F**King Lowers Admittance Standards for Dummies

It's mostly music and art schools that have gone with test-optional or even no test. Makes sense. And let's be honest....the majority of college football players are likely below the average incoming freshman on test scores.

 

I doubt that all those good Duke basketball players could qualify otherwise. Don't know about Stanford.
LSU has a Stanford graduate transfer CB this year. He was offered a 100k job in cybersecurity but chose to play a season of football here. Is he that smart or was he offered such a job simply because he is a Stanford grad?

 

If your offered a 100 k to live in the bay area you should turn it down. You would be broke by the 10th of the month.

 

Being a Stanford grad helps, no doubt. I have no idea what his test scores or GPA were to get in to furd. I do know his degree is Communications/Sociology...Symbolic Systems. The classes are highly theoretical and cognitive-based. I would call it a "soft" major as opposed to something like molecular biology. Cybersecurity is a high-paying job with an average annual of over $100k. Does the government and other cybersecurity firms want furd grads? Of course.

That $100k though? My opinion based on Alexander's comments and the propensity of the media to spin, is that it might not have been based on an actual offer, but rather on what furd projects it's grads to earn with that degree. Per Alexander, "It would have been for six figures for sure." Regardless, he's clearly very smart and capable but at the end of the day, he's from Louisiana. One year postponing a six-figure salary doesn't seem like that big a deal in order to play in Death Valley on Saturday nights in the fall.

May not have been in the Bay Area. Could have been in the Northeast or even at Ft Gordon in Georgia.
http://www.thelivingmoon.com/45jack_files/03files/NSA_Fort_Gordon_01.html

 

Even if the company is in the bay area a lot of those kinds of jobs can be done from wherever you are that has internet.

 

Personal feeling is that about 5-7 public universities should remain opening and juco or close the rest.

 

Kinda. They can be criterion-referenced or norm referenced. Norm ref tests can include things not "taught." If you're interested google it.

 

Not sure if this is the best place to post this but it explains what's going on at Bama and some other schools who have made a definite shift in their approach toward recruiting students. I found it pretty interesting.

"With state funding now just 12.5 percent of the university’s budget, campus leaders have mapped an offensive strategy to grow in size, prestige and, most important, revenue. The endgame is to become a national player known for more than championship football. Berkeley, the University of Michigan and University of Virginia are the schools “we compare ourselves against,” said Kevin W. Whitaker, Alabama’s interim provost.....The University of Alabama is the fastest-growing flagship in the country. Enrollment hit 37,665 this fall, nearly a 58 percent increase over 2006. As critical as the student body jump: the kind of student the university is attracting. The average G.P.A. of entering freshmen is 3.66, up from 3.4 a decade ago, and the top quarter scored at least a 31 on the ACT, up from 27.

Instead of layoffs and cuts, some public universities facing budget challenges are following this blueprint for survival: higher charges to students, and more of them. Nowadays, the real money comes from tuition and fees. The average for four-year public colleges rose 81 percent in constant dollars between 2000 and 2014. At Alabama, tuition and fees have about doubled in the last decade, to $10,470 for residents and to $26,950 for nonresidents.

Even when it awards full-tuition scholarships, the university makes money — on dorm rooms and meal plans, books, football tickets, hoodies and school spirit items....All told, these extras and essentials brought in $173 million last year — on top of $633 million in tuition and fees, up from $135 million in 2005.

Alabamians are now just 43 percent of the student body....Overall enrollments have been dropping since 2010. That has all but the nation’s top schools battling for students. Alabama may be a standout example, but across the country university flagships and even regional campuses once focused on serving nearby counties are extending their reach......The University of Alabama has 45 recruiters — 36 outside of Alabama, “Everybody wants the kids from the Northeast and California,” according to Mr. Burd of New America. “They are wealthy and they tend to be good students.”

In the past six years, in Ms. McGraw-Hickey’s region, applications to Alabama rose from 193 to 903."

https://www.nytimes.com/2016/11/06/education/edlife/survival-strategies-for-public-universities.html

Anyway, those were just a few of the "highlights" but it outlines what I was trying to say earlier. Money comes from tuition and if applications are down, colleges are trying to find ways to increase that number.

 

Alabama = Cal, UVA, Michigan

Seriously delusional.

 

That's not what he said. He said those are the schools “we compare ourselves against”. And why not? If you want to compete against schools at that level, your standards have to be set just as high. It's like they say, dress for the job you want, not the job you have.

And not sure if you realize, but kal has been dropping down the academic rankings the last few years. Heck USC surpassed them a few years ago but I still won't consider sending my kids there.