Breezing Through The 'Mismatch' Debate

I have a time/task mismatch myself but I do want to zip through this NY Times article on Scalia's poorly articulated question about academic mismatch and affirmative action. There will be homework assigned, so get ready, and full speed ahead:

In an awkward exchange in Wednesday’s potentially game-changing Supreme Court arguments on affirmative action, Justice Antonin Scalia hesitantly asked whether it might be better for black students to go to “a slower-track school where they do well” than to go to a highly selective college, like the University of Texas, through some form of racial preference.

“I don’t think,” Mr. Scalia said, “it stands to reason that it’s a good thing for the University of Texas to admit as many blacks as possible.” He was addressing Gregory G. Garre, the lawyer defending the University of Texas at Austin’s affirmative action policy, which supplements the automatic admission of top-ranking students from all high schools across the state with the use of race as one factor in a “holistic” approach to admissions.

In asking such a pointed question, Mr. Scalia was stepping into a long debate over what has been called the mismatch theory of college admissions.

OK, it is interesting that Scalia was not a much more adept speaker (and the transcript does not bail him out; p. 66 ff). Anyone familiar with the argument knows he meant "some" black students, not all. (For simplicity I will operate in a black/white world, marginalizing Asians and Hispanics, but not for the first time). But Scalia surely knows the haters gonna hate. Of course, he also knows he has a lifetime appointment, so who's laughing now?

As to the theory:

The proponents of the “mismatch effect” say that large allowances based on a student’s race are harmful to those who receive them, that they learn less than they would if they attended a college more closely matched to their level of academic preparation, receive lower grades, become academically discouraged and socially segregated. Critics say that the “mismatch” research is based on flawed assumptions that cannot be validated by other researchers, and that the evidence is more likely to show that all students, regardless of race, benefit from enrolling at the most challenging college that will accept them.

We can work with that.

In layman’s terms, some see it as another form of the argument over whether getting a gentleman’s C at Harvard is better for one’s future than getting straight A’s at a lower-ranked university.

Ah, well. A second issue is whether discouraged students in over their heads drop to an easier major. So, a prospective scientist enters the STEM program at Harvard, is in over his head, and graduates with an Art Appreciation degree. His counterpart at Ohio State is in STEM classes that meet his background and abilities and graduates with a degree in computer science.

So is a Harvard art appreciation degree with a B average better or worse than a computer science degree with a b+ average fro OSU? And what does "better or worse" mean, anyway - earnings, life satisfaction, social network? Good luck answering that, let alone finding data.

But one issue is this - if (I say IF) students respond to academic mismatch by moving to an easier major, studies that looks exclusively at graduation rates are looking in the wrong place. We will revert to that.

Mr. Scalia’s comments drew a sharp response from Mr. Garre, the university’s lawyer. He said students admitted using their race as one of many criteria “fare better” academically over time than those admitted from the top 10 percent of every high school class, without regard to race.

And in remarks that seemed to allude to the now discredited “separate but equal” doctrine of education, Mr. Garre continued, “And frankly I don’t think the solution to the problems with student body diversity can be to set up a system in which not only are minorities going to separate schools, they’re going to inferior schools.”

Well, invoking "separate but equal" is just being inflammatory - colleges do sort their applicants in a way that local public schools do not.

As to the claim that the students admitted under ther Top Ten Percent program fare less well than their 'holistic' counterparts, I am surprised. From the transcript:

If you look at the academic performance of holistic minority admits versus the top 10 percent admits, over time, they ­­fare better.

OK, he said it. If he is comparing holistic minority admits versus Top Ten minority admits, I can rationalize it. The Top Ten program provides diversity because Texas public schools tend to be racially segregated by neighborhood. Its easy to imagine that a ten-percenter in an inner-city mostly black school could move to a wealthier lily-white suburban school and drop into the second quartile. Conversely, there might be in that mostly-white school a black kid in the 11-15th percentile who would be a much stronger college candidate than the inner-city kid.

