4 ms·

> The narratives aren’t superfluous, but they are at best aspirational. This a paraphrase of what I wrote. > Universities are not certainly not meritocracies,

> 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.

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.