MCATs, Affirmative Action, and DEI, Oh My

[Emily Lake]

Just so we're clear, you're claiming that you see absolutely no difference whatsoever between:

A) The government should tell students what they can and cannot study (your framing)
and
B) The government should use tax-payer funding to incentivize fields that society needs, rather than those that we don't (my position)

That is a bit over-simplified because clearly giving incentives for fields you feel society needs, you are making disincentives for fields you feel society does not need. While it is not a direct diktat, it is fairly close to A.

"We have too many apples in today's delivery, let's put apples on sale so people buy them"
"Oh you're so awful, denying people the right to buy oranges!"

 

[Emily Lake]

Oh, I’m very aware of why some (white) people prefer all white or mostly white instructors and classmates. I have friends who are not white and who teach at public universities. I know some of the shit they have to put up with. Mostly from their students.

So in other words: white people bad, mkay.

That straw man response is uncalled for. Whether you admit it or not, bigotry exists, and its victims have to deal with it. And before you get in huff about it, notice that the previous sentence neither mentions race nor targets race.

Why are you artificially limiting this to solely the last sentence? You're limiting it to the red sentence, and trying to pretend the blue sentence was never said?

WTF ?No, I’m not limiting to the last sentence.

Fill in the blanks for me...

What blanks?

I even provided bolds and colors. It sure looks like you were limiting it to the last sentence. You say you're not... while also claiming that race isn't mentioned, when it clearly and obviously was... in everything except the last sentence - you know, the one you directed attention to?

You need to read more carefully. The "previous sentence" refers to green sentence (you know, the one right before the purple one). There is no mention of race in the green sentence.

Thank you, that's the blank.

Still don't think Derec's post was a strawman of what Toni wrote though.

 

[laughing dog]

Genuine question here: Why do you seem to think that appreciating literature requires a degree?

Gaining sufficient knowledge in any area does not require a degree. Degrees are visible certification.

 

[laughing dog]

Just so we're clear, you're claiming that you see absolutely no difference whatsoever between:

A) The government should tell students what they can and cannot study (your framing)
and
B) The government should use tax-payer funding to incentivize fields that society needs, rather than those that we don't (my position)

That is a bit over-simplified because clearly giving incentives for fields you feel society needs, you are making disincentives for fields you feel society does not need. While it is not a direct diktat, it is fairly close to A.

"We have too many apples in today's delivery, let's put apples on sale so people buy them"
"Oh you're so awful, denying people the right to buy oranges!"

Are you posting drunk?

 

[laughing dog]

Oh, I’m very aware of why some (white) people prefer all white or mostly white instructors and classmates. I have friends who are not white and who teach at public universities. I know some of the shit they have to put up with. Mostly from their students.

So in other words: white people bad, mkay.

That straw man response is uncalled for. Whether you admit it or not, bigotry exists, and its victims have to deal with it. And before you get in huff about it, notice that the previous sentence neither mentions race nor targets race.

Why are you artificially limiting this to solely the last sentence? You're limiting it to the red sentence, and trying to pretend the blue sentence was never said?

WTF ?No, I’m not limiting to the last sentence.

Fill in the blanks for me...

What blanks?

I even provided bolds and colors. It sure looks like you were limiting it to the last sentence. You say you're not... while also claiming that race isn't mentioned, when it clearly and obviously was... in everything except the last sentence - you know, the one you directed attention to?

You need to read more carefully. The "previous sentence" refers to green sentence (you know, the one right before the purple one). There is no mention of race in the green sentence.

Thank you, that's the blank.

Still don't think Derec's post was a strawman of what Toni wrote though.

Really? You think a sentence about the racist preferences of some white people means “white people are bad?”

 

[Toni]

In practice: no.

There are people who grow up in families with greater means who can afford to pursue whatever intellectual interests they choose. But most people are less fortunate and must settle on an area of interest to them that will also afford them the ability to earn a living, hopefully also incorporating some of what most interests them.

But they should NOT be burdened by student loans.

I fundamentally disagree that something not being free means that thing is not available.

If you want to make higher education free (which is not free, it's just paid for by other people's money), then we need to have significantly higher entry standards for all fields.

You seem entirely blind to the reality that if all of higher ed is free, then the volume of people who pursue intellectual interests that will not earn them a living will increase. For all of your talk of understanding the human condition, I'm not sure you actually understand humans.