So if both of them end up at UT, one by virtue of being a Ten Percenter and the second holistically, it would not be a surprise if the holistic minority admit outperformed his inner-city counterpart.

But is it likely that the group that missed the Ten percent cutoff outperforms everyone who passed that line? That would depend on who uses the Texas public schools:

During the 2014-15 school year, well over half of the state’s 5.2 million public school students were Hispanic. That’s up from 15 years ago, when about 40 percent of the state’s 4 million public school students were Hispanic. At the same time, the Asian student population doubled, but kids of Asian descent still make up a tiny portion — 4 percent — of the statewide student population.

Since the turn of the century, the white student population has plummeted by about a third — down from 43 percent of all students in 2000 to less than 29 percent during the last school year. Meanwhile, the black student population has remained largely the same, declining slightly in the past five years to less than 13 percent of the student population in the 2014-15 school year.

Well, ignoring Hispanics is ludicrous. part of the public school issue is 'white flight':

According to the voluntarily reported NCES data, about 57 percent of students enrolled in Texas private schools are white, 23 percent are Hispanic and six percent are black.

Well, OK - it may be that the public school system in Texas is so creaky that the holistic kids from the better schools outperform most of the kids from the majority of public schools. I'd like to dig up the numbers, and hope to soon.

Pressing on:

In the current case, Mr. Taylor is counsel on an amicus brief propounding the mismatch theory, on behalf of his co-author on that book, Richard Sander, a professor at the University of California, Los Angeles, law school. “Students who are admitted with far lower grades and test scores and other indicia of academic capability are almost certain to do badly academically, and we think, and this is more debatable, that they’re also likely to do worse in their careers and other departments of life than they would if they were getting good grades at some less prestigious school,” Mr. Taylor said.

He said the idea was not to reduce the number of black students going to college, but to admit them to schools where they would be more likely to succeed. “Martin Luther King didn’t go to a fancy college,” he said. “Thurgood Marshall didn’t go to a fancy college. Colin Powell didn’t go to a fancy college.”

OK.

Oren Sellstrom, one of the lawyers on a brief attacking the mismatch theory, said that “there is a vast body of social science evidence that shows exactly the opposite of what the mismatch theory purports to show, that actually minority students who benefit from affirmative action get higher grades at the institutions they attend, leave school at lower rates than others, and are generally more satisfied in higher education, and that attendance at a selective institution is associated with higher earnings and higher college completion rates.”

Hmm. The Journal of Economic Literature published a survey article on this very topic. It is described in the WaPo by Richard Sander himself, and it is inconclusive on this point:

JEL is one of the flagship journals published by the American Economics Association; it generally publishes articles that try to synthesize knowledge in a field, rather than those with new results. Two years ago, JEL’s editors decided to commission an article on the “mismatch” (or “peer effects”) debate.  Recognizing that this was an unusually controversial issue, the article was to be written by two economists with differing starting positions: Peter Arcidiacono, a Duke economist who has published several important studies on mismatch, and Mike Lovenheim, a Cornell economist who was skeptical about mismatch. When the authors completed a draft, JEL sent it to seven diverse peer reviewers — an unusually large number — to ensure the draft was critically examined. All seven recommended publication. JEL has a queue, but the article will probably appear in the next issue.

Given this process, it should not be surprising that the resulting article — “Affirmative Action and the Quality-Fit Tradeoff” — does not take thundering positions on any of the outstanding issues. Indeed, it finds that on many of the most important questions raised by the mismatch hypothesis, the available data is too scattered and too poor in quality to reach clear conclusions. Moreover, since the authors find there are “positive average effects of college quality” on a host of outcomes, any mismatch effect has to be large enough to outweigh these advantages. Nonetheless, the authors find persuasive evidence that such mismatch effects occur, particularly in law school and in science education.

