Pages

Friday, November 9, 2018

Hard to see the scandal

The article from the Sacramento Bee shown on the left leaves the implication that there is some kind of scandal because applicants to UCLA and other universities pay an application fee, but many applications are rejected. It's unclear why that fact should be seen as a scandal.

Calculations of the revenue obtained are simply applicants times the fee. There is no mention in the article of the fact that the application fee can be waived based on family income, etc. Unless the number of applicants used in the calculation removes those who received fee waivers, the estimated revenue must be an overstatement.

There is no calculation or estimate in the article as to the cost of processing an application, successful or not. Note that some successful applicants - presumably including some who got fee waivers - don't come. Is it a scandal that they imposed a cost on the university without coming? We seem to have a non-story. Slow news day?

Full article at https://www.sacbee.com/news/politics-government/capitol-alert/article221386570.html

PS: If you think the article above is not hinting at scandal and is just presenting data, take a look below at how the conservative Flashreport news aggregation site is portraying the piece:

No comments: