University lowers entry standard for women in engineering courses

[Metaphor]

https://www.smh.com.au/education/a-...ring-entry-bar-for-women-20190828-p52lpp.html

The University of Technology Sydney will allow female school leavers to enter its engineering courses with a lower ATAR than males under a plan to boost the number of women in the field.

The university applied to the NSW Anti-Discrimination Board for permission to give 10 Australian Tertiary Admission Rank (ATAR) adjustment points to female students applying for engineering and construction degrees next year.

Note: the ATAR is the largest single method that Australian universities use for entry into degrees. It is an index that compares the achievement of students in Year 12 across the country. It is an index with higher numbers meaning you beat more students.

Many universities allocate adjustment points based on disadvantage or illness, but UTS Director of Women in Engineering and IT, Arti Agarwal, said she believed the university would be the first to base them on gender.

Dr Agarwal said a better gender balance will lead to improved student outcomes and better buildings and design in the wider world.
"Lots of research has shown that teams are more productive when they are gender balanced. They come up with better ideas and better solutions," she said.
"We (women) ride in cars, we use public transport, we do all kinds of things," she said. "If they are only being designed and engineered by one gender, then the requirements and needs of the other gender can get missed a bit."
Dr Agarwal said female participation in some UTS engineering programs, such as mechanics and mechatronics - was as low as four per cent, leading to a heavily male-dominated workforce.

The faculty's research also found that bonus points could boost female enrolments in some engineering courses by more than 10 per cent.

"The decision would not lower the quality of the graduates," she said. "I really cannot stress this enough - we are not taking people who don't deserve to be here.

It's difficult to believe that Dr Agarwal has sufficient mathematical werewithall to hold an engineering PhD, given that it is mathematically certain that letting in lower-ranked students will lead to lower-quality graduates.

essica Massih, a fifth-year student in Civil and Environmental Engineering at UTS, said gaining entry to a course was just the beginning, and the female students would still have to prove themselves during their degree.

"Some people I've spoken to think it's a handout, but I think it's a hand up," she said. "I hope it does [act as an incentive]. They will still be able to prove themselves throughout the degree by doing just as well, if not better."
But Andrew Norton, the director of higher education at the Grattan Institute think tank, doubted ATAR concession would encourage more women to study engineering.


"It's a very male-dominated workplace, and work we did recently showed that even when women have the qualification they don't work in the area because of the nature of the workplace," he said.
More than half of all students starting a bachelor degree at an Australian university are now admitted on a basis other than their ATAR, with many universities using bonus points, interviews, or offering places based on HSC results alone.
Adjustment points raise a student's tertiary entrance rank for the university that allocates them. If a female applicant's ATAR is 69, then UTS would consider it to be 79 after adding the ten extra points, but the revised rank would not be recognised by any other university.

I do wonder what Australia's anti-discrimination Acts are for. Clearly, they're not about stopping discrimination.

 

[Jarhyn]

https://www.smh.com.au/education/a-...ring-entry-bar-for-women-20190828-p52lpp.html



Note: the ATAR is the largest single method that Australian universities use for entry into degrees. It is an index that compares the achievement of students in Year 12 across the country. It is an index with higher numbers meaning you beat more students.



It's difficult to believe that Dr Agarwal has sufficient mathematical werewithall to hold an engineering PhD, given that it is mathematically certain that letting in lower-ranked students will lead to lower-quality graduates.

essica Massih, a fifth-year student in Civil and Environmental Engineering at UTS, said gaining entry to a course was just the beginning, and the female students would still have to prove themselves during their degree.

"Some people I've spoken to think it's a handout, but I think it's a hand up," she said. "I hope it does [act as an incentive]. They will still be able to prove themselves throughout the degree by doing just as well, if not better."
But Andrew Norton, the director of higher education at the Grattan Institute think tank, doubted ATAR concession would encourage more women to study engineering.


"It's a very male-dominated workplace, and work we did recently showed that even when women have the qualification they don't work in the area because of the nature of the workplace," he said.
More than half of all students starting a bachelor degree at an Australian university are now admitted on a basis other than their ATAR, with many universities using bonus points, interviews, or offering places based on HSC results alone.
Adjustment points raise a student's tertiary entrance rank for the university that allocates them. If a female applicant's ATAR is 69, then UTS would consider it to be 79 after adding the ten extra points, but the revised rank would not be recognised by any other university.

