Bruddah IZ
DA
So once applicants are accepted by a med school, the accepted applicant can then decide to accept or decline an acceptance from a med school which makes acceptance rates non-discriminatory? WTH dude?
Ponderable
- Thread starter Bruddah IZ
- Start date
Andy Dukes
PREMIER
If I apply to 4 schools and I happen to be accepted by all four schools, than my number counts as four acceptances by the data used in your original post. If he wanted to state we are accepting and training doctors in a discriminating way he would have had to show the race of those actually attending not accepted into those schools. Those numbers would then show up in the graduation numbers but of course the graduation numbers show a completely different story where the white majority is overwhelming.
Bruddah IZ
DA
Are you now saying that blacks and hispanics apply to more medical schools then whites and asians, thus the higher acceptance rates?
Andy Dukes
PREMIER
I am not assuming anything but as I stated earlier, if I was waived application fees, I would apply to more schools to better my chances of getting in, which could lead to me be accepted in multiple schools, meaning my race would show up as being accepted in multiple schools. And this is of course after taking into account, you are not required to state your race on the applications. It is voluntary, so the data is skewed. Now a census of actual students would show if any discrimination was actually happening. Something the writer of your piece could have found and used for his assertion but I think that the census of actual students would disprove his preconceived assumption so he found some bit of data that made his assumption look plausible.
Bruddah IZ
DA
You're assuming that whites and asians are not applying to schools at a higher rate because of diversity policies. Clearly your PDF shows that stat as well. And Perry's table not surprisingly corroborates.
Andy Dukes
PREMIER
I am not making that assumption at all. I would say the data is skewed by voluntary rejection of stating race as the biggest factor. The second being that if you know you are getting into a program through known channels, I don't need to apply to as many schools if even more than one.
Bruddah IZ
DA
Race is the biggest factor according to the PDF you posted.
Bruddah IZ
DA
In Defense of Profits -- Why They Are At Least As Moral as Wages
September 22, 2016, 10:10 am
Quick background: my company privately operates public parks, making our money solely from the entry fees voluntarily paid by visitors and campers. We don't get paid a single dollar of tax money.
A major partner of ours is the US Forest Service (USFS), which actually operates more recreation sites than any other agency in the world (the National Park Service has a higher profile and the Corps of Engineers has more visitors, but the USFS is the most ubiquitous). Despite the USFS being an early pioneer of using private companies to reduce the operating costs of parks and campgrounds, the USFS still has a large number of employees opposed to what we do. The most typical statement I hear from USFS employees that summarizes this opposition -- and it is quite common to hear it -- is that "It is wrong to make a profit on public lands."
It would be hard to understate the passion with which certain USFS employees hold to this belief. I discovered, entirely accidentally through a FOIA request my trade group had submitted to the USFS, that the Forest Supervisor at the time of the Tahoe National Forest, a fairly senior person in the USFS management structure and whom I have never met or even had a conversation with, circulated emails through the agency about how evil he thought I was.
This general distaste for profit, which is seen as "dirty" in contrast to wages which are relatively "clean" (at least up to some number beyond which they are dirty again), is not limited to the USFS or even to government agencies in general, but permeates much of the public. As a result, I thought I would describe a conversation I had with a USFS manager (actually this is the merger of two conversations). The conversation below had been going on for a while discussing technical topics, and we will pick it up when the District Ranger makes the statement highlighted above (a District Ranger is the lowest level line officer in the USFS, responsible in some cases for the land management functions of an area the size of a county. I have cleaned up the text (I am sure the sentences would not be as well-formed if I had a transcript) but I think this captures the gist of it:
Ranger: I think it's wrong that you make a profit on public lands
Me: So you work for free?
Ranger: Huh?
Me: If you think it's wrong to make money on public lands, I assume you must volunteer, else you too would be making money on public lands
Ranger: No, of course I get paid.
Me: Well, I know what I make for profit in your District, and I have a good guess what your salary probably is, and I can assure you that you make at least twice as much as me on these public lands.
Ranger: But that is totally different.
Me: How?