Why do we have to make it harder to pursue a degree? We already make it extremely hard to become a physician and only a little less hard to become a lawyer or to earn a PhD. Part of it is the academic hurdles but the rest of it--a not insubstantial part--is the cost. I know multiple PhDs who joke (but not really) that the most important quality needed to obtain a doctorate is a high tolerance for years of poverty. They are not wrong.

What do you have against a well educated population?

 

[Emily Lake]

Just so we're clear, you're claiming that you see absolutely no difference whatsoever between:

A) The government should tell students what they can and cannot study (your framing)
and
B) The government should use tax-payer funding to incentivize fields that society needs, rather than those that we don't (my position)

That is a bit over-simplified because clearly giving incentives for fields you feel society needs, you are making disincentives for fields you feel society does not need. While it is not a direct diktat, it is fairly close to A.

"We have too many apples in today's delivery, let's put apples on sale so people buy them"
"Oh you're so awful, denying people the right to buy oranges!"

Are you posting drunk?

Nope. I just understand that not giving an incentive for something is quite different from telling people they can't have it.

 

[Emily Lake]

Really? You think a sentence about the racist preferences of some white people means “white people are bad?”

You know, if anyone else were ever referenced as having race-based preferences, and those preferences framed as bad, I wouldn't have this impression.

But that's not what happens. It's always presented as a one-way street, and presented with the impression that it's commonplace and frequent. Whether you like it or not, it ends up conveying a rather negative view toward white people, even though the overwhelming majority of white people aren't at all racist... and a whole lot of black people and hispanic people and asian people and middle eastern people are very racist.

It's as annoying as the idiot girls who say they'd choose the bear because of male sexual aggression and violence. Yes, male violence is a thing, and yes we should safeguard against it in cases where the risk is elevated. But the vast majority of men are great people, and society can't function without them. Plus, they're far less likely to maul your corpse, and would be much more inclined to fight the bear to save a woman alone in the woods. But the framing and the constant "men are bad" narrative tends to make a whole lot of men view women as if they're sexist - and a lot of women are.

 

[Emily Lake]

In practice: no.

There are people who grow up in families with greater means who can afford to pursue whatever intellectual interests they choose. But most people are less fortunate and must settle on an area of interest to them that will also afford them the ability to earn a living, hopefully also incorporating some of what most interests them.

But they should NOT be burdened by student loans.

I fundamentally disagree that something not being free means that thing is not available.

If you want to make higher education free (which is not free, it's just paid for by other people's money), then we need to have significantly higher entry standards for all fields.

You seem entirely blind to the reality that if all of higher ed is free, then the volume of people who pursue intellectual interests that will not earn them a living will increase. For all of your talk of understanding the human condition, I'm not sure you actually understand humans.

Why do we have to make it harder to pursue a degree? We already make it extremely hard to become a physician and only a little less hard to become a lawyer or to earn a PhD. Part of it is the academic hurdles but the rest of it--a not insubstantial part--is the cost. I know multiple PhDs who joke (but not really) that the most important quality needed to obtain a doctorate is a high tolerance for years of poverty. They are not wrong.

What do you have against a well educated population?

1) A whole lot of degrees are overvalued, and degrees are now so easy to get that they add no material value to getting a job. Jobs that have no plausible requirement for information gained in a degree now require a bachelor's, and it's absurd.

2) Fully funding higher ed with no consideration to what is being studies is most likely to lead to an overabundance of degrees with no practical use, a cohort of permanent students who survive on the educational stipend forever, and not enough people pursuing degrees in fields we actually need. That has the practical outcome of the US importing people from other countries to fill those fields, further suppressing the earning power of our own citizens.

3) If we incentivize the fields we need - which are often the hard ones - then it helps to remove or reduce the financial burden you complain of. But if there is no incentive to study the harder fields, then a lot of people are more likely to choose degrees which are not as hard to get. This in turn accelerates the dynamic in item 2 above.

4) Audit classes. Take community college classes in the evenings. Go to the local library. Use the internet. There are TONS of ways for the population to educate themselves that do not require other people paying for them to get a college degree in underwater basket weaving. By all means, if you want to learn to do underwater basket weaving, go for it - but it doesn't need a degree, and it certainly doesn't need a degree that other people are paying for.

 

[Derec]

First of all: physician salaries are being conflated by some with fees for service.

I am not conflating anything. Rather, you are misunderstanding what "fee for service" is. It is a model of physician compensation.
 Fee-for-service

Secondly: the persons who should be involved with determining a patient’s treatment t options are: the physician, operating under the guidance of whatever policies and best practices established by the directors of the medical facility, state medical boards, AMA, etc. and the patient.
Not any insurance company or legislature.