I do wonder what Australia's anti-discrimination Acts are for. Clearly, they're not about stopping discrimination.

It seems you don't understand that admissions is not the same as passing and earning a degree. Let me explain that for you:

One gets you in the door, and the other is walking through the gauntlet.

There's a big difference between say, letting someone GO to school and someone getting a degree. If the women successfully complete the degree, what difference does it make?

I mean, personally, I would prefer a blind system which removes random applicants from over-represented groups rather than a gnostic system that adds applicants from under-represented ones, but I'm not going to let the perfect be enemy of the good here.

 

[Jimmy Higgins]

https://www.smh.com.au/education/a-...ring-entry-bar-for-women-20190828-p52lpp.html

Note: the ATAR is the largest single method that Australian universities use for entry into degrees. It is an index that compares the achievement of students in Year 12 across the country. It is an index with higher numbers meaning you beat more students.

It's difficult to believe that Dr Agarwal has sufficient mathematical werewithall to hold an engineering PhD, given that it is mathematically certain that letting in lower-ranked students will lead to lower-quality graduates.

If these candidates can't handle the Engineering, they'll not get the degree. I remember Freshman year and how big the Engineering class was, and how much smaller it got in the Spring Semester and then the beginning of Sophmore year. For the life of me, I have no idea why some people are against giving some people opportunities.

I do wonder what Australia's anti-discrimination Acts are for. Clearly, they're not about stopping discrimination.

Uh oh... he's been triggered again. Right-wing snowflake protocols are in effect!

 

[Metaphor]

It seems you don't understand that admissions is not the same as passing and earning a degree.

I hold two degrees with first class honours, Jarhyn. I know what's involved in getting in and getting out.

Let me explain that for you:

One gets you in the door, and the other is walking through the gauntlet.

There's a big difference between say, letting someone GO to school and someone getting a degree. If the women successfully complete the degree, what difference does it make?

The difference is that men would have been discriminated against because of their gender in the admissions.

I mean, personally, I would prefer a blind system which removes random applicants from over-represented groups rather than a gnostic system that adds applicants from under-represented ones, but I'm not going to let the perfect be enemy of the good here.

I would prefer a system where nobody gets discriminated against because of their gender by lowering entry standards for one gender.

 

[Metaphor]

If these candidates can't handle the Engineering, they'll not get the degree.

You don't say. What it means is that more marginal candidates will be offered entry, and more marginal candidates are more likely to drop out. Having people begin and not finish degrees benefits nobody. It does not benefit the university, it does not benefit the individual, it does not benefit society.

I remember Freshman year and how big the Engineering class was, and how much smaller it got in the Spring Semester and then the beginning of Sophmore year. For the life of me, I have no idea why some people are against giving some people opportunities.

Oh. What people are those?

Uh oh... he's been triggered again. Right-wing snowflake protocols are in effect!

Right-wing. Sure Jan.

 

[Keith&Co.]

given that it is mathematically certain that letting in lower-ranked students will lead to lower-quality graduates.

That would be interesting math to show.
To get that result, you would have to lower the graduation standards, not the entry standards.

is there any indication that they're lowering the graduation standards as well?
OR any demand that a certain percentage of the women that are let in be allowed to graduate?

 

[Metaphor]

given that it is mathematically certain that letting in lower-ranked students will lead to lower-quality graduates.

That would be interesting math to show.
To get that result, you would have to lower the graduation standards, not the entry standards.

Degrees are not pass/fail. Subjects in Australia are graded. An engineering graduate with distinctions and high distinctions has a significantly better grasp of engineering than an engineering graduate with passes and credits.

 

[Jarhyn]

I hold two degrees with first class honours, Jarhyn. I know what's involved in getting in and getting out.



The difference is that men would have been discriminated against because of their gender in the admissions.

I mean, personally, I would prefer a blind system which removes random applicants from over-represented groups rather than a gnostic system that adds applicants from under-represented ones, but I'm not going to let the perfect be enemy of the good here.

