However, as this book shows, UCLA gives significant preferences to African Americans, while it discriminates against Asians. The author, a professor of political science and economics at UCLA, documents what he witnessed as a member of UCLA's faculty oversight committee for admissions. He also describes findings from a UCLA internal report as well as statistics from a large data set that he has posted online. All show that UCLA is breaking the law. The discrimination is not simply a byproduct of class-based preferences. For instance, for one aspect of the admissions process, a rich African American's chance of admission is almost double that of a poor Asian, even when the two applicants have identical grades, SAT scores, and other factors.
212 pages, Paperback
First published April 24, 2014
17 people want to read
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May 16, 2014
Groseclose has written a book describing the cheating in the admissions at UCLA. He has handled the statistical areas in a masterful way and even allowed those of us unfamiliar with all of the techniques to understand the results. It seems apparent that there was cheating in the admissions at UCLA in violation of Proposition 209.
Groseclose then goes further and describes what he think happened which resulted in the admissions cheating at UCLA. He proposes that the liberal left wing professors thought that they did not have enough Black students at UCLA, perhaps an admirable goal if they were really not admitting enough. Unfortunately they did not check the statistics of their admissions which would have told them they were pretty much right on already on their admissions.
Instead they created a new system which just happened to have more choices and unseen weighting of background. They were able to nearly double the number of Black students in this manner.
Groupthink is a human reaction and this is apparently what happened at UCLA. The liberal professors and others wanted a certain conclusion so they worked through their new system to get the desired results. They were not exactly liars but the truth was omitted in their desire for particular results.
This sometimes happens in various studies, that's why we have blind studies etc., when the results are desired and it comes true and later we find out that the results were really not supporting the thesis. Drug companies have sometimes done this as well as others.
As Groseclose points out in his vanilla book rather than strident book, that this is easy to happen and when one thinks primarily of results rather than the truth such results are almost unavoidable.
Yes, we need to have on admissions as well as all other areas where it is important to have both a full compliment of liberals and a full compliment of conservatives, or a lfull compliment of yeasayers and a full compliment of naysayers to make sure that the result is close to the truth that it would be with groupthink.
Groseclose has done an admirable job for us and we should appreciate his efforts.
Thanks
J. Robert Ewbank author "John Wesley, Natural Man, and the Isms" "Wesley's Wars" and "To Whom It May Concern"
Groseclose then goes further and describes what he think happened which resulted in the admissions cheating at UCLA. He proposes that the liberal left wing professors thought that they did not have enough Black students at UCLA, perhaps an admirable goal if they were really not admitting enough. Unfortunately they did not check the statistics of their admissions which would have told them they were pretty much right on already on their admissions.
Instead they created a new system which just happened to have more choices and unseen weighting of background. They were able to nearly double the number of Black students in this manner.
Groupthink is a human reaction and this is apparently what happened at UCLA. The liberal professors and others wanted a certain conclusion so they worked through their new system to get the desired results. They were not exactly liars but the truth was omitted in their desire for particular results.
This sometimes happens in various studies, that's why we have blind studies etc., when the results are desired and it comes true and later we find out that the results were really not supporting the thesis. Drug companies have sometimes done this as well as others.
As Groseclose points out in his vanilla book rather than strident book, that this is easy to happen and when one thinks primarily of results rather than the truth such results are almost unavoidable.
Yes, we need to have on admissions as well as all other areas where it is important to have both a full compliment of liberals and a full compliment of conservatives, or a lfull compliment of yeasayers and a full compliment of naysayers to make sure that the result is close to the truth that it would be with groupthink.
Groseclose has done an admirable job for us and we should appreciate his efforts.
Thanks
J. Robert Ewbank author "John Wesley, Natural Man, and the Isms" "Wesley's Wars" and "To Whom It May Concern"
Displaying 1 of 1 review