Comments on: Deep in the Heart of Asshats

By: Feminist Law Professors » Blog Archive » “Baylor University is being called ‘the poster child for SAT misuse’ after the student newspaper revealed an unusual practice: paying admitted freshmen to retake the SAT and offering l

Fri, 17 Oct 2008 19:05:59 +0000

[...] the first line of this article in Inside Higher Ed. Via Historiann, who adds the usual colorful commentary and illustrations that make her so popular around these here [...]

By: ortho stice

ortho stice — Fri, 17 Oct 2008 14:05:52 +0000

Baylor’s initial scheme should not be surprising in an age of corporatized universities competing for higher “rankings.” I’m surprised more universities have not tried it.

The Times editorial opined: http://www.nytimes.com/2008/10/17/opinion/17fri3.html

By: Erica

Erica — Fri, 17 Oct 2008 00:02:05 +0000

I can’t wait

By: Historiann

Historiann — Thu, 16 Oct 2008 19:32:39 +0000

Hi Erica and Buzz–thanks for stopping by to comment. (Erica, I’ve got something for you especially–check back here tomorrow!)

As for Buzz’s comments about his religion homework: While I support the right of sectarian institutions to impose religious tests on their faculty, there is no question but that said religious tests limits the competition. Dropping the essay question on religion from their application process would open up the number of applications for faculty positions they could consider. That would be a straightforward way of increasing the competition in their job searches, and thereby increasing the quality and status of their new faculty.

I also might note that in my experience, religious institutions are no less exploitative than secular ones. My former employer, the University of Desperation, was a Catholic institution that regularly deployed the rhetoric of “family” and “community” when it wanted to extract uncompensated work from the faculty, but when we “family members” went to the administration with a problem, we were rebuffed and left on our own. I really felt for the fired Baylor junior faculty because of this–I’m sure they were told they were part of a Christian community, too.

This is why I prefer working at a public, secular, godless institution: it’s all business, and no one pretends that there’s some greater good that we should sacrifice for, outside of the meaning we see and the pleasure we take in our own work.

By: Buzz

Buzz — Thu, 16 Oct 2008 19:18:13 +0000

@Erica: I didn’t know you took the SAT twice. My SAT score went up 150 points between exams, but that was between my freshman and junior years, during which time my test-taking skills improved a great deal. After students are admitted to a university, they have little reason to study for another exam sitting, and I agree that Baylor is unlikely to improve their scores markedly with this stunt. Still, if the average improvement is only 20 points per student, that could have a nontrivial effect on their ranking.

The basic fact is that Baylor University is a messed up place. I applied for a job there at one point. The ad looked much like any other; it mentioned that Baylor was a Baptist institution, but lots of the colleges mentioned affiliations with churches, and I thought nothing of it. However, unlike all the other nominally religious colleges I applied to, Baylor sent back a note saying they couldn’t consider my application unless I also submitted an essay explaining how faith was a crucial part of my life. I never wrote back.

By: Erica

Erica — Thu, 16 Oct 2008 16:37:46 +0000

Seems like a huge waste of money, really. Nobody’s going to get a vastly higher score the second time they take it (my second score was slightly lower), unless the student accidentally ate the scantron the first time around.

That just makes scrounging for those few points all the more pathetic and sleazy.