We are slowly building towards the interesting stuff. Back to mismatch critics:

Mr. Sellstrom called the mismatch theory “paternalistic,” and said that the concern Mr. Scalia’s remarks raised for him was that, “At root he does not believe that students of color belong at elite institutions. I hope that’s not the case, but the tenor of the remarks certainly suggests that that is underlying his thinking.”

Yeah, yeah, haters gonna hate. Setting aside the bulk of the inflammatory response the "paternalistic" comment is spot on. As the JEL article notes:

At first blush, economists should be very skeptical of the mismatch hypothesis. After all, affirmative action just expands the choice set. If an individual believes a particular school would be too difficult, then the individual could simply attend another school. By revealed preference, the individual must be better off.

Ahh, but do we know enough to make informed choices?

Yet, even in the context of rational expectations, where student beliefs are right on average given their information sets, there are cases where under-represented groups could be made better off in the absence of affirmative action. This comes about because schools may have private information about match quality but are letting in lower match quality students in order to satisfy diversity goals. Thus, the information sets of both schools and students are the critical components in driving mismatch.

They also note that students are never told they are under-qualified but were accepted on a preference. Athletes generally know this, and students with a certain self-awareness might accurately guess. But Harvard is under pressure to meet their numbers achieve certain diversity goals, so they won't be telling candidates they are pretty marginal.

Well. In the context of big ticket decisions such as buying a home, Elizabeth Warren Democrats throw consumer sovereignty right out the window. Odd that they seem to respect the notion here. One might argue that if the DoE required colleges to disgorge a lot more data on enrollments, preferential dmissions, departmental and major transfers, and the like - the grist for these economists mill, in other words - consumer sovereignty could be protected and enhanced.

The Feds got more collegiate assault expulsions when they asked for it - I bet they could get this data overnight, if Team Obama was not in a Don't Ask, Don't tell modality on this topic.

The Ties closes with a heart-warming but utterly atypical example:

Christle Nwora, 21, a senior at the University of Texas and a member of its Black Student Alliance, was admitted because she was in the top 10 percent of students at Plano East Senior High School. She is a humanities major, and in a program that will send her to medical school in the fall. She said prestige had been a factor in her decision to go there.

“I think it goes to the value of my degree,” she said. “It’s one of the most recognizable college brands. We have a strong alumni network, which ranges all across the world.”

More power to her. Plano East Senior High School is in roughly the top third of public schools in Texas; Plano itself is a prosperous mostly-white city outside of Dallas. Since you didn't ask, the Plano East Senior High racial makeup is:

White (35.4%), Hispanic (25.6%), Asian (23.1%)

Asians? Yes:

As of the 2000 U.S. Census, of the foreign-born residents, 17% were from China, 9% from India, and 4% from Vietnam

...

The reputation of the Plano Independent School District has attracted many Indian residents.

So the young lady in question is not a Ten Percenter at a troubled school - she'd be a rock star a lot of places. Including the NY Times, which has never quoted me, so there we are.

We also see she is a state semi-finalist speaking extemporaneously on foreign affairs. Can we get her number to Ben Carson?

Comments

[Captain Hate]

Don't the donks implicitly agree with Scalia through their sporadic praises of community colleges? And boilerplate platitudes for HBCU?

[Lazybusy]

First but not foremost

[James D]

The much larger issue that nobody seems to talk about, is that a lot of kids, of all races, who go to college probably shouldn't be there in the first place.

Or at least they shouldn't be going directly from high school to a four-year residential college.

The idea that everyone who graduates high school should go directly to a traditional college for a bachelor's degree is insane, and it would be a very good thing if that became part of our national discussion.

Some kids should go to vocational school. Some should get a 2-year degree. Some should take a year or two to work a menial job and begin to figure out what they might want to do with their lives (and develop a little more maturity and self-discpline) and only then go to a four-year school. Etc.

Besides, according to what I read in the news, today's colleges are hotbeds of racism, microaggression and unchecked sexual violence. Why would anyone want to subject their children to that?

[Captain Hate]

Yes, the "everybody should go to college" canard is a hot steaming pile that needs to be flushed away.

