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I'd urge you to think more about this. You can imagine the same thing for murder trials: 10 million per victim or you go to jail. You can use the money to mak

I'd urge you to think more about this. You can imagine the same thing for murder trials: 10 million per victim or you go to jail. You can use the money to make the world better! I'm not so sure. These institutions have an embedded narrative. For universities it's that they are meritocracies, where class/race/gender/etc do not matter. For the justice system it's that everyone is equal before the law and the guilty will be punished. I don't think these institutional narratives are superfluous. While it's naive to expect the institutions to live up to the narratives, the narratives end up serving as ideals. And I don't think the institutions can exist without those ideals.

tus87 7y ago
WRONG. Murder is a negative to society. A loser going to Harvard is not, may even improve society if they study well.
- mythrwy 7y ago
  If Harvard had infinite seats maybe.
opportune 7y ago
I would really like universities to be meritocracies. However I went to a highly ranked school for undergrad and I can assure you it was nowhere close to a meritocracy, nor did it really try to pretend that it was. That narrative may exist for you and others, but it's entirely accidental.
- leftyted 7y ago
  I also went to a highly ranked school. It wasn't a perfect meritocracy but it was at least oriented towards merit. But my initial point remains: the idea of the meritocracy is necessary. I don't think universities can exist without it, at least not in this form.
  - opportune 7y ago
    See, I really don't think they are oriented much towards merit either. At least, not my idea of "merit". My idea of merit would be purely academic: test scores, grades (though these are very leaky), and academic achievements outside the classroom (e.g. performance in academic competitions). Yet many, if not most, people at highly ranked/competitive universities don't fall into the "academic" admissions bucket: there's also athletes, musicians, people with "quirky hobbies" (many of which are invented purely for college admissions), people who might have had standards relaxed a bit to meet demographic targets, and most of all kids from rich feeder schools + legacies. Then you get the rest of the students who get in purely on academic merit. In my experience those maybe make up a plurality but not a majority. They're basically there to lend legitimacy to the rich kids.
  - CydeWeys 7y ago
    Isn't research the main driving force behind many universities? Would they really be affected that much by how some undergraduates got in, especially since they likely wouldn't even be participating in research anyway?
michaelbuckbee 7y ago
How about with traffic laws? Finland applies a sliding scale to them based on income: https://www.theatlantic.com/business/archive/2015/03/finland-home-of-the-103000-speeding-ticket/387484/ https://www.theatlantic.com/business/archive/2015/03/finland...
ska 7y ago
The narratives aren’t superfluous, but they are at best aspirational. Universities are not certainly not meritocracies, and the justice system certainly does not treat everyone equally. So I think it is by all means good to support moves towards the ideals that these institutions make, but there may be a practical middle ground where in recognition that they do not in fact meet these ideals, resources could be captured and used in ways that address this imbalance somewhat?
- leftyted 7y ago
  > The narratives aren’t superfluous, but they are at best aspirational. This a paraphrase of what I wrote. > Universities are not certainly not meritocracies, and the justice system certainly does not treat everyone equally. Neither is perfect. But it's not like they're random. In universities there is correlation between "being smart" and "getting in/excelling at universities" and in the justice system there is a correlation between "killing someone" and "going to jail". > So I think it is by all means good to support moves towards the ideals that these institutions make, but there may be a practical middle ground where in recognition that they do not in fact meet these ideals, resources could be captured and used in ways that address this imbalance somewhat? The middle ground is understanding that the institutions aren't perfect and constantly working to shore them up. But my feeling is that if we go from understanding that the institutions aren't perfect to throwing out the ideals completely then the institutions will crumble. My sense is that we can't do without the ideals. People aren't rational agents.
  - ska 7y ago
    The middle ground is understanding that the institutions aren't perfect and constantly working to shore them up. I think you are rejecting the idea of a middle ground completely. Holding institutions to their stated values is table stakes for me. I don't think you have to reject the ideals in order to recognize that the world is not meeting them. For example, a university could be quite open about the pressure to allow lower merit students from privileged backgrounds. What if they said "look, we can't completely withstand the political and other pressure put on us. So we're going to allow 5% enrollment of students who do not meet our regular thresholds, so long as they pay 5x (10x?) full tuition. This extra tuition will be used to create N full scholarships and M partial scholarships for students that meet the academic requirements but do not have the financial ability to attend. All students will be treated equally academically throughout their programs" To some degree you cannot stop this from happening (see prep schools, etc.) but you can bring it out in the light.
darawk 7y ago
> I'm not so sure. These institutions have an embedded narrative. For universities it's that they are meritocracies, where class/race/gender/etc do not matter. For the justice system it's that everyone is equal before the law and the guilty will be punished. Do they have that narrative though? We already have affirmative action, which is the explicit inclusion of race/gender/class in admissions criteria. We are already a long ways from pure meritocracy. > I don't think these institutional narratives are superfluous. While it's naive to expect the institutions to live up to the narratives, the narratives end up serving as ideals. And I don't think the institutions can exist without those ideals. Two things: 1. I think you're overindexing on the importance of these narratives a bit, but you're right, they're important. 2. More importantly, this policy wouldn't destroy those narratives. You can make the scale very steep such that you have to pay quite a bit to get your average student in, and the steepness of that curve will be determined by the eliteness of the institution. You have the same meritocratic rules, they're just tempered by money.
- gnud 7y ago
  Some of the idea behind programs like affirmative action is that because of race/class/gender, some people score lower on various exams than they could. They were not given equal opportunities - and so to judge them equally during admissions would not be fair. I think affirmative action is tricky, because we single out some reasons for 'sub-potential' performance, but we ignore a lot of others. But even if I think it's tricky, I tend to be in favor of it. My biggest issue with these programs is that they should really have some built-in "off-switch", when the program should be dismantled because there's no longer a pressing need for it. I don't think we're there yet, but hopefully we will get there - and then what?
  - darawk 7y ago
    Ya, I wasn't trying to argue for or against affirmative action in that comment. Just trying to point out that it's already not driven purely by intellectual merit. I agree on the off-switch issue as well. It's the problem with subsidies of any kind - they might be useful for a time, but at some point, we want to get rid of them...but they tend to be permanent.
ummwhat 7y ago
They would still be meritocracy. You can pay to get in the door but getting out with a degree is still a matter of merit.
manfredo 7y ago
What the above poster is describing is effectively how the status quo works, but more explicit and with transparency. Universities are not purely meritocratic. They factor in race, gender, and VIP status into the application. Donating money is one way of obtaining VIP status.
CydeWeys 7y ago
Using an analogy to murder isn't going to be very convincing when the thing you're comparing murder with isn't remotely as close to as bad as murder itself. It's a poor argument that trivially be rebutted by pointing out that the other thing isn't nearly as bad as murder, so the conclusions don't follow.

