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One of the things that is fascinating about America is that their obsession with race draws attention away from Class. The value of getting into Harvard- sure,

One of the things that is fascinating about America is that their obsession with race draws attention away from Class. The value of getting into Harvard- sure, you'll get a good education. You might even get a great education! But what you're also going to get is membership of a club that is going to offer you opportunities for the rest of your life. Once you view it that way then changing the composition of the elite universities takes on a completely different perspective. Because if you break that old boys club, suddenly access to great job opportunities and high political office become 1000x more meritocratic. Do we really think that Harvard and Yale have such a fantastic admissions process that they managed to spot and select every single future Supreme Court Justice at the age of 20? No don't be silly. Instead Harvard and Yale have created an environment where every single step through your career as a Harvard grad there's a helping hand for you. And the role of Harvard is to zealously nurture this in-group, because that's what creates their value, and the core of that is legacy admissions.

deltarholamda 3y ago
>Instead Harvard and Yale have created an environment where every single step through your career as a Harvard grad there's a helping hand for you This is the key to the Ivies' brand. And it's not really covered in the article, but the reason we care about the Ivies is because whatever fad catches on in the Ivies goes on to become government policy. And why not? They are the best and the brightest, the great and good, destined to guide the benighted masses into the future. Bill Buckley famously said he would rather be governed by the first 500 names in the Boston telephone book than the faculty of Harvard. Interestingly, this somewhat reflects the idea behind Free Software, where many eyes make bugs shallow. If you were trained in an Ivy, everybody you work with came from an Ivy, all of the potential eyes work the same way, so the bugs remain deep.

deltarholamda 3y ago

>Instead Harvard and Yale have created an environment where every single step through your career as a Harvard grad there's a helping hand for you This is the key to the Ivies' brand. And it's not really covered in the article, but the reason we care about the Ivies is because whatever fad catches on in the Ivies goes on to become government policy. And why not? They are the best and the brightest, the great and good, destined to guide the benighted masses into the future. Bill Buckley famously said he would rather be governed by the first 500 names in the Boston telephone book than the faculty of Harvard. Interestingly, this somewhat reflects the idea behind Free Software, where many eyes make bugs shallow. If you were trained in an Ivy, everybody you work with came from an Ivy, all of the potential eyes work the same way, so the bugs remain deep.