It is somewhat amusing that they give scholarships to people with financial industry background, who are the least in need, and who will receive the highest salaries on exit - and then claim that their scholarships are need based.
At least they are teaching their students the ethics they need to succeed in the financial industry.
Not only American, but not common either. The best analogy to American business schools will be party (communist party) schools in Soviet Union and China.
I can't pick words to express just how similar are these two systems.
And in all of those countries, you have huge masses of clueless parents seeing these institutes as something that magically, effortlessly make their children "big men" of higher socioeconomic standing overnight once they graduate.
As for me, my own experience was that it takes a lot to convince parents that Western "big name business school" is a gigantic waste of money if you go there for actual skills and knowledge. And the argument "you go to business school to make connection with kids of other rich people" does not hold water either. All of such students are well connected people to begin with, and are very class conscious themselves. If they see no use of socialising with you, what will make them want doing so?
I wrote another post below explaining how it was for me.
An MBA in the U.S. honestly doesn't even feel like "university" in the traditional sense.
It is essentially an exchange where the student pays a massive amount of tuition money and the university gives them two years to network with people. I believe the goal is to make friends with the folks who were going to get that finance job through their connections anyway, and then maybe they can get YOU a finance job too.
It likely exists anywhere universities rely on alumni’s donations, i.e. anywhere universities are private businesses, like in UK. Probably not a big deal in places where unis are state-funded and places are not limited.
Companies can have both a diversity policy and a policy to make sure the top talents don't go elsewhere.
University too, can have a diversity policy as well as a merit policy. To compete and attract the best students, University must either provide merit based scholarship, or organize with other universities to get rid of merit based scholarships everywhere (cartel!)
To play devil's advocate here: the press and the public do not want to hear that tech companies pay 7 digits of monthly salary to attract some talent. Nor do they want to hear that Universities have to offer merit based scholarships to attract top students, otherwise these students will go elsewhere.
Companies advertise their diversity efforts but not the salaries of their executives. Stanford said what the public wanted to hear.
There's a bait and switch that colleges do. Also hospitals, but mostly colleges.
On the one hand they go out and tell people what a value driven organization it is, how their passion is making the world a better place -- when they are asking for money from people almost of whom have far less in the bank than they already do and when they are defending things like very adventagous tax rates.
On the other hand when they get caught doing something that looks unprincipled or rapacious they all of a sudden become economists lecturing you about how of course every organization acts as an interest maximizier and what are you naive?
Well maybe we were naive. But now that everyone knows what the deal is maybe they can lay off the disingenuous appeals for donations and tax expenditures. Fool me once and all that.
I agree. I think universities can be both, but they should just be honest about it! There’s nothing wrong with being both a for profit institution that needs to turn a profit and a value driven organization. Be up front though, and don’t make outsiders feel in the wrong when they call you out for mixed messaging.
Our society is culturally configured to promote lying here. Instead of addressing the issue openly like adults, people decide to operate covertly, driven by competition and fear of missing out.
It'll be nice when we start to culturally grow up a bit and begin trusting the world. Collaboration/hybridization is much quicker than competition when it comes to genetic evolution & I suspect the same holds for cultural evolution.
One issue I think we need to address is how society basically judges things based on sound-bite descriptions of them. This is an area where I think IT can contribute, by trying to find ways to bias our communication technologies against such practices.
I think this is a result of design methodologies and motivations geared toward talking advantage of human attention instead of respecting/cultivating it.
I don’t know if there are rules against that. I think it’s more an unspoken rule that may have consequences if violated, although I’m fairly certain that’s illegal. The impetus is more on us to be open with each other about salary. It’s only in the company’s best interest for us not to do so.
> So, to start with, shut down the rules against discussing salaries or university costs with coworkers and other students, respectively.
No, this will expose evidences of institutional and systemic racism and question people about the country name. Should it be United State or Segregated State?
How can any individual claim to 'know' what the press and public want to hear? This is a comically self serving assertion and anyone making this kind of claim is acting in a political and manipulative manner.
