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Good. With the end of affirmative action, legacy status in admissions becomes much harder to justify. [0] The number of kids entering elite universities via non

Good. With the end of affirmative action, legacy status in admissions becomes much harder to justify. [0] The number of kids entering elite universities via non-meritocratic avenues is incredible. > "[The researchers] examined four kinds of nonracial preferences—for recruited athletes, and for children of Harvard graduates, financial donors and members of faculty and staff. The researchers found that more than 43% of white applicants admitted to Harvard between 2014-19 fell into one or more of these categories. Nearly three quarters of them would have been rejected if they had been subjected to the same standards as other white applicants." [0] https://www.wsj.com/articles/end-college-legacy-preferences-harvard-sffa-racce-affirmative-action-13e90e30 https://www.wsj.com/articles/end-college-legacy-preferences-...

twoodfin 3y ago
Opens a ton of slots for race-neutral preferences that can, say, pull in the top performing students from otherwise underperforming urban and rural districts.
xkcd-sucks 3y ago
It's kind of begging the question to assume multigenerational family ties to a university are "not merit" when a big part of a university's value proposition is social networking: One doesn't go to Harvard just to take courses; one goes to Harvard to bump shoulders with the scions of dictators / diplomats / "captains of industry" etc. Personally I didn't understand that at the time, would have rejected the notion on principle, and still don't really like it, but is definitely worth consideration
- yannyu 3y ago
  Then we might as well admit that "merit" is heavily influenced by starting conditions instead of pretending that everyone has "equal opportunity". How many times have I heard from people that the USA is about "equality of opportunity" and not "equality of outcome"? Legacy admissions is directly contrary to equality of opportunity, and undermines the idea of meritocracy in university admissions that people have been crowing about in anti-affirmative-action rhetoric.
  - rayiner 3y ago
    Why does legacy admissions being bad justify racial preferences? Two wrongs don’t make a right.
    - vkou 3y ago
      > Two wrongs don’t make a right. This is nonsense, in any moral framework worth its salt. Consider a simple situation: 1. Lying is wrong. 2. Someone's running from a mob that wants to kill them. They went right. 3. The mob stops, and asks you if the person in question went right. 4. Two wrongs don't make a right, so you tell the truth. Or don't say anything, and let the mob go off in the correct direction and chase that person down.
      - WillPostForFood 3y ago
        Your example is backwards. Lying is the right, and truth is the wrong in your example. So in arguing for two wrongs are OK, you are suggesting you'd direct the mob to the person running away (maybe they were a person you didn't like, or were of privilege you resent).
        vkou 3y ago
        > Lying is the right, and truth is the wrong in your example. Lying is wrong! Except, according to you, when it leads to good outcomes! It sounds like outcome-driven morality is what you're pushing for..? Then what's the problem with AA? Not using it to compensate for structural disadvantages is being in the wrong in its case...
        WillPostForFood 3y ago
        "Lying is wrong" is a non-sequitur - like West is to the left. It is morality for 5 year olds or Sam Harris. >Then what's the problem with AA? Not using it to compensate for structural disadvantages is being in the wrong in its case... AA fails on that criteria as well. It isn't compensating the people who were wronged and the burden falls on people didn't do the wrong. Poor asian immigrant gets kicked out so Harvard can virtue signal and put a black face on their web page and course catalog. Never mind that kid is a wealthy immigrant from Kenya. And to make it even worse, the AA admits do worse, drop out at higher rates, and drop down to lesser majors because many aren't academically competitive. They would have done better if they were matched on merit to schools.
- importantbrian 3y ago
  Yeah, I think part of the problem is that people don't really understand this. I have taken classes at a community college, a directional state school, an R1 and my master's degree is from a highly selective school. My n=1 experience is that the coursework from any accredited program is largely the same. The professors at the state school were actually better than at any of the other schools from a pure teaching perspective. The biggest difference between them was the profile of my classmates. The entire value that Harvard et al. provide is the name brand and the alumni network. The education itself you can get anywhere.
  - esafak 3y ago
    So be sure to network when you get there. Socialize! Attend the parties! It's not just for fun's sake.
  - tekla 3y ago
    Not necessarily true. The more prestigious schools have more budget to hire better professors, but more importantly, can fund top class research that costs ALOT of money. Your random college probably can't afford a research nuclear reactor, but MIT sure as hell can if they want. Getting a position as a undergrad on those research projects is incredibly competitive.
    - spullara 3y ago
      MIT is different though as they don't have legacy or athletic admissions.