RIP NBA stars Dolph Schayes and John "Hot Rod" Williams.

[boatbuilder, Esq., Lord of All He Surveys]

TM--For a guy with a time/task mismatch, you do prodigious work.

[MarkO]

This is of no interest to anyone who has ever argued a case.

[Jeff Dobbs]

Plano East was perhaps our greatest rival when I played high school baseball.

Boo Plano East!

[Jeff Dobbs]

I missed the homework assignment. Is it a group assignment? Do we get to pick our partners? Because if it's about education, I call dibs on rse.

[lyle]

Something I don't believe I've ever done before, repost from a dying thread:

http://sultanknish.blogspot.com/2015/12/can-left-learn-to-love-isis.html

Mr. Knish makes the very convincing claim that the treasonous left will come to regard ISIS as an ally much like it made itself fellow travelers with the Soviets. The only difference is that ISIS is not--yet--identifying and recruiting the useful idiots as the Rooskies did. I don't disagree with a single word of this piece. To wit:

Obama and Hillary contend that ISIS cannot be defeated militarily. And if it cannot be defeated militarily, the only options are Cold War containment or diplomatic outreach. It’s not too hard to imagine the arguments that will be made for the latter at the expense of the former. They were the same arguments that were made and are still being made by the left for engagement with Communist terror regimes.

ISIS has not done anything that the Soviet Union did not do. Its ideology is thoroughly different, but both were built on swamps of atrocity, mass murder, mass rape, ethnic cleansing and raw butchery. If the left could serve the Soviet Union, who is to say that it won’t learn to love the Islamic State?

So sue me. (See, I tied it back to jurisprudence, after all.)

[clarice]

excellent, T M. I have seen the mismatch with my own eyes--kids from underperforming schools admitted to the Ivies to make them look good and forgoing their dream majors to end up with worthless Studies degrees. And if you don't think their desire to graduate these kids even by lowering standards is also in play read Michelle Obama's senior thesis.

The top 10 percent solution is a silly punt. The top ten percent at the best public schools in most states is head and shoulders over the top ten percent in all the other schools. My old high school has now become an urban dump--with nursery schools, vocational classes and courses taught in 4 languages.It used to churn out ranks of professionals. The top ten percent there are not even in the same universe as the top ten percent in a school like Nicolet in Milwaukee's suburbs. A deeper look at the Univ of Wisconsin's records since it adopted the ten percent solution will show these kids admitted though poorly qualified take longer to graduate and drop out more often. We contribute to a program that seeks out talented kids in those schools and actually prepares them in summer classes and otherwise for college work.
All this AA stuff might soothe liberal consciences, but it's a band aid over the rot of the public school system and harmful to the intended beneficiaries. And I haven't even mentioned that black kids from wealthy, well-educated families are presently getting admission boosts for which nothing in their background warrants.

[cathyf]

Perhaps a little rephrasing could be useful:

Among MAA students (Merely Average Academically), white MMA students are given a lifelong unfair advantage by being steered into the colleges which are appropriate to their academic talents. They learn more there, and are more successful there, than the MAA students of "preferred" racial/ethnic groups, who are lured into schools which are mismatched to their abilities.

[Stephanie]

About that lake they are searching...

No one in the media has noticed, but couldn't they be searching for the missing GoPro video camera(s)? The media just assumes it is a 'hard drive.'

[Cecil Turner]

Academic mismatch and affirmative action are absolutely the biggest issue facing the nation right now. If you're going to allow teams with shall we say "challenged" seasons into bowl games, there's gotta be a fairer way. Bringing academics into postseason play confuses everyone.

How can the Longhorns, with a 5-7 record, lose out to worse teams in a bowl bid just because of a faulty academic performance rating? When stuff like this happens, you know there's something rotten going in in the Big 12.

Finally, who is this Fisher kid? How fast does he run the 40? [What? Fisher is a girl? This ain't about football?] You people are crazy.