This is the best apologism for a liar, because apparently that's what the person lied to 'wanted to hear', according to the liar.
Integrity does not depend on what people want to hear. Stanford can articulate their view point and do their own thing. Lying betrays a lack of belief in their view point and a lack of integrity.
Actually, no. This reveals the extent to which the US financial industry operates with similar quasi-aristocratic political dynamics - especially covert privilege based on perceived conformity and career potential - as the old Soviet Communist Party.
> Aristocracy and privilege are about as far from communism as it gets.
In theory. In practice (history is full of it), the castes develop overnight. A group of individuals has to make decisions and manage the oversight and record keeping, etc. This leads to corruption and a de-facto aristocracy.
You keep repeating this but as somebody from former Warsaw Pact country let me tell you there was a real caste system during communism. Party members were basically royalty. And the ruling caste (top, most loyal apparatchiks) were just like Louis XIV, having completely unlimited powers over other people.
If that's the case, why are we surprised that execs are lying? Or shall I say "creatively refining terms"? They start by going to schools that lie, teach how to lie and get away with it.
In some ideal world alums of that school would immediately turn around and tell the school "You will not get a penny until you terminate everyone who participated in approving and carrying out this program for lying and do so publicly" but instead what we are going to get is more pieces about "how the school needs to get better".
>Companies can have both a diversity policy and a policy to make sure the top talents don't go elsewhere.
Those should be one policy, the diversity policy is about making sure top talent doesn't go elsewhere . . . your comment implies that people from "diverse" backgrounds are not top talent, whether that's what you meant or not.
>the diversity policy is about making sure top talent doesn't go elsewhere
From what I know that doesn't seem to be the case at all, it's about projecting a positive image of your company (The candidates skills are secondary) (Though in theory the standards should be identical)
The hiring practices should be based upon who would be the best candidate (Experience, technical skills, personality, Education)
When you simply focus on what objective skills you need as an employer, you should find "Diverse"/minority candidates in proportion to what percentage of top candidates they occupy.
One of the chief points in this article was that "diversity" is often an excuse to hire/admit people who will bring in a lot of money, connections, and prestige but aren't necessarily the most meritorious candidate.
Malia Obama is Diverse. John Dorsey from the wrong side of Chicago is just an Urban Youth.
I'm sure people have done studies. Who donates more money? The poor kids who struggled through life and attended Stanfurd that finallyed opened the doors for him to become rich? Or the blue blood with the silver spoon who would have made it through daddy's connections regardless of which school he went to?
I feel the former has stronger gratitude for his school.
Some don't donate due to gratitude, some donate to increase the chances their children will get in, and/or otherwise obtain social signals or networking benefits that can be used to further oneself.
We had a large percentage of my graduating high school class end up at ivy league schools. It was interesting to talk to them a decade after they had graduated and were in full swing with their professional career's and life.
One buddy I know who went to Princeton and ended up on Wall St told me they hound him for donations. His fraternity does the same with the emphasis on exactly what you pointed out. He wants his children to have a better chance they he did, so he donates large six figure sums every year to the school and fraternity hoping when his two kids grown up, they will have a leg up on the competition to get in there.
As a fellow Princeton grad, I think his children will indeed have a better chance than most of getting in due to their legacy status, resource rich upbringing, and those donations.
Business schools use financial aid to bring in students that help their ratings. This can be through tangible #s like GMATs and SATs, to people who will command high salaries (finance background) to students who are likely to make them look good (serial entrepreneurs).
> At least they are teaching their students the ethics they need to succeed in the financial industry.
The US Financial sector probably employs 5 million people in this country. You are telling all those people are unethical as your comment implies? That is a bit biased.
Stanfurd can favor students born on a blue moon with an extra nipple for all I care. But claiming all scholarships are need based, giving them to rich students, and then telling students to not discuss their aid is disgusting. In my book this is on par with the wage fixing between Apple and the other tech giants.
This is the downside of diversity and inclusion. Companies and schools have gotten so good at paying lip service to it, we can't tell what kind of bullshit happens on the inside.