      - meetingthrower 3y ago
        False. They do have slots for athletes.
        spullara 3y ago
        "Unlike many other schools, MIT does not send “likely letters” or do “signings,” nor do our coaches have discretionary “slots” which they may fill." https://mitadmissions.org/help/faq/does-mit-recruit-athletes/ https://mitadmissions.org/help/faq/does-mit-recruit-athletes...
- bradleyjg 3y ago
  The public makes a huge investment in Harvard, both directly through grants and indirectly through waived taxes. Is subsidizing social networking with and among the privileged a good use of public dollars?
  - kaibee 3y ago
    Well, you get smart kids who actually earned their spot connected to the rich kids with money. The first group isn't as privileged as the second group. This certainly isn't the best system, but if it was removed, would something better naturally emerge, or would we just further reduce social mobility without any benefit? /realpolitik
    - bradleyjg 3y ago
      It seems like your model here is that we eliminate alumni preferences at Harvard, rich kids stop getting in but that has no impact on their future elite status. The smart kids miss out on connecting with them and end up the only real losers in the change. I think you should consider another possibility—-that things like getting into Harvard is how rich kids end up being elite. Take those things away from them and many will still be wealthy but they won’t be elite. They’ll be the guy working a mid level job (or none at all) that just happens to have a really sweet house and vacations in Aspen.
      - xp84 3y ago
        > wealthy but they won’t be elite. They’ll be the guy working a mid level job (or none at all) I think a super rich kid who can't quite get into say, Harvard, but instead goes to some other school, is not going to be unemployed or pushing paper in middle management, they're still going to work for the family firm, start a business with family money, or cross-pollinate among the other elite families. Furthermore, if the would-be legacies can't get into Harvard and Yale, the most likely outcome I foresee is that they start to cluster at other schools (say Amherst, Tufts, BU[1]), gradually shifting the character and reputations of those schools and getting us right back where we came from. I don't really think that is a bad thing, and think it's probably best to stop doing legacy admissions. But I think there's no way this will result in reshaping of class in our society to where the elites are usurped by a bunch of smart, diverse (merit-admitted) kids from the wrong side of the tracks. Best case it gives a boost to the best non-Ivy schools at attracting the descendants of the Harvard and Yale set, potentially to the point of altering society's definition of which schools are the most elite. [1] forgive any errors in my choice of schools – I just googled top universities in New England and skipped over ones I know are Ivies.
- janalsncm 3y ago
  Being able to sit down for dinner with a college professor is already a huge advantage. Those kids don’t need an additional boost. Looking back, my dad was a mechanical engineer and it definitely helped me. Especially in math and science. He showed me the math he was doing and as a kid seeing math done at a professional level helped me appreciate what actually mattered. As a result I really cared about those subjects and I did well.
- spullara 3y ago
  It would be interesting to see if there is a reason to go to Harvard without legacy admissions. There certainly is a reason to go to MIT for example where they don't have it.
- DiogenesKynikos 3y ago
  If Harvard wants to be a networking club for the rich, that's fine, but then it should be cut off from public funding. Cutting off public funds would obliterate Harvard's research output overnight. NSF, NIH, NASA, DOE and other government agencies fund virtually all fundamental scientific research in the United States. Without government funding, most professors (at least in science and engineering) would immediately leave for places where they could access public funding. Harvard should decide what's more important to it: networking or world-class research?
- sterlind 3y ago
  on the other hand, people go to MIT to interact with brilliant classmates and faculty. MIT's value proposition is that the smartest people are there, and funding will find those people (and vice versa) on the merits of their intellectual abilities. On the other hand, > One doesn't go to Harvard just to take courses; one goes to Harvard to bump shoulders with the scions of dictators / diplomats / "captains of industry" etc is correct about Harvard. Harvard is much more about elitism-qua-elitism. Sure it's academically selective (if you're not from a political dynasty), but that's just because the intellectual elite is only one of many kinds of elite they carry about. I think this is a true insight about Harvard, and the other ivies that give a "Gentleman's C" to plutocrats' children, but I think it deserves to be destroyed. I'd prefer Lincoln Lab to the Skull and Bones.
- michael1999 3y ago
  The word "merit" is flexible, but not so flexible that it encompasses the mediocre children of well connected people. That's the entire point of "merit" based admission. You are right that much of the value in Harvard is the network, but that's not the branding.
- jchw 3y ago
