My reading of it is they're going to help groups who get lower than average grades with additional tutoring programs trying to make their group ave equal the school ave, but they won't ask the teacher to mark their work differently. I don't agree with this policy.

I hope its correct.

http://reason.com/blog/2014/07/22/u-wisc...

?

The person who wrote the original article critical of the UW policy is a well-respected UW professor. This policy is not something I suspect most people here would support. I don't expect it will continue.

Keep in mind the person who wrote the article (Madness in Madison) critical of this, Dr. Lee Hansen, is a UW professor and is well respected here.

The man who wrote the article critical of the UW policy of race-based grade discrimination, Dr. Lee Hansen, goes to church with me. He's a good guy.

He already found that out. He probably should have done Teach America (where they supplement your salary with food stamps) instead of increasing his micro biology knowledge. Probably would have a better chance.

This is just another attempt to get us off track of the real issues (not AJA, but the article itself). I graduated high skool (sp), and had about two years of college (part time) before I was drafted in 1966 at age 25 (between wives). After I won the war in Vietnam I came home and completed a little more of my education at night skool(), and even graduated from a technical school in electronics. I got a job with a great company, listed my education, and I know no one ever checked out my grades. I even doubt they checked the validity of my educational claims, just like Obama's. Do companies operate any differently these days? I cood (sp) have had all "D's". How wood (sic) they no (sic) how smart I really is (sic)? What difference does it make, what were Obama's grades in college, what courses did he take? No one cares, so forget about it and go back to what happened in Benghazi, IRS targeting, NSA collecting Galt's Gulch members comments and email, open borders, the important stuff. Sorry AJA, no offense to you, only to the article itself. I just couldn't pass up the opportunity. These are just my thoughts, I kood (sp) be wrong.

is it any wonder why we have dumb graduates when they have dumb teachers. the university is now catching up with how the grade schools have performed for 40 years. welcome to the usa dumbed down country of the world.

This is, of course, outrageous. However, outrageous is a word that can no longer express the true outrage of any rational thinker because it is now used so often that it is becoming meaningless. The fact that such an idea is even being considered, let alone carried out, is beyond the pale and sounds the death knell of higher education. We are about to be living in the Land of the Marching Morons.

I feel (whoa oo oo) that in the last decade I'm in that situation alot. Something glaringly apparent that "spokespeople" claim is exactly the opposite. The circuit court ruling today for example. The new press secretary says "This ruling has no meaningful effect on ACA." Really? Or we have a "humanitarian situation" on the Border. what?

This happened to my nephew. High grades and denied at UW. He ended up going to Marquette. He is out now working in a lab at Mayo and is applying to med school.

That intrigues me. I think you will find some fascinating reading, at any rate.

Any more hints on your story line?

Jan

Thanks I'll check out this link. I suspect some of his finding could support the story I'm working on.

Let me add a different note to this conversation. Just yesterday, I included the addy of a neat blog on Paleoanthropology (specifically, Paleo-genetics). John Hawks is one of the leaders in the genetics of the really ancient human landscape, including population genetics and the gene flow from other species into H. sapiens. His blog is generally courteous, but he cuts little slack to professional colleagues who present poor science in their findings. John Hawks is heavily involved with the Rising Star dig in South Africa, that has a chance of totally revising our view of our ancient lineage. He also recently created a Paleoanthropology course for Coursera that had an initial sign up of 30,000 students (though the final tally was only a few hundred). (I believe the UW told him to take a camera crew and fly all over the world to film the on-site digs and interviews for the course.)

He is a professor at...you guessed it...UW-Madison. So, while I do not know much about UW in other respects, I can say that their Paleoanthropology department is terrific. There has been only one hint of anything other than a merit-based approach in his work: a team of all women anthropologists were selected to squeeze through the crack to dig the Rising Star find. (That they were the smallest anthropologists was definitely a point in their favor, but I also think that the U of SA was making a statement as to the support of women in Anthropology. There is a bit of a backstory here...)

If you would like to peruse the work of a dynamite brain-riding Paleoanthropologist who has done very nice work in the introgression of Neanderthal and Denisovan genes into the human genome, please check out www.johnhawks.net. And - somehow - this is the other side of the coin from the article above and from the rep that UW-Madison apparently has.

Jan

What this means to me is this. "historically underrepresented racial/ethnic’ means that this category of people are either :

1) Too damn stupid or lazy to do well so they have to be "given" grades thereby completely diminishing the value of the grade, of;
2) "historically underrepresented racial/ethnic’ actually ARE three steps behind whites on the evolutionary scale and totally incapable of getting good grades based on work and effort.

PICK ONE!!


“Professors, instead of just awarding the grade that each student earns, would apparently have to adjust them so that academically weaker, ‘historically underrepresented racial/ethnic’ students perform at the same level and receive the same grades as academically stronger students,” he wrote.

Did not Rand say that racism was the lowest form of collectivism?

The only thing is: this makes explicit what I always assumed was implicit.

One great thing about shrugging - no longer will the sweat of my brow be forcefully taken from me and redistributed to these ridiculous sausage factories.

I am so *sick* of thinking my tax dollars fund these f'ing looney bins.

Time for a reverse-racism challenge?

Yes, I saw that too.
Think whoever wrote the language meant it to be sufficiently nebulous to allow them that ability to use it as they choose. However, I doubt the document is enforceable. Now, I suspect they are backing away from the language and "clarifying" its scope to avoid it being openly challenged and shut down using the Michigan's race/sex/religion info prohibition precedent.
Would be nice for some group that cannot easily be ignored to write a letter to the college asking 1) what the language specifically means with respect to distribution of grades and race, and 2) how distribution of grades based on race benefits education or in any meaningful way is compliant with accreditation standards.

$5Au would really hate to have to write a syllabus incorporating this crap.