Sure, I think we are saying the same thing? It's easier to lie about diversity and inclusion now that it has become popular. Maybe even mandatory because many people want to attend a school or work at a company that values diversity. I remember during orientation they showed a Pride video. I thought it was unrelated but my co-workers teared up. Previously, companies wouldn't have bothered or knew how to.
I have no idea what you're trying to say, and name-dropping Ellen Pao doesn't help.
It seems like you're faulting society's wish to increase diversity for lies about diversity. And, sure, that's true in the sense that being ask about the issue is necessary for an untruthful answer–but that's just a meaningless truism.
Large changes take time, and there are always setbacks on the way. The environmental movement created the concept of "greenwashing", which seems similar. But even that is progress of sorts, because it's literally "PR for environmentalism". When it's exposed, it promotes schemes such as certifications. And even when not exposed, it establishes good practices as the new norm for next generation.
Thanks for telling me the comment is unclear. I'm working on writing better. It's a complaint against liars and hypocrites. That's what I'm trying to say.
Name dropping Ellen Pao never helps on HN or reddit. People here really don't like her, whereas she's a hero in other spheres. Nevertheless, I don't agree with everything she did but she offers insight people miss.
The diversity receiving lip service here is economic diversity. Wealth always comes with privilege and social standing. Reading this as social diversity ignores the possibility that lower economic status is associated with greater diversity...in a statistically random world this is an equal possibility.
The central problem here is that Stanford is saying one thing and doing another. The central question, which isn't asked in the article, is why. Stanford is creating an exclusive, private club, as is their right, but not being upfront about the rules of exclusion. More importantly, the reasons for exclusion.
I was thinking about this myself. In addition to the PR benefit when soliciting alumni donations ("This money is helping needy students") I think there could be a more immediate business reason: I bet a lot of finance types (or otherwise wealthier applicants) don't apply for financial aid (and don't feel bad about not receiving an offer) because there's this myth about it being need based. Now it seems like everyone might as well apply for aid and play coy, especially if they have other offers
The idea has always been that admission and aid are separate decisions (for US citizen), and that applying for financial aid would therefore never have negative consequences (beyond the time to fill out the application).
Yes, but before people believed Standford's lies that aid was needs based, so if they had money from a job or something, they would expect to get nothing and not bother applying. I was in a similar situation, my parents both worked, and was offered nothing in terms of financial aid. Now that we know aid is not needs based, and in fact a lot of aid goes to people with the most finance experience, it makes sense to apply even if you have money already.
Maybe the Alumni donors like to say they are donating to allow the education of Stanford to people that couldnt afford it, but actually they enjoy being part of an exclusive club.
Why is the idea of a meritocracy pushed in the US? For the same reasons.
If you can convince the people who are getting fleeced that their situation is because they haven’t worked hard enough, they won’t struggle when you steal the coat off their back.
And this is not much different from pretty much all other business schools with any much big name.
I'm Russian, from a top 1% family in Russia. I studied in an average college in Canada on my own volition, against wishes of my clueless parents who wanted to bang big money away on a business school. It took a lot of efforts for me to convince them that "big name business school" is a waste of money if you go there for actual skills and knowledge in the best case, and a disaster when you simply gave money away to small time fraudsters in the worst.
I personally know two other Russians few years older than me who went for Harvard MBA, and now spill bitter tears for spending a big portion of their family fortune for, at best, laughably mediocre education for such price.
And even in the mid-tier college I was going to, I saw that very few people who were getting not even a scholarship, but a "income supplement stipend," usually given to low income students, being given to another Russian guy who was always dressed expensively and casually wore $2000 watch and few other surprisingly well off people.
I instantly understood that they do it in anticipation that if this guy will work in his father's company and earn big buck, they can proudly put his testament and his salary on their graduate outcomes statistics.
I am surprised people are surprised by this. I went to B school over twenty years ago, and my experience was after I applied and was accepted and passed on going, they offered a scholarship. It was clear it had nothing to do with need, they wete just trying to persuade me to go. Tuition amounts are just sticker prices that you can negotiate down based on your bargaining power. If you don't know that you don't belong in business school.