  What that sounds like to me is that we give (/continued to give) national accreditation to elite clubs that care more about status than genuine merits. Obviously organizations that want to do this should be free to in some form, but does it really have a place anywhere in the education system? Not all universities seem to be this way. While any measure of merit will definitely be flawed in some way, there are certainly universities that live and die not on elite status but on elite results. In some ways, it's going to be a proxy, because people who are better off will naturally perform better. But on the other hand, at least selecting people literally based on how well they perform academically is more meaningful to the function of education than selecting people because they're related to someone of high status. I never felt like university was for people like me anyways, but there are DEFINITELY some kinds of organizations that get a sort of special status, e.g. churches, universities, etc. where it feels like we should be scrutinizing them more. Maybe I just don't understand, though. But, that's what it feels like to me.
- analog31 3y ago
  That could change, if there's no credible reason for society to support it. Democratizing education quality and access is inseparable from diminishing, or at least changing, the appeal of "elite" colleges.
IG_Semmelweiss 3y ago
[flagged]
- networkchad 3y ago
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- doctorpangloss 3y ago
  While I believe you are trying to make a good faith insight porn comment and I don’t think you should be (inevitably) downvoted, I am skeptical of the methods of the “rather popular podcast” that led them to make such a claim. Also, I’m not sure if it’s the gotcha you think it is. If I were you, I would take a long hard look at claims like these, and how even when they are not true, well, an item that says “So and so claim turns out to be not true” is itself propagating the untrue claim. It will illuminate for you the true way Reddit is quite toxic, and why among many reasons content moderation and publishing are hard.
  - IG_Semmelweiss 3y ago
    I didn't find it gentlemanly to name names here, and wanted to let my comment be developed independently, but since my comment is already flagged, I suppose i'll make it clear the source and the weight of the research that I'm simply referencing. This was saidin the all-in-podcast. This was during episode 135, at the 23:15 mark. The show has a guide so it should be findable. I believe hosts do research and in fact, have VC minions (paid staff) during the show pulling the data to demonstrate how the calc was derived. (I'm actually quite surprised this is not immediately known, as I thought the podcast audience was primarily HN ..) Also, sibling comment added his own independent analysis
- rafram 3y ago
  > A rather popular podcast > Unsure if they said > But either way, its quite astounding You’re not making a terribly strong case here. What’s your source? What does “most disfavored” mean? Is there actually anything to show that Jewish students are favored in college admissions?
kiba 3y ago
We're still creating a meritocratic elite, based on capacity limit and price of admission. Not everybody get to have an elite education, or afford such an opportunity. Ideally, high quality education would be democratized and made accessible to anyone who want it regardless of their means to pay.
- l33t233372 3y ago
  > Ideally, high quality education would be democratized and made accessible to anyone who want it It pretty much is. Hardvard undergraduate classes aren’t substantially higher quality than at many other state schools.
  - whimsicalism 3y ago
    People say this, not sure what it is based on, unless by “many other”s you just mean Michigan, UC, and UNC.
    - l33t233372 3y ago
      And University of Nebraska, and University of Wisconsin Maddison, and Texas A&M, and Ohio State, and many others. It seems like you based what you said on some vague notion of prestige, but if you look at the courses offered/required, the topics covered, and the books used of any of the schools I listed, you’ll see it’s effectively the same education as Harvard and the rest. Unless you think there’s something magical about the professors at Harvard that enables them to teach undergraduate classes far better than professors at state schools, there’s no reason to assume the classes are any higher quality.
- kneebonian 3y ago
  > Ideally, high quality education would be democratized and made accessible to anyone who want it regardless of their means to pay. We already have that for the most part, I can find courses from half a dozen of the worlds best universities online for free right now.
  - 3y ago
chmod600 3y ago
“for recruited athletes, and for children of Harvard graduates, financial donors and members of faculty and staff“ Athletes have merit. Arguably more than some academic departments.
- Larrikin 3y ago
  Why should a top high school baseball prospect take up a spot at a college instead of a spot on a local A league team?
  - chmod600 3y ago
    Why should a Political Science major take a spot at a college instead of joining a political group discussion on reddit? It’s not like it’s a real science and I don’t see any merit in it, nor what it contributes to college. I’d much rather have athletes on campus even though I am not one. At least it provides nice facilities for healthy recreation (a lot healthier than just drinking a lot).
    - BryanBigs 3y ago
