Patterico's Pontifications

8/9/2023

This Week in Education News

Filed under: General — JVW @ 6:36 am



[guest post by JVW]

In the run-up to our annual back-to-school season, let’s take a look at some issues pertainin’ to the learnin’ of our young’uns.

First Period
The Biden Administration is back in court over its attempts to unilaterally forgive student debt:

A federal court on Monday put a pause on new Biden administration rules that would forgive the debt of student borrowers who were defrauded by colleges that misled them or closed suddenly.

[. . .]

While federal law previously allowed for the cancelation of student loans for borrowers who had been misled or defrauded, the Biden administration’s new borrower defense rules that took effect last month look to make it easier for borrowers to seek relief.

The new policy would allow borrowers to submit claims if they believe they were misled by their college and would offer automatic relief for borrowers whose institutions were closed. The new standards ease limits on when borrowers can file an application and also increase the types of violations that would make them eligible for debt cancellation. The rule include a ban on arbitration agreements that for-profit colleges often include in enrollment contracts.

[The Career Colleges and Schools of Texas], which filed its lawsuit on behalf of more than 70 for-profit Texas schools, argues the new rule was created “with a thumb on the scale to maximize the number of approved claims and, ultimately, further the administration’s loan forgiveness agenda.”

The court will hear the case on November 6. The order means the new standards cannot currently be applied to claims pending on or received after July 1.

Remember when all those people who had mortgages with flim-flam financial institutions which crashed and burned were told that they could have vast chunks of their home loans forgiven through the beneficence of the federal government? Yeah, neither do I.

Second Period
The good people of Oberlin College have a problem. It seems that after recklessly attempting to intimidate a venerable business within their community and in return getting eviscerated in civil court, they now face the reluctance of their insurance companies to reimburse them for their folly:

Oberlin College is embarking on another legal battle now that it has finally paid out $36.59 million in damages to a local bakery for falsely accusing the business owners of racism. This time, the college is suing four of its insurance providers after they failed to reimburse the school for the multimillion-dollar judgment in the Gibson’s Bakery case.

[. . .]

Now the college is pursuing legal action against Lexington Insurance Company of New York; United Educators Insurance of Bethesda, Maryland; Mount Hawley Insurance Company of Peoria, Illinois; and StarStone Specialty Insurance Company of Cincinnati.

The school filed the suit in Lorain County Common Pleas Court in April accusing the companies of wrongfully refusing to “to honor promises they made in their respective policies to protect the interests of Oberlin College” and the school’s former vice president and dean of students, Meredith Raimondo.

The college had $25 million in commercial umbrella liability coverage from Lexington and another $10 million from Mount Hawley. The school had an additional $5 million from StarStone and $25 million in overlapping educators legal liability coverage from United Educators, according to the lawsuit.

“These policies were intended to provide seamless coverage for lawsuits like the Gibson litigation,” the complaint says. “Unfortunately, the defendant insurers have failed to pay a penny toward the $36,590,572.48 sum that Oberlin paid the Gibson plaintiffs. They also have failed to pay for the full cost of Oberlin’s appeals, which were pursued at the behest of the insurers in order to reduce their collective exposure.”

Oberlin claims that they wanted to settle the case for $10 million, but the insurance companies demanded that they fight it out in court. But Oberlin has lied about so much of this controversy that it would be silly to grant them any credibility in their claims. For their part, United Educators counters that they never promised to cover abject stupidity:

The company wrote in the filing that the policy at hand “potentially provides coverage in relation to ‘personal and advertising injury,’ defined to include defamation and/or disparagement in certain circumstances” but that it “excludes any such coverage if ‘personal and advertising injury’ is caused ‘with the knowledge that the act would violate the rights of another … ,’ or if the insured published material it knew to be false. Further, the Lexington policy provides coverage for punitive damages insurable by law, but only where the corresponding award of compensatory damages is also covered by the Lexington policy.”