At this point I need to help the Ranger out. He struggled to put his thoughts on this into words. I will summarize it in the nicest possible way by saying he thought that while his wage was honorable, my profit was dishonorable, or perhaps more accurately, that his wage paid by the government was consistent with the spirit of the public lands whereas my profit was not consistent
Me: I'm not sure why. My profit is similar to your wage in that it is the way I get paid for my effort on this land -- efforts that are generally entirely in harmony with yours as we are both trying to serve visitors and protect the natural resources here. But unlike your wage, my profit is also a return on the investment I have made. Every truck, uniform, and tool we use comes out of my profit, whereas you get all the tools you need paid for by your employer above and beyond your salary. Further, your salary is virtually guaranteed to you, short of some staggering malfeasance. Even if you do a bad job you likely would just get shunted to a less interesting staff position at the same salary, rather than fired. On the other hand if I do a bad job, or if one of my employees slips up, or even if some absolutely random occurrence entirely outside my control occurs (like, say, a flood that closes our operations) my profit can completely evaporate, or even turn into a loss. So like you, I get paid for my efforts here on public lands, but I have to take risk and make investments that aren't required of you. So what about that makes my profit less honorable than your wage?
Ranger: Working on public lands should be a public service, not for profit
Me: Well, I think you are starting to make the argument again that you should be volunteering and not taking a salary. But leaving that aside, why is profit inconsistent with service to the public? My company serves over 2 million visitors a year, and 99.9% give us the highest marks for our service. And for the few that don't, and complain about a bad experience, every one of those complaints comes to my desk and I personally investigate them. Do you do the same?
Why do I make such an effort? Part of it is pride, but part is because I understand that my margins are so narrow, if even 5% of those visitors don't come back next year -- because they had a bad time or they saw a bad review online -- I will make no money. Those 2 million people vote with their feet every year on whether they think I am adequately serving the public, and their votes directly affect how much money I make. Do you have that sort of accountability for your public service?
Postscript: Interestingly, though perhaps not surprisingly, the government ranger did not bring up what I would consider the most hard-hitting challenge: How do we know your profits are not just the rents from a corrupt, cronyist government contracting process. Two things let me sleep well at night on this question. The first is that I know what lobbying I do and political connections I have (zero on both) so I am fully confident I can't be benefiting from cronyism in the competitive bid process for these concession contracts. Of course, you don't know that and if our positions were reversed, I am pretty sure I would be skeptical of you.
So the other fact I have in my favor, which is provable to all, is that the recreation areas we operate are run with far lower costs and a demonstrably higher level of service than the vast majority of recreation areas run by the government itself. So while I can't prove I didn't pull some insider connections to get the work, I can prove the public is far better off with the operation of these parks in private hands.
September 22, 2016, 10:10 am
Quick background: my company privately operates public parks, making our money solely from the entry fees voluntarily paid by visitors and campers. We don't get paid a single dollar of tax money.
A major partner of ours is the US Forest Service (USFS), which actually operates more recreation sites than any other agency in the world (the National Park Service has a higher profile and the Corps of Engineers has more visitors, but the USFS is the most ubiquitous). Despite the USFS being an early pioneer of using private companies to reduce the operating costs of parks and campgrounds, the USFS still has a large number of employees opposed to what we do. The most typical statement I hear from USFS employees that summarizes this opposition -- and it is quite common to hear it -- is that "It is wrong to make a profit on public lands."
It would be hard to understate the passion with which certain USFS employees hold to this belief. I discovered, entirely accidentally through a FOIA request my trade group had submitted to the USFS, that the Forest Supervisor at the time of the Tahoe National Forest, a fairly senior person in the USFS management structure and whom I have never met or even had a conversation with, circulated emails through the agency about how evil he thought I was.
This general distaste for profit, which is seen as "dirty" in contrast to wages which are relatively "clean" (at least up to some number beyond which they are dirty again), is not limited to the USFS or even to government agencies in general, but permeates much of the public. As a result, I thought I would describe a conversation I had with a USFS manager (actually this is the merger of two conversations). The conversation below had been going on for a while discussing technical topics, and we will pick it up when the District Ranger makes the statement highlighted above (a District Ranger is the lowest level line officer in the USFS, responsible in some cases for the land management functions of an area the size of a county. I have cleaned up the text (I am sure the sentences would not be as well-formed if I had a transcript) but I think this captures the gist of it:
Ranger: I think it's wrong that you make a profit on public lands
Me: So you work for free?
Ranger: Huh?
Me: If you think it's wrong to make money on public lands, I assume you must volunteer, else you too would be making money on public lands
Ranger: No, of course I get paid.
Me: Well, I know what I make for profit in your District, and I have a good guess what your salary probably is, and I can assure you that you make at least twice as much as me on these public lands.
Ranger: But that is totally different.
Me: How?
At this point I need to help the Ranger out. He struggled to put his thoughts on this into words. I will summarize it in the nicest possible way by saying he thought that while his wage was honorable, my profit was dishonorable, or perhaps more accurately, that his wage paid by the government was consistent with the spirit of the public lands whereas my profit was not consistent
Me: I'm not sure why. My profit is similar to your wage in that it is the way I get paid for my effort on this land -- efforts that are generally entirely in harmony with yours as we are both trying to serve visitors and protect the natural resources here. But unlike your wage, my profit is also a return on the investment I have made. Every truck, uniform, and tool we use comes out of my profit, whereas you get all the tools you need paid for by your employer above and beyond your salary. Further, your salary is virtually guaranteed to you, short of some staggering malfeasance. Even if you do a bad job you likely would just get shunted to a less interesting staff position at the same salary, rather than fired. On the other hand if I do a bad job, or if one of my employees slips up, or even if some absolutely random occurrence entirely outside my control occurs (like, say, a flood that closes our operations) my profit can completely evaporate, or even turn into a loss. So like you, I get paid for my efforts here on public lands, but I have to take risk and make investments that aren't required of you. So what about that makes my profit less honorable than your wage?
Ranger: Working on public lands should be a public service, not for profit
Me: Well, I think you are starting to make the argument again that you should be volunteering and not taking a salary. But leaving that aside, why is profit inconsistent with service to the public? My company serves over 2 million visitors a year, and 99.9% give us the highest marks for our service. And for the few that don't, and complain about a bad experience, every one of those complaints comes to my desk and I personally investigate them. Do you do the same?
Why do I make such an effort? Part of it is pride, but part is because I understand that my margins are so narrow, if even 5% of those visitors don't come back next year -- because they had a bad time or they saw a bad review online -- I will make no money. Those 2 million people vote with their feet every year on whether they think I am adequately serving the public, and their votes directly affect how much money I make. Do you have that sort of accountability for your public service?
Postscript: Interestingly, though perhaps not surprisingly, the government ranger did not bring up what I would consider the most hard-hitting challenge: How do we know your profits are not just the rents from a corrupt, cronyist government contracting process. Two things let me sleep well at night on this question. The first is that I know what lobbying I do and political connections I have (zero on both) so I am fully confident I can't be benefiting from cronyism in the competitive bid process for these concession contracts. Of course, you don't know that and if our positions were reversed, I am pretty sure I would be skeptical of you.
So the other fact I have in my favor, which is provable to all, is that the recreation areas we operate are run with far lower costs and a demonstrably higher level of service than the vast majority of recreation areas run by the government itself. So while I can't prove I didn't pull some insider connections to get the work, I can prove the public is far better off with the operation of these parks in private hands.
Andy Dukes
PREMIER
Race is the biggest factor for what?
Bruddah IZ
DA
Black and Hispanic Acceptance to medical schools given GPA and MCATS.
Andy Dukes
PREMIER
But that would only show a bias if the attendance reflected a bias based on the acceptance data. It is pretty clear the acceptance data your article showed does not lead to a racial bias in actual attendance and graduation rate. So it is useless in trying to define racial bias.
Bruddah IZ
DA
Relegating White and Asian GPA's and MCATS to diversity while promoting Black and Hispanic GPA's and MCATS to meet diversity goals.
Bruddah IZ
DA
Graduation rates and attendance are racially biased?
Andy Dukes
PREMIER
Again, what is the outcome? Are we seeing a statistical correlation between actual attendance and the racial profile described in the acceptance data? Doe not look like it. In fact it looks exactly opposite.
Andy Dukes
PREMIER
Looks like a larger portion of Asians graduate from medical school than are represented by the countries Asian population.
Bruddah IZ
DA
What are the inputs given MCATS and GPA's.? I get that you are trying to justify reverse discrimination on the input side. Are you willing to not accept kids that are not Hispanic or black because of the color of their skin? I cut out the end of your post because you answered your own question. My answer would have been the same.
Bruddah IZ
DA
Great now I'm hungry for Pie. A big one too!! lol.
Anyone who argues Asians are not the top of the heap in academics, is well, not very... Asian.
Bruddah IZ
DA
And they love Apple pie too. Small ones for a smaller group and bigger ones for the extended ohana.
Wez
DA
LOL, can't he be all?