tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-9430835.post7393221380650470748..comments2024-03-29T05:14:33.223-07:00Comments on Steve Sailer: iSteve: The Moneyballization of college admissionsUnknownnoreply@blogger.comBlogger33125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-9430835.post-66519742228093968112011-07-12T00:13:04.416-07:002011-07-12T00:13:04.416-07:00Other significant changes 1997-2011 assuming both ...Other significant changes 1997-2011 assuming both years are not an aberrations from the trend and ignoring any change <=3 slots:<br /><br />In 1997, all universities ranked 51-100 are lumped together. Assume any college breaking from this group 51-100 into the top 50 did so from an avg 1997 rank of 66 (at the top 1/3 of the 2nd group of 50):<br /><br />Risers:<br />=======<br />+25 Rensselear Polytech (avg66->41)<br />+25 UC Irvine (avg66->41) est<br />+21 UT Austin (avg66->45) est<br />+20 USC (43->23) CONFIRMED<br />+19 Penn State (avg66-47) est<br />+19 U of Miami, Fl (avg66-47) est<br />+8 U Penn (13->5)<br />+7 Columbia (11->4)<br />+7 Boston Col (38->31)<br />+7 GA Inst of Tech (48->35)<br />+7 UC Santa Barbara (49->36)<br />+6 UCLA (31->25)<br />+5 UC Berkeley (27-22)<br />+4 WashU StL (17-13)<br />+5 Carnegie Mellon (28->23)<br /><br /><br />Fallers:<br />========<br />-15 Tulane (36->51)<br />-15 TX A&M (48->63)<br />-7 Brown (8->15)<br />-7 U of Rochester (30->37)<br />-6 Tufts (22->28)<br />-5 Duke (4->9)<br />-5 UMich (24->29)<br />-5 Brandeis (29->34)<br />-5 Lehigh (32->37)<br />-5 UNC Chapel Hill (25->30)<br />-5 Yeshiva (45->50)<br />-5 GeoWash U (46-51)<br />-4 UWisc Madison (41->45)<br /><br />Generalities among Rising Unis:<br />------------------------------<br />* STEM emphasis<br />* Sunny and/or nice weather <br />* Near hip urban center <br />* East or West Coast or Southern Town with Northern/Foreign DominanceDiminishing Power of Professorsnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-9430835.post-78731668487762901172011-07-11T23:07:04.741-07:002011-07-11T23:07:04.741-07:00Just found the 1997 published USN&WR rankings ...Just found <a href="http://web.archive.org/web/19970128161154/http://www.usnews.com/usnews/edu/college/cat02_1.htm" rel="nofollow">the 1997 published USN&WR rankings</a> - the oldest archived at the Way Back Machine:<br /><br />21 U of VA<br />24 U of MI<br />25 U of NC Chapel Hill<br />>25 UC Berkeley, UCLA<br /><br />Which means that UC Berkeley and UCLA have actually risen while the other top public Unis have fallen 1997-2011.Diminishing Power of Professorsnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-9430835.post-12531255024494286522011-07-11T23:00:32.040-07:002011-07-11T23:00:32.040-07:00which colleges would people say have fallen in pre...<i>which colleges would people say have fallen in prestige<br /><br />Cooper Union and CUNY are the obvious examples of schools that have declined. Perhaps a case can be made that Berkeley has also declined.</i><br /><br />One would expect National Public Universities to be hit the hardest economically since the collapse of the Internet (2001) and Real Estate (2008) bubbles in addition to the increasingly winner-take-all effects of hyper credentialism in the US. <br /><br />Finances are a major indirect measure of USN&WR rankings (faculty pay, faculty:student ratio, financial resources, etc) so much more highly ranked academic public universities have always been ranked below less academic but wealthy private universities in the USN&WR ranking.<br /><br />The Internet Archive <a href="http://web.archive.org/web/19990501093920/http://www2.usnews.com/usnews/edu/college/natua_nf.htm" rel="nofollow">Way Back Machine goes as far back as the 1999 US N&W Report Ranking</a>.<br />The <a href="http://berkeley.edu/news/media/releases/2006/08/18_rankings.shtml" rel="nofollow">2006 Ranking is here</a>. The current ranking can be found at the <a href="http://www.usnews.com" rel="nofollow">US News website</a>.<br /><br />USN&WR Ranking of the Top 5 Public National Universities by pub date:<br /> 1999 2006 2011<br />UC Berkeley 22 21 22<br />UCLA 25 26 25<br />Univ VA 22 22-25 25<br />U Mich 25 22-25 29<br />UNC ChpHll 24 >26 30<br /><br />I believe these rankings were similar to when I entered college in just after the USN&WR ranking started in 1983.