It conveniently falls in line with racial diversity goals but it is unclear what other goals it accomplishes. The reasonable assumption is that any soft skill goals or measures will have a high preference for white males. It is very suspect that this isn't true.
Don't admission officers actually come from worse educational backgrounds than alumni? I think many AO never reach educational or career heights that would help them appreciate the accomplishments of applicants while alumni do.
Those admissions processes are actually seen as very fair processes in those countries. IIRC, there is very high economic diversity in the top colleges in China and India which can't be said about the Ivy League schools.
Uniqueness and well-roundedness are traits of privilege. The activities typically used to signal "uniqueness" for college admissions like philanthropy and political activism have roots in privilege. If you're not from a rich, well-connected white family, the best chance for success is through the typical tryhard, academic STEM path. You can't afford to be unique. You don't have cronyism or money to fall back on.
I guess Harvard's defense is that they do most of the "work" at the subjective personality score stage where races are conveniently ranked in the same order as their desirability for "diversity".
It seems unlikely to be unintentional. Since Harvard is grading personality on a USA-centric scale, it would most likely accentuate the traits of the current USA leaders and executives who are overwhelmingly white. We would expect the white children to inherit, genetically and environmentally, these traits from their leader and executive parents and score the highest by a good margin and all other minorities to score low.
The results contradict the expectations. Conveniently, it is black > Hispanic > white > Asian which is exactly the diversity hierarchy
> Spacex: we can go to Mars, but haven't even launched a Mars rocket. Google: AI is here, and the product? Waymo, logs millions of miles, is just sunny conditions?
I don't think that is their literal message and goal. SpaceX's real mission is to innovate space travel which they've been capable of doing and have demonstrated with clear achievements.
SpaceX's revenue is in the billions and is very close to profitable. It most likely would be profitable if it wasn't constantly spending money to expand like Amazon in its early years.
> A great school and teacher obviously can change the lives of children in poverty but it's astonishingly difficult and requires immense talent to achieve.
Teaching children in poverty is a specialization. Teachers can excel at teaching children at upper middle class schools but fail miserably at an inner city school. People complain about privilege on teacher quality difference between inner city and good schools. The truth is that the "good" teachers at an upper middle class school wouldn't be much of an improvement over the "bad" teachers at inner city schools. The "good" teachers only know how to teach well-behaved, studious students!
That is why integration failed. The environment at good schools are good for children with familial support and low behavioral issues. It is not good for children with behavioral issues without familial support.
> Like many charter schools in New York City, the Promise Academy has an extended
school day and year, with coordinated after-school tutoring and additional classes on Saturdays
for children who need remediation in mathematics and English Language Arts skills. Our rough
estimate is that Promise Academy students that are behind grade level are in school for twice as
many hours as a traditional public school student in New York City. Students who are at or
above grade level still attend the equivalent of about fifty percent more school in a calendar year.
The students are working twice as hard as others and attend remediation classes.
Other inputs:
> The schools provide free medical, dental and mental-health services (students are
screened upon entry and receive regular check-ups through a partnership with the Children’s
Health Fund), student incentives for achievement, nutritious cafeteria meals, support for parents
in the form of food baskets, meals, bus fare, and so forth, and less tangible benefits such as the
support of a committed staff. The schools also make a concerted effort to change the culture of
achievement, emphasizing the importance of hard work in achieving success.
These inputs are claimed as characteristics of a "high quality school" in the abstract:
> We conclude with evidence that suggests
high-quality schools are enough to significantly increase academic achievement among the poor.
"High quality schools" (high quality meaning high test scores) generally do not fund many of these services for their students. What the study demonstrates are characteristics of schools that can help underprivileged children with less than adequate familial support.
This is an argument in favor of segregation. These services can only scale and be cost effective if a large portion of the students will use the services. This would not be cost effective if the majority of the school was not underprivileged.
If the test is based on the standard middle/high school curriculum (if there is one), then it can be a fairly good predictor.
Otherwise, even if it is an arbitrary test, it takes study skills and discipline to be able to master it. I imagine that both of those traits correlate with performance at school.
> it outcompetes payment systems from American tech companies
Does it? I think American payment systems are winning outside of China/USA. Of course it won the Chinese market because China makes it extremely difficult for foreign tech companies to compete.
> The GDPR is about 68 to 90 pages depending on which language you're reading it in. It is trying to be futureproof by leaving measures defined in terms of 'current state of technology', 'reasonable security considering the risk' and other such ambiguous terms.
1 page or 1,000 pages, most people are not in a position to accurately interpret it and understand what does or does not comply.
That's a solid 50 hours of engineering and QA. At a $75/hr contracting rate, that is $3,750 (50 * $75/hr).
And that's just the engineering work. The website owner cannot know whether or not the engineering work and website meets the requirements of GDPR by himself. He does not have the ability to interpret the GDPR policies. The website owner would need to consult with a compliance lawyer or expert to assess the website for compliance. I would guess it would take a lawyer 10 hours at minimum (assuming the lawyer is a GDPR expert and already knows GDPR in and out) to assess a website for GDPR compliance, billed at a low $250/hr is $2500.
If the biased models replace human decision making, then it just has to be shown that the models are less biased than humans which may not be that high of a bar to pass.
MIT cares more about scores and STEM and MIT actually has around the lowest family income and lowest percent of rich people in the Ivy League tier.