What Really Counts in Getting In
http://www.insidehighered.com/news/2006/05/31/admit
Do you want your daughter to get into Harvard? Get yourself to an art museum. But if your daughter doesn’t want to go, don’t worry about it. That’s because there is a correlation between parents who visit art museums having their children end up at highly competitive colleges. There’s no correlation between visiting art museums and ending up at a top college yourself.
That’s one of the surprising findings of one of the more unusual studies about which factors may or may not lead students to end up in college or at an elite college. The study, “Chess, Cheerleading, Chopin: What Gets You Into College,” appears in the new issue of Contexts, a publication of the American Sociological Association.
The study accepts the premise that academic preparation, as measured by grades and test scores, is central to college enrollment. But with many high school students trying for an edge in college admissions through résumé padding — and with parents hoping trying to find new ways to make their children Ivy-bound — the question remains: Which activities outside the classroom actually make a difference?
Jay Gabler, a Ph.D. student in sociology at Harvard University, and Jason Kaufman, an associate professor of social sciences at Harvard, tried to figure that out by using the National Educational Longitudinal Survey, a project of the U.S. Department of Education that involved tracking the educational progress and characteristics of thousands of people who were eighth graders in 1988. Because of the differing college-going rates of students of different races and ethnicities, Gabler and Kaufman examined only white students’ records. And their study only looked for correlations on whether students actually matriculated to colleges of various sorts, not whether they applied.
Of activities that take place out of school, the researchers found that participation in music or dance classes made it more likely that a student would enroll in a four-year college program, but had no correlation to whether students would end up at elite colleges. The only out-of-school activity that increased the likelihood of a student ending up enrolled at an elite college was parental visits to art museums.
Art classes and visits to public libraries (by parents or children) had no correlation to students matriculating either to colleges generally or to elite institutions.
Several activities that take place in school increased the likelihood that students would enroll at a four-year college, although not an elite college. These activities included school music groups, interscholastic team sports, and student government. Two types of participation made it more likely students would end up at elite colleges: yearbook or school newspapers and “hobby clubs.” (The authors regretted that there was no breakdown on the impact of various hobbies, so it is unclear if photography clubs do better or worse than chess or other topics.)
Numerous activities had no apparent impact on whether or not students will end up in college — elite or otherwise. School plays, interscholastic individual sports, intramurals, cheerleading, academic honor societies, public service clubs — no impact is clear from any of them.
What does all of this mean? The authors say that their research suggests that extracurricular activities do matter, but perhaps not just to be piled one on top of another for the longest possible list. One possibility the authors suggest is that this data may reflect the relevance of the theory of “cultural capital,” a term coined by Pierre Bourdieu, the late French sociologist.
Bourdieu wrote that knowledge of elite culture is in itself something of value — just like money or class status may have value in helping a person get ahead. Gabler and Kaufman note that many critics have questioned the relevance of Bourdieu’s theories – based on decades-old research in France — to American society today. But Bourdieu’s theories would explain why music or art classes have an impact, while cheerleading doesn’t.
And to the extent that parents who visit art museums (even without their children) are likely to talk about high art and culture, their children (if they pay even a little attention) will pick up cultural knowledge that their peers lack. And if those parents teach their children to name drop, there could be an impact, especially if it allows students to shine in interviews.
“A chance mention of the new Bertolucci film or the Ruscha show at the Whitney may tip an applicant from one pile to another,” the authors write.
So what activities did the authors of this paper participate in during high school? Their author ID’s indicate that Gabler was editor of the student paper and Kaufman was on the tennis team.
— Scott Jaschik
Comments
Wine & cheese?
Drinking wine, cheese eating, gossiping and viewing Walter Bayes, ‘The Cricket Green, Great Bentley’ is the yardstick used to measure for admittance of caucasians – I find it appaling – that elite college admissions employee use – what is next? Eating frogs!
If it is true – that this formula is used by the elite colleges – it is clearly discriminatory however this fluffy paper gives us another evidence of discriminatory tactic is in use against admitting African Americans into higher education.
David Robertson, Professor at SUNY, at 8:50 am EDT on May 31, 2006
Isn’t it probable that parents who visit art museums are more affluent than parents who don’t, and thus their children benefit from the colleges’ belief that the parents are more likely to make a contribution?
PN NJ, at 8:50 am EDT on May 31, 2006
Wine & Cheese?