[Buckeye]

Stephanie

Could be looking for the GoPro camera(s), but likely the SD cards would be pulled and ditched also.

If the divers can find the SD cards if they were removed, I will be seriously impressed.

[Dave (in MA)]

I'm suffering from reader's block.

[Threadkiller]

The other mosque:

http://www.shiapac.org/2015/12/05/deobandi-radicalisation-at-rizwan-farooks-mosque-and-the-san-bernardino-tragedy/

[sbw]

whether getting a gentleman’s C at Harvard is better for one’s future than getting straight A’s at a lower-ranked university

This tiptoes perilously close to a future federal requirement for employment quotas for lemonade stands.

[Cecil Turner]

whether getting a gentleman’s C at Harvard is better for one’s future than getting straight A’s at a lower-ranked university

There's also the cost-benefit analysis for the [Asian] person who didn't get admitted so the affirmative action one could.

[daddy]

Well TM,

If they just decided not to issue grades like what ManTran says happens during the first year at CalTech, problem solved.

[Captain Hate]

404's barely trained rat, Earnest, screwed up and said ISIS before quickly correcting himself to ISIL in an otherwise nonstop stream of lies. Let the beatings commence.

[Old Lurker]

Who's badmouthing the Gentleman's C?

Huh?

[clarice]

No such thing at the Ivies any more except in STEM classes.

[Ignatz Ratzkiwatzki]

Congrats to Barry, Hillary and the Dems as Majority Of Americans Oppose ‘Assault Weapons’ Ban For First Time In 20 years Of NYT Polling.

[rse]

Not me OL.

I have my final NYC schedule. Get in Tuesday the 19th late afternoon and out mid-morning on sunday the 24th. Gotta go find that Campbell Apartment.

Years ago we had a board meeting over in York, UK. After a summer in college at Oxford I will admit I was looking forward to a pint of bitters. I got to hotel and then went off to ramble around York before our area manager was to pick me up that evening. My motto, please try not to be shocked, is have book and off I go even if it's by myself. I sit in a well-located pub, reading and quaffing a few. That night the manager was horrified I was sitting alone in a pub for several hours by myself lest I give the wrong signal.

I laughed and said "Not if anybody looked to see what I was reading." Oh. Well.

[Old Lurker]

Seriously true, Clarice.

YL2, 4th year med making the rounds interviewing for her residency had an interview last week where one of the docs speaking with her, after flipping through her file, said "I see you got a B+ in XXX in your freshman year at Columbia. What's the story about that?"

Really?

Good thing I found and burned my own report cards that I came across going through Mom's things.

[daddy]

Just got notified that another phony Credit Account is somehow being charged to me.

I've mentioned over the last few months how my info has been reported as hacked multiple times: Company notified me, plus some other agencies, and somebody tried to open a Discovery Card in my name a few months back.

I shot that down and did the Eqifax Credit route.

Now I am being badgered by Barkley's(sp) Bank, them believing that I have been writing checks to the tune of $14,000 via some Hawaiian Air Credit Card. Idiocy.

I have no such thing, but it is a hassle having to deal with all this crap, as they act like you are guilty until proven innocent. I refuse to give out any personal info but just tell them they're nuts.

Also Momma just said that one of the Equifax Credit Security type companies just got hacked of their data.

geez.

To the dogs.

[daddy]

I sit in a well-located pub, reading and quaffing a few. That night the manager was horrified I was sitting alone in a pub for several hours by myself lest I give the wrong signal.

Rse,

I've been giving off the wrong signal then for at least 25 years now, and I plan to give it off after again after Christmas if I ever get my Indian VISA back.

BTW, the rascals cancelled my 2 days in Cambridge layover and now I'm scheduled to sit in some secure Paris Airport Hotel for I think 5 days. Is "bastardo's" the proper way to say it in Italiano?

[Buckeye]

OL

Buckeye Jr. got one A- during undergrad which meant he graduated 3rd out of a class of ~7000.