I would prefer a system where nobody gets discriminated against because of their gender by lowering entry standards for one gender.

Yeah, not convincing me. Apparently you don't know how to do the math where getting in isn't getting out, it's getting in.

As to whether "men" have been discriminated "against", the men that get in are still the "best" men, if it's even possible to make that determination with pre-admissions testing. They haven't been discriminated against at all. The ones who have, the "lowest of them", you have yet to make an argument as to why, given a culture which drives women to lower scores through a likely effect of lower self-confidence, the women who get adjustment points over academic disadvantage and culture bias do not deserve an adjustment at this point in time.

As to the description of MY solution, well, maybe you can show "mathematically" how that would be "lowering entry standards". I'll keep harassing you to either support my model, show how it "lowers entry standards", or leave the conversation.

 

[Politesse]

This is a poor approach in my opinion. Is this the only thing they're doing? I don't see how this will create anything other than a incoming freshman year with a lot of female dropouts, if the system in general is already heavily weighted against women, plus now a bunch of chauvinist rage and the assumption, already a problem, that any female student must have cheated her way into the program even if her personal score would have in fact gotten her in anyway.

This sort of gender preferential handicapping tends to lead to overt discrimination against trans students as well. Observe the recent furore in the sporting world. Do they have a plan for this?

 

[Jarhyn]

This is a poor approach in my opinion. Is this the only thing they're doing? I don't see how this will create anything other than a incoming freshman year with a lot of female dropouts, if the system in general is already heavily weighted against women, plus now a bunch of chauvinist rage and the assumption, already a problem, that any female student must have cheated her way into the program even if her personal score would have in fact gotten her in anyway.

And this is exactly why I support my solution: blind the eye, and shave back over-represented groups randomly. Candidates get seen on their own merits which are not changed, and it statistically weights the evaluators to see more of the under-represented group.

Ultimately, they still pick X qualified candidates, but it still suggests that women will be represented at a higher percentage.

 

[thebeave]

"We (women) ride in cars, we use public transport, we do all kinds of things," she said. "If they are only being designed and engineered by one gender, then the requirements and needs of the other gender can get missed a bit."

She does have a good point. Perhaps this will be the future of seating in public transport:

https://www.dailywire.com/news/49588/feminist-student-designs-anti-manspreading-chair-paul-bois

"A university student has won a national award for designing a chair that stops men from manspreading," reports the Daily Mail. "Laila Laurel, 23, created the piece of furniture to stop men from widening their legs and encroaching on other people's personal space."

The chair does nothing revolutionary and simply positions two pieces of wood so that the man sitting down must keep his legs together.

 

[Metaphor]

Yeah, not convincing me. Apparently you don't know how to do the math where getting in isn't getting out, it's getting in.

You have manufactured from whole cloth that I have confused admissions with graduations. I haven't and I'm not going to persist with your fruitless red herring.

As to whether "men" have been discriminated "against", the men that get in are still the "best" men, if it's even possible to make that determination with pre-admissions testing. They haven't been discriminated against at all. The ones who have, the "lowest of them", you have yet to make an argument as to why, given a culture which drives women to lower scores through a likely effect of lower self-confidence, the women who get adjustment points over academic disadvantage and culture bias do not deserve an adjustment at this point in time.

My conviction is that universities should not discriminate by gender in admissions. You have no evidence that "the culture" drives women to lower scores. In fact, it is the exact opposite. Women get higher grades than men. Culture drives women to higher scores.

As to the description of MY solution, well, maybe you can show "mathematically" how that would be "lowering entry standards". I'll keep harassing you to either support my model, show how it "lowers entry standards", or leave the conversation.

Whether it would lower entry standards or not depends on the distributions of the different groups with 'random' admissions. But ff course I would never support your model in any case. It discriminates against people from "overrepresented" groups. I do no support such discrimination.

 

[Metaphor]

This is a poor approach in my opinion. Is this the only thing they're doing?

If you are asking: are they doing things like reaching out to talented high school girls to encourage them into engineering, offering women-only scholarships and bursaries, run women-only support and mentoring?

Yes. They are doing all that, but the gender commissars have decided they have not corralled enough women into engineering degrees yet.