Prof. Robertson,After reading this article, and then your comment, and then the article twice again, I fail to see where you make the leap that there is any indication that the things discussed in the article, seemingly drawn from a retrospective review of a limited number of cases, are actually considered, yet alone relied on, by any school in the admissions process. To further allege discrimination seems unfounded.
Richard Martorelli, Administrator at Ivy League, at 9:45 am EDT on May 31, 2006
Re: the narrow focus on Caucasions
While I understand why Prof. Robertson might consider that the decision to concentrate on one ethnic group a racist one, it is also possible that the presence of affirmative action might skew the results of this admittedly fluffy study. My guess is that the study’s authors wanted a group where activities counted, not their ethnicity.
Anonymous, Professor, at 9:45 am EDT on May 31, 2006
Mr. Robertson, African-Americans are just as capable of padding resumes with fluffy things as white people. In fact, some are even better!
PN probably has a good point: going to art museums is probably a proxy for wealth.
Personally, I view all things on resumes as padding, unless the student can demonstrate that they can compete with adults in adult fields and win without the help of their parents or schools. So, I count the patents or published works (though recent events have lead me to think that a lot of works published by younger people (usually women) are plagiarized, anyway.)
Larry, at 9:45 am EDT on May 31, 2006
Methodology
I would be inclined to say the same as the above about the art museum finding, but I would assume, or at least strongly hope, that the study’s authors controlled for income in the regression. If not, you could probably show that anything from eating caviar to having 3 cars gave your kid a better chance of going to an elite college...
The finding that visits to art museums by the students were insignificant doesn’t really match with the authors’ hypothesis of cultural capital (wouldn’t those students be even more well-informed than those who just picked up parental name-drops?) but maybe the number of students who visit art museums but whose parents DON’T is so small that if you control for /parental/ visits, the additional effect from students visiting couldn’t be captured.
Lindsay, at 9:45 am EDT on May 31, 2006
Ah, Professor Robertson being provocative again and playing his one note symphony! Pretty clear, however, that this article has nothing to do with formulas used by elite colleges for admission and everything to do with a correlational (though not a causative) relationship. But here are somewhat related issues I wish someone would address. Should elite schools admit the All American crew (need I add white) kid who is in the bottom 10% of his elite prep school class? Should those schools have set asides of 8% African American students (when, at least according to Shelby Steele, only about 1-2% should be admitted on a meritocratic basis)? Should we continue to have legacy admissions? How about those foundational or development admits whose parent donates a million bucks and who gets in under the standard “will be able to graduate"? Or does any of this matter since we are going to have a bottom quarter of the class anyway regardless of whether we admit a class of intellectual geniuses or not?
Patrick Mattimore, at 10:00 am EDT on May 31, 2006
What really counts in getting in
I haven’t read the article, but I imagine that the art museum visits are an epiphenomenon of a greater set of activities and circumstances. Children suffer their parents’ status in many societies and ours is one. Besides sharing a little (or a lot) in “elite cultural knowledge", the children of parents are also drawn into the competitive web that surrounds their parents, have positioned themselves with interesting and useful experiences that other students may not have been able to access ( European, African and Asian visits [including art museums], a summer job at the hospital or on an archaeological excavation or at the Field Musuem, for example), and they have the ability to access references of elite status as well. They are often able to put together all of these things ( with the help of their parents) in ways that most young people considering college do not. They are also more likely not to consider the huge expense of an elite college a barrier to their applying to them. All of these things and more are probably indicated by visits to art museums.
Tom Riley, Dean at NDSU, at 10:00 am EDT on May 31, 2006
This article made me smile. My 26-year-old son still recalls with horror our trips to the Met Museum of Art when he was younger and how we “tortured” him by “examining every painting with a magnifying glass for hours on end". (He’s exaggerating! It was only a couple of hours, no magnifying glass, and NOT every single painting!) Rats! Had I known about this research, I would have encouraged him to apply to ivy league schools. At least the “torture” may have paid off!
Ginny R, Director, Skills Center at College of St. Elizabeth, at 10:30 am EDT on May 31, 2006
Be careful in over-interpreting
Be careful with this study. It did not correlate chances of ADMISSIONS with these factors, only chances of ATTENDANCE. Since there are many factors involved in the admissions decisions made by colleges (grades, test scores, etc.), all this study really tells us is what we already know: if your parents are educated and financially well-off, you are more likely to ATTEND college than someone who comes from parents who aren’t. It does not really measure anyone’s chances of ADMISSIONS to any particular college or group of colleges.