He said he was ask (teased more like it) during an interview for residency but they let it slide because it was in a graduate level Molecular Genetics class.

I probably didn't even spell it correctly.

[rse]

Buckeye-my dad's half-brother was only about 3 years older than me. He was at MIT when I was in high school. He tells me he is going to summer school. I knew it was NOT because he was struggling. Seems they only taught the 6th semester of calc in the summer and I asked what one did in a 6th semester. The answer was "invent new theorems." I remember not being fond of working with the existing ones.

[Old Lurker]

Our kids would like each other, Buckeye.

YL2's excuse was she was still touring full time with a ballet company her freshman year and just goofed up with that one class. Her interviewer laughed it off but then observed that they had pulled the files on all current residents at that program and found the lowest undergraduate grade reported of any of them was an A-. She was not amused.

BTW she got an A+ in Molecular Genetics I think.

:-)

[Ignatz Ratzkiwatzki]

Suddenly I feel very stupid.
Think I'll go whittle on a rock.

[Old Lurker]

I'm with RSE.

My kids did say that Number Theory was a hard course. I looked at the work and said I did not see a number anywhere in it so that must be the problem.

[Old Lurker]

Before you go away Iggy. Was this you bidding over the phone?

http://www.foxnews.com/leisure/2015/12/11/156-ferrari-fetches-28-million-at-nyc-car-auction/?intcmp=hpff

[lyle]

I aced all my music theory classes. Does that count for anything? :)

[lyle]

Even dead Black Widows are repulsive:

http://www.foxnews.com/us/2015/12/11/martyr-scorned-body-san-bernardino-jihadist-bride-unclaimed/?intcmp=hpbt3

[Dave (in MA)]

Trending: Willard Scott: NBC and 'Today' Show Weatherman Announces Retirement From TV

Trending: Apparently Willard Scott, NBC and 'Today' Show Weatherman Is Still On TV

Trending: Apparently Willard Scott, NBC and 'Today' Show Weatherman Is Still Alive

[Daddy on the new iPhone]

Don't worry Igg. I can get u a Masters or Doctorate in AricanAmerican Studies from UNC Chapel Hill in about 30 minutes. How's your jump shot?

[Old Lurker]

Lyle, you know music and math live in the same corner of the brain, right?

[lyle]

Don't feel bad, Ig. You've got someone out there who only wishes you love:

http://hotair.com/archives/2015/12/11/big-news-from-the-ap-hillary-clinton-is-preaching-love-and-kindness/

Today, Clinton rarely ends her remarks without asking her audience to consider adding some “love and kindness” to their daily lives.

[DrJ]

Lyle, you know music and math live in the same corner of the brain, right?

While the plural of anecdotes is not data, all of the high-school state Math prize winners in my region were in the Jr. Symphony (me included) save for one. He was a Jazz pianist, and also a friend.

[Old Lurker]

Suggesting 60% of Republican Primary Voters might need to reconsider their beliefs:

"Sen. Lindsey Graham Friday knocked the GOP’s “visceral” “dislike of President [Barack] Obama” during an interview on Boston Herald Radio. “Well there’s about 40 percent of the Republican primary voter who believes that Obama was born in Kenya and is a Muslim,” Graham said, adding “there’s just a dislike for President Obama that is visceral. It’s almost irrational.” Graham noted the Republican party is “not gonna win 270 electoral votes if you don’t grow the vote with the Hispanic community.”

[Buckeye]

OL

I will tell him he should have been studying with YL2.

rse

I remember sweating bullets over diffie Q. There were honors calculus classes for the Engineering kids that I avoided, figured it would cut into my beer drinking and girl chasing.

I was a straight A student in those subjects.

[lyle]

That's great news, OL! So great that I'll humblebrag some more: I also aced three semesters of Calculus before switching majors. :)

[Threadkiller]

40%??

Is that this mysterious base I here tell doesn't exist?

[Old Lurker]

See Lyle!