Although as I am sure many here would agree, it makes little sense for those who want to participate in startups.
When a business person lies about a product he is being unethical and committing fraud.
Are people surprised that other people and institutions commit fraud and lie? No. No one is surprised. However when a criminal commits a crime, people react in kind.
My daughter is applying for colleges. When a college says that they only offer need-based aid, what it means is that we can't afford it. Yet I've encouraged her to apply to a few of those colleges anyway, based on the assumption that they don't only offer need based aid.
Stanford undergrads do not make 170k base salary after graduation. Please read the article, it was talking about MBAs, specifically "12 percent of Stanford MBA graduates were hired by private equity firms, with a median starting salary of $177,500, the article said".
But she will rub shoulders with others who are well connected and/or are likelier to have higher warning power going forward. College is important because of the network you make, not the learning, which is why exclusivity is important (for top level schools like Stanford, easily worth the sticker price).
Oddly enough, I made no network in while college, but learned math, physics, programming, and electronics, among other things. I think what I learned has helped me in my career.
The value varies by major. A good friend of mine went from the engineering sciences major to SUNY Binghamton or Buffalo, where he got an engineering BS and a paid co-op. He ended up paying very little, had no debt, and had a network right out of school to get a job for his PE. Then He started his own engineering practice.
Some state universities have partnerships with other schools for masters programs too. My school had a 3-2 masters program where you’d end up with a state BS/BA and an MS in engineering or sciences from a another school, sometimes public sometimes private.
The nice thing about program transfers vs a normal transfer is that there are no surprises. All of your general education and in-major requirements are met. Anecdotally, it’s a better experience for some majors because the larger universities usually consider teaching a distraction, and you get better instructors and smaller classes for in-major stuff in the CC. Intro to CS in my state school was a hazing ritual designed to reduce a group of 600 students down to 300 for the spring. At the CC, it’s 30-40 kids.
Need-blind policies only stop universities from not admitting you based on need but does not stop their need-based "formula" from being corrupt, as seen here.
Need-blind admission would be "we'll make the decision of whether to admit you without considering whether you can afford to come". It's analogous to an iPhone offered for sale at $1000, even if you can't afford to pay $1000 for an iPhone.
Need-based aid means charging less money to people who, in your judgment, can't afford more. It's analogous to finding scruffy people on the street and giving them 70% off coupons for iPhones.
There is no logical dependence from one to the other. An Apple store does practice need-blind admission, and definitely does not practice the "required" need-based aid.
Not exactly the same concept. Need-based admission requires need-blind aid, but not the other way around: especially for foreign students, many good US colleges need-based aid if you get an offer, but are less likely to admit you.
Not surprising. These are primarily businesses after all with billions of dollars of investments and brand value to maintain. You can’t expect them to give an education to just anyone off the street!
1. With high-income whites some dumb blokes may sneak in due to privilege and winging it based on family connections, etc. This might be happening at the expense of spunky smart low income whites or blacks who worked harder and were smarter to overcome their disadvantage to get to a point where they’re in the pool of those being considered for admission into Stanford.
2. Diversity hires bring fresh perspectives and help break group-think. In my experience, all-white, all-Indian, all-Asian, etc. teams were always inferior in terms of the experience of working there to diverse teams.
Yeah but gender and race diversity (the qualifications mentioned in the article) still discriminate against poor white males.
I am fairly certain that a poor white guy would have a very different perspective from one who grew up in a life of privilege but that socioeconomic diversity doesn’t look as good I guess.
I observed the same. When women and blacks are topic, white poor men are consideration and victim or huge unfairness. Any other time, they are suckers, lazy, should have learn coding, don't have merit, yadda yadda.
Kinda like gentrification is good thing and people pushed away got what they deserve and no one is entitled to live there. Untill it is tech workers who can't afford live in SV and suddenly it is all about egoism and YIMBY etc.