Carolyn Lawrence, at 10:30 am EDT on May 31, 2006
Cultural awareness
I’m not sure if Colby counts as “elite,” but for me, it was a fantastic place to stretch my brain, form lifelong friendships, and stimulate my curiosity. When I applied to school, I applied only to private colleges, three of which were very competitive. It never occurred to me to do otherwise.
I knew from early childhood on that I would go to college and that I would go to the school that was the best fit both for my intellect and my personality. Yet many of people I meet today were not raised with that feeling.
So many of the people I meet who went to large public schools wish that they had an experience more akin to mine. It is not that they aren’t well-educated, they are, but they didn’t know they had options. Private schools in New England seemed unattainable, for reasons of both cost and connection.
These were not obstacles I considered. My father was disabled with a limited income, but my parents knew that a good school with a strong endowment could provide the necessary scholarships.
As it would happen, my mother and I (though not always together) have visited the Cleveland Museum of Art, as well as museums in other cities, far more times than we could possibly count. The idea that such habits may be indicative of the values and attitudes that affect one’s educational choices certainly rings true for me.
Heidi, Colby grad, at 10:45 am EDT on May 31, 2006
Corrections and clarification
I just read the article in Contexts. It’s brief and the details on methodology are woefully scarse, but it appears that the authors know their business even if the conclusions are of limited value. The usual SES suspects — parental income, student grades, test scores — were included as control variables, meaning that the positive association between museum attendance and elite college matriculation occurs ABOVE AND BEYOND the obvious contributions of these SES factors. So this is not about whether these students have parents who attend museums because they are affluent — affuence is controlled for. And I would hope the authors know their business well enough to figure out how to account for any intercorrelation between museum attendance and wealth, if they are indeed proxies for one another, as Larry speculates.
If we were to speculate on what museum attendance is a proxy for — I think it’s about a rich intellectual home life, NOT about wealth. I wonder if the authors were able to include parental educational levels in their model.
A correction for Carolyn: the dependent variable is “matriculation at an elite college", not college attendance. Also note that the sample included white students only for good methodological reasons.
Hoosier Prof, at 12:30 pm EDT on May 31, 2006
...correction, part two.
Whoops, now I have to correct myself. It appears that parental education IS included as a control variable.
The bottom line, in any case, is that this study goes further than I would think appropriate in suggesting that some kind of student activity helps a student get into an elite college. That kind of causal claim is rarely appropriate for a study of this kind. The authors do the same kind of thing those annoying write-ups of medical research do ("Coffee causes heart attacks!!!") — they confuse ‘association’ with ‘causation’.
Hoosier Prof, at 12:40 pm EDT on May 31, 2006
Points on the Curve
You know the kid I want to meet? The white Ivy matriculant-cheerleader whose parents regularly attend professional wrestling and dirt track racing. How did she work the admissions formula with her life? Let’s leaven the stats with a few case studies from various points on the curve.
Philoctetes, at 1:50 pm EDT on May 31, 2006
While we’re discussing causes and correlations...
...Larry, it’s a bit of a jump that plagiarists are young women.
Michele, at 1:50 pm EDT on May 31, 2006
I hope Larry’s “I count” is hypothetical and he’s not actually in a position to make any kind of admissions or hiring decisions. “Well, this applicant has a lot of original work, but she’s a woman, so it’s probably not her own.”
jcl, grad student, at 4:35 am EDT on June 1, 2006
What Really Counts In Getting In...
When I was young I was taught that the most important thing in life was “money.” As I aged, the most important thing became “attitude.” Now, that most important thing has migrated to “relationships.” I note that “relationships” is now giving way to, are your ready for this? —- “race!” Fully half of all the responses to this clearly race-neutral article are race-conscious and essentially deal with nothing but. I’m pretty fed up with race as the precursor of every societal function on the planet. It won’t be long before discussions of interplanetary travel and microscopic gall mites are reduced solely to matters of race. Personally, I’d rather go back to money.
Lloyd Rain, retired from higher ed, at 4:20 pm EDT on June 2, 2006
stereotypographics
JCL,
When females constitute the majority of students in US universities, it only follows that most plagiarists would be women, so long as men and women are equally likely to plagiarize.
I have noted, also, that the majority of the plagiarists in my classes are native English speakers. Although I have not tested this rigorously, I suspect that they are right-handed, as well.
Also, the majority of bad drivers in Miami are of Latin American origin.