      Yeah I sure got to use the 75,000 seat football stadium a lot for pickup games when I was in school. It's not like you need 'athletes' on campus to build student rec facilities.
  - nazgulnarsil 3y ago
    Not what you meant, but the answer is because they are a profit center for the college.
  - bilbo0s 3y ago
    Because money. Sorry. That's the reality that everyone fails to talk openly about when discussing athletics. It brings in a lot of money for the top schools like Stanford, Michigan, Texas, Alabama and so on. You find a way to replace that revenue, a lot of schools would be happy to get rid of it. But until then? I mean the B1G has a tv split of almost 100 million a year "per". Once all the former PAC12 schools unite with the B1G, that amount will be even larger. All that to say this, no one is throwing away 100 million a year. Maybe the elite schools you can get to stop athletic admissions? But that 2nd tier of state flagships that are taking all that in? I'm not sure they would go down without an epic fight. Now of course, we can question whether or not you need a men's baseball team to bring that money in? You probably don't. But they will all probably fight tooth and nail to keep football and basketball.
anovikov 3y ago
Beware. On the next iteration, education will simply lose it's importance in providing any sort of edge in life. Just because well, elites are hereditary, it's only about particular methods of maintaining their hereditary status. Education seems to about to cease to be that method. Which means, we will see all the same people on the same commanding positions in the society - except they will be uneducated/much less educated. Because why bother. A step like this increases the necessary level of violence applied to the society to keep the elites in their places and the masses in check. Because maintaining elites through educational attainment was the nicest avenue i can think of, all other methods will be uglier. A good society should know how to let the elites stay in power without getting everyone else too angry.
hunson_abadeer 3y ago
> With the end of affirmative action, legacy status in admissions becomes much harder to justify. I've heard this repeated nearly verbatim in a couple of places, and it's such a puzzling framing. Why was this practice any less ethically challenged prior to the SCOTUS decision?
- chaostheory 3y ago
  Not sure why this wasn't mentioned more often but it's because of donor money. Donor money that funds things like new cafeterias and other facilities ultimately benefits everyone at school and helps keep tuition prices in check, also complicates the ethics ie if they didn't have enough donors, then tuition will go up and it'll be even less affordable
  - Jotra7 3y ago
    [dead]
  - hunson_abadeer 3y ago
    Yeah, it would be sad for Harvard to get unaffordable.
    - chaostheory 3y ago
      Noted your sarcasm, but it would be sad for Harvard and its ilk to get EVEN MORE unaffordable for anyone not upperclass.
      - hunson_abadeer 3y ago
        I think the argument rings hollow to me mostly because it's not that Harvard has to charge this much. I'm sure they could be providing the same quality of education for 1/5th the price. In fact, with the endowments many of these schools have, they could probably go tuition-free for a couple of decades and still be fine. They charge this much essentially because they can (govt-subsidized loans), and because it helps them maintain a certain reputation.
dionidium 3y ago
> With the end of affirmative action, legacy status in admissions becomes much harder to justify. I just don't see this. In our society we believe it to be illegitimate to discriminate on the basis of race. We believe that to be a special kind of uniquely harmful prejudice, one that fractures the deepest structures of society, and that it therefore clears the very high bar required for limiting freedom of association. That is what is at issue in the case of affirmative action, the elimination of which was not a broad referendum on the right to form elite social clubs.
- MisterBastahrd 3y ago
  We do not live in a perfect world. Instead, we live in a world where a collection of individuals has had the fruits of their labor stolen from them for most of the past 400 years, served in wars where promises were made and not kept upon their return, and are still being discriminated against in representative democracy. And when someone enumerates all the reasons that these people have been harmed, financially, spiritually, democratically, and physically... the people who are against attempts to rectify the situation given the tools available also have nothing but "fairness" to fall back on when attempting to justify their positions, because they'd rather sweep it under the rug and pretend like it's something that we should never address.
  - intimidated 3y ago
    You might not agree with the spirit of this an endeavor, but I have a yes/no question for you: If you were to wear your most clever, most creative writing cap, could you make a convincing case entirely contrary to your beliefs? I'm not asking whether you could write a convincing case against racial affirmative action, because I know you could handle that just fine. Instead, could write a convincing case that the group you're talking about owes some collective debt to the rest of society, rather than the other way around?
    - MisterBastahrd 3y ago