> In my experience, all-white, all-Indian, all-Asian, etc. teams were always inferior in terms of the experience of working there to diverse teams.
I feel like I'm missing some kind of obvious universal common-sense knowledge in having to ask this, but by what mechanism could this possibly come about?
for example if everyone on a team is from the same background, the working culture will be heavily influenced by that, which can make it harder for people from other backgrounds or cultures to join or fit in
You're getting downvoted, presumably for your last sentence, but I read what you wrote literally and agree. "Diversity candidates" do not contribute in the same way as those with a financial background. But they do contribute. They've earned their places and make it a better school. I do not buy into the cynical idea that big universities with big endowments are really just businesses trying to make money.
Yep. I'm afraid nuances are being left unnoticed in the heat of the argument. Oh well, guess I won't be joining such anymore. Nice of you to chime in, for a while it looked like I'll be on my own here.
But I doubt the latter contributes in the same way.
Not that quick. I'm familiar with a certain department in a certain party school in the Midwest. The faculty in that department is entirely white, with the exception of one Indian, who was hired long ago. There is no reason to believe that the applicant pool contains mostly white people or that the top applicant is invariable white - the job market in the Sciences has been LOUSY the last ten years!
But the department is all-white. You'd think it tells something about the atmosphere in that institution, and indeed it's frankly xenophobic.
> The former improves average post-graduation median salary,
> so it's good for the reputation. But I doubt the latter
> contributes in the same way.
No need for doubt when there's data.
In particular, the data time and again show that in the US wage gaps persist for women and minorities. [0] [1]
So if "diversity candidates" who matriculate to Stanford have above average median salaries post-graduation, these scholarships are "good for the reputation" in the same way.
> Last year, 12 percent of Stanford MBA graduates were hired by private equity firms, with a median starting salary of $177,500, the article said. Venture capital companies hired 7 percent of them, and paid a median salary $167,500 to the beginners.
It's not all that high, since calling them beginners isn't exactly true [0]. It looks like a decent-sized chunk of the students have years of work experience in finance/consulting/tech and some already have advanced degrees. They weren't going to be paid poorly to begin with.
Have your read the book Pedigree? It's about how people get these type of jobs written by a Kellog Professor. A lot of gatekeeping. Our society is not merit based.
You're making a comparison to the top 10% of the graduating class of an ivy league college; if you did the same analysis on Stanford MSCs in CS you would probably get a similar breakdown. That doesn't mean everybody going into software engineering makes $200,000/year (I'm making the assumption that the private equity firms are hiring the top performers in this case).
there was someone that had responded to you saying something mocking like "much less than 160k but say whatever makes you feel better" that deleted their comment between when i saw it and when i logged in so i'm replying to you so that that person burns a little inside: there's nothing more priceless than someone being not just wrong but 180 degrees wrong: http://fortune.com/2012/12/07/stanford-mba-price-tag-hits-18...
He asked that the report not be shared publicly because he has returned the data to the school
This isn't how data works. It isn't something physical. It's 2017. After the whole media piracy FUD that dragged on for years, everyone should understand how it works. Stanford had the data all along. The article doesn't say that Allcock deleted the data so he may still have it even if he gave Stanford "back" a copy.
He asked that the report not be shared publicly because he has returned the data to the school, which has not disputed its findings.
Although I can understand the fact that he's a student there and wants to remain one, he could've released it all anonymously, perhaps with some redaction of specific personal details; this (recent?) strong desire to toe the line is unfortunate, because it means the school can still distort the facts however it wants.
I'm guessing a lot of people didn't read the article: this is about GSB, Stanford's Business school. As pointed out in the article, https://poetsandquants.com/2017/11/30/stanford-gsb-misled-st... is the original source and should be preferred for the HN submission.
What's the perception of HN community regarding MIT?, personally I think they have a different culture than other top 5 universities.
For example they don't give Honorary degrees and you only have to disclose your financial status and if you need financial help only after been accepted.