[lyle]

Don't sell yourself short, Miss Lindsey. There's a dislike of you that probably equals or exceeds that of Barry.

[rse]

Buckeye-Red has asked why anytime she meets someone whose parents went to my alma mater about the same time they always say they remember me and grin.

Who says studying and having fun do not mix?

[Old Lurker]

Judging by his polling, Lyle that number seems close to 99%.

[Old Lurker]

"Who says studying and having fun do not mix?"

Me?

[lyle]

I was being charitable, OL. And loving. Love and kindness is all the rage these days...

[lyle]

But not happiness. Happiness is not good. Per Insty linking to the Slimes:

Happiness Doesn’t Bring Good Health, Study Finds. “The new study says earlier research confused cause and effect, suggesting that unhappiness made people ill when it is actually the other way around.”

[Old Lurker]

Love is never having to say you're sorry, Lyle.

[lyle]

Burge responds to Granny:

Iowahawk takes a more sober look at American under attack from ISIS and other forms of radical Islam and responds, “You’re confused, Grandma. This isn’t Woodstock, it’s Altamont.”

[lyle]

Love is never having to say you're sorry, Lyle.

Whew, boy! If there's something a Clinton is good at it's...never saying sorry.

PS. Doesn't writing that force you to pay a royalty to Al Gore, OL?

[Old Lurker]

you are quick

[JMHanes]

I always thought there was no discipline where you end up confronting the Really Big Questions faster than in higher math. Unfortunately, I dropped calculus 3 weeks in, when I realized I wasn't going to be able to whiff the homework all semester and then just cram for the exam.

[Buckeye]

Another story that is "on topic".

My nephew did graduate from Ohio State with a Computer Science degree (actually Computer Engineering, but close enough). Guess he wanted to follow his uncle's footsteps.

Between his Junior and Senior year he did an internship at Microsoft working on Xbox, the ultimate dream job for a nerdy gamer.

He was the only Caucasian of 17 kids that summer doing the Microsoft internship, all the rest were Asian and nearly all the rest were from West Coast schools.

They liked him well enough that Microsoft paid for him to go to grad school and now he is back in Redmond as a principal XBox architect. A couple of the Asian kids from his internship now work for him.

Now I think I would like to follow his footsteps;)

[Threadkiller]

http://www.nbcnews.com/news/us-news/muhammad-ali-hits-trump-misguided-murderers-sabotaging-islam-n477351

Cavuto is promoting this a "Trump picks a fight with Ali!"

[Old Lurker]

JMH "I dropped calculus 3 weeks in, when I realized I wasn't going to be able to whiff the homework all semester and then just cram for the exam."

Only difference between you and me is I forgot to drop the course.

[Threadkiller]

Donald J. Trump retweeted
5h5 hours ago

Ted Cruz ‏@tedcruz The Establishment's only hope: Trump & me in a cage match. Sorry to disappoint -- @realDonaldTrump is terrific. #DealWithIt

[Jack is Back! (On Alert!)]

We finally made it to Philly and our hotel on Rittenhouse Square. It felt like it took just as long to drive down 17th street as it did to get to Philly. Lots of blue and gold. Not much camo or green and gray.

They both get up at 0530 for the bus trip south and north. Walk On is scheduled for 1230 and we want to be there for that.

Go Navy - Beat Army!

[Steve]

Newsmax TV Live News Stream

http://commoncts.blogspot.com/2015/12/newsmax-tv-live-news-stream.html

[Buckeye]

JiB

If Frederick hasn't seen the Independence Hall and the Liberty Bell, probably ought to check it out on the way to dinner.

Go Navy!

[Cecil Turner]

FBI San Bernardino Shooting Investigation Stymied by White House Politics (H/T Insty):

A SOFREP source confirmed that after the shooting, Obama held a meeting in the Oval Office with his National Security Council, the attorney general, and the directors of the DHS, FBI, and NSA, in which a directive was given to downplay the terrorism angle.