      I used to be a dyed-in-the-wool conservative. Their entire case is "it's not fair" in the absolute sense. That because some white folks descend from people who didn't have anything to do with slavery that all should be absolved from participating and benefitting from systemic racism. It's not an intellectual argument. It's an argument from performative and wanton ignorance.
MisterBastahrd 3y ago
Harder to justify? In an absolute vacuum, they were always the hardest to justify. There's absolutely no reason that they should have ever existed. I do still like the idea of employees of universities getting the benefit of their children attending for free, though... but then I also had no problem with affirmative action for many of the same reasons.
29athrowaway 3y ago
Then they will put their money into another pay-to-win system.
ericmcer 3y ago
Why did they lump athletes in with those other three groups. Athletics is the ultimate meritocracy. If athletes are a significant portion of that 43% it dilutes the whole argument. If 10% were alumni/donors/faculty it would still be outrageous, no need to pump up the numbers.
- xdennis 3y ago
  > Athletics is the ultimate meritocracy ...but not in education. The US system of making athletes waste time in university is quite unique and ridiculous.
  - kulahan 3y ago
    I like that we still emphasize education even if you're going for a job that doesn't even require you to know how to read.
    - oblio 3y ago
      Don't they basically get a free pass for regular courses as long as they behave and provide results?
      - nocsi 3y ago
        Yea.. These students also generate capital through ticket sales and rally alumni to donate. Unless a non-producing sport.
mabbo 3y ago
> Nearly three quarters of them would have been rejected if they had been subjected to the same standards as other white applicants. That's kind of insane. Over 30% of white students at Harvard would have been rejected if not for those programs.
Scarblac 3y ago
But also, why is meritocracy so above any criticism? Why is it considered so great? It would be fairer to just pick at random. Or even better, make sure everyone who wants a good education can get one.
- koolba 3y ago
  The rationale for meritocracy is that a limited resource should be allocated to the individual that will make most use of it. Demonstrating that you understand the prerequisites and are studious is a pretty good indicator that you’ll attend class and strive to learn more. Randomly picking students with zero minimum qualification would be a massive waste of resources. Randomly picking students above a given objective standard would be okay. Though arguably not as good as given the best of the best first dibs (depends on who you ask!).
deleted 3y ago
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CraigRo 3y ago
This statement is a bit misleading, as the criteria get to be hair-splittingly narrow when you are talking about a school with a sub 5% acceptance rate -- you could fill the whole class with valedictorians. Nevertheless, my experience is that in terms of finding a 'better' candidate: Legacy -- legacy preference is pitched as a tiebreaker. Most of the legacies are actually quite good, and many are exceptional, so perhaps 30-50% got in over some 'better' kid. But in many cases, those slots represent something like geographic diversity, or a legacy kid of a minority or a kid of some famous person, and they generally don't take dolts. So this is not a huge tip. FacBrat -- The kids of professors tend to be extremely and sometimes extraordinarily good -- their parents are Harvard professors, and that tends to rub off. Staff members less so, but it is politically hard to reject them if you want to keep their parents. There are more in the second category than in the first. So perhaps 60% of the kids get in based on this tip. Donor -- Not a lot of these that I know of. Even in the 1930s, the son of the President of IBM got rejected from Harvard and Princeton because he was a goof off. I seriously doubt that there are more than 10-20 kids/year who get in this way who wouldn't otherwise. Athlete -- This is where very few of these kids would get in if they were in the general pool -- 10% max I'd guess. A lot of them are very good, but that level of dedication to sport tends to eat time that could have been used for academics or other worthwhile pursuits. I've always been amazed that they recruit for Golf, Squash, Crew, Fencing, Diving, Tennis, Lax, and Water Polo... these sports are limited to prep schools and rich suburban districts ... not exactly equitable.
- whimsicalism 3y ago
  Your comment is pretty spot on about the admission dynamics. > Legacy I think it is more of a tip than you are making it out to be simply due to yield farming - the smart kid who has a Harvard parent is more likely to go to Harvard over Yale than a generic smart kid, so if you want to keep your admission rates as low as possible you tip legacy. > 10-20 kids/year who get in this way who wouldn't otherwise. They certainly exist, Harvard has the z-list.
  - meetingthrower 3y ago
    Hah just heard that come up in another context. Confirmed. Heard the price tag was $3m and you have to take a gap year.
theiwefrtifre 3y ago
[flagged]
bushbaba 3y ago
Which is why many have stated it’s hardest to get into university if you are a non wealthy, legacy white or Asian male. I totally see that’s institutions all issuing apologies for the past discrimination.
agentofoblivion 3y ago
Headline in 5 years: “Endowments from alumni down 50% and no one knows why!”

