Apparently in the interest of “diversity,” being a member of the 4H Club (and don’t even think about it if you’re a leader of such an organization, reduces your chances of getting into many private colleges:
what Espenshade and Radford found in regard to what they call “career-oriented activities” was truly shocking even to this hardened veteran of the campus ideological and cultural wars. Participation in such Red State activities as high school ROTC, 4-H clubs, or the Future Farmers of America was found to reduce very substantially a student’s chances of gaining admission to the competitive private colleges in the NSCE database on an all-other-things-considered basis. The admissions disadvantage was greatest for those in leadership positions in these activities or those winning honors and awards. “Being an officer or winning awards” for such career-oriented activities as junior ROTC, 4-H, or Future Farmers of America, say Espenshade and Radford, “has a significantly negative association with admission outcomes at highly selective institutions.” Excelling in these activities “is associated with 60 or 65 percent lower odds of admission.”
Espenshade and Radford don’t have much of an explanation for this find, which seems to place the private colleges even more at variance with their stated commitment to broadly based campus diversity. In his Bakke ruling Lewis Powell was impressed by the argument Harvard College offered defending the educational value of a demographically diverse student body: “A farm boy from Idaho can bring something to Harvard College that a Bostonian cannot offer. Similarly, a black student can usually bring something that a white person cannot offer.” The Espenshade/Radford study suggests that those farm boys from Idaho would do well to stay out of their local 4-H clubs or FFA organizations — or if they do join, they had better not list their membership on their college application forms. This is especially true if they were officers in any of these organizations. Future farmers of America don’t seem to count in the diversity-enhancement game played out at some of our more competitive private colleges, and are not only not recruited, but seem to be actually shunned. It is hard to explain this development other than as a case of ideological and cultural bias.
I’d love to hear their explanation for this.
Rand, I don’t see a link to the text you quoted.
***********
If you say you want to bring communitarian organic farming to the developing world, I bet that Ivy admissions offices will look kindly on you.
If you want to contribute to a Second Green Revolution, fuhgedaboudit.
I’d love to hear their explanation for this.
Hmmm. Plain, simple bigotry might be the best fit in accordance with the principle of “Occam’s razor”. Any other simpler explanation?
I wonder how the survey would break down if you were to separate, on the one hand, states with open records as to gun registration and/or CCW permits, versus, on the other hand, states in which those records are sealed.
To word it differently: I wonder if some of these schools are rejecting people based on their ownership of firearms, and the 4-H connection is a secondary one.
I suspect that a disproportionate number of these colleges are in states with gun registration.
I do believe Ken is saying the same thing Mike is.
Government student financial aid is nothing more than a taxpayer subsidy of leftist college professors.
I suspect that the “elite” colleges are steadily becoming more and more irrelevant, since homeschooled teenagers are probably better educated than graduates of four-year opinion mills.
Not just bigots – snotty, obnoxious, self-centered bigots. 🙁
Home school is not an option for everybody. We can not afford to give up the fight at either grade schools or colleges. I don’t know exactly how to fight the fight given tenure and all, but the long term viability of this nation depends on an educated population.
It’s pretty simple. College admissions departments, in the interest of reducing recruiting costs and also for good reasons of familiarity, tend to hire recent graduates of their own school. Ye reap what ye sow.
Greetings,
I retired from 20+ years as a officer in the U.S. Army. Took a job with J&J just north of Dallas, TX.
The corp. owner of the factory was in the N.E. Now I do pronounce my name as Miiiiiichael and wear cowboy boots . . . there was always that hint of ‘you don’t talk fast enough’ and ‘who the heck would really wear those things’, and ‘OMG you don’t own a gun do you?’ in the dealings with corporate people from New Jersey. It really is a different culture.
So even though the plant close, they lost money and jobs were sent overseas – I am really not amazed that 4H and JROTC are frowned upon in the ‘Elite’ schools.
Of course, A&M would welcome you . . . 🙂
Regards,
Dang, a = an
close = closed
My fingers type faster than I think!
regards,
As the other commenters inply, correlation isn’t causation, and there may be associated phenomena for which the ag-related or military-related credits are simply markers. I would expect FFA members & leadership to be aiming for science/agronomy collegial tracks, for one thing, and those are usually found at state universities and land-grant colleges. It could be that the recruiters look at that line in the application & wonder why junior wants to go to a private school instead, when he’s clearly aggie material.
The ROTC thing is much less easily explainable as anything other than bigotry. Maybe “but we don’t even have ROTC here!”
Oh, btw, please note that I work in the ag industry. Not only wasn’t I a member of 4-H or FFA, but it wasn’t even an option in the suburbs I grew up in. I was briefly in the Jaycees, although I don’t think I bothered to put it on my college application. My SATs spoke for themselves, and I coasted into a cheap land-grant. Well, it was cheap at the time – joining the Big Ten was the ruin of Penn State if you ask me.
I like the sound thrashing that y’all are (inadvertently) giving the spirit of “disparate impact.” Nicely done.
