7 ms·

If Harvard's "best interest" isn't fairness but rather perpetuating Harvard as an institution for the maximum amount of time into the future, then its admission

by 09bjb 7y ago

If Harvard's "best interest" isn't fairness but rather perpetuating Harvard as an institution for the maximum amount of time into the future, then its admissions behavior makes sense. Colleges and Universities are institutions (like private companies) and (like private companies) it is very difficult to get them to engage in behavior that they perceive may shorten their own lifetimes. Put differently, the main goal of an institution is survival. Profit (or a huge endowment, or close connections to the wealthy or those in power) is the primary factor in ensuring survival, and institutions know it. Harvard has been focused on power over ethics for...well, I'm not sure, but certainly over a hundred years. As much as I would like to believe that admitting better-qualified candidates over "better-connected" candidates (heavy quotes here) will be better for their survival in the long run, I wouldn't put money on it. And, it turns out, neither would Harvard.

09bjb 7y ago
Extending this thought: if you thought that the primary concern of so-called elite institutions was ever "fairness", you're mistaken. They deal in Influence. And yes, it's highly ironic that the current fashion for identity politics and all the other "post-modern" ideologies were started and perpetuated by these institutions, which don't actually engage in said ideologies outside of hiring humanities professors that say whatever they please. Even within that behavior, the hyper-left trend of said professors is much stronger outside of the Ivy League than in it. The tip-top institutions are quite conservative when the rubber meets the road.
darawk 7y ago
Of course, one might also note that these institutions are only "elite" because of their connection to the, well, elite. The entire idea of "fairness" here doesn't really make sense. If Harvard committed itself to "fairness" it would no longer be an elite institution, and nobody would care how fair its admissions were.
- HenryKissinger 7y ago
  Places like MIT and Caltech are elite institutions, despite the fact that they don't give two shits about legacies or well connected applicants.
  - malandrew 7y ago
    Yes, but they are not illuminati elite. They are merely individual contributor elite.
  - akhilcacharya 7y ago
    MIT might not care about legacies as much as Harvard but they do recruit athletes. I read about someone that was a recruited athlete for sailing the year I was rejected. The guy had just a ~2100 SAT and no real other hooks to speak of. Really changed my perspectives on how much racial affirmative action actually impacts Asian Americans like me.
    - nessus42 7y ago
      > Really changed my perspectives on how much racial affirmative action actually impacts Asian Americans like me. Do you think that you have a right to an MIT education based solely on merit or intelligence? That's not how prestigious universities have accepted students for like 100 years. Prestigious universities typically want, in part, a diverse student body, represented by both sexes and multiple races and cultures. Let's grant for the sake of argument that Asians are just smarter than everyone else. The consequence of this is that all the best universities would be 100% Asian if they accepted students based purely on aptitude. But the goal of prestigious universities is not to be such a pure meritocracy that this would ever be the case. Not for Asians, nor any other race or culture. I made it into MIT, but at the time I was at something of a disadvantage demographically. I was a White male in 1980 from an economically advantaged city and area of the country. If I'd been female, or non-White (and maybe non-Asian), or from an underrepresented part of the country, my chances of getting into MIT would have been much greater. I knew this when I applied and planned my backup applications accordingly. As for SAT scores, at least when I applied, MIT claimed that SAT scores were way down on the list of what they considered to be most important for successful applicants. (Though I'm sure that SAT scores were not ignored.) I had an SAT score of 1500, which at the time was very high. I.e., it's equivalent to an IQ of 155 or so. (According to the people who do such correlations.) I also had, litterally, straight A's in high school. Not a single B in four years. I had a perfect score on my Chemistry achievement test. And yet I was not accepted via "Early Action". Just how high does your IQ have to be to get in via Early Action? Well, there is no answer to that question, because that's just one of many things that MIT is considering when they admit students.
bhk 7y ago
> power over ethics No one sees themselves as evil. I'm sure that "they" just differ in terms of what they consider ethical. If I may play the devil's advocate: Why is it more ethical to favor those born with ability than to favor those born with connections? I don't have a quarrel with either form of discrimination, but I do have a problem with the dishonesty about how things actually work.
- 09bjb 7y ago
  I am definitely not a trained ethicist, philosopher, etc...but my personal view is that morality in a society largely comes down to whether and how power is shared. The weak and vulnerable will stay that way without some help, and the powerful will grow more powerful without either rules or morals to check them. So in this case, I personally would say it's more ethical to favor those born with ability rather than connections because it rewards the behavior you're ostensibly trying to instill (hard work, overcoming odds, etc.). But again, I'm not surprised by these sorts of admissions policies, and I think swinging the other way so radically that they self-destruct is probably more ill-advised than the status quo.
- solveit 7y ago
  Apparently we're close enough to post-scarcity that people forget jobs are supposed to do things and not status symbols. The point of meritocracy isn't that it's more fair or ethical, the point is that we give the most important (on the margin) jobs to the people most capable of doing said job. The fact that money, status, and power flow to the people doing important jobs is an incidental side effect. Now universities aren't exactly jobs, but the point stands. Universities are supposed to educate people, so that those people can do stuff. Letting in people with connections and not ability means we are not making the best use of our limited educational resources. Note that this is an argument for affirmative action as advertised and an argument against affirmative action as practised.
  - pingyong 7y ago
    Why do I always get the impression that getting into an elite university is harder than getting a degree there once you're already in?
traderjane 7y ago
It sounds like Harvard deals in merit and not egalitarianism, where merit considers the power you bring to the table and not merely your academic skill.
- heedlessly2 7y ago
  If I am a child of a Harvard administrative staff member, then I have an advantage when getting into Harvard. So that would not be a merit advantage. That's just called luck. Here's the big difference between the upper-class kids and everyone below when it comes to admission's fairness. Everyone else says "I worked hard as an individual, therefore i deserve to get into a good college." Upper-class kids says "MY FAMILY worked hard, therefore i (as an individual) deserve to get into a good college." The emphasis is WHO worked hard. Upper-class kids tend to ride on the coat-tails of their parents and grand-parents.
shitpostbot 7y ago
I can't read the article, but I can see the start of the Asians are discriminated against argument. I always saw it as admitting people who bring the most value to the student body. Academics is just one tiny slice of that, but a lot of people are under the impression test scores are really what determine how "qualified" someone is to attend a school, everything else is just nice to have. Really there are no hard qualifications for who they want to admit or not. Harvard could admit nothing but left handed people who speak esperanto if they wanted to, but that wouldn't mean they're discriminating against Asians even though the average rejected asian candidates had higher average test scores. A student body that is homogenous across ethnicity and nationality, where everyone studied 14 hours a day to get in and all had perfect SATs and play violin, where everyone was upper middle class who's parents could afford to get them the required tutoring to meet the academic admission standards, etc etc, would be a much less compelling place for people to attend. Now if there was a school that had the best professors, where the students were from every country on the planet and hundreds of languages were spoken, where you could network with the kids of the richest and most powerful people on the planet (even if they're dumb), but also weren't in an isolated bubble of ignorant rich children because they admitted plenty of people from lower income areas (even though they had worse academics), that also had some of the smartest students, I think that would be a much more compelling argument for the quality of the experience of attending a university. Tests can gamed, asian and Indian students study harder, that doesn't mean admitting more of them would make for a better university.
MarkMc 7y ago
An organization where long-term revenue matches long-term expenses can last forever. There's no need for Harvard to keep piling up their endowment year after year
akhilcacharya 7y ago
I agree. It’s social engineering by design! Folks need to be clear about calling this out.