That is not realistic if payments are made by a third party. Even in a universal healthcare system, the system is based on laws passed by the legislature that govern how the system is run.
It is not even necessarily best for the patient, because a physician (or other healthcare professional like an NP) is financially incentivized to offer treatments even if they are not in the patient's best interest.

It is —well, worse than sad —wrong—that telemedicine is taking the place of real in person medical exams and consultations. Sometimes people live in remote areas and telemedicine is the only practical way to receive medical care.

I am not opposed to telemedicine as a tool. It obviously has its place for some patients and conditions. But unscrupulous physicians (or midlevels) can misuse it to pad their bottom line. That's where the "fee for service" model comes in. A provider is incentivized to cram as many appointments as they can because that means more RVUs they generated, and thus more money in their pocket.
That either results in a patient not getting sufficient care due to rushed appointments, and in worst case it's a pill mill. Even in the best case scenario, where 15 min appointments are enough to say get a refill for a chronic condition with no change in circumstances, charging full amount for such a stripped down appointment results in the patient (or taxpayers) being fleeced. Shorter, low overhead, telehealth appointments should result in savings for the patient, not contribute to somebody's beach house or boat payment. Of course, #notAllDoctors, but I have much more respect for an ER doctor making $300k or even a cardiothoracic or neurosurgeon making $800k than I do for a psychiatrist making $600k refilling SSRIs on 10 minute intervals all day. And yes, they exist.

If you want to argue about limiting the scope of telemedicine, I’ll probably be right there with you.

As I said it has its place, but should not be abused to rob patients of sufficient interaction with their providers. And cheaper costs should also result in savings for the patient or third-party payers, not end up in the pockets of providers and administrators.

I do not know for certain abd gave y a clue where to look to find out but my gut tells me doctors practicing telemedicine are not commanding huge salaries based off televisits.

You'd be surprised. With "fee for service", volume pays a lot, and telemedicine is a good way to ensure high volume. You don't even have to walk between rooms.

 

[Loren Pechtel]

Yep. It seems fair enough to those starting out with a 150 yard lead in a quarter mile race.

That's a lead somebody else had decades ago, in a different race. It is not moral to penalize people who sort of look alike for that head start long ago. Or, with Asian students, to penalize them 150 yards just because they are (on average) faster than others, when they don't even look like the runners who got a head start decades ago.

People who ‘sorta look like that’ still get a lot of breaks that those of different complexions do not get.

Asians are not being penalized re University/med school admissions for being Asian except to the extent that there still exist a lot of anti-non-Caucasian sentiment still survives. I’ve witnessed some pretty nasty stuff myself. I’ve written about friends who are Asian, who have spoken English their entire lives, who obtained degrees through PhDs from excellent US universities who still have students who complain about their ( nearly imperceptible) accents. Yeah, there is still plenty of anti-anything but Caucasian and preferably Christian or ‘Christian.’ And male.

Being harder for them to get in is being penalized for looking like those who have done well.

And if the claims about it actually being distribution amongst colleges why have they not used that as a defense? I find the silence from those accused of discrimination deafening.

 

[Loren Pechtel]

Counterpoint: part of the reason we have a Trump problem is people are giving people like him too much grace.

I don’t believe that Emily is a Trumper. She’s more conservative than I am, especially along social issues.

While a whole bunch of Trumpists are hard core racists, not all of them are and I ^think^ ( and could be wrong) that he garnered a bunch of support from Right to Lifers whose single or single most important issue is the abortion issue.

I think a lot of Trumpers are people who prefer being told nice stories than want to actually look at the problem. Trump presented simple answers--never mind that they were fairy tales.

 

[laughing dog]

Just so we're clear, you're claiming that you see absolutely no difference whatsoever between:

A) The government should tell students what they can and cannot study (your framing)
and
B) The government should use tax-payer funding to incentivize fields that society needs, rather than those that we don't (my position)

That is a bit over-simplified because clearly giving incentives for fields you feel society needs, you are making disincentives for fields you feel society does not need. While it is not a direct diktat, it is fairly close to A.

"We have too many apples in today's delivery, let's put apples on sale so people buy them"
"Oh you're so awful, denying people the right to buy oranges!"

Are you posting drunk?

Nope. I just understand that not giving an incentive for something is quite different from telling people they can't have it.

I didn’t say it was. But when the gov’t is giving signals, people pay attention.

 

[Toni]

Counterpoint: part of the reason we have a Trump problem is people are giving people like him too much grace.