<br /><br />There has been virtually no change in the USN&WR ranking of the top two UC schools but a small but measurable drop in the other top national public universities (VA, MI and NC Chapel Hill). <br /><br />BTW, USC surpassed UCLA for the first time this year.Diminishing Power of Professorsnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-9430835.post-58317095552779221132011-07-11T20:05:24.787-07:002011-07-11T20:05:24.787-07:00"which colleges would people say have fallen ..."which colleges would people say have fallen in prestige, due to poor leadership, over the last few decades? Brown is an obvious one. I suppose you could say CCNY, due more to a change in admissions policies and city demographics. Not sure who else would be on this list."<br /><br />Brown? Brown's dropped a bit on US News, but not by much. Their acceptance rates are way lower than they used to be. <br /><br />Cooper Union and CUNY are the obvious examples of schools that have declined. Perhaps a case can be made that Berkeley has also declined.Alhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/17327836181389523648noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-9430835.post-13495372051490480612011-07-11T19:16:56.502-07:002011-07-11T19:16:56.502-07:00"That's because whites not only aren'..."That's because whites not only aren't interested in making themselves over to appear to be something they're not, but because whites mistrust ambition as a motive in just about any pursuit. The underlying cultural belief is that If you have to strive to fit in at a university or in a socioeconomic group, it's a sure sign you don't belong there."<br /><br /><br />Actually, I'd say this is truer of Korean culture. Koreans really mistrust ambition to the point of stasis. Which is why they need artificial stimulants like degrees and university prestige and other such motivations to get them going.<br />It's fundamentally a Buddhist/Confucian culture. Not the clown Christianity that has warped the West beyond recognition.Haciendanoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-9430835.post-1736510273993273222011-07-11T12:13:18.914-07:002011-07-11T12:13:18.914-07:00Stari - sorry but I didn't follow. Could you e...Stari - sorry but I didn't follow. Could you explain the connection between your 1st and 2d paragraphs?not a hackernoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-9430835.post-19047384631036800272011-07-11T10:09:41.346-07:002011-07-11T10:09:41.346-07:00The most interesting cases are the relatively weak...The most interesting cases are the relatively weak academic colleges that are nonetheless highly ranked due to endowment or power in the real world. For example, compare the current <a href="http://colleges.usnews.rankingsandreviews.com/best-colleges/rankings/national-universities" rel="nofollow">US N&W Report rank (USN#)</a> with an <a href="http://www.highimpactuniversities.com/rpi.html" rel="nofollow">Australian ranking of High Impact Universities (AHIU#)</a> (likely similar to other non-US rankings like those in Asia or purely US academic rankings like Gorman's Report):<br /><br />College/U USN# / AHIU#<br />========================<br />Dartmouth 9/106<br />Notre Dame 19/133<br />Georgetown 21/160<br /><br />There is some explaination in that smaller and less research-focused colleges are penalized, but these are 3 have the largest gaps by far of the top 20 USN which can easily be explained by the 4 moneyball criteria listed:<br /><br />Dartmouth - powerful and wealth alumni network<br /><br />Notre Dame - less powerful but rabidly loyal alumni network<br /><br />Georgetown - deep network into the DC governement network<br /><br />Conversely, the biggest gaps between the highest ranking AHIU# and lowest ranking USN# are tend to be public universities:<br /><br />UC Berkeley 5/22<br />UC Los Angeles 4/25<br />UC Michigan 6/29<br />UC San Diego 10/35<br />U of Minnesota 12/64<br />U of Wisconsin 18/45<br />Penn State 20/47<br /><br />Arbitrage opportunity: short the typical graduate from overranked private institutions and long the honors graduate from underranked public ones.Diminishing Power of Professorsnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-9430835.post-48440727914834036432011-07-11T10:09:25.804-07:002011-07-11T10:09:25.804-07:00To understand how moneyball is played by colleges,...To understand how moneyball is played by colleges, you have to understand what the the metrics of a successful college are as measured by it's alumni:<br /><br />1) Endowment/Fundraising<br />2) Power/Influence Realworld<br />3) Power/Influence Cultural<br />4) Ranking(s)<br /><br />Note that education/learning are not on the list. That is an increasingly marginalized outcome to the process as measured by lowered core requirements, reading/essay demands and grade inflation.