tus87 7y ago

WRONG. Murder is a negative to society. A loser going to Harvard is not, may even improve society if they study well.

mythrwy 7y ago
If Harvard had infinite seats maybe.

opportune 7y ago

I would really like universities to be meritocracies. However I went to a highly ranked school for undergrad and I can assure you it was nowhere close to a meritocracy, nor did it really try to pretend that it was. That narrative may exist for you and others, but it's entirely accidental.

leftyted 7y ago
I also went to a highly ranked school. It wasn't a perfect meritocracy but it was at least oriented towards merit. But my initial point remains: the idea of the meritocracy is necessary. I don't think universities can exist without it, at least not in this form.
- opportune 7y ago
  See, I really don't think they are oriented much towards merit either. At least, not my idea of "merit". My idea of merit would be purely academic: test scores, grades (though these are very leaky), and academic achievements outside the classroom (e.g. performance in academic competitions). Yet many, if not most, people at highly ranked/competitive universities don't fall into the "academic" admissions bucket: there's also athletes, musicians, people with "quirky hobbies" (many of which are invented purely for college admissions), people who might have had standards relaxed a bit to meet demographic targets, and most of all kids from rich feeder schools + legacies. Then you get the rest of the students who get in purely on academic merit. In my experience those maybe make up a plurality but not a majority. They're basically there to lend legitimacy to the rich kids.
- CydeWeys 7y ago
  Isn't research the main driving force behind many universities? Would they really be affected that much by how some undergraduates got in, especially since they likely wouldn't even be participating in research anyway?

michaelbuckbee 7y ago

How about with traffic laws? Finland applies a sliding scale to them based on income: https://www.theatlantic.com/business/archive/2015/03/finland-home-of-the-103000-speeding-ticket/387484/ https://www.theatlantic.com/business/archive/2015/03/finland...