There's nothing wrong per se with awarding this aid either needs based or merit based. Awarding it merit based seems to be working for Stanford based on results. Moreover, this is for graduate business school. I'm a crunchy progressive but I see no problem with this private school doing whatever they want (legally) if it works for them which it apparently does.
But awarding them merit based and then claiming to be needs based is hypocrisy.
that is just the PR side of things. you also have to think of the students.
Stanford lied to potential students and told them that they did not offer merit based scholarships thus inducing them to pay full price. That is an intentional misrepresentation of fact for financial gain on Stanford's part at the expense of students who paid full price.
It also lied to donors. Naively it seems they'd have legal cause to sue for their donations back. The claim that Stanford give aid based only on need is an important part of the pitch.
The article also mentions gender and discrimination based upon nationality which could be suggestive of racial discrimination as well. Women are biased over men, foreign over domestic. This is not uncommon and likely legal (see: Fisher vs University of Texas 2016 [1]) for now, but I also would like to see universities required to acknowledge the discrimination. Calling things equal or need based and then actively engaging in racial and gender biases is quite absurd.
they also awarded {more to} female students with the same need as male students. how does your "crunchy progressive" side feel about that if that was reversed?
For the sake of an argument, there is some merit to diversity preference: if a disadvantaged candidate made as much progress agains the headwind as a regular candidate, it stands to reason they are more capable. Thoughts?
They can favor whoever they want. The issue is they claimed one thing (scholarships based on needs) and did another, (scholarships based on merit and gender).
It's a thoughtful comment about the article and deserves to be published as the top-level comment, but do you have anything to add about the comment that you are replying to?
But they are not disadvantaged. Almost everyone who gets into Stanford and Ivy league colleges, underrepresented minorities included, come from very privileged upbringings.
The only disadvantaged population (overachieving children of poor immigrants, mainly European and Asian) is discriminated against through affirmative action in the admissions process and apparently also for scholarships.
When you offer diversity-based scholarships as opposed to need-based, you don’t actually select for the people who are disadvantaged because of their background; you select for people who are not disadvantaged and incidentally have a background that may disadvantage other people.
If your goal is to help disadvantaged people, you should be giving out some combination of need- and merit- based scholarships.
I somewhat agree with the first part. That's why most of Harvard's black students are first or second generation African immigrants. I have Nigerian friends who joke about being Nigerian princes because, well, they kind of are.
The second part assumes class is the only disadvantage. Perhaps preference for poorer student is the only type of affirmative action accepted by both major US political parties. And I agree money solves a lot of problems, but it doesn't fix every race and gender issues. The best example is all of the famout actresses bringing awareness to sexual assault.
Lots of practices are ok, as long as you tell the truth about what you are doing. The issue here is that they were saying one thing and doing another.
A good question to ask, though, is why were they lying about it? What message were they trying to send by saying they did not give any merit based awards? What made them instead decide to do the opposite of what they said they were doing?
Not for business school. Nothing about business study is particularly rigorous or requires extraordinary intelligence. In truth, being dumb as a rock, but having the right social pedigree and network is totally fine.
Legacy WASP types have had no problem running many institutions, and most of them are pretty average in terms of capability.
TLDR; Stanford says they only give aid based on need. Their data shows this is true for "base" aid but then they also do "increment" on this aid (without knowledge of students) which is to make class more diverse. So you end up with some students with more need but less total aid and vice versa. They say they will look in to this and make process more transparent. Interesting part of the story was that this was found out by student who got hold of unintentionally accessible data and spent months analyzing it to discover how Stanford gave aid.
If you want to advertise a program with strong employment opportunities for your graduates, you will accept more students who will get high paying jobs. This is part of the reason that more people with finance backgrounds are accepted.
>But it does discriminate — often favoring female applicants, international students, and those with backgrounds in finance, says the report by Adam Allcock, a Stanford business school student from the United Kingdom who found and analyzed the data.
The comments about the rich not needing aid isn't entirely true, having rich parents doesn't automatically mean the child is rich. I would want to see the report in order to draw my own conclusions.
