Congratulations on a very well-written essay, Mr. Knospe.
I don't recall any issues with your reasoning offhand, but I question your axioms.
For one thing, why must admissions to private institutions be "fair"? As long as they're not lying to anyone about their policies they're simply exercising the prerogatives of ownership. If the whole reason is, as you put it "to restore societal faith in meritocracy" then I will posit that a) I never had faith in meritocracy and b) I see no advantage to promoting such.
For another thing, I think LBJ's quote was correct but misapplied. Certainly it's unreasonable to consider the newly-freed man as other than handicapped in the race, but that doesn't imply that we should stop running races or should in fact run them with the handicapped starting closer to the finish line. Tranposed to our topic, it could be that students whose academics don't qualify them for a particular college should go to a different college -- even if they would have been capable of achieving more had they been blessed with more fortunate lives.
These points are arguable. One could claim that preferential treatment has benefitted society as a whole, justifying the harm done to some individuals, but I'd want to see both the evidence of the former and the reasoning behind the latter.
One could claim, as well, that we benefit from a "real" meritocracy, but then I'd want to know why we would and why you believe such a thing is achievable.
To me, the advantage of affirmative action was never that it was fair. Rather, it was a way of assuring that the composition of elites bear some resemblance to the underlying distribution of ethnic, cultural, and religious groups in society. There's plenty of economic research looking at caste and gender reservations in politics that suggest that legally mandated diversification does yield improvements in the conditions of under-represented groups (for example, "Can Mandated Political Representation Increase Policy Influence for Disadvantaged Minorities? Theory and Evidence from India" by Rohini Pande).
I think the chief problem with college admissions today is that it's become impossible to get into a prestigious school. The simplest solution would just be for the elite universities to double or triple in size. I know that Stanford, for one, would like to increase the size of its undergraduate student body, but Palo Alto won't let them. Another win for NIMBYism!
It's always easier to tell other people how to run their business than to offer a better competing product, isn't it?
a) U.S. private universities have become the best in the world because they are the richest in the world, and those riches have not been from tuition, but from philanthropy. A disproportionate share of philanthropy comes from alumni, who presumably are engaged with legacy admits. "No legacy admits" may imply "lower quality private universities", which hardly seems fair to the great majority of students who aren't legacies. Also, there is the consideration that private universities don't necessarily see themselves engaged with one student at a time, but with one family over generations.
b) So you don't like jock admits; what about music, debate, and other extra-curriculars? The fact that football factories admit illiterates is a straw man in this debate. Here is a better example: a top private university admits a future Olympic champion and Fortune 500 CEO, who scores in the 90th percentile academically. Is that applicant a better choice than somebody in the 99th percentile who does nothing but study?
c) Class-based admission, or as you argue granular adversity based affirmative action, makes a lot of sense for private universities, who can afford the costs of the exercise. Public universities might be better advised towards simpler approaches, such as the Texas "top ten per cent" approach to UT-Austin and A&M. Though I understand that became so successful it was wound back.
Your ideas are good ones, and here is another, to fix a more upstream problem that plagues admissions to all universities: Abolish or modify the Common Application, by which students can fill out one form and then apply to dozens of institutions with the click of a button. By pumping up the number of applications, the Common App automatically depresses the percentage of accepted applications to each entering class - a metric that universities love because it wins them good ratings in closely watched annual rankings. And by flooding university admissions offices with files to triage, the Common App reduces the admissions process to a crapshoot that favors applicants with easily identifiable "additive" qualities like athletic prowess (gotta fill that freshman football/baseball/basketball team), alumni relatives, or minority backgrounds.
What often gets unsaid - especially by admissions officers at elite colleges - is that the Common App enables and encourages "Hail Mary" passes by applicants who, if they really thought about which college would be best for them and where they would have a realistic chance of acceptance, would apply to fewer and different schools. (What also gets unsaid is that the Common App also floods universities with applications fee - a nice windfall that one imagines they would be loath to give up.) The mantra of "we read all applications and everyone has a chance" sounds nice, but the reality is far different.
The UK has a system called UCAS that gives applicants five slots to use as they see fit (and only one for either Oxford or Cambridge - not both.) The universities also publish the minimum scores on school-leaving exams like the A-levels and the IB for admission to each program. With only five chances to score a place, applicants are forced to take a good, hard look at their choices - and, more importantly, at themselves - before pushing the button. No system is perfect, but UCAS has some qualities - transparency and efficiency among them - that the US system would do well to adopt.
All good ideas, but if their purpose is to restore faith in the meritocracy, you can count me out. There's so much else wrong with elite education apart from its admissions policies, there's so much harm done to both those on the top and the bottom in the zero sum game it plays. It bears recalling that the term 'Meritocracy' was coined by a British politician turned satirist who was aiming to point out its corrosiveness, not its allure or value as a guiding principle for a democracy.
