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As someone who was the subject of the quota in USSR, and despite what the article says, I think the story is more nuanced: at least in part, it was an "affirmat
by resource0x 8y ago
As someone who was the subject of the quota in USSR, and despite what the article says, I think the story is more nuanced: at least in part, it was an "affirmative action". It's a zero sum game, the number of places was fixed. Good universities were in short supply. Not so good universities normally didn't enforce any quotas (at least in Russia proper; in Soviet Republics like Ukraine, it was more complicated :)
(I cannot prove "affirmative action" part, it's just how I understood it then. Others might disagree)
- pvg 8y agoRight but the parallel here is to Harvard (and top Soviet universities) specifically, not Soviet or American higher education in general. That parallel, while imperfect in many ways, works reasonably well.