Much as I’d love to hype on elitist views of college admisions departments, my belief is that this is less active descrimination and more a case of what is missing from the applications of 4H, FFA, and ROTC folks. A high school student only has so much time to devote to various clubs and activities outside shool. The three activities listed consume far more “free” time than a lot of the other activities which would otherwise fill that portion of the application. That’s even more the case if the student has invested enough time and energy into performing a leadership role.
As the other commenters inply, correlation isn’t causation
It’s a factor of three reduction and is consistent with the ideological stuff associated with these colleges.
I would expect FFA members & leadership to be aiming for science/agronomy collegial tracks
Why would you think that? FFA leadership experience should be just as good as being a leader of some other high school group.
The obvious conclusion is that if you come to their school as an established leader, then you are less easily forced into their own mold of “leadership”. That said, if they don’t have ag majors or ROTC programs, then it is less likely you would find programs at their schools interesting. I’m sure if you entered in your school with the characteristics of, say, Texas A&M or Colorado School of Mines, or the Citadel, and had applicants with 4H and ROTC experience, they’d rank higher to the admissions departments of those schools. The author of the piece is on the faculty of Princeton, he likely used Princeton’s admissions system and did not realize that the system takes into account one’s own institutions shortcomings in rating students for admissions there.
A high school student only has so much time to devote to various clubs and activities outside shool. The three activities listed consume far more “free” time than a lot of the other activities which would otherwise fill that portion of the application.
So? Why wouldn’t you want students who excelled in activities that aren’t typical of the other students? Is FFA or ROTC participation less indicative of achievement potential than glee club is? What about diversity?
It sure looks like bigotry. And why would anyone expect different from American universities? Their pattern of rejecting students who “aren’t our kind” is more the norm than the exception, historically.
In my experience people who participate in leadership of some organization during school or college do not show up to class very often and get lousy grades as a result. Do you really expect a frat boy to be a good achiever?
“Do you really expect a frat boy to be a good achiever?”
Presidents:
Rutherford B. Hayes – Delta Kappa Epsilon
James Abram Garfield – Delta Upsilon
Chester A. Arthur – Psi Upsilon
Grover Cleveland – Sigma Chi
Benjamin Harrison – Phi Delta Theta
William McKinley – Sigma Alpha Epsilon
Theodore Roosevelt – Delta Kappa Epsilon
William Howard Taft – Psi Upsilon
Woodrow Wilson – Phi Kappa Psi
Calvin Coolidge – Phi Gamma Delta
Franklin D. Roosevelt – Delta Kappa Epsilon
Harry S. Truman – (honorary) Alpha Delta Gamma, Beta Sigma Tau, Lambda Chi Alpha, Phi Alpha Delta, and Sigma Delta Kappa.
John F. Kennedy – Phi Kappa Theta
Gerald R. Ford – Delta Kappa Epsilon
Ronald Reagen – Tau Kappa Epsilon
George H. W. Bush – Delta Kappa Epsilon
Bill Clinton – Alpha Phi Omega
George W. Bush – Delta Kappa Epsilon
Vice Presidents:
Charles W. Fairbanks – Phi Gamma Delta
Thomas Riley Marshall – Phi Gamma Delta
Charles Evans Hughes – Delta Upsilon
Charles G. Dawes – Delta Upsilon
Nelson Rockefeller – Psi Upsilon
Alben Barkley – Delta Tau Delta
Henry Wallace – Delta Tau Delta
Adlai Stevenson – Phi Delta Theta
Dan Quayle – Delta Kappa Epsilon
Astronauts:
Neil Armstrong – Phi Delta Theta
Jon McBride – Phi Delta Theta
F. Story Musgrave – Phi Delta Theta
Alan Bean – Delta Kappa Epsilon
Roger Chaffee – Phi Kappa Sigma
Michael McCulley – Tau Beta Phi
Susan Helms – Chi Omega
Edgar Mitchell – Kappa Sigma
John Young – Sigma Chi
Greg Harbaugh – Sigma Chi
Scott Altman – Sigma Chi
Elliot See – Phi Kappa Psi
Owen Garriott – Phi Kappa Psi
and I’m probably missing a whole bunch more.
… what was the question again?
Godzilla’s Told Status:
[X] Told [ ] Not Told
In my experience people who participate in leadership of some organization during school or college do not show up to class very often and get lousy grades as a result. Do you really expect a frat boy to be a good achiever?
You’re a natural at this. If only the researchers had thought to compare people of otherwise equivalent academic standing. It’s a good thing we have posters on the internet to set them straight.
While I’m at it: what do Gen. Creighton Abrams, Lt. Gen. Russel Honoré, Major General Thomas Darling, Senator Sam Brownback, Senator Tom Harkin, Senator Orrin Hatch, Senator Sam Nunn, Rosalynn Carter, Pat Nixon, Walter Mondale, Jacqueline Kennedy-Onassis, and J. Dennis Hastert have in common with Orville Redenbacher, Herschel Walker, and astronauts Alan Shepard, Ellison Onizuka, Jerry Ross, Bonnie Dunbar, Peggy A. Whitson and Donald Williams?
