Admissions by Software
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Suppose colleges could buy software that would enable them to speed up the admissions process and admit classes that are more diverse—without fear of being sued by foes of affirmative action. Would institutions purchase? Can (and should) colleges outsource admissions decisions to software?
That’s what a professor at Auburn University is hoping to find out. Juan E. Gilbert, an associate professor of computer science, developed the software two years ago, and it attracted a brief flurry of attention. But what he didn’t have then were any clients to actually use the software. Now, Auburn—which tested the software last year—has announced that it will use it in actual admissions decisions next year. And while Gilbert says that Auburn is the first institution to publicly admit to using the software, he says that about five other colleges have used it, although in many cases not for an entire class of undergraduates. Gilbert also now has an outside investor, having sold a minority interest in the company to the owners of Cox, Matthews and Associates, which publishes Diverse Issues in Higher Education.
It’s unclear of course whether Gilbert’s software business will take off. But Applications Quest raises interesting issues about how colleges evaluate and measure diversity when they assemble their classes. Gilbert’s basic premise is that colleges want racial and ethnic diversity in their student bodies, that the Supreme Court’s rulings allow colleges to consider race and ethnicity only in certain instances, and that many colleges are afraid of being sued.
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The software works this way: A college decides how many applicants it will admit from that middle group. Then the college picks the criteria it will use to evaluate the applicants. These would generally include a range for acceptable SAT scores or high school grades, planned major in college, status such as first generation to go to college, intended major, race, gender and so forth. Then the software clusters all of these applicants into groups equal in total number to the number of projected admits. In doing so, the software groups applicants who share the same qualities together. Then the software selects one person from each group to be admitted, but this person is the applicant who is the least like others in his or her cluster. (Details are available on the company’s Web site.)
Gilbert said in an interview that this system offers key advantages. First, it removes bias from the equation, as an admissions officer can’t be accused of providing more or less emphasis to any criterion based on personal interests. Second, it assures that race and ethnicity are taken into account, but not given more weight than the Supreme Court would permit. “It does what we as human beings can’t do on a large scale,” he said.
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While Alderman said he is certainly following the debates over affirmative action nationally, that issue was not crucial to the interest at Auburn. The protection against lawsuits “is certainly nice to have,” but “for us, it was a more efficient way to achieve the same results.”
Roger Clegg, president of the Center for Equal Opportunity, a group that opposes affirmative action, said that while he thinks this software may be “less racially discriminatory” than the way some colleges have assigned points for applicants on the basis of race or ethnicity, concerns remain. Clegg said that the software is still racially discriminatory in that it considers race and ethnicity, and that the system was designed “in order to achieve particular racial results.”
Clegg said that the problems with the software are apparent if one imagines the same computer programs being used to keep black students out—as opposed to admitting them. Just as one would oppose the use of software to exclude members of minority groups, he said, the same should be true of software with a diversity goal.
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(Posted on April 28, 2008)
Comments
This is just another way for them to confuse us and avoid the accusation of racism in their admissions process.
Posted by at 5:38 PM on April 28
How can this software “remove bias from the equation” when it’s specifically designed to admit all possible minorities that happen to meet the standards?
Posted by Question Diversity at 5:41 PM on April 28
I’m sure they would love this, because the university officials could always claim they do not know how the software works.
I don’t think it would work in the long term, because the software itself could be subpoenaed and examined by expert witnesses.
Posted by Michael C. Scot at 5:47 PM on April 28
Today the K-12th public school system, a system which once produced smart forward thinking citizens that got us through the Cold War and made us the most dominant nation on earth has been flooded in parts of the country with tens upon tens of millions of legal and illegal immigrants in a single generation forcing the educational system to dumb down it’s cirriculum to the lowest common denominator in an effort to accommodate them; a practice that has not brought favorable or desirable results. In my father’s day, high school students gained measurable aptitudes in higher math, engineering, pre-college science, and solid English courses that led to real competency right along with trades like mechanics and electrical vocational courses. Today, where I live, scared teachers worry if they can read and write English and hope they aren’t in a gang before graduating them.
Let’s face it. Public education isn’t bringing the desired results. I don’t know any better way to say it. We spend more time and money seeking to turn kids into entitled disparate modern liberals than we do instilling in them with traditional American values, a solid work ethic, and empowering them with a high level of education and a responsibility to make this country something they can be proud of. That’s what we used to do and it worked.
What we have today is a system the elitists created. A system they overcharge us for that brings little in the way of desirable results. They ask us to pay for our own demise with the logic that it’s good for us when the only thing it’s good for is their own careers and ideology.