The over looked point - if this had been favoured against females or internationals, you can sure bet there would be massive public outcry, calls for people to quit their posts and protests at the University.
Having worked at a university at one point I can understand how shitty security is at virtually all universities. But Stanford claims to turn out brilliant technologists (in addition to these overpaid MBAs) yet apparently doesn't hire any.
Your comment reminded me of UTAustin. The university IT group explicitly didn't hire CS grads (from anywhere) but preferred to train their own. Also, a weird fondness for the NATURAL language.
All security is a disaster everywhere. In case you weren't paying attention, Apple (arguably the world's wealthiest company and widely lauded as a security-conscious firm) just shipped their operating system with a blank root password.
> shitty security is at virtually all universities.
Shitty compared to whom? Who are the examplars of information security universities aren't matching? Academia security doesn't look so bad compared to governmental or corporate security.
Security involves trade-offs and some of universities' lower security is a conscious choice to not impair academic freedom or collaboration.
> apparently doesn't hire any.
If their graduates are as good as claimed, the University can't afford them. And many wouldn't want to work there because most of the University's problems are not interesting.
I’ve done some consulting with higher education, but am not an expert in the vertical.
My opinion, based on my observation at a half dozen campuses is that academic computing is ok, but the central services type stuff (payroll, admissions, accounting, HR) is often underfunded and struggling to meet mushrooming compliance requirements.
Compared to a similar sized organization in another sector, they aren’t as good as a bank, .gov revenue department or insurance company. But they are better than a municipal government, k-12, or retail.
I work in the central IT department at a university that has around 20,000 students. You are a 100% correct that we are very underfunded and understaffed. I'm the lead and only full time programmer for the entire portal system. We make due by hiring students to help off load the work for us full timers.
Our security team is relatively new. When I first started back in 2013 we didn't really have one. So if you had a few programmers that didn't understand security, many things got through. We do a much better job now, but I can see how other universities can really struggle.
Without the actual data, or even the report that was generated based on it, there is not much that can be concluded. It seems that this leak was specific to the Business school so it's a stretch to generalize to the whole University.
Given the categories, I'd sooner attribute this to unconscious bias rather than a secret plot to bias towards female and/or international students though.
Public schools do a disservice to low income students by not teaching personal finance, or if they do it's a short unit topic for a few weeks somewhere in high school.
We should be drumming into heads from an early age the real cost of debt, the value of saving, time value of money, when debt makes sense and when it doesn't, etc.
Anyone can open an online account at Vanguard. Imagine what could be done in a generation or two if people would participate in the markets instead of buying lottery tickets and being bitter and envious about "the rich"
Credit cards are the one thing I can’t wrap my head around. I am not American and most of my young U.S. friends I met early in college were so excited about having a credit score of x which entitled them to more debt...
I only know people who use credit cards to get 2%+ back from their purchases, plus an interest free 20 to 45 day loan. If you're spending with a credit card more than the cash you have on hand, then you're doing it wrong. Obviously, there must be some cohort of people that pay interest, but there's no reason anyone with half a brain can't setup up autopay and earn the cash back benefits and rental car/travel insurance benefits without paying any interest at all.
Yup. I put almost everything through CCs and pay it off weekly/bi weekly. I almost never keep a balance except on 0% interest cards which are handy for large purchases. By having a few cards and keeping your utilization low (under 15%) you'll be able to make your credit score sky rocket which is crucial for when you need a car/home loan.
I don't recall the comment I responded to saying anything about credit score, I thought they said their friends couldn't wait to get into credit cards just so they had access to more debt, which to me implied they were going to pay credit card interest rates.
I apologize though if I read it incorrectly the first time.
It depends on your definition of merit. Is it based on ability to acquire the skills to perform top-drawer work, or based on something else, like the desirability of the candidate based on their family or business connections or other factors that make them more marketable, even if their abilities are only average?
Most Americans think "meritocracy" refers to the former. The reality is that it nearly always refers to the latter.
At least they are teaching their students the ethics they need to succeed in the financial industry.