The answer contains a number and a letter.
ken,
to the best of my knowledge, most states with CCW / CCH / pistol permits require the person to be 21 years old, and thus probably NOT just applying for college. Unless they are checking on Mom’s and Dad’s background, that isn’t keeping kids out of college.
It’s the same kind of idiot, elitist thinking, but seems much less likely a factor.
It strikes me that the real correlator may be school size.
4h is a rural club, and rural high schools can have class siEs down as low as fifty graduates. Many rural high schools field five man high school teams and they play offense and defense.
A rural high school will often lack languages, art and foreign exchange programs. Now compare a rural grad with a minimum class suite against a inner city valedictorian who took some enrichment classes at Columbia or Georgetown. Who looks better? The one thriving against adversity or the one with the Norman Rockwell background and solid but empty transcript?
“4h is a rural club”
It started that way, but it hasn’t been strictly rural for decades. Alongside the original beef, dairy, and horse clubs there are also 4H sewing clubs, computer clubs, robotics clubs, and so on.
“A rural high school will often lack languages, art and foreign exchange programs.”
4H clubs are active in 90 countries around the world, and there are indeed exchange programs. 4H members learn public speaking (all members do it every year) and each member learns basic accounting and basic business record keeping as part of their yearly project – whether that project is raising and training steer or building a robot.
“The one thriving against adversity or the one with the Norman Rockwell background and solid but empty transcript?”
Which one is which? Are you under the impression that life in the country is idyllic and easy?
Have you ever been to a modern farm or ranch? Do you have any idea what it takes to produce food profitably? Have you any conception whatsoever of how hard rural kids work, or how much sophisticated equipment they have to learn to operate and repair? And do you think those kids have any choice in the matter?
So because their parents choose to live on a farm and produce the food that ends up filling your belly, the kids should be punished by denying them educational opportunities?
Ken and Mike are right. It’s plain old ignorant bigotry.
Ed
It takes sixty billion in tariffs and subsidies for farms to make profits
Jack, keep digging.
Yeah, I was off by two.
Total budget of USDA is over 150 billion.
Pity the farmers can’t be profitable without those subsidies
” Government payments accounted for 5 to 8 percent of total gross cash farm income over the last several years. For larger farming operations that received Government payments in 2004, these payments dropped from roughly 10 percent of gross cash farm income for farming operations with $100,000 to $250,000 in sales to 5 percent of gross cash farm income for farming operations with over $500,000 in sales.”
That’s what USDA says
“To revitalize rural America, farm policy must emphasize entrepreneurship over entitlement”
Tell you what, Jack. We’ll do away with the subsidies and educational opportunities and you in turn can do away with anything we produce. I doubt pinheads such as yourself would survive for long without full shelves your local grocery store.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=I4s0nzsU1Wg
Harold
No Problemo.
1) It’s amazing what we produced out of the garden.
2) There is a thing called Free trade.
3) USDA says “Farm Policy must emphasize entreprenuership over entitlement”.
Farmers have an entitlement mindset, and it’s really harmed farming.
Can you raise multiple head of cattle in your little garden for your dairy products? Do you have enough prowess with a tackle box and fishing rod or hunting implements to provide protein for your family? Somehow I doubt it. Vegetables, legumes, and herbs can only last you so long. For that matter, how many people in this increasingly urbanized and labor avoidant society possess the necessary skills or even own enough land to survive on their own? Not very many. If what you’re looking for is hunger riots societal collapse, then by all means continue marginalizing the producers in America. In the end, it will be the country folks who’ll band together and survive, not you.
Harold
If them country farm folk were that productive and smart, they wouldn’t be living on 150 billion in handouts from the USDA and hiding behind agricultural tariffs to keep out competition from the caribbean.
you do realize the US Army is spending about as much in afghanistan
as the USDA is in farm supports?
neither of which seems like a productive use of tax dollars
Jack,
just how many farmers do you know?! Most of them that I know want USDA out of the way, not out to pay.
DS
I get around a bit, and i’ve spent some times in the rural panhandles of texas, Oklahoma and Kansas. I’ve spent time in the rural midwest, and
let us say water subsidies and agricultural price supports are the stock in trade at the diner conversation list.
Tell you what, if these farmers didn’t want the USDA around, then they should
be on their congressman. But, in reality, I’ve seen them shouting about Price adjustments, Ethanol subsidies and protective tariffs.
The fact that small farmers get about 10% of their income from USDA, in fact, that is almost as much as their household income from farming speaks to how dependent they are on this.
USDA is a $149 Billion dollar annual expense. That isn’t chicken feed.
Given that fewer then 10 million people are in farming, that’s about $15K per farm laborer in income supports.
Red staters are very dependent upon federal largesse. The USDA is just one of many programs helping these people survive.