I don’t believe that Emily is a Trumper. She’s more conservative than I am, especially along social issues.

While a whole bunch of Trumpists are hard core racists, not all of them are and I ^think^ ( and could be wrong) that he garnered a bunch of support from Right to Lifers whose single or single most important issue is the abortion issue.

I think a lot of Trumpers are people who prefer being told nice stories than want to actually look at the problem. Trump presented simple answers--never mind that they were fairy tales.

I have yet to hear a ‘nice’ story out of Trump’s mouth.

Unless you consider racist and sexist and Islamophobic‘stories’ to be nice.

 

[Toni]

Yep. It seems fair enough to those starting out with a 150 yard lead in a quarter mile race.

That's a lead somebody else had decades ago, in a different race. It is not moral to penalize people who sort of look alike for that head start long ago. Or, with Asian students, to penalize them 150 yards just because they are (on average) faster than others, when they don't even look like the runners who got a head start decades ago.

People who ‘sorta look like that’ still get a lot of breaks that those of different complexions do not get.

Asians are not being penalized re University/med school admissions for being Asian except to the extent that there still exist a lot of anti-non-Caucasian sentiment still survives. I’ve witnessed some pretty nasty stuff myself. I’ve written about friends who are Asian, who have spoken English their entire lives, who obtained degrees through PhDs from excellent US universities who still have students who complain about their ( nearly imperceptible) accents. Yeah, there is still plenty of anti-anything but Caucasian and preferably Christian or ‘Christian.’ And male.

Being harder for them to get in is being penalized for looking like those who have done well.

And if the claims about it actually being distribution amongst colleges why have they not used that as a defense? I find the silence from those accused of discrimination deafening.

Im not at all certain what you were trying to say here??

 

[Emily Lake]

Just so we're clear, you're claiming that you see absolutely no difference whatsoever between:

A) The government should tell students what they can and cannot study (your framing)
and
B) The government should use tax-payer funding to incentivize fields that society needs, rather than those that we don't (my position)

That is a bit over-simplified because clearly giving incentives for fields you feel society needs, you are making disincentives for fields you feel society does not need. While it is not a direct diktat, it is fairly close to A.

"We have too many apples in today's delivery, let's put apples on sale so people buy them"
"Oh you're so awful, denying people the right to buy oranges!"

Are you posting drunk?

Nope. I just understand that not giving an incentive for something is quite different from telling people they can't have it.

I didn’t say it was. But when the gov’t is giving signals, people pay attention.

And you think that signal somehow gets heard as “nobody is allowed to study x”?

That seems a bit argument ad absurdum to me.

 

[Loren Pechtel]

If "tribe" is simply a neutral synonym for "group," then adding the -al suffix should yield a simple, neutral adjective--roughly equivalent to "group-based." But in common usage, "tribal" immediately shifts meaning to connote "in-group bias," "favoritism," and "out-group hostility."

If "tribal" carries those negative traits by default, then the base word "tribe" is not being treated as neutral at all. It is inherently pre-defined by those negative behaviors. Yet in practice, actual tribes--much like any non-cosmopolitan group--are diverse. Their traditions range from open, tolerant, and charitable to closed and insular.

What we have here is the inherent flaw in political correctness. Fundamentally, politically correct is about pretending that removing a label that has negative connotations somehow removes whatever caused the connotation. For historical things that can be a reasonable approach, but when you do it to ongoing situations you just contaminate another word for no benefit.

So we end up with two parallel usages for tribe:
1. Literal: A neutral identifier for a distinct group of people.
2. Pejorative: A shorthand for reflexive bias and hostility.

The irony here is that a certain cohort likes to hide behind the literal definition while actively deploying the pejorative one--all while assuming that "tribes" are incapable of universalist thought, i.e. they think the latter version is the literal or "natural" one.

That is a textbook display of a learned, hidden bias. It is also interesting because I learned that usage of tribal here myself from the people here. I even used the word tribal in this fashion once or twice, but had never encountered this usage before coming here to post.

No, this is a display of attempting to remove an issue by removing the label.

 

[Politesse]

The one thing that's a little baffling is they chose to erase the Hispanic guy, rather than the White guy in the middle. Did Hispanic males drop below even White males on the progressive stack? Or maybe they thought the Hispanic guy was also White?!

Altering the Asian girl's face had to sting a little for her. I guess AI (or the photo editor) wasn't too fond of her chubby cheeks. I kinda liked her better the original way.

How is what you describe "DEI" in any way?

That's about making things look different than they are. You've heard of the token black guy? Looks like we have a token white guy here.

