alt Hacker NewsYeah, there’s really no way around it when you have more qualified students than slots, unless you just mark each applicant as qualified or not and run a lottery.
But they do have to “craft a class” to some extent. An obvious example is athletic recruiting, but some schools are consciously thinking about populating other extracurriculars, like marching bands or orchestras.
And you also don’t want a class that’s all computer science majors or zero philosophy majors. I imagine they consider other factors as well. The admissions staff may be liberal, but I’m guessing at most schools they deliberately admit some outspoken conservatives.
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No they don’t “have” to do any of this as evidenced by the fact that the US is the only country where it happens. In most countries it would (rightly) be considered strange to care how good someone is at sports or marching band when evaluating their ability to study academic subjects (the actual purpose of a university).
> An obvious example is athletic recruiting
Itself a very US-specific thing. So much so that trans athletes in college sports were a focal point of a propaganda campaign that resulted in Trump winning.
I don't think any large European country even has athletic admissions, outside of maybe Olympic-level athletes.
You could have quotas for each program. And then just set exams differently for each. Removes the "general education" as major, but most other countries find that one insane thing in first place. University is already for specialisation. High school is place were general education should happen.