Chydenius, Senior Fellow at Free Curricula Center, at 6:45 am EDT on June 6, 2006
http://www.insidehighered.com/news/2006/05/31/admit
Do you want your daughter to get into Harvard? Get yourself to an art museum. But if your daughter doesn’t want to go, don’t worry about it. That’s because there is a correlation between parents who visit art museums having their children end up at highly competitive colleges. There’s no correlation between visiting art museums and ending up at a top college yourself.
That’s one of the surprising findings of one of the more unusual studies about which factors may or may not lead students to end up in college or at an elite college. The study, “Chess, Cheerleading, Chopin: What Gets You Into College,” appears in the new issue of Contexts, a publication of the American Sociological Association.
The study accepts the premise that academic preparation, as measured by grades and test scores, is central to college enrollment. But with many high school students trying for an edge in college admissions through résumé padding — and with parents hoping trying to find new ways to make their children Ivy-bound — the question remains: Which activities outside the classroom actually make a difference?
Jay Gabler, a Ph.D. student in sociology at Harvard University, and Jason Kaufman, an associate professor of social sciences at Harvard, tried to figure that out by using the National Educational Longitudinal Survey, a project of the U.S. Department of Education that involved tracking the educational progress and characteristics of thousands of people who were eighth graders in 1988. Because of the differing college-going rates of students of different races and ethnicities, Gabler and Kaufman examined only white students’ records. And their study only looked for correlations on whether students actually matriculated to colleges of various sorts, not whether they applied.
Of activities that take place out of school, the researchers found that participation in music or dance classes made it more likely that a student would enroll in a four-year college program, but had no correlation to whether students would end up at elite colleges. The only out-of-school activity that increased the likelihood of a student ending up enrolled at an elite college was parental visits to art museums.
Art classes and visits to public libraries (by parents or children) had no correlation to students matriculating either to colleges generally or to elite institutions.
Several activities that take place in school increased the likelihood that students would enroll at a four-year college, although not an elite college. These activities included school music groups, interscholastic team sports, and student government. Two types of participation made it more likely students would end up at elite colleges: yearbook or school newspapers and “hobby clubs.” (The authors regretted that there was no breakdown on the impact of various hobbies, so it is unclear if photography clubs do better or worse than chess or other topics.)
Numerous activities had no apparent impact on whether or not students will end up in college — elite or otherwise. School plays, interscholastic individual sports, intramurals, cheerleading, academic honor societies, public service clubs — no impact is clear from any of them.
What does all of this mean? The authors say that their research suggests that extracurricular activities do matter, but perhaps not just to be piled one on top of another for the longest possible list. One possibility the authors suggest is that this data may reflect the relevance of the theory of “cultural capital,” a term coined by Pierre Bourdieu, the late French sociologist.
Bourdieu wrote that knowledge of elite culture is in itself something of value — just like money or class status may have value in helping a person get ahead. Gabler and Kaufman note that many critics have questioned the relevance of Bourdieu’s theories – based on decades-old research in France — to American society today. But Bourdieu’s theories would explain why music or art classes have an impact, while cheerleading doesn’t.
And to the extent that parents who visit art museums (even without their children) are likely to talk about high art and culture, their children (if they pay even a little attention) will pick up cultural knowledge that their peers lack. And if those parents teach their children to name drop, there could be an impact, especially if it allows students to shine in interviews.
“A chance mention of the new Bertolucci film or the Ruscha show at the Whitney may tip an applicant from one pile to another,” the authors write.
So what activities did the authors of this paper participate in during high school? Their author ID’s indicate that Gabler was editor of the student paper and Kaufman was on the tennis team.
— Scott Jaschik
Comments
Wine & cheese?
Drinking wine, cheese eating, gossiping and viewing Walter Bayes, ‘The Cricket Green, Great Bentley’ is the yardstick used to measure for admittance of caucasians – I find it appaling – that elite college admissions employee use – what is next? Eating frogs!
If it is true – that this formula is used by the elite colleges – it is clearly discriminatory however this fluffy paper gives us another evidence of discriminatory tactic is in use against admitting African Americans into higher education.
David Robertson, Professor at SUNY, at 8:50 am EDT on May 31, 2006
Isn’t it probable that parents who visit art museums are more affluent than parents who don’t, and thus their children benefit from the colleges’ belief that the parents are more likely to make a contribution?
PN NJ, at 8:50 am EDT on May 31, 2006
Wine & Cheese?