by 09bjb 7y ago

09bjb 7y ago

Extending this thought: if you thought that the primary concern of so-called elite institutions was ever "fairness", you're mistaken. They deal in Influence. And yes, it's highly ironic that the current fashion for identity politics and all the other "post-modern" ideologies were started and perpetuated by these institutions, which don't actually engage in said ideologies outside of hiring humanities professors that say whatever they please. Even within that behavior, the hyper-left trend of said professors is much stronger outside of the Ivy League than in it. The tip-top institutions are quite conservative when the rubber meets the road.

darawk 7y ago

Of course, one might also note that these institutions are only "elite" because of their connection to the, well, elite. The entire idea of "fairness" here doesn't really make sense. If Harvard committed itself to "fairness" it would no longer be an elite institution, and nobody would care how fair its admissions were.

HenryKissinger 7y ago
Places like MIT and Caltech are elite institutions, despite the fact that they don't give two shits about legacies or well connected applicants.
- malandrew 7y ago
  Yes, but they are not illuminati elite. They are merely individual contributor elite.
- akhilcacharya 7y ago
  MIT might not care about legacies as much as Harvard but they do recruit athletes. I read about someone that was a recruited athlete for sailing the year I was rejected. The guy had just a ~2100 SAT and no real other hooks to speak of. Really changed my perspectives on how much racial affirmative action actually impacts Asian Americans like me.
  - nessus42 7y ago
    > Really changed my perspectives on how much racial affirmative action actually impacts Asian Americans like me. Do you think that you have a right to an MIT education based solely on merit or intelligence? That's not how prestigious universities have accepted students for like 100 years. Prestigious universities typically want, in part, a diverse student body, represented by both sexes and multiple races and cultures. Let's grant for the sake of argument that Asians are just smarter than everyone else. The consequence of this is that all the best universities would be 100% Asian if they accepted students based purely on aptitude. But the goal of prestigious universities is not to be such a pure meritocracy that this would ever be the case. Not for Asians, nor any other race or culture. I made it into MIT, but at the time I was at something of a disadvantage demographically. I was a White male in 1980 from an economically advantaged city and area of the country. If I'd been female, or non-White (and maybe non-Asian), or from an underrepresented part of the country, my chances of getting into MIT would have been much greater. I knew this when I applied and planned my backup applications accordingly. As for SAT scores, at least when I applied, MIT claimed that SAT scores were way down on the list of what they considered to be most important for successful applicants. (Though I'm sure that SAT scores were not ignored.) I had an SAT score of 1500, which at the time was very high. I.e., it's equivalent to an IQ of 155 or so. (According to the people who do such correlations.) I also had, litterally, straight A's in high school. Not a single B in four years. I had a perfect score on my Chemistry achievement test. And yet I was not accepted via "Early Action". Just how high does your IQ have to be to get in via Early Action? Well, there is no answer to that question, because that's just one of many things that MIT is considering when they admit students.