Posted by Unemployed WASP at 7:14 PM on April 28
“Clegg said that the problems with the software are apparent if one imagines the same computer programs being used to keep black students out—as opposed to admitting them.”
One would not have to design a program to keep blacks out that even considered their race, only GPAs and SATs. As we all know, whites and Asians are always in the top 10% to 25% of these categories. The problem with universities is that they want absolute control over the process of who gets in and meeting their “standards” of diversity and tolerance. In short, they want these places to reflect what passes for
their “sensibilities.”
It has nothing to do with “fairness” or even “education,” in many respects.
If it were about these issues, then the universities would take an “open door” approach to admissions; after all, as we all know and hold with unshakable conviction, “no human being is illegal” when it comes to migrations into nations. They are only enriched by unencumbered “diversity,” that source of all goodness, which always triumphs and strengthens. So why should any human being be inadmissible to a university; what makes them different from a: city, state, or country?
Should not the approach for universities also be, “come one, come all?”
And for that matter, should not universities take this approach toward all graduate and sports programs as well? Moreover, should not all of this be provided by the universities free of charge? If countries can be flooded to bursting with our common humanity and thrive while providing everything form universal health care to food and shelter, why shouldn’t they be capable of this as well? They are large social entities after all, with a greater duty toward higher social responsibilities. It is not only their purpose to function as such, but it should also be their obligation!
Now repeat after me Comrades:
No Human Being Is Inadmissible,
No Human Being Is Inadmissible,
No Human Being Is Inadmissible…
This of course warms the heart and should lead the USA to have both the best university system in the world, along with the best educated populace the earth has ever known in history!
Posted by John PM at 9:19 PM on April 28
The whole system of entitlement is nothing but a failure. The admissions software is replacing good old-fashioned hard work.
A Japanese teenager can achieve more in 5 years than a black American adult can achieve in a lifetime. America continues to produce the Welfare Warriors.
Posted by at 11:12 PM on April 28
Nice try, multicultists, but designing software to discriminate against Whites doesn’t absolve you of responsibility. It takes a human to write code, and a human decision is still being made.
Posted by at 2:43 AM on April 29
I don’t understand why a computer program would magically make universities immune from discrimination lawsuits. The race criteria is still there only it’s claimed it’s not given much consideration. What we have is a new criteria: those whose characteristics are least like the cluster.
You can admit anyone to any university using any criteria. What matters are performance and graduation rates. If after this program is used and the graduation rates for races remain the same, it will only go to prove that being overly objective does not raise performance or graduation rates.
Posted by sbuffalonative at 7:28 AM on April 29
Any computer program written for this purpose would specifically include formulaic mathmatical weights for each approved criteria used by that program to isolate its selections, including weights for race - which, of couse, is the rub.
Any assigned weight for race cannot be other than an arbitrary sociological judgement that favors one over another, based solely a person’s condition of birth - an inherently unjust (and dumbly inefficient) means of selection.
This is a further example of the axiom: Liberals screw-up everything they touch.
Posted by Gary at 3:19 PM on April 29
I think, John PM that we already have these institutions that take anyone with tuition money. They are called “community colleges” and are often quite useful. Although I already have a four-year hard-science degree, I will be taking another welding class at the local C.C. this summer.
Posted by Michael C. Scot at 5:49 PM on April 29
“I think, John PM that we already have these institutions that take anyone with tuition money. They are called “community colleges’ and are often quite useful. Although I already have a four-year hard-science degree, I will be taking another welding class at the local C.C. this summer.”
Mr. Scott,
You have missed my point, methinks?
Nothing so crude as “tuition” should ever be allowed in university admissions, ever. Nor should something so Westerly bourgeois oriented and oppressive as the constructs of: “aptitude,” “intelligence,” or “diligence,” ever come into question here.
It is only demanding that all such outmoded methods of dialectically incompatible constructs join their human advocates, on the ash heap of history; of course with all “running dogs,” as well!
Remember Mike, resistance is futile ;)
And of course:
No Human Being Is Inadmissible,
No Human Being Is Inadmissible,
No Human Being Is Inadmissible……………..
Posted by John PM at 10:10 PM on April 29
As if bureucracy wasn’t damaging enough, now the authorities will empower computers to decide.
Posted by A Reader at 10:43 PM on April 29
When the overall academic achievement ratings drop, hopefully they’ll release a version 1.1 patch to fix the memory leak that allowed them to do this in the first place.
Posted by Concerned Citizen at 2:35 PM on April 30