And they have a nifty little flightradar pic I think they stole from Hit.

[Miss Marple 2]

Dana Perino on The Five said the big memecoming from the elite is that "You have a better chance of being struck by lightning than by being in a terroroist attack." Meanwhile, they are telling everyone that climate change is what they need to be worried about.

She says the American people aren't buying this and that is the problem Obama has.

I would add that given that, I expect another speech or two.

[Jack is Back! (On Alert!)]

CT,

I think it took the FBI 10 hours or so to ID the perp even though everyone and his goat knew his name, connected the dots and wrote Terrorism. Hard to believe we still have FBI directors, agents and other functionaries willing to play along this game and not resigning or going public.

Wonder what they'd call a mushroom cloud?

[Miss Marple 2]

Jack,

They would call it pollution and say we needed to step up our carbon reduction.

[Ignatz Ratzkiwatzki]

--Before you go away Iggy. Was this you bidding over the phone?--

Had the bidding stopped at 28 cents I would have been in with both feet, OL.

I recall the late eighties boom and bust in cars and believe this one will be as or even more spectacular once the QE sails over the horizon.
Last time it was largely driven by the Japanese bubble. This time it's worldwide. Time for a vacation in the South Seas, or perhaps Holland.

[clarice]

jmh--you are talking to one of the biggest cram at the last minute people on earth. Even for bar exams. I can't imagine even signing up for calculus.

[pagar a bacon, ham and sausage supporter]

These police probably do not take orders from the establishment.

http://www.truthandaction.org/germany-now-sharia-police-legally-patrol-streets-enforcing-islamic-law/

[henry]

I went to Yale largely because I could say I graduated from Yale and no one would ask what my grades were. ;)

[Janet]

All this AA stuff might soothe liberal consciences, but it's a band aid over the rot of the public school system and harmful to the intended beneficiaries. And I haven't even mentioned that black kids from wealthy, well-educated families are presently getting admission boosts for which nothing in their background warrants.

SO true. Encouraging strong 2 parent families & fixing the rot in our public schools is the answer.
Any fixes happening at the college level are about 20yrs too late....band aid is exactly right.

[maryrose]

I had a hard time getting through Statistics so I never even considered Calculus
I have administered an AP Calculus exam however

[maryrose]

In my career as a counselor I saw many disappointed students denied admission just so AA student or football player could get in
We started telling w
Caucasian kids to forget applying to the University of Michigan

[DrJ]

Would it be immodest to mention that I did not miss a single point all semester in Differential Equations? Homework, tests and final? Easiest course I ever had.

[Janet]

I haven't even mentioned that black kids from wealthy, well-educated families are presently getting admission boosts for which nothing in their background warrants.

and that point is spot on too.
There is all kinds of nonsense with giving anyone special treatment because of skin color or heritage. All the mixed race kids now...
and what exactly is the definition of a Latino?
skin color? speaks Spanish? their heritage? their last name?

[Ignatz Ratzkiwatzki]

Yes, Doc, I believe it would.:)

[An 'F' in Spanish, yet I learned a lot. It was just too high a level for me.]

It's funny, when I first encountered the change of rate of a change of rate in an elementary physics class, I knew I didn't have the math to deal with it. Twice, formally, later, I essayed courses in diff and integ. calculus and I didn't do well, but those were two bad years for me academically, anyway.

I often brag that I had the same frosh grades as George W. Bush and John F. Kerry.

[Stephanie]

new fred

[Cecil Turner]

Wonder what they'd call a mushroom cloud?

Extreme hyper-localized man made climate change?

[Mahon]

Another reason why kids may chose to go to a school where they are "over-matched" is that the top schools give them generous financial packages in order to make their numbers. Anything that's rare and desirable will be subject to bidding wars.

And BTW the gentleman's C is now the lady's and gentleman's A-, in part due to the general collapse of standards and in part because with few exceptions the top schools now only admit very smart kids, which wasn't as true 50 years ago.