 

[laughing dog]

It's difficult to believe that Dr Agarwal has sufficient mathematical werewithall to hold an engineering PhD, given that it is mathematically certain that letting in lower-ranked students will lead to lower-quality graduates.

I don't know anything about Dr. Agarwal, but it would only be a mathematical certainty if the lower rankings are always accurate and measure all the relevant abilities. Otherwise, it is not a mathematical certainty but a probability with the probability dependent on the rankings accuracy and relevancy.

 

[Jarhyn]

You have manufactured from whole cloth that I have confused admissions with graduations. I haven't and I'm not going to persist with your fruitless red herring.



My conviction is that universities should not discriminate by gender in admissions. You have no evidence that "the culture" drives women to lower scores. In fact, it is the exact opposite. Women get higher grades than men. Culture drives women to higher scores.

As to the description of MY solution, well, maybe you can show "mathematically" how that would be "lowering entry standards". I'll keep harassing you to either support my model, show how it "lowers entry standards", or leave the conversation.

Whether it would lower entry standards or not depends on the distributions of the different groups with 'random' admissions. But ff course I would never support your model in any case. It discriminates against people from "overrepresented" groups. I do no support such discrimination.

Ah, moving goalposts.

You have shitheads in this world supporting bias against women as a function of the current underrepresentation of women. The only way to resolve these biases are to see women achieve more equal representation, and their representation is important in a great many fields, particularly engineering, where things are designed without consideration of an entire mode of a bimodal distribution of people.

Also, if women get higher grades than men that would imply that increasing the percentage of women in engineering programs would improve the quality of graduates, assuming that in Australian institutions, women are less represented in the degree than men.

 

[laughing dog]

Also, if women get higher grades than men that would imply that increasing the percentage of women in engineering programs would improve the quality of graduates.

Only true if grades are accurate and relevant measures of quality. Uh oh.

 

[Metaphor]

Ah, moving goalposts.

What goalposts? Are you talking about the straw men you manufactured and which I'm not going to address any further?

Also, if women get higher grades than men that would imply that increasing the percentage of women in engineering programs would improve the quality of graduates, assuming that in Australian institutions, women are less represented in the degree than men.

No, it would not imply that. Women get higher grades in the degrees they've chosen and in degrees where presumably there was no gender bias in admissions.

 

[Metaphor]

Also, if women get higher grades than men that would imply that increasing the percentage of women in engineering programs would improve the quality of graduates.

Only true if grades are accurate and relevant measures of quality. Uh oh.

No. Women get higher grades in the degrees they've chosen and in degrees where presumably there was no gender bias in admissions.

 

[Jarhyn]

Ah, moving goalposts.

What goalposts? Are you talking about the straw men you manufactured and which I'm not going to address any further?

Also, if women get higher grades than men that would imply that increasing the percentage of women in engineering programs would improve the quality of graduates, assuming that in Australian institutions, women are less represented in the degree than men.

No, it would not imply that. Women get higher grades in the degrees they've chosen and in degrees where presumably there was no gender bias in admissions.

And I quote:

would prefer a system where nobody gets discriminated against because of their gender by lowering entry standards for one gender.(emphasis added)

Those goalposts right there.

Your statement, the one I replied to, simply said "Culture drives women to higher scores."

I'm not going to accept your "presumption". I throw it out and reject it. I will, however, accept your "Women get higher grades in the degrees they've chosen". So rejecting your presumption, yeah, still implies more women = more high quality graduates.

 

[Metaphor]

And I quote:

would prefer a system where nobody gets discriminated against because of their gender by lowering entry standards for one gender.(emphasis added)

Those goalposts right there.

I didn't shift any goalposts. I would prefer a system where nobody gets discriminated against because of their gender by lowering entry standards for one gender.

I object to the discrimination. A lottery system but where the odds are tweaked against a particular group is also discrimination. I don't support it.

I'm not going to accept your "presumption". I throw it out and reject it. I will, however, accept your "Women get higher grades in the degrees they've chosen". So rejecting your presumption, yeah, still implies more women = more high quality graduates.

No, it does not. Women get higher grades when they choose courses that have the same entry standards as men.