twoodfin 3y ago

Opens a ton of slots for race-neutral preferences that can, say, pull in the top performing students from otherwise underperforming urban and rural districts.

xkcd-sucks 3y ago

It's kind of begging the question to assume multigenerational family ties to a university are "not merit" when a big part of a university's value proposition is social networking: One doesn't go to Harvard just to take courses; one goes to Harvard to bump shoulders with the scions of dictators / diplomats / "captains of industry" etc. Personally I didn't understand that at the time, would have rejected the notion on principle, and still don't really like it, but is definitely worth consideration

yannyu 3y ago
Then we might as well admit that "merit" is heavily influenced by starting conditions instead of pretending that everyone has "equal opportunity". How many times have I heard from people that the USA is about "equality of opportunity" and not "equality of outcome"? Legacy admissions is directly contrary to equality of opportunity, and undermines the idea of meritocracy in university admissions that people have been crowing about in anti-affirmative-action rhetoric.
- rayiner 3y ago
  Why does legacy admissions being bad justify racial preferences? Two wrongs don’t make a right.
  - vkou 3y ago
    > Two wrongs don’t make a right. This is nonsense, in any moral framework worth its salt. Consider a simple situation: 1. Lying is wrong. 2. Someone's running from a mob that wants to kill them. They went right. 3. The mob stops, and asks you if the person in question went right. 4. Two wrongs don't make a right, so you tell the truth. Or don't say anything, and let the mob go off in the correct direction and chase that person down.
    - WillPostForFood 3y ago
      Your example is backwards. Lying is the right, and truth is the wrong in your example. So in arguing for two wrongs are OK, you are suggesting you'd direct the mob to the person running away (maybe they were a person you didn't like, or were of privilege you resent).
      - vkou 3y ago
        > Lying is the right, and truth is the wrong in your example. Lying is wrong! Except, according to you, when it leads to good outcomes! It sounds like outcome-driven morality is what you're pushing for..? Then what's the problem with AA? Not using it to compensate for structural disadvantages is being in the wrong in its case...
        WillPostForFood 3y ago
        "Lying is wrong" is a non-sequitur - like West is to the left. It is morality for 5 year olds or Sam Harris. >Then what's the problem with AA? Not using it to compensate for structural disadvantages is being in the wrong in its case... AA fails on that criteria as well. It isn't compensating the people who were wronged and the burden falls on people didn't do the wrong. Poor asian immigrant gets kicked out so Harvard can virtue signal and put a black face on their web page and course catalog. Never mind that kid is a wealthy immigrant from Kenya. And to make it even worse, the AA admits do worse, drop out at higher rates, and drop down to lesser majors because many aren't academically competitive. They would have done better if they were matched on merit to schools.
importantbrian 3y ago
Yeah, I think part of the problem is that people don't really understand this. I have taken classes at a community college, a directional state school, an R1 and my master's degree is from a highly selective school. My n=1 experience is that the coursework from any accredited program is largely the same. The professors at the state school were actually better than at any of the other schools from a pure teaching perspective. The biggest difference between them was the profile of my classmates. The entire value that Harvard et al. provide is the name brand and the alumni network. The education itself you can get anywhere.
- esafak 3y ago
  So be sure to network when you get there. Socialize! Attend the parties! It's not just for fun's sake.
- tekla 3y ago
  Not necessarily true. The more prestigious schools have more budget to hire better professors, but more importantly, can fund top class research that costs ALOT of money. Your random college probably can't afford a research nuclear reactor, but MIT sure as hell can if they want. Getting a position as a undergrad on those research projects is incredibly competitive.
  - spullara 3y ago
    MIT is different though as they don't have legacy or athletic admissions.
    - meetingthrower 3y ago
      False. They do have slots for athletes.
      - spullara 3y ago
        "Unlike many other schools, MIT does not send “likely letters” or do “signings,” nor do our coaches have discretionary “slots” which they may fill." https://mitadmissions.org/help/faq/does-mit-recruit-athletes/ https://mitadmissions.org/help/faq/does-mit-recruit-athletes...
bradleyjg 3y ago
The public makes a huge investment in Harvard, both directly through grants and indirectly through waived taxes. Is subsidizing social networking with and among the privileged a good use of public dollars?
- kaibee 3y ago
  Well, you get smart kids who actually earned their spot connected to the rich kids with money. The first group isn't as privileged as the second group. This certainly isn't the best system, but if it was removed, would something better naturally emerge, or would we just further reduce social mobility without any benefit? /realpolitik
  - bradleyjg 3y ago
