[rkique]

* allow people to pay millions to go to college; allow this to fund student aid for other students. Explicitly stop using it to build buildings

Most elite colleges (not the UCs though) offer 100% need-based aid to accepted students and are need blind in the admissions process. This comes directly from the endownment or the rich alumni and donors already.

* stop having all of these overfunded and weirdly inappropriate sports institutions as a core part of academia.

I completely agree.

* stop with massively-inflated grades that allow the rich-but-undercapable kids to graduate with the appearance of successful academics. They can buy their way in but they have to do as well as everybody else after that.

They do have to do as well as everyone else. Grade inflation is a school-wide phenomenon, but GPA in general is a poor indicator of academic performance: all of the prospective med school students at my school are being advised to apply to colleges which practice grade inflation. The grading system at colleges is taken into account by graduate and preprofessional programs.

* ensure that the influx of money from rich kids' applications doesn't go to administrators in any way, as that would incentivize them to over-prioritize these people.

The admissions office is somewhat decoupled from the rest of the institution, and receive fixed salaries -- this problem does not exist.

[MiroF]

> 100% need-based aid to accepted students

With the little weird caveat that poor students at top institutions have to work doing things like cleaning the bathrooms of the richer kids as part of their "term-time work expectation" for receiving financial aid.

[trexmix]

I have never seen or heard of that happening. My brother goes to an Ivy on a fully need based scholarship

[MiroF]

At Harvard at least, there is a "dorm crew", comprised mostly of poorer students meeting their term-time work requirements that come with finaid, that is responsible for cleaning the in-suite bathrooms.

I think I recall recently reading that some schools might have finally eliminated the requirement (maybe, Yale?) but I'm not sure. It was definitely the case at Harvard as of ~March 2020. (but probably not for this year for obvious reasons!)

[finolex1]

Yale has a `student income contribution`, where students on finanical aid are expected to work in some term-time jobs. However these jobs are virtually all administrative (doing paperwork, making calls, etc.), research or teaching assistant-ships. I have not heard of poorer students doing any cleaning.

[MiroF]

Here's a brief article on the practice https://www.thecrimson.com/article/2019/4/8/dorm-crew-tweets...

[ajkjk]

> The admissions office is somewhat decoupled from the rest of the institution, and receive fixed salaries -- this problem does not exist.

It's not the admissions office that that was targeted at. The donations today go to programs, buildings, etc -- things that involve lots of administrative staff and leaders who are payed executive-level salaries. This should all be going to support students and educators.