Prof. Robertson,After reading this article, and then your comment, and then the article twice again, I fail to see where you make the leap that there is any indication that the things discussed in the article, seemingly drawn from a retrospective review of a limited number of cases, are actually considered, yet alone relied on, by any school in the admissions process. To further allege discrimination seems unfounded.
Richard Martorelli, Administrator at Ivy League, at 9:45 am EDT on May 31, 2006
Re: the narrow focus on Caucasions
While I understand why Prof. Robertson might consider that the decision to concentrate on one ethnic group a racist one, it is also possible that the presence of affirmative action might skew the results of this admittedly fluffy study. My guess is that the study’s authors wanted a group where activities counted, not their ethnicity.
Anonymous, Professor, at 9:45 am EDT on May 31, 2006
Mr. Robertson, African-Americans are just as capable of padding resumes with fluffy things as white people. In fact, some are even better!
PN probably has a good point: going to art museums is probably a proxy for wealth.
Personally, I view all things on resumes as padding, unless the student can demonstrate that they can compete with adults in adult fields and win without the help of their parents or schools. So, I count the patents or published works (though recent events have lead me to think that a lot of works published by younger people (usually women) are plagiarized, anyway.)
Larry, at 9:45 am EDT on May 31, 2006
Methodology
I would be inclined to say the same as the above about the art museum finding, but I would assume, or at least strongly hope, that the study’s authors controlled for income in the regression. If not, you could probably show that anything from eating caviar to having 3 cars gave your kid a better chance of going to an elite college...
The finding that visits to art museums by the students were insignificant doesn’t really match with the authors’ hypothesis of cultural capital (wouldn’t those students be even more well-informed than those who just picked up parental name-drops?) but maybe the number of students who visit art museums but whose parents DON’T is so small that if you control for /parental/ visits, the additional effect from students visiting couldn’t be captured.
Lindsay, at 9:45 am EDT on May 31, 2006
Ah, Professor Robertson being provocative again and playing his one note symphony! Pretty clear, however, that this article has nothing to do with formulas used by elite colleges for admission and everything to do with a correlational (though not a causative) relationship. But here are somewhat related issues I wish someone would address. Should elite schools admit the All American crew (need I add white) kid who is in the bottom 10% of his elite prep school class? Should those schools have set asides of 8% African American students (when, at least according to Shelby Steele, only about 1-2% should be admitted on a meritocratic basis)? Should we continue to have legacy admissions? How about those foundational or development admits whose parent donates a million bucks and who gets in under the standard “will be able to graduate"? Or does any of this matter since we are going to have a bottom quarter of the class anyway regardless of whether we admit a class of intellectual geniuses or not?
Patrick Mattimore, at 10:00 am EDT on May 31, 2006
What really counts in getting in
I haven’t read the article, but I imagine that the art museum visits are an epiphenomenon of a greater set of activities and circumstances. Children suffer their parents’ status in many societies and ours is one. Besides sharing a little (or a lot) in “elite cultural knowledge", the children of parents are also drawn into the competitive web that surrounds their parents, have positioned themselves with interesting and useful experiences that other students may not have been able to access ( European, African and Asian visits [including art museums], a summer job at the hospital or on an archaeological excavation or at the Field Musuem, for example), and they have the ability to access references of elite status as well. They are often able to put together all of these things ( with the help of their parents) in ways that most young people considering college do not. They are also more likely not to consider the huge expense of an elite college a barrier to their applying to them. All of these things and more are probably indicated by visits to art museums.
Tom Riley, Dean at NDSU, at 10:00 am EDT on May 31, 2006
This article made me smile. My 26-year-old son still recalls with horror our trips to the Met Museum of Art when he was younger and how we “tortured” him by “examining every painting with a magnifying glass for hours on end". (He’s exaggerating! It was only a couple of hours, no magnifying glass, and NOT every single painting!) Rats! Had I known about this research, I would have encouraged him to apply to ivy league schools. At least the “torture” may have paid off!
Ginny R, Director, Skills Center at College of St. Elizabeth, at 10:30 am EDT on May 31, 2006
Be careful in over-interpreting
Be careful with this study. It did not correlate chances of ADMISSIONS with these factors, only chances of ATTENDANCE. Since there are many factors involved in the admissions decisions made by colleges (grades, test scores, etc.), all this study really tells us is what we already know: if your parents are educated and financially well-off, you are more likely to ATTEND college than someone who comes from parents who aren’t. It does not really measure anyone’s chances of ADMISSIONS to any particular college or group of colleges.