If you have a moment, check out the comment section on the NRO piece for some pretty good bon mots, such as “So I guess you can’t take out insurance so that you can just slander and defame people. Who knew?” and “Oberlin has done the seemingly impossible: drummed up sympathy for insurance companies.” and my favorite, “Can an article in the Oberlin student paper linking the concept of insurance with the slave trade be far off?” Funny stuff.

Third Period
Yep, Harvard is going to continue to flout the Supreme Court’s ruling in the Students for Fair Admissions case from six weeks ago which held that colleges cannot use race as a factor in admission. Period. An editorial at National Review Online calls out Harvard’s chicanery:

[. . .] Last Tuesday, Harvard University — one of the two named defendants in the Supreme Court’s ruling — revealed its new set of required admissions essays for fall 2024, and the very first (and thus presumably most important) prompt is as follows: “Harvard has long recognized the importance of enrolling a diverse student body. How will the life experiences that shape who you are today enable you to contribute to Harvard?”

[. . .]

The next several years of behind-the-scenes racial tinkering in college admissions will be done in defiance of the law, not openly but dressed up in a new “adding diversity to our community” admissions-essay language. (The “video essay” is but a matter of time, and for the most cynical of reasons; Columbia Law School recently backtracked after briefly listing such a proposal on its website.) Numerical scores vulgarly grading applicants in racial categories may be formally dispensed with; the balance will instead be tabulated mentally, and the results disguised elsewhere. But Harvard has signaled its defiance as openly as it can. Neither it nor its peer institutions (nor the long-embedded bureaucracies within them) will stop attempting to build the image of a “racially ideal student body” merely because the Supreme Court of the United States told them in no uncertain terms it was against the law.

Fourth Period
CalMatters has a good deal of data regarding achievement disparities among various racial and ethnic groups in California from 2015-19. During the second reign of Governor Jerry Brown, the state switched its funding formula so that more state dollars were funneled into schools which had greater numbers of low-income families, English learners, foster children, and children with disabilities. The state education establishment likes to claim that this switch in focus led to better results for those students in the pre-COVID era, but it is widely believed that any progress was fully wiped out during Gavin Newsom’s draconian school closures undertaken at the behest of his teachers union masters. Naturally we don’t know, because California so thoughtfully cancelled standardized testing for 2020 and 2021, and 2022 results are still being embargoed — er, compiled. Read the article; it’s not a pretty picture.

Lunch
Washington and Oregon will join USC and UCLA in the Big Ten. Colorado and Arizona have bolted to the Big 12, and are now to be joined by Utah and Arizona State, and in a surprise move, the Atlantic Coast Conference is expressing interest in California and Stanford (sucks to be you, Washington State and Oregon State). Instead of a Power Five conference alignment, we’re due to have a Power Four, which perhaps paves the way for a better college football playoff system.

But how good is it really going to be for the schools involved? Ohio State will no doubt love a November game at the Rose Bowl in 67 degree weather, but what will USC think when it has to travel to Penn State and play in snowy sub-freezing weather? And what will happen when West Coast teams need to make an East Coast road swing for basketball? Will Stanford fly east on Monday then play on Tuesday night at Clemson, Thursday night at Georgia Tech, and Saturday afternoon at Miami before flying home Saturday evening? Can you really justify having — ahem, ahem — student athletes miss an entire week of class four or five times per season to make these sort of road trips? The new president of the NCAA, former Massachusetts Governor Charlie Baker, says that he is concerned about these sorts of issues but the reality of the situation is that it is the football conferences themselves with their television alliances, not the NCAA, which is calling the shots these days. Blame Notre Dame for opening the floodgates some 33 years ago when they signed their own television deal with NBC.

Fifth Period
It’s not looking so great for math education in the Golden State:

The California State Board of Education’s new math framework, adopted last month, has drawn intense public criticism. Most critics have focused on the framework’s overt political content or its aims to achieve “equity” by holding back advanced students, but there is an arguably even more fundamental problem: an approach to education called inquiry learning, which has virtually zero grounding in research. There is little in the framework that resembles real mathematical learning.