Congratulations on a very well-written essay, Mr. Knospe.
I don't recall any issues with your reasoning offhand, but I question your axioms.
For one thing, why must admissions to private institutions be "fair"? As long as they're not lying to anyone about their policies they're simply exercising the prerogatives of ownership. If the whole reason is, as you put it "to restore societal faith in meritocracy" then I will posit that a) I never had faith in meritocracy and b) I see no advantage to promoting such.
For another thing, I think LBJ's quote was correct but misapplied. Certainly it's unreasonable to consider the newly-freed man as other than handicapped in the race, but that doesn't imply that we should stop running races or should in fact run them with the handicapped starting closer to the finish line. Tranposed to our topic, it could be that students whose academics don't qualify them for a particular college should go to a different college -- even if they would have been capable of achieving more had they been blessed with more fortunate lives.
These points are arguable. One could claim that preferential treatment has benefitted society as a whole, justifying the harm done to some individuals, but I'd want to see both the evidence of the former and the reasoning behind the latter.
One could claim, as well, that we benefit from a "real" meritocracy, but then I'd want to know why we would and why you believe such a thing is achievable.
Still, an excellent essay.
To me, the advantage of affirmative action was never that it was fair. Rather, it was a way of assuring that the composition of elites bear some resemblance to the underlying distribution of ethnic, cultural, and religious groups in society. There's plenty of economic research looking at caste and gender reservations in politics that suggest that legally mandated diversification does yield improvements in the conditions of under-represented groups (for example, "Can Mandated Political Representation Increase Policy Influence for Disadvantaged Minorities? Theory and Evidence from India" by Rohini Pande).
I think the chief problem with college admissions today is that it's become impossible to get into a prestigious school. The simplest solution would just be for the elite universities to double or triple in size. I know that Stanford, for one, would like to increase the size of its undergraduate student body, but Palo Alto won't let them. Another win for NIMBYism!
It's always easier to tell other people how to run their business than to offer a better competing product, isn't it?
a) U.S. private universities have become the best in the world because they are the richest in the world, and those riches have not been from tuition, but from philanthropy. A disproportionate share of philanthropy comes from alumni, who presumably are engaged with legacy admits. "No legacy admits" may imply "lower quality private universities", which hardly seems fair to the great majority of students who aren't legacies. Also, there is the consideration that private universities don't necessarily see themselves engaged with one student at a time, but with one family over generations.
b) So you don't like jock admits; what about music, debate, and other extra-curriculars? The fact that football factories admit illiterates is a straw man in this debate. Here is a better example: a top private university admits a future Olympic champion and Fortune 500 CEO, who scores in the 90th percentile academically. Is that applicant a better choice than somebody in the 99th percentile who does nothing but study?
c) Class-based admission, or as you argue granular adversity based affirmative action, makes a lot of sense for private universities, who can afford the costs of the exercise. Public universities might be better advised towards simpler approaches, such as the Texas "top ten per cent" approach to UT-Austin and A&M. Though I understand that became so successful it was wound back.
Your ideas are good ones, and here is another, to fix a more upstream problem that plagues admissions to all universities: Abolish or modify the Common Application, by which students can fill out one form and then apply to dozens of institutions with the click of a button. By pumping up the number of applications, the Common App automatically depresses the percentage of accepted applications to each entering class - a metric that universities love because it wins them good ratings in closely watched annual rankings. And by flooding university admissions offices with files to triage, the Common App reduces the admissions process to a crapshoot that favors applicants with easily identifiable "additive" qualities like athletic prowess (gotta fill that freshman football/baseball/basketball team), alumni relatives, or minority backgrounds.
What often gets unsaid - especially by admissions officers at elite colleges - is that the Common App enables and encourages "Hail Mary" passes by applicants who, if they really thought about which college would be best for them and where they would have a realistic chance of acceptance, would apply to fewer and different schools. (What also gets unsaid is that the Common App also floods universities with applications fee - a nice windfall that one imagines they would be loath to give up.) The mantra of "we read all applications and everyone has a chance" sounds nice, but the reality is far different.
The UK has a system called UCAS that gives applicants five slots to use as they see fit (and only one for either Oxford or Cambridge - not both.) The universities also publish the minimum scores on school-leaving exams like the A-levels and the IB for admission to each program. With only five chances to score a place, applicants are forced to take a good, hard look at their choices - and, more importantly, at themselves - before pushing the button. No system is perfect, but UCAS has some qualities - transparency and efficiency among them - that the US system would do well to adopt.
All good ideas, but if their purpose is to restore faith in the meritocracy, you can count me out. There's so much else wrong with elite education apart from its admissions policies, there's so much harm done to both those on the top and the bottom in the zero sum game it plays. It bears recalling that the term 'Meritocracy' was coined by a British politician turned satirist who was aiming to point out its corrosiveness, not its allure or value as a guiding principle for a democracy.