Carolyn Lawrence, at 10:30 am EDT on May 31, 2006
Cultural awareness
I’m not sure if Colby counts as “elite,” but for me, it was a fantastic place to stretch my brain, form lifelong friendships, and stimulate my curiosity. When I applied to school, I applied only to private colleges, three of which were very competitive. It never occurred to me to do otherwise.
I knew from early childhood on that I would go to college and that I would go to the school that was the best fit both for my intellect and my personality. Yet many of people I meet today were not raised with that feeling.
So many of the people I meet who went to large public schools wish that they had an experience more akin to mine. It is not that they aren’t well-educated, they are, but they didn’t know they had options. Private schools in New England seemed unattainable, for reasons of both cost and connection.
These were not obstacles I considered. My father was disabled with a limited income, but my parents knew that a good school with a strong endowment could provide the necessary scholarships.
As it would happen, my mother and I (though not always together) have visited the Cleveland Museum of Art, as well as museums in other cities, far more times than we could possibly count. The idea that such habits may be indicative of the values and attitudes that affect one’s educational choices certainly rings true for me.
Heidi, Colby grad, at 10:45 am EDT on May 31, 2006
Corrections and clarification
I just read the article in Contexts. It’s brief and the details on methodology are woefully scarse, but it appears that the authors know their business even if the conclusions are of limited value. The usual SES suspects — parental income, student grades, test scores — were included as control variables, meaning that the positive association between museum attendance and elite college matriculation occurs ABOVE AND BEYOND the obvious contributions of these SES factors. So this is not about whether these students have parents who attend museums because they are affluent — affuence is controlled for. And I would hope the authors know their business well enough to figure out how to account for any intercorrelation between museum attendance and wealth, if they are indeed proxies for one another, as Larry speculates.
If we were to speculate on what museum attendance is a proxy for — I think it’s about a rich intellectual home life, NOT about wealth. I wonder if the authors were able to include parental educational levels in their model.
A correction for Carolyn: the dependent variable is “matriculation at an elite college", not college attendance. Also note that the sample included white students only for good methodological reasons.
Hoosier Prof, at 12:30 pm EDT on May 31, 2006
...correction, part two.
Whoops, now I have to correct myself. It appears that parental education IS included as a control variable.
The bottom line, in any case, is that this study goes further than I would think appropriate in suggesting that some kind of student activity helps a student get into an elite college. That kind of causal claim is rarely appropriate for a study of this kind. The authors do the same kind of thing those annoying write-ups of medical research do ("Coffee causes heart attacks!!!") — they confuse ‘association’ with ‘causation’.
Hoosier Prof, at 12:40 pm EDT on May 31, 2006
Points on the Curve
You know the kid I want to meet? The white Ivy matriculant-cheerleader whose parents regularly attend professional wrestling and dirt track racing. How did she work the admissions formula with her life? Let’s leaven the stats with a few case studies from various points on the curve.
Philoctetes, at 1:50 pm EDT on May 31, 2006
While we’re discussing causes and correlations...
...Larry, it’s a bit of a jump that plagiarists are young women.
Michele, at 1:50 pm EDT on May 31, 2006
I hope Larry’s “I count” is hypothetical and he’s not actually in a position to make any kind of admissions or hiring decisions. “Well, this applicant has a lot of original work, but she’s a woman, so it’s probably not her own.”
jcl, grad student, at 4:35 am EDT on June 1, 2006
What Really Counts In Getting In...
When I was young I was taught that the most important thing in life was “money.” As I aged, the most important thing became “attitude.” Now, that most important thing has migrated to “relationships.” I note that “relationships” is now giving way to, are your ready for this? —- “race!” Fully half of all the responses to this clearly race-neutral article are race-conscious and essentially deal with nothing but. I’m pretty fed up with race as the precursor of every societal function on the planet. It won’t be long before discussions of interplanetary travel and microscopic gall mites are reduced solely to matters of race. Personally, I’d rather go back to money.
Lloyd Rain, retired from higher ed, at 4:20 pm EDT on June 2, 2006
stereotypographics
JCL,
When females constitute the majority of students in US universities, it only follows that most plagiarists would be women, so long as men and women are equally likely to plagiarize.
I have noted, also, that the majority of the plagiarists in my classes are native English speakers. Although I have not tested this rigorously, I suspect that they are right-handed, as well.
Also, the majority of bad drivers in Miami are of Latin American origin.
Chydenius, Senior Fellow at Free Curricula Center, at 6:45 am EDT on June 6, 2006