The framework has roots dating back to the “math wars” of the 1990s. Then as now, reformists and traditionalists argued over the best way to teach children math, and California’s math curriculum was a focal point. Reformists encouraged students to discover and construct knowledge with little guidance from the teacher; traditionalists emphasized the need for step-by-step practice of procedures and memorization of basic math facts. In 1997, California adopted compromise standards—a pedagogical hodgepodge of both approaches.

The new framework, clocking in at 1,000 pages, represents a complete victory for the reformists. It’s astounding in both its breadth—including learning goals, instructional “best-practices,” and class sequences—and its mediocrity.

And here’s the concluding paragraph of the article, which helps explain why California tends to favor the new and untried over the tried and true:

The California math framework is the latest chapter in a long-running story in American education: the rejection of proven instructional fundamentals in favor of fashionable but untested theories. We’ve already been down this road in reading education. Proponents of whole-language literacy bristled at the structure and formalized nature of phonics; though evidence for the effectiveness of phonics was abundant, schools avoided it, and legions of students struggled to learn to read under pseudo-scientific literacy models. California looks set to repeat this error in math, ignoring sound research in favor of romantic notions about learning and childhood.

Sixth Period
Here’s an incredibly heartbreaking and disturbing article about DEI nonsense pushing a sensitive white principal past his breaking point:

In mid July, a former Toronto District School Board (TDSB) principal, Richard Bilkszto, took his own life in a story that made international headlines. According to a statement released by his lawyer at the behest of family members, Bilkszto’s bullying at the hands of equity consultants hired by the school district played a part in his eventual suicide.

Bilkszto’s reputation was destroyed in front of hundreds of fellow educators when KOJO Institute facilitators — including founder, Kike Ojo-Thompson — accused the venerated teacher of being an “apologist” for white supremacy during a training session conducted over Zoom. “We are here to talk about anti-black racism, but you, in your whiteness, think that you can tell me what’s really going on for black people?” Ojo-Thompson shot back at Bilkszto after he challenged her assertion that Canada’s racial history resembles America’s.

The article goes on to detail some of the “training” that these grievance-mongers foisted upon their customers, which came to light when ten hours of recordings of these seminars were given to NRO. It’s absolutely the sort of mindless nonsense that you have come to expect, and teachers in Ontario (and, we well know, in lots of places throughout the U.S.) are being bullied into accepting it as true. It’s up to all of us to root this out in our own communities and make sure that no more fragile minds are put through this sort of Maoist indoctrination.

– JVW

52 Responses to “This Week in Education News”

  1. From the recent decision:

    ….nothing in this opinion should be construed as prohibiting universities from considering an applicant’s discussion of how race affected his or her life, be it through discrimination, inspiration, or otherwise. But, despite the dissent’s assertion to the contrary, universities may not simply establish through application essays or other means the regime we hold unlawful today. (A dissenting opinion is generally not the best source of legal advice on how to comply with the majority opinion.) indirectly. The Constitution deals with substance, not shadows,” and the prohibition against racial discrimination is “levelled at the thing, not the name.”

    A benefit to a student who overcame racial discrimination, for example, must be tied to that student’s courageand determination. Or a benefit to a student whose heritage or culture motivated him or her to assume a leadership role or attain a particular goal must be tied to that student’s unique ability to contribute to the university. In other words, the student must be treated based on his or her experiences as an individual—not on the basis of race.

    Kevin M (ed969f)

  2. Shorter: Don’t do this.

    Kevin M (ed969f)

  3. @2

    Shorter: Don’t do this.

    Kevin M (ed969f) — 8/9/2023 @ 12:59 pm

    You know they’re going to push it.