    It seems like your model here is that we eliminate alumni preferences at Harvard, rich kids stop getting in but that has no impact on their future elite status. The smart kids miss out on connecting with them and end up the only real losers in the change. I think you should consider another possibility—-that things like getting into Harvard is how rich kids end up being elite. Take those things away from them and many will still be wealthy but they won’t be elite. They’ll be the guy working a mid level job (or none at all) that just happens to have a really sweet house and vacations in Aspen.
    - xp84 3y ago
      > wealthy but they won’t be elite. They’ll be the guy working a mid level job (or none at all) I think a super rich kid who can't quite get into say, Harvard, but instead goes to some other school, is not going to be unemployed or pushing paper in middle management, they're still going to work for the family firm, start a business with family money, or cross-pollinate among the other elite families. Furthermore, if the would-be legacies can't get into Harvard and Yale, the most likely outcome I foresee is that they start to cluster at other schools (say Amherst, Tufts, BU[1]), gradually shifting the character and reputations of those schools and getting us right back where we came from. I don't really think that is a bad thing, and think it's probably best to stop doing legacy admissions. But I think there's no way this will result in reshaping of class in our society to where the elites are usurped by a bunch of smart, diverse (merit-admitted) kids from the wrong side of the tracks. Best case it gives a boost to the best non-Ivy schools at attracting the descendants of the Harvard and Yale set, potentially to the point of altering society's definition of which schools are the most elite. [1] forgive any errors in my choice of schools – I just googled top universities in New England and skipped over ones I know are Ivies.
janalsncm 3y ago
Being able to sit down for dinner with a college professor is already a huge advantage. Those kids don’t need an additional boost. Looking back, my dad was a mechanical engineer and it definitely helped me. Especially in math and science. He showed me the math he was doing and as a kid seeing math done at a professional level helped me appreciate what actually mattered. As a result I really cared about those subjects and I did well.
spullara 3y ago
It would be interesting to see if there is a reason to go to Harvard without legacy admissions. There certainly is a reason to go to MIT for example where they don't have it.
DiogenesKynikos 3y ago
If Harvard wants to be a networking club for the rich, that's fine, but then it should be cut off from public funding. Cutting off public funds would obliterate Harvard's research output overnight. NSF, NIH, NASA, DOE and other government agencies fund virtually all fundamental scientific research in the United States. Without government funding, most professors (at least in science and engineering) would immediately leave for places where they could access public funding. Harvard should decide what's more important to it: networking or world-class research?
sterlind 3y ago
on the other hand, people go to MIT to interact with brilliant classmates and faculty. MIT's value proposition is that the smartest people are there, and funding will find those people (and vice versa) on the merits of their intellectual abilities. On the other hand, > One doesn't go to Harvard just to take courses; one goes to Harvard to bump shoulders with the scions of dictators / diplomats / "captains of industry" etc is correct about Harvard. Harvard is much more about elitism-qua-elitism. Sure it's academically selective (if you're not from a political dynasty), but that's just because the intellectual elite is only one of many kinds of elite they carry about. I think this is a true insight about Harvard, and the other ivies that give a "Gentleman's C" to plutocrats' children, but I think it deserves to be destroyed. I'd prefer Lincoln Lab to the Skull and Bones.
michael1999 3y ago
The word "merit" is flexible, but not so flexible that it encompasses the mediocre children of well connected people. That's the entire point of "merit" based admission. You are right that much of the value in Harvard is the network, but that's not the branding.
jchw 3y ago
What that sounds like to me is that we give (/continued to give) national accreditation to elite clubs that care more about status than genuine merits. Obviously organizations that want to do this should be free to in some form, but does it really have a place anywhere in the education system? Not all universities seem to be this way. While any measure of merit will definitely be flawed in some way, there are certainly universities that live and die not on elite status but on elite results. In some ways, it's going to be a proxy, because people who are better off will naturally perform better. But on the other hand, at least selecting people literally based on how well they perform academically is more meaningful to the function of education than selecting people because they're related to someone of high status. I never felt like university was for people like me anyways, but there are DEFINITELY some kinds of organizations that get a sort of special status, e.g. churches, universities, etc. where it feels like we should be scrutinizing them more. Maybe I just don't understand, though. But, that's what it feels like to me.
analog31 3y ago
That could change, if there's no credible reason for society to support it. Democratizing education quality and access is inseparable from diminishing, or at least changing, the appeal of "elite" colleges.

