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{{Main|Political systems}} |
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One of the advantages and use cases our system offers is replacing closed decision processes with ones that are open to all. An example of this is college admissions, one that has a direct impact on the public, especially young people. Many high school students aim for the most competitive schools for which the admission rate might be less than 10%. Needless to say, the applicant pool, aside from those who are admitted for non-academic reasons (eg corruption, legacy, athletics), is outstanding. But the number of slots is extremely limited. So the admissions committees are forced to choose a class from candidates that are all uniformly excellent. It is easy to see how their decisions will hinge on subjective nuances such as whether the interview went well or if they liked the essay. It is also easy to see how the committee simply has too much information to deal with effectively. This is a case where opening up the process can provide a more democratic and effective means to select among very similar candidates. |
One of the advantages and use cases our system offers is replacing closed decision processes with ones that are open to all. An example of this is college admissions, one that has a direct impact on the public, especially young people. Many high school students aim for the most competitive schools for which the admission rate might be less than 10%. Needless to say, the applicant pool, aside from those who are admitted for non-academic reasons (eg corruption, legacy, athletics), is outstanding. But the number of slots is extremely limited. So the admissions committees are forced to choose a class from candidates that are all uniformly excellent. It is easy to see how their decisions will hinge on subjective nuances such as whether the interview went well or if they liked the essay. It is also easy to see how the committee simply has too much information to deal with effectively. This is a case where opening up the process can provide a more democratic and effective means to select among very similar candidates. |
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Latest revision as of 14:57, 1 October 2024
Main article: Political systems
One of the advantages and use cases our system offers is replacing closed decision processes with ones that are open to all. An example of this is college admissions, one that has a direct impact on the public, especially young people. Many high school students aim for the most competitive schools for which the admission rate might be less than 10%. Needless to say, the applicant pool, aside from those who are admitted for non-academic reasons (eg corruption, legacy, athletics), is outstanding. But the number of slots is extremely limited. So the admissions committees are forced to choose a class from candidates that are all uniformly excellent. It is easy to see how their decisions will hinge on subjective nuances such as whether the interview went well or if they liked the essay. It is also easy to see how the committee simply has too much information to deal with effectively. This is a case where opening up the process can provide a more democratic and effective means to select among very similar candidates.
Students could submit their applications to our rating system and have the network judge them in general or for admission to any particular school (if raters are available with knowledge of specific schools). Obviously the quality of the raters would be important here so their own ratings in terms of objectivity would be important. The system could be streamlined by having algorithms to partially perform ratings of applications automatically. The algorithms, of course, would be open to scrutiny, and modification, by all.
A system of this kind would gain credibility over time and eventually challenge the current closed admissions review committees. Colleges, who should be interested in cutting costs, might choose to hand over the admissions decision-making to our ratings system after tuning it to their own requirements. This is an example of an institution being dissolved out of existence by the constant presence of a better alternative.
Replacing closed/centralized traditional rating systems
College admissions brings to mind a related institution, the US News and World Report college rankings. US News has had a profound influence on colleges, to the point where some schools have pulled out of its ranking system altogether (eg Harvard Medical School). But most simply try to rank highly by the standards set by US News. The system mostly relies on colleges self-reporting statistics and other facts about themselves. As a result, there is an unspecified amount of fraudulent data being submitted as well as shady data reporting practices for the purpose of obtaining a higher US News rank.
“A General Accounting Office investigation in November found that 91 percent of colleges and universities misrepresented their expected cost of attendance”
US News makes money from its ratings system by selling the right to advertise its rankings:
https://www.nytimes.com/2024/01/06/us/college-rankings-us-news.html
Clearly this, like college admissions, is a closed-door rating system with alot of problems. Converting it into an open source rating system where the quality of the raw data can also be assessed, would be an important reform. Another reform would be open algorithms used to aggregate the data instead of relying on US News for this. Weighting factors, in particular, are largely subjective and would benefit from public scrutiny.
US News also produces rankings of high schools, hospitals, hotels, etc. Since using the US News rankings is quite well established in the public mind, we will have to change that over time. One effective technique, it would seem, is to give users the ability to build their own ratings system for a particular application. This, we should emphasize, is exactly what we are already doing.
An example of this is a NY Times college ranking system that you build yourself:
Here the user selects the criteria of importance to them (high earnings post grad, low sticker price, campus safety, etc) and the system rates the colleges, around 900 in total, accordingly. It is fun to use and reasonably informative:
The type of slider-bar tuning and filters shown here is something we can provide in our user interface as well. Indeed we could supply a widget library so users can put together their own customized UIs.