    It’s going to take someone who’s qualified but was rejected and to sue Harvard an inordinate amount of money. Like half of their foundation.

    whembly (5f7596)

  4. Apparently the ban on affirmative action in education hasn’t hurt University of California 2023 enrollments:

    ……….
    Overall, UC admitted 88,285 Californian first-year applicants, an increase of 3.5% over last year, with gains posted at most of the nine undergraduate campuses. Admission rates inched up systemwide, to nearly 67%, and at nearly all campuses. UC Santa Cruz opened its doors most widely, accepting 10,000 more first-year students for this year over last year, a whopping 44.5% increase.

    At several of the system’s most sought-after campuses, the admission rate is much lower. UCLA admitted 9.5% of California first-year applicants and UC Berkeley, 15.1%, both slightly up compared to last year.
    ………
    Latinos were the largest group of admitted California first-year students at 38%, followed by Asians at 34%, white applicants at 19% and Black applicants at 5%. American Indians made up 1% of admitted students but grew overall with significant gains at UCLA, UC Santa Cruz and UC Santa Barbara.
    ……..
    Overall, 44% of UC’s admitted class of first-year applicants and 37% of transfer students are members of underrepresented racial and ethnic groups, a diversity reflecting the state’s demographic shifts and more than 25 years of UC experimentation in how to create diverse classes without affirmative action.
    ……..
    The number of admitted students from other states and countries rose over last year but was lower than 2021 levels. UC admitted 23,696 first-year students from other states, compared with 22,798 in 2022 and 28,157 in 2021. International students numbered 17,704 for fall 2023 compared with 17,531 in 2022 and 19,973 in 2021.
    ……..
    UC plans to expand enrollment of California undergraduates by 4,200 this fall under an agreement with Gov. Gavin Newsom. UCLA, UC Berkeley and UC San Diego, the three most selective campuses, also plan to swap out about 900 out-of-state and international students this fall and give those seats to Californians under a deal with Newsom and legislators who increased state funding to pay for losses in higher nonresident tuition.
    ……..

    Rip Murdock (d2a2a8)

  5. It’s going to take someone who’s qualified but was rejected and to sue Harvard an inordinate amount of money. Like half of their foundation.

    whembly (5f7596) — 8/9/2023 @ 1:19 pm

    They better hurry……..

    Rip Murdock (d2a2a8)

  6. I love the school day layout of your post, JVW!

    In my opinion, the root cause of the demise of the PAC 12 was declining interest in college football on the west coast. We can debate why the interest went down.

    The intermountain west, midwest, and south have a lot more fervor for college football, so it makes sense they were the beneficiaries of the realignment.

    I am elated that my alma mater, BYU, is now in the Big 12, but not so happy that rival Utah got a life raft. We compete against them for in-state recruits, and Utah being relegated back to the Mountain West Conference would have resulted in BYU gaining a leg up in recruiting.

    norcal (bc0bb5)

  7. I am elated that my alma mater, BYU, is now in the Big 12, but not so happy that rival Utah got a life raft. We compete against them for in-state recruits, and Utah being relegated back to the Mountain West Conference would have resulted in BYU gaining a leg up in recruiting.

    The move to the Big 12 is probably a big deal. I know that other conferences have wanted them in past years, but the prohibition on playing basketball games on Sundays was always a deal-breaker because of TV contracts. Did BYU relent, or has the Big 12 promised not to schedule Sunday games for them?

    JVW (dfc44a)

  8. Did BYU relent, or has the Big 12 promised not to schedule Sunday games for them?

    JVW (dfc44a) — 8/9/2023 @ 3:24 pm

    The latter. BYU is an absolute zealot when it comes to Sunday play.