<br /><br />Ranks are last because they are often subjective, purposedly scrambled for variety by the likes of US N&W Reports and ultimately are limited by the endowment. Institutions like Stanford, Duke and WashU show how newfound wealth or an early focus on cultivating wealthy families is ultimately reflected in higher rankings. <br /><br />NYU's rise is because they also have increased cultural and realworld influence due to their great location in NYC and AVIS-like #2 we try harder vis-a-vis Columbia.<br /><br />On the other hand, institutions that have willfully failed to focus on the fundamentals of College moneyball have suffered by comparision. Yale, Columbia and UChi. <br /><br />Yales endowment has fallen further behind Harvard while Princeton and Stanford catch up. Where Columbia used to be clearly the next university after HYP - it is often nosed out by the likes of Stanford, Duke, Brown, CalTech, etc depending on a student's interest.Diminishing Power of Professorsnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-9430835.post-48017832713726251732011-07-11T09:01:40.041-07:002011-07-11T09:01:40.041-07:00The University of Chicago is an example of a schoo...<i>The University of Chicago is an example of a school that has declined in prestige and relative endowment size due to being overly rigorous and high minded.</i><br /><br />The University of Washington, St. Louis is a counter example to UofChi. <br /><br />The deep pockets of UWash enabled them to sweep up many very talented and motivated Ivy rejects who lacked a hook (legacy, minority, athlete, woman in STEM, etc). UWash rose in the ranks accordingly. <br /><br />Stanford's focus on STEM talent enabled them to also buck historical trends and rise up the ranks over the past several generations. A necessary historical requirement was the rise of tech and the finance behind it since the 1960s.<br /><br />The problem with UofChi is that they focused primarily on uber-nerds in the liberal arts whose most likely prestigious career outcome is becoming a famous professor in the liberal arts.<br /><br />Yale has fallen behind Harvard and allowed Princeton to challenge it by focusing on spawn of the elite and others who are the most liberal. Princeton, meanwhile, focused on admitting families (students by proxy) striving for real world power.<br /><br />There is a purported trend among elite Liberal Arts Colleges to sweep up powerful Jewish families (students by proxy) who are losing Ivy slots to Asian kids raised by Dragon Moms.Diminishing Power of Professorsnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-9430835.post-10360321928444885382011-07-11T07:01:38.569-07:002011-07-11T07:01:38.569-07:00>The underlying cultural belief [of whites] is ...>The underlying cultural belief [of whites] is that If you have to strive to fit in at a university or in a socioeconomic group, it's a sure sign you don't belong there.<<br /><br />Don't know if that really is the underlying belief, but it sounds like a wise one. The world is surfeited with stressed-out lying phonies who muscled their way up to their level of incompetence.Anonymousnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-9430835.post-17400642723937439092011-07-10T23:34:30.535-07:002011-07-10T23:34:30.535-07:00Forgive my heat-stroke cerebroflatulence above-- N...Forgive my heat-stroke cerebroflatulence above-- <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Theothernewyork.jpg" rel="nofollow">New York</a> is in Lincolnshire, just up the road from much larger Boston.Reg Cæsarnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-9430835.post-58672705196629151042011-07-10T22:51:40.034-07:002011-07-10T22:51:40.034-07:00"Oxtoby was a chem professor, later dean of p..."Oxtoby was a chem professor, later dean of physical sciences at UofC. He should do his own number crunching."<br /><br />I believe that is Eugene Oxtoby, not David Oxtoby. EO taught chemistry and they used his textbook.mapnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-9430835.post-41560088428343748352011-07-10T21:04:09.332-07:002011-07-10T21:04:09.332-07:00"Hey, I realize you write these blog posts fo..."Hey, I realize you write these blog posts for free, but just because you've "never even seen an economic professor's paper on the topic" doesn't mean there haven't been dozens released in the last few years. Start with Richard Vedder."<br /><br />I'm familiar with Vedder's work on whether college is worth it to students and society as a whole. What I'm interested in here is what kind of applicants are most worth admitting by universities -- that's the kind of the behind-the-scenes stuff that this article refers to, but I've seldom seen published.Steve Sailerhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/11920109042402850214noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-9430835.post-28651469848538552892011-07-10T19:56:11.419-07:002011-07-10T19:56:11.419-07:00Hey, I realize you write these blog posts for free...Hey, I realize you write these blog posts for free, but just because you've "never even seen an economic professor's paper on the topic" doesn't mean there haven't been dozens released in the last few years. Start with Richard Vedder.<br /><br />As to whether a concrete ROI attains to a prestigious degree, the answer is yes, if you're black or Latino. For the rest it's conspicuous consumption and haute money laundering of dubious benefit. Also your view of a modern college president vs. admissions dean is laughably out of date. Trustees and faculty "government" are more powerful than in Charles Eliot's day (and they had power back then). Presidents are figurehead fundraisers with people skills and some fig-leaf doctorate. Mozilo doesn't come to mind. Expect them at 70% female by the end of the decade.<br /><br />Admissions execs, while certainly banking less than the football coach, are subjects of intense scrutiny to a degree unimaginable in 1950 Palo Alto or New Haven. The ones from the current breed burn out faster than the pre-moneyball types (Fred Hargadon would be an example of the latter). It's a long string of hassles with mediocre remuneration, and a lot less fun than being the athletics director.Anonymousnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-9430835.post-40402415631639741442011-07-10T19:30:22.293-07:002011-07-10T19:30:22.293-07:00The University of Chicago is an example of a schoo...The University of Chicago is an example of a school that has declined in prestige and relative endowment size due to being overly rigorous and high minded.Anonymousnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-9430835.post-91755753110305101942011-07-10T12:28:31.756-07:002011-07-10T12:28:31.756-07:00"... but I've never even seen an economic..."... but I've never even seen an economic professor's paper on the topic of what kind of college applicants give the best financial return to the college. These analyses exist, and I bet ambitious parents in Seoul are reading some of them translated into Korean right now, but Americans don't seem very interested in the topic."<br /><br />That's because whites not only aren't interested in making themselves over to appear to be something they're not, but because whites mistrust ambition as a motive in just about any pursuit. The underlying cultural belief is that If you have to strive to fit in at a university or in a socioeconomic group, it's a sure sign you don't belong there.Anonymousnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-9430835.post-65061830910587461522011-07-10T11:07:55.606-07:002011-07-10T11:07:55.606-07:00Here's the thing: whites think of academics a...Here's the thing: whites think of academics as a priest caste who have taken a vow of near poverty in order to serve as purveyors of higher truth. <br /><br />Rich profs and Uni's rollin' in dough profane the temple of knowledge.Anonymousnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-9430835.post-13092573467725913682011-07-10T11:07:40.706-07:002011-07-10T11:07:40.706-07:00Here's the thing: whites think of academics a...Here's the thing: whites think of academics as a priest caste who have taken a vow of near poverty in order to serve as purveyors of higher truth. <br /><br />Rich profs and Uni's rollin' in dough profane the temple of knowledge.Anonymousnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-9430835.post-19554967772013796722011-07-10T10:54:53.990-07:002011-07-10T10:54:53.990-07:00Universities are run by their boards of Trustees t...Universities are run by their boards of Trustees the same way that corporations are run by their Boards of Directors. <br /><br />The trustees are essentially focused on growing the prestige of the University. <br /><br />The trustees work hard to grow the endowment not simply so that the school can have more money but so that the school can spend on things that add to its prestige.