Is The College Admissions Process Broken?

[ColdWombat]

Some of my own thoughts on the ethical issues (I’m a professor) and some of the popular services are mostly in these comments if you’re interested:

ProPublica article about pay-to-play “research”

I’ve honestly not heard of profs who directly offer fee-based research experiences to the public (e.g., high schoolers). It would be viewed very poorly in my professional circles. I would be appalled if any of my colleagues did that. I don’t consider it ethical. Of course, my brain’s output is mine (IP thorniness aside). So I could be a consultant in my free time, offering my time/expertise to outside parties in exchange for money. That’s typically quite expensive and customers include companies, lawyers, etc. But a high schooler doesn’t need my expert opinion on anything. They’d hire a less expensive person for anything they’d actually need, such as tutoring or advising. If they want to do research in my lab, they’d be there via the university or another official program. They can work as a volunteer, or I can pay THEM. They can’t pay ME directly to work in my lab. Since I’m a biologist, (nearly) all my projects require physical resources. Depending on the discipline/school, a “pay…

ProPublica article about pay-to-play “research”

Ahh, this is interesting. I took a look at the brochure and the affiliated faculty. Malkin is emeritus, so no longer has a lab at Duke. I think at least a couple of the other profs are also retired. The thing that really stuck out to me is that only a couple of them list their main employer. They all list where they earned their PhD, but their employers are mostly totally different universities. I think they’re getting around any legal problems a few ways: The main employer isn’t listed; the “day job”, if you will. These include Dickinson, LaSalle, Worcester State, etc. None of those are mentioned in the brochure. They are calling this the International Research Institute of North Carolina – so they can be employed as “adjunct” faculty through this place. All of these programs are virtual. So whether or not computational or other resources from the “day jobs” are actually used, it would be easy to say they weren’t. They must have their own IRB. I seems that IRI-NC has establishe…

ProPublica article about pay-to-play “research”

That’s interesting. Thanks for the info on Polygence. I took a look at their website and browsed some of the projects. The mentors are mostly PhD students, as noted by @IBG. Importantly, PhD students do not yet know how to write a standard scientific publication. That’s what they learn to do during their PhD. Ideally, they can do it by the time they graduate, but some new PhD’s still struggle to independently write a scientific publication. In my years of mentoring, I’ve had only 2 grad students with the writing chops to do it well early in their PhD, and even they had to learn stuff about the proper format, language, etc. The “publications” linked on the Polygence site are not what would be considered a publication in normal academic research. They are on the level of a term paper or slide presentation for an undergraduate class. The ones that I viewed on the site are pretty much exactly what I’ve gotten as a work product when I’ve assigned my undergraduate students to write a revie…