    BTW, I once dated a girl who maintained it was breaking the Sabbath to buy something from a vending machine on Sunday. Other than that, she was a delight!

    norcal (bc0bb5)

  9. JVW, here is a link for you regarding BYU and Sunday play:

    https://kslsports.com/487476/big-12-womens-basketball-tournament-byu-no-sunday-play/

    norcal (bc0bb5)

  10. Stanford stopped the PAC 12 from taking a less elite school like Texas years ago. It still sees itself as too elite for the Big 12. I understand why it feels that way but, amazingly, it is the reason for this round of realignment.

    Texas wanted the PAC 12 but Stanford blocked it. Texas has always wanted a bigger conference but it made do with the revenue from the Longhorn Network. The upcoming contract renewal wasn’t going to equal what bigger conferences could command, which is why Texas is moving to the SEC.

    Texas has always had an affinity for the PAC 12 because it sees itself as strong academically, like the academically elite PAC 12 schools. Stanford and Cal don’t share that view. It’s no surprise they are the odd men out.

    DRJ (51bb15)

  11. Didn’t the floodgates open when SCOTUS ruled the schools own the athletic tv rights, not the NCAA?

    DRJ (51bb15)

  12. Not just Stanford and Cal, DRJ.

    May I present Carol Folt, President of USC:

    https://trojanswire.usatoday.com/2022/08/01/why-did-pac-12-not-expand-and-poach-big-12-schools-in-2021-uscs-carol-folt/

    norcal (bc0bb5)

  13. In my opinion, the root cause of the demise of the PAC 12 was declining interest in college football on the west coast. We can debate why the interest went down.

    The Pac-12 never had a TV package that could compete with the other conferences; DirectTV didn’t carry the PAC-12 Network, which cut into viewer interest and payouts the schools. PAC-12 schools received an average of $37M while Big Ten schools receive $58M.

    Rip Murdock (d2a2a8)

  14. I actually agree with that. I don’t think the Texas schools would have been a good cultural or academic fit with the PAC 12, way back when or now.

    DRJ (51bb15)

  15. The PAC 12 schools didn’t prioritize athletics the way Texas schools do, so the interest levels were more modest. We are fanatics about all sports in Texas.

    DRJ (51bb15)

  16. I can’t wait for football to start.

    DRJ (51bb15)

  17. The PAC 12 schools didn’t prioritize athletics the way Texas schools do……

    Or the SEC, which is virtually the farm conference for the NFL.

    Rip Murdock (d2a2a8)

  18. I can’t wait for football to start.

    DRJ (51bb15) — 8/9/2023 @ 5:11 pm

    Same here!

    My brother, who, like me, is a BYU fan despite leaving the Mormon faith, wants me to go with him to the BYU – Texas game in Austin. More specifically, he wants for us to hang out with the Texas tailgaters while wearing our BYU gear, wait for somebody to sarcastically offer us some beer, and then go over and drink it all.

    norcal (bc0bb5)

  19. What Southern Cal and Robert E. Lee have in common.

    Rip Murdock (d2a2a8)

  20. Oh for the love of God. We tried that math curriculum already. It sucks.

    I keep trying to post a coherent comment on math education in this country, but it keeps being ARGH! but longer.

    OK, I’ll try again.

    1. Mostly elementary teachers don’t really understand math past about the 4th grade level. They are teaching by their own rote memorization from the teacher edition text book. The kids then don’t understand what they are doing either.

    2. We are teaching high-school math to jr high students. Jr. high students mostly don’t have the brain development yet to understand algebra. The brain generally transitions from concrete to abstract reasoning around age 13-14. Algebra requires abstract reasoning.

    3. Admin don’t like to have us remediate, because that means that we might be “tracking” students and math classes might have 28 instead of 25 because we have an extra-help class of 20 for the lowest kids who don’t understand.

    4. Nobody needs Calculus. Most people don’t need Algebra II/trig. People need Algebra, Geometry, and maybe a semester of basic stats/ research design to they can figure out what they are actually seeing in that article or poll and not just what they are told they are seeing.

    5. Most people who take advanced Math do it so they can get into a good college. It’s just gatekeeping for no good reason because very few college majors need Calculus either.