ska 7y ago

The narratives aren’t superfluous, but they are at best aspirational. Universities are not certainly not meritocracies, and the justice system certainly does not treat everyone equally. So I think it is by all means good to support moves towards the ideals that these institutions make, but there may be a practical middle ground where in recognition that they do not in fact meet these ideals, resources could be captured and used in ways that address this imbalance somewhat?

leftyted 7y ago
> The narratives aren’t superfluous, but they are at best aspirational. This a paraphrase of what I wrote. > Universities are not certainly not meritocracies, and the justice system certainly does not treat everyone equally. Neither is perfect. But it's not like they're random. In universities there is correlation between "being smart" and "getting in/excelling at universities" and in the justice system there is a correlation between "killing someone" and "going to jail". > So I think it is by all means good to support moves towards the ideals that these institutions make, but there may be a practical middle ground where in recognition that they do not in fact meet these ideals, resources could be captured and used in ways that address this imbalance somewhat? The middle ground is understanding that the institutions aren't perfect and constantly working to shore them up. But my feeling is that if we go from understanding that the institutions aren't perfect to throwing out the ideals completely then the institutions will crumble. My sense is that we can't do without the ideals. People aren't rational agents.
- ska 7y ago
  The middle ground is understanding that the institutions aren't perfect and constantly working to shore them up. I think you are rejecting the idea of a middle ground completely. Holding institutions to their stated values is table stakes for me. I don't think you have to reject the ideals in order to recognize that the world is not meeting them. For example, a university could be quite open about the pressure to allow lower merit students from privileged backgrounds. What if they said "look, we can't completely withstand the political and other pressure put on us. So we're going to allow 5% enrollment of students who do not meet our regular thresholds, so long as they pay 5x (10x?) full tuition. This extra tuition will be used to create N full scholarships and M partial scholarships for students that meet the academic requirements but do not have the financial ability to attend. All students will be treated equally academically throughout their programs" To some degree you cannot stop this from happening (see prep schools, etc.) but you can bring it out in the light.

darawk 7y ago

> I'm not so sure. These institutions have an embedded narrative. For universities it's that they are meritocracies, where class/race/gender/etc do not matter. For the justice system it's that everyone is equal before the law and the guilty will be punished. Do they have that narrative though? We already have affirmative action, which is the explicit inclusion of race/gender/class in admissions criteria. We are already a long ways from pure meritocracy. > I don't think these institutional narratives are superfluous. While it's naive to expect the institutions to live up to the narratives, the narratives end up serving as ideals. And I don't think the institutions can exist without those ideals. Two things: 1. I think you're overindexing on the importance of these narratives a bit, but you're right, they're important. 2. More importantly, this policy wouldn't destroy those narratives. You can make the scale very steep such that you have to pay quite a bit to get your average student in, and the steepness of that curve will be determined by the eliteness of the institution. You have the same meritocratic rules, they're just tempered by money.

gnud 7y ago
Some of the idea behind programs like affirmative action is that because of race/class/gender, some people score lower on various exams than they could. They were not given equal opportunities - and so to judge them equally during admissions would not be fair. I think affirmative action is tricky, because we single out some reasons for 'sub-potential' performance, but we ignore a lot of others. But even if I think it's tricky, I tend to be in favor of it. My biggest issue with these programs is that they should really have some built-in "off-switch", when the program should be dismantled because there's no longer a pressing need for it. I don't think we're there yet, but hopefully we will get there - and then what?
- darawk 7y ago
  Ya, I wasn't trying to argue for or against affirmative action in that comment. Just trying to point out that it's already not driven purely by intellectual merit. I agree on the off-switch issue as well. It's the problem with subsidies of any kind - they might be useful for a time, but at some point, we want to get rid of them...but they tend to be permanent.

ummwhat 7y ago

They would still be meritocracy. You can pay to get in the door but getting out with a degree is still a matter of merit.

manfredo 7y ago

What the above poster is describing is effectively how the status quo works, but more explicit and with transparency. Universities are not purely meritocratic. They factor in race, gender, and VIP status into the application. Donating money is one way of obtaining VIP status.

CydeWeys 7y ago

Using an analogy to murder isn't going to be very convincing when the thing you're comparing murder with isn't remotely as close to as bad as murder itself. It's a poor argument that trivially be rebutted by pointing out that the other thing isn't nearly as bad as murder, so the conclusions don't follow.