<br /><br />What is interesting is that the "white survivalist" crowd often says that they, the white survivalists, are unhappy that so many of the white students at the ivies are jewish. At the same time the white survivalist crowd says that they are unhappy that so many of the students at the ivies are asian.<br /><br />Statistics show that, apples to apples, jewish students go on to donate dramatically more than white christian students. <br /><br />And asian students go on to donate dramatically less than white christian students<br /><br />So it is logical for the trustees to listen to the "white survivalists" and accept fewer asians, but it is logical for the trustees to IGNORE the white survivalists and accept plenty of jewsAnonymousnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-9430835.post-48123037581780511732011-07-10T10:13:43.032-07:002011-07-10T10:13:43.032-07:00Half-assed moneyball strategies have existed for s...Half-assed moneyball strategies have existed for some time. About a decade ago Gordon Gee, then the chancellor of Vanderbilt University, <a href="http://www.jewishachievement.com/domains/edu.html" rel="nofollow">proposed discriminating in favor of Jews</a> because they, among other things, were supposedly more likely to become bigger donors. Gee's efforts increased the Jewish share of Vandy's student body <a href="http://www.forward.com/articles/130140/" rel="nofollow">from 3% to 15%</a>.Jack Aubreynoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-9430835.post-90767401417444804162011-07-10T09:48:27.538-07:002011-07-10T09:48:27.538-07:00Just curious, which colleges would people say have...Just curious, which colleges would people say have fallen in prestige, due to poor leadership, over the last few decades? Brown is an obvious one. I suppose you could say CCNY, due more to a change in admissions policies and city demographics. Not sure who else would be on this list.Natenoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-9430835.post-79946178705015178882011-07-10T08:58:02.555-07:002011-07-10T08:58:02.555-07:00Perhaps Oxtoby is an exception, but -by almost alw...Perhaps <i>Oxtoby</i> is an exception, but <i>-by</i> almost always refers to a settlement in the Danelaw, being the suffix used to this day in Scandinavia, and means "town". <br /><br />Cottle's surname dictionary doesn't list it-- he has an <i>Oxby</i>, however-- nor does the AA's road atlas, which shows every flyspeck in Great Britain, including New York, Lancashire.<br /><br />Incidentally, Simon Kuper recently did a big piece for the Weekend FT about how Moneyball is revolutionizing English soccer. Beane himself is involved, taking calls at odd hours of the morning.Reg Cæsarnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-9430835.post-7006480746857236402011-07-10T08:06:56.615-07:002011-07-10T08:06:56.615-07:00@stari_momak: Your picture of academia is decades ...@stari_momak: Your picture of academia is decades out of date. You'd be a fool to attend grad school at Michigan or Indiana over Harvard these days.Anonymousnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-9430835.post-36376986484301767032011-07-10T07:39:44.144-07:002011-07-10T07:39:44.144-07:00@Diminishing Power of Professors said: You are rig...@Diminishing Power of Professors said: You are right. All these things are happening. Which doesn't really contradict what I was claiming (corporatization of the business side of higher education). All it means is that corporations are restructuring so that universities are run by some professors for some professors.Nanonymousnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-9430835.post-82953257920545131862011-07-10T03:56:30.224-07:002011-07-10T03:56:30.224-07:00Ever hear of the Tampa Bay Rays? They've gone...Ever hear of the Tampa Bay Rays? They've gone from cellar dwellers to contending in the AL East by implementing Moneyball strategies. Are teams still able to achieve arbitrage gains in the market for high on-base percentage hitters? Of course not--that secret's out. But it doesn't mean that quantitatively focused teams aren't looking for (and finding) the next Moneyball-type insights. Most recently, teams have been focusing on defense--see, e.g., Billy Beane's recent A's lineups.Anonymousnoreply@blogger.com