    Nic (896fdf)

  21. It’s going to take someone who’s qualified but was rejected and to sue Harvard an inordinate amount of money. Like half of their foundation.

    I’m sure they have binding arbitration agreements in place now.

    Kevin M (ed969f)

  22. Here’s the funny thing: These self-directed and holistic approaches may work well for the gifted students who see patterns and connections naturally. But they are the ones who are going to be held back until the duller students do the same, which may never happen.

    In truth, both these methods can work. Just not in the same classroom with the same children. AP programs get the kids out who are bored and perhaps disruptive when rote learning is employed, while providing the bulk of the kids the actual practical education that they need.

    But that’s not what is happening here: ALL the kids get the AP program because every kid is just as bright as any other. Right? RIGHT!?!

    Kevin M (ed969f)

  23. ALL the kids get the AP program because every kid is just as bright as any other. Right? RIGHT!?!

    Kevin M (ed969f) — 8/9/2023 @ 5:54 pm

    Yes. Every little darling is precious and gifted.

    My mom said the worst part of being a teacher is parents who support their kids no matter what.

    She also said she could more easily teach a class of 100 Asian students than 10 typical students.

    norcal (bc0bb5)

  24. I would welcome you, and happily let you drink all the beer you want, norcal.

    DRJ (51bb15)

  25. @4: “Latinos were the largest group of admitted California first-year students at 38%, followed by Asians at 34%, white applicants at 19% and Black applicants at 5%.”

    Are those the actual demographic numbers for California now?

    2020 Census:

    Hispanic – 39.4%
    Non-Hispanic White – 38.3%
    Hon-Hispanic Asian – 17.0%
    Hon-Hispanic Black – 6.8%

    UC admissions:

    Hispanic – 38%
    White – 19%
    Asian – 34%
    Black – 5%

    It’s clear that UC is not discriminating against Asians, but what’s going on with White folk? Are they all opting for private colleges? Admissions there are not in their favor either, but perhaps more balanced.

    Kevin M (ed969f)

  26. I would welcome you, and happily let you drink all the beer you want, norcal.

    DRJ (51bb15) — 8/9/2023 @ 6:04 pm

    That’s very sweet of you.

    norcal (bc0bb5)

  27. 5. Most people who take advanced Math do it so they can get into a good college. It’s just gatekeeping for no good reason because very few college majors need Calculus either.

    STEM colleges are pretty fond of it. If you are trying to get into a good one, you damn better have single-variable calculus well in hand. And then you get LOTS MORE math (multi-variable calculus, linear algebra, differential equations and Statistics at the minimum) when you get there. Having to start with basic calculus is remedial.

    A large high school should have at least one math teacher qualified to teach into calculus (not to mention trig, geometry (Euclidian and co-ordinate), and of course algebra which should be taught to all college-track kids. Probably useful to those intending to be contractors, too.

    What they don’t seem to have any more is the shop classes. More of those, please. Not everyone wants to go to college.

    Kevin M (ed969f)

  28. *intro

    Kevin M (ed969f)

  29. @Kevin@27 A person who is going into physics, engineering, theoretical math, or economics needs Calculus. Almost every HS has calculus teacher (even the small ones). At a largish HS they teach at least a hundred kids a year who want to be lawyers and 25 who might want to do hard sciences. But it doesn’t matter about the kids who know they aren’t going into a hard science, they have to take it anyway because it’s a gatekeeping class for college. We should be teaching geometry and Algebra in HS, not in Jr. High and we should make sure they know it, instead of requiring that they half-know it in order to push on to Algebra II/IM3 for A-G college requirement purposes.

    We would love to have shop, we recruited everywhere after our shop teacher retired. There aren’t any teachers for it. Fortunately the HS has still been able to fill positions for automotive tech and construction.

    Nic (896fdf)

  30. “More specifically, he wants for us to hang out with the Texas tailgaters while wearing our BYU gear, wait for somebody to sarcastically offer us some beer, and then go over and drink it all.”