bhk 7y ago

> power over ethics No one sees themselves as evil. I'm sure that "they" just differ in terms of what they consider ethical. If I may play the devil's advocate: Why is it more ethical to favor those born with ability than to favor those born with connections? I don't have a quarrel with either form of discrimination, but I do have a problem with the dishonesty about how things actually work.

09bjb 7y ago
I am definitely not a trained ethicist, philosopher, etc...but my personal view is that morality in a society largely comes down to whether and how power is shared. The weak and vulnerable will stay that way without some help, and the powerful will grow more powerful without either rules or morals to check them. So in this case, I personally would say it's more ethical to favor those born with ability rather than connections because it rewards the behavior you're ostensibly trying to instill (hard work, overcoming odds, etc.). But again, I'm not surprised by these sorts of admissions policies, and I think swinging the other way so radically that they self-destruct is probably more ill-advised than the status quo.
solveit 7y ago
Apparently we're close enough to post-scarcity that people forget jobs are supposed to do things and not status symbols. The point of meritocracy isn't that it's more fair or ethical, the point is that we give the most important (on the margin) jobs to the people most capable of doing said job. The fact that money, status, and power flow to the people doing important jobs is an incidental side effect. Now universities aren't exactly jobs, but the point stands. Universities are supposed to educate people, so that those people can do stuff. Letting in people with connections and not ability means we are not making the best use of our limited educational resources. Note that this is an argument for affirmative action as advertised and an argument against affirmative action as practised.
- pingyong 7y ago
  Why do I always get the impression that getting into an elite university is harder than getting a degree there once you're already in?

traderjane 7y ago

It sounds like Harvard deals in merit and not egalitarianism, where merit considers the power you bring to the table and not merely your academic skill.

heedlessly2 7y ago
If I am a child of a Harvard administrative staff member, then I have an advantage when getting into Harvard. So that would not be a merit advantage. That's just called luck. Here's the big difference between the upper-class kids and everyone below when it comes to admission's fairness. Everyone else says "I worked hard as an individual, therefore i deserve to get into a good college." Upper-class kids says "MY FAMILY worked hard, therefore i (as an individual) deserve to get into a good college." The emphasis is WHO worked hard. Upper-class kids tend to ride on the coat-tails of their parents and grand-parents.

shitpostbot 7y ago

I can't read the article, but I can see the start of the Asians are discriminated against argument. I always saw it as admitting people who bring the most value to the student body. Academics is just one tiny slice of that, but a lot of people are under the impression test scores are really what determine how "qualified" someone is to attend a school, everything else is just nice to have. Really there are no hard qualifications for who they want to admit or not. Harvard could admit nothing but left handed people who speak esperanto if they wanted to, but that wouldn't mean they're discriminating against Asians even though the average rejected asian candidates had higher average test scores. A student body that is homogenous across ethnicity and nationality, where everyone studied 14 hours a day to get in and all had perfect SATs and play violin, where everyone was upper middle class who's parents could afford to get them the required tutoring to meet the academic admission standards, etc etc, would be a much less compelling place for people to attend. Now if there was a school that had the best professors, where the students were from every country on the planet and hundreds of languages were spoken, where you could network with the kids of the richest and most powerful people on the planet (even if they're dumb), but also weren't in an isolated bubble of ignorant rich children because they admitted plenty of people from lower income areas (even though they had worse academics), that also had some of the smartest students, I think that would be a much more compelling argument for the quality of the experience of attending a university. Tests can gamed, asian and Indian students study harder, that doesn't mean admitting more of them would make for a better university.

MarkMc 7y ago

An organization where long-term revenue matches long-term expenses can last forever. There's no need for Harvard to keep piling up their endowment year after year

akhilcacharya 7y ago

I agree. It’s social engineering by design! Folks need to be clear about calling this out.