<p>what is going on at colleges today? the adults need to be back in charge. the power structures that control most schools is going off the deep end. </p>
<p><a href=“An Amazing Diversity Plan at Madison — Minding The Campus”>http://www.mindingthecampus.com/2014/07/an-amazing-diversity-plan-at-madison/</a></p>
<p><em>getting out the popcorn</em></p>
<p>no need for popcorn, nobody in their right mind can defend a school doing something like this.</p>
<p>This really diminishes my opinion of the University of Wisconsin. Not the diversity paper, which is mostly boring but makes the decent point that diversity is more than just letting women/racial minorities/other under represented group in the door, but that they are not just token representation but should also proportionally populate the “hard majors” and all levels of success.<br>
What diminished my opinion of the U of Wisconsin is that they apparently have a professor of economics who is either really bad at understanding this report, or is seeking attention and purposely misleading people to fan the flames of the (very tired) war on affirmative action.</p>
<p>When universities see their mission as being primarily a “privilege rectifier” rather than an educational institution, then neither of the missions is well served.</p>
<p>When I read the position paper, the time and energy that went into it is obvious. I can’t help but think that there is room for a lot of budget savings at many universities.</p>
<p>Schools like this are supposed to prepare people properly to meet challenges in their careers…not set up systems that cause them to misperceive where they stand. Doing this stuff to the “diversity” pool is like setting up a soft schedule for an athletic team. It does nothing but make the coach look good, and it sets the team up for disappointment down the road. </p>
<p>Is there any possibility that this is satire?</p>
<p>Maybe, but its hard to tell the difference these days. :)</p>
<p>As a statement of <strong>aspiration</strong> it would be fine. The question is, what are they planning to do to achieve this? There is a huge amount of ground between mentorship efforts to encourage people to feel comfortable in and aspire to a field, or offering targeting academic support to fill in gaps, and actually demanding that grades be assigned on a quota system. (I haven’t read the actual paper.)</p>
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<p>What a surprise that the conservatives got it wrong.</p>
<p><a href=“Sims: Diversity Framework does not relate to grading”>http://www.news.wisc.edu/23011</a></p>
<p>There is a flip side, that pof. completely overlooked. In current situation and if it persists, many in the group deiscussed who truly worked hard and deserve all recognition for their personal achievent, will never be given a full credit since they wiil be thought of as the ones who simply game the system. And it is a real shame since the people who truly deserve it will be deprived (basically punished) by such policies, while others who truly palying the “diversity game” may not fully benefit from it either, as they have high probability of being derailed by challenges any way. There are exceptions, but I normally do not pay much attention to this garbage, because, as I have mentioned, this is still a “natural” selection at some point of time. I mean in real proffessional environment, the people who truly did not qualify, will be out at some point of time. Hence, we will always have URMs as well as ORMs. And while those URMs who do survive are NOT given full credit, there is another bias exists towards ORMs, who are presumed to be ALWAYS working very very hard.<br>
The really fair system would benefit hard working self-reliant URMs much more than the current system of percentile representation, since everybody would know that they achieve strictly because they qualify and absolutely nothing else. </p>
<p>I’m going to remind people to try to keep politics out of the discussion. </p>
<p>emeraldkity4 I read the link you provided it has a lot of double speak and vague statements. hopefully this is not spin because they got exposed… that I guess is a judgement call for you to make as well as everyone else. I for one believe action speak louder … but we shall see. I hope the leftist power/privilege infrastructure that the school has in place will not do this. time shall tell. </p>
<p>At Harvey Mudd, they fulfilled aspirations about women in computer science by finding ways to encourage students who didn’t already have experience programming to succeed in introductory classes, and enjoy those classes. For example, they separated experienced students from neophytes, so the newer programmers wouldn’t be overwhelmed and marginalized. As a result, they went from women being 10% of CS majors to women being 40% of CS majors.</p>
<p>Is there any indication that Wisconsin intends to fulfill their aspirations by giving unearned grades to students underrepresented in their discipline? Or is it rather that they would like to have underrepresented students succeed in their discipline, through encouragement, mentoring, recruiting and academic support?</p>
<p>If I were an admissions officer at a professional and saw a URM applicant from UW, I’d question the grades and dismiss them entirely if the LSAT or MCAT or similar score was not commensurate with the grades on the UW transcript.</p>
<p>If were an admissions officer or a hiring officer, I would downgrade anybody who believes that UW is about to start giving out grades based on race. Puh-leez.</p>
<p>Here is the link to completed report. I think people should read it before deciding on it’s merits or lack thereof. </p>
<p><a href=“http://diversityframework.wisc.edu/documents/FrameworkforDiversityMay192014_2.pdf”>http://diversityframework.wisc.edu/documents/FrameworkforDiversityMay192014_2.pdf</a></p>
<p>The article says the faculty senate approved the plan. Whether they carry it out, I suppose, remains to be seen.
But one wonders if, in such an environment, if faculty members aren’t doing this already. Similar to high school for principals pressuring teachers to give passing grades to the star athletes to keep them eligible for the team. </p>
<p>It’s not in the plan. That’s what the e-mail tried to explain.</p>
<p>tatinG you are most probably correct. you can read all the fluff, double talk and vague statements the school put in in the pretty brochure , but look at the liberal power/privilege infrastructure at the school and the faculty and sadly I am almost certain it is or will soon be in motion.
it really only matters from a societal perspective with the STEMS and medicine/healthcare degrees (otherwise it is really a moral/fairness question )</p>
<p>Cats and Dogs! Living together! Etc.</p>