    I endorse this plan.

    AJ_Liberty (974367)

  31. Nic, I generally agree with your posts, but you are off base on your dismissal of calculus (although I would agree that it is overemphasized to the detriment of some other alternatives like statistics and perhaps computer science).

    Calculus is fundamental to any real understanding of chemistry, physics, math, and economics. So people in college end up needing calculus to be:

    Doctors, Business majors, any sciences (although biology adjacent fields can skirt around it), engineers, some computer scientists, many architects (school dependent).

    Maybe you meant “not everyone needs calculus” (which I agree with) instead of “nobody needs calculus?”

    Nate (1f1d55)

  32. Nic,

    I actually did not get algebra until 9th grade (HS in my area). I agree that wannabe lawyers would be better off learning something besides calculus. Maybe formal logic or Python.

    Kevin M (ed969f)

  33. @nate@31 I mean that people who aren’t headed into fields that specifically need Calculus don’t need it in HS but a lot of people have to take it anyway if they want to attend a competitive college and our goal in secondary seems to be to push people further in math just to get there, even if they don’t really have a good understanding of the fundamentals of math. Instead we should make sure students understand the fundamentals before they accelerate (if they need/want to). As a country we should be looking for a solidity of understanding of Algebra and Geometry instead of how many kids we can push into Calc.

    Nic (896fdf)

  34. @Kevin@32 I was an experiment with 8th grade algebra. They selected 10 of the top 7th grade math students and gave us an 8th grade text book, a syllabus, and a desk in the back of our 7th grade classes. We had to teach ourselves. I finished the text in March, so they gave me a pre-alg text and a new syllabus. 5 of us made it to algebra in the 8th grade (I was at a 7-12 at the time so it was generally one of us and a class full of 9th graders). I did take Calc in HS from a guy who was an excellent comp sci teacher for a comp sci teacher and retook it in college because I tested through college algebra but was still required to attend a class for math credits. I’ve never used a lick of it, despite extensive stats and research design classes in both undergrad and grad.

    Nic (896fdf)

  35. To me, the point of tailgating is to party with people from your school and the other school. Let the teams decide who wins. All the fans win.

    DRJ (856414)

  36. The sad truth is, no matter how math is taught, most Americans are functionally innumerate.

    Maybe my standards are high, but when faced with a choice, with a 99.999% chance of good and a 0.0000001% chance of bad, they will focus on the bad.

    Kevin M (ed969f)

  37. @Kevin@36 If you think the stick is a snake and are careful there’s no down side except looking foolish. If you think the snake is a stick and aren’t careful you might die. We have to train ourselves to weigh the odds because the human mind is built to overweigh the possible bad result over the probable good one because too many optimists died to snake-bite.

    Nic (896fdf)

  38. “The Pac-12 never had a TV package that could compete with the other conferences”

    The PAC-12 negotiated the largest TV deal ever in 2011. Larger than what the SEC had. Larger than the Big10. A lot of people forget they were riding high at that time. Then they failed to produce on the field (no champions since 2004, nor even getting close, and none of their teams were even interesting) and the bottom fell out. (Add to that the fact that games starting after 10:00pm ET aren’t a big sell to networks. West coast just doesn’t sell as well, no matter the sport.)

    Note that just a year ago, if anyone in the know was asked which conference had a bigger chance of dying, PAC12 or Big12, most everyone would’ve chosen the latter with the departure of Texas and OU. It wasn’t even close. Instead the Big12 scored big and ate the PAC12’s lunch. A combination of poor performance and really poor leadership. When Colorado left (a poor performer, but a very interesting team now with Deion) the reaction was good riddance. That sort of attitude leads to unsurprising outcomes.

    lloyd (0d0d78)

  39. Good points, lloyd.

    DRJ (856414)

  40. Traditonal family values republican anton lazzaro sentenced to 21 years in jail for sex trafficking underage children. By the way laura ingram says republicans should go down with titanic on abortion or their sell outs!

    asset (d0eb66)

  41. To me, the point of tailgating is to party with people from your school and the other school. Let the teams decide who wins. All the fans win.