How is misrepresenting the racial composition of their school expanding diversity, equity, or inclusion? In no definition of equity is "putting students in digital blackface to appease Marketing" a recommended practice. Indeed, Stanford's own ethnic studies faculty are furious about this incident. While white nationalist assholes are clearly delighted and amused. What should that tell you?

What it tells me is that reality is quite far from what they claim.

So you concur. They aren't "woke", and this PR bullshit was not advancing diversity, equity, or inclusion in any way.

 

[Loren Pechtel]

That is a highly personal and ideological assumption. Do you really believe that medical schools that have taken race into account did so out of a dislike for White people and Asians, or some progressive stack preference?

I think it is different for different people that are in charge of these medical schools as well as institutions such as AAMC. Left-wingers have been dominating academia for decades, and the more extreme, more ideological of them definitely do hold anti-white views even when they are white themselves.

I don't think it's an anti-white bias. Rather, it's the mantra of the anti-discrimination warriors that disparate outcomes prove discrimination. The data must be made to fit the faith.

Ironically, the progressive stack doesn't actually exclude Asians. But the narrative works brilliantly for conservatives because it sows division in the ranks of liberals. Asian liberals ask, "Why are you guys doing this to us?" Other liberals say, "Wait, why are we doing this to Asians? We're supposed to like Asians!"

I am not a conservative myself, but I am with them on this issue. People should be treated as individuals.
The left has a fundamental problem here. That causes tensions between ideology of "whites bad, POC good" and the fact that they have to use "diversity" as justification for racial preferences, which means that they have to discriminate against Asians and not just whites.

Asians are doing well. Thus the bias must not apply to them.

And while everyone is busy infighting, conservatives go and cut funding to healthcare and education. I am oversimplifying the rhetoric, but based on past observations, it's a fair extrapolation of what the Trump administration will do.

And I firmly blame the Left for this. Even supposedly moderates like Biden. Biden administration had completely embraced "affirmative action" even as it had become so unpopular that an initiative to restore in in California failed decisively (57-43%). That turned people off and helped Trump get reelcted.

Agreed. The left has caused catastrophic damage in pursuit of an illusion. Just because there is little in the way of active wrongdoing doesn't mean they weren't asleep at the helm.

But stepping away from the partisan politics, have you considered a broader, far less ideological framework? Namely: school charters, state mandates, and the public good aspect of the medical profession.

I think admitting best candidates for med school regardless of race is in the interest of public good. Admitting blacks and Hispanics with worse grades and scores means that there is no incentives for these groups to work harder in undergrad, nor is there an incentive for undergrad nor K-12 institutions to close the racial achievement gap.

Disagree, they're still competing with each other.

For example, earlier you wrote that a coal miner's daughter would have no shot at competing with these groups. Yet, I showed you that a medical school in West Virginia gives massive preference to in-state residents--the vast, vast majority of whom are White.

Every state gives preferences to in-state students, but WV is a small and unusual state in its demographics. States like Pennsylvania also produce a lot of coal and that is a bigger, more diverse state.
In any case, let's not take that example too restrictively - my point was that there are poor or lower middle class whites and Asians, and there are upper middle class and rich blacks and Hispanics. Using race as some kind of proxy for how privileged your family of origin is is highly inaccurate.

Exactly my position, also. It doesn't end up helping the poor, it gives the upper middle class an easy street.

So theoretically, if a demographic's acceptance rate is tied to fulfilling a public good, the formula isn't just about scores. It looks more like: Acceptance rate = f(MCAT, GPA, Mission Fitness)

The problem is that "mission fitness" can be gamed just like Harvard's infamous "personality scores".

I dislike "gamed". That would imply the students were taking advantage of it. Things like extracurricular activities are gamed (students choosing things that will get them into good schools), but this is concealment of discrimination.

It's no different than things like meaningless height requirements (an old dodge against hiring women--pick a cutoff that gives plenty of men but few women. There are jobs where it matters, but in most cases they come with both a minimum and a maximum.)

 

[Loren Pechtel]

1.i did not state that there are many lynchings currently. I stated that there have been a number of recent hangings that appears to be to possibly be lynching rather than suicide, as is often claimed. Most of the black community is skeptical of the suicide claims.

People don't like accepting that it was suicide. Thus there is pressure to find some outside thing to blame.

And it's not exactly unusual for suicides to stage things such that it appears to be murder because of the stigma that suicide carries.

And the reality is if the body isn't found soon enough they often simply can't be sure.