    When my college fraternity brothers and I make an annual trip to some college football destination, we are always very heartened by the degree to which we get invited into tailgate parties. Michigan, Ole Miss, Alabama, and Stanford were very kind in this respect, though other schools have also welcomed us in.

    JVW (169544)

  42. Stanford stopped the PAC 12 from taking a less elite school like Texas years ago. It still sees itself as too elite for the Big 12.

    Chicago and Michigan apparently blackballed Notre Dame from joining the Big 10 back in the 1930s for the very same reason. Notre Dame has held a grudge to this day.

    JVW (11c4d2)

  43. My siblings always mystified me by their avid tailgating, leaving in the morning, even for late games. One game, we met for drinks on a Friday. When I announced my early departure in order to get ready for an Opera, they scolded me with “but it will not start for another three hours!” I asked them “and when are you going to the game tomorrow?”

    felipe (5e2a04)

  44. It’s clear that UC is not discriminating against Asians, but what’s going on with White folk? Are they all opting for private colleges? Admissions there are not in their favor either, but perhaps more balanced.

    Kevin M (ed969f) — 8/9/2023 @ 6:05 pm

    Possibly their enrollments are higher for the Cal State or community college systems.

    Rip Murdock (d2a2a8)

  45. When I announced my early departure in order to get ready for an Opera, they scolded me with “but it will not start for another three hours!” I asked them “and when are you going to the game tomorrow?”

    Ha! Good one. I would start attending the opera if it would develop a good tailgating culture.

    JVW (830390)

  46. The problem with college admissions is that the highly esteemed colleges y admit too small a fraction of those who apply. The results of that are not good. It did not use to be that way generations ago.

    Sammy Finkelman (1532a3)

  47. Possibly their enrollments are higher for the Cal State or community college systems.

    Yeah, that’s not the typical break. But if they cannot get into UC, hey may have to. I’d also like to see how student aid breaks. I suspect that student aid will be where the discrimination moves to.

    Kevin M (ed969f)

  48. The problem with college admissions is that the highly esteemed colleges admit too small a fraction of those who apply. The results of that are not good. It did not use to be that way generations ago.

    They get far more applications now for the same number of seats. Unlike public colleges, elite colleges tend to have small professor-student ratios and that is part of why they are highly esteemed. My college had an 8-1 ratio at the time for about 450 undergrads. Now they have 1000 undergrads and accept less than 10% of applicants.

    One of the big changes has been the “free money” offered to gullible kids to spend on their college dreams. Fifty years ago you needed Money to get into Harvard.

    Kevin M (ed969f)

  49. Attempted answers to question as to why college costs so much more now

    https://www.quora.com/Hows-it-that-families-could-afford-college-education-for-kids-out-of-pocket-in-the-1950s-but-the-same-education-requires-huge-loans-now

    I don’t know about Harvard, but didn’t it occasionally give scholrships?

    Sammy Finkelman (1d215a)

  50. Reagan started it by cutting funding and student loans designed to help eventually made thinks worse. Answer end govt. backed student loans and make public collages tuition free. Private collage will have to deal with it.

    asset (6d4c9d)

  51. City College, and all of its spinoffs, in New York City was tuition free from 1847 through 1977.

    Sammy Finkelman (1d215a)

  52. Reagan started it by cutting funding and student loans designed to help eventually made thinks worse. Answer end govt. backed student loans and make public collages tuition free. Private collage will have to deal with it.

    asset (6d4c9d) — 8/10/2023 @ 3:35 pm

    The federal government shouldn’t even be in the education business. Is education even mentioned in the Constitution?

    norcal (290511)


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