IG_Semmelweiss 3y ago

[flagged]

networkchad 3y ago
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doctorpangloss 3y ago
While I believe you are trying to make a good faith insight porn comment and I don’t think you should be (inevitably) downvoted, I am skeptical of the methods of the “rather popular podcast” that led them to make such a claim. Also, I’m not sure if it’s the gotcha you think it is. If I were you, I would take a long hard look at claims like these, and how even when they are not true, well, an item that says “So and so claim turns out to be not true” is itself propagating the untrue claim. It will illuminate for you the true way Reddit is quite toxic, and why among many reasons content moderation and publishing are hard.
- IG_Semmelweiss 3y ago
  I didn't find it gentlemanly to name names here, and wanted to let my comment be developed independently, but since my comment is already flagged, I suppose i'll make it clear the source and the weight of the research that I'm simply referencing. This was saidin the all-in-podcast. This was during episode 135, at the 23:15 mark. The show has a guide so it should be findable. I believe hosts do research and in fact, have VC minions (paid staff) during the show pulling the data to demonstrate how the calc was derived. (I'm actually quite surprised this is not immediately known, as I thought the podcast audience was primarily HN ..) Also, sibling comment added his own independent analysis
rafram 3y ago
> A rather popular podcast > Unsure if they said > But either way, its quite astounding You’re not making a terribly strong case here. What’s your source? What does “most disfavored” mean? Is there actually anything to show that Jewish students are favored in college admissions?

kiba 3y ago

We're still creating a meritocratic elite, based on capacity limit and price of admission. Not everybody get to have an elite education, or afford such an opportunity. Ideally, high quality education would be democratized and made accessible to anyone who want it regardless of their means to pay.

l33t233372 3y ago
> Ideally, high quality education would be democratized and made accessible to anyone who want it It pretty much is. Hardvard undergraduate classes aren’t substantially higher quality than at many other state schools.
- whimsicalism 3y ago
  People say this, not sure what it is based on, unless by “many other”s you just mean Michigan, UC, and UNC.
  - l33t233372 3y ago
    And University of Nebraska, and University of Wisconsin Maddison, and Texas A&M, and Ohio State, and many others. It seems like you based what you said on some vague notion of prestige, but if you look at the courses offered/required, the topics covered, and the books used of any of the schools I listed, you’ll see it’s effectively the same education as Harvard and the rest. Unless you think there’s something magical about the professors at Harvard that enables them to teach undergraduate classes far better than professors at state schools, there’s no reason to assume the classes are any higher quality.
kneebonian 3y ago
> Ideally, high quality education would be democratized and made accessible to anyone who want it regardless of their means to pay. We already have that for the most part, I can find courses from half a dozen of the worlds best universities online for free right now.
- 3y ago

chmod600 3y ago

“for recruited athletes, and for children of Harvard graduates, financial donors and members of faculty and staff“ Athletes have merit. Arguably more than some academic departments.

Larrikin 3y ago
Why should a top high school baseball prospect take up a spot at a college instead of a spot on a local A league team?
- chmod600 3y ago
  Why should a Political Science major take a spot at a college instead of joining a political group discussion on reddit? It’s not like it’s a real science and I don’t see any merit in it, nor what it contributes to college. I’d much rather have athletes on campus even though I am not one. At least it provides nice facilities for healthy recreation (a lot healthier than just drinking a lot).
  - BryanBigs 3y ago
    Yeah I sure got to use the 75,000 seat football stadium a lot for pickup games when I was in school. It's not like you need 'athletes' on campus to build student rec facilities.
- nazgulnarsil 3y ago
  Not what you meant, but the answer is because they are a profit center for the college.
- bilbo0s 3y ago
  Because money. Sorry. That's the reality that everyone fails to talk openly about when discussing athletics. It brings in a lot of money for the top schools like Stanford, Michigan, Texas, Alabama and so on. You find a way to replace that revenue, a lot of schools would be happy to get rid of it. But until then? I mean the B1G has a tv split of almost 100 million a year "per". Once all the former PAC12 schools unite with the B1G, that amount will be even larger. All that to say this, no one is throwing away 100 million a year. Maybe the elite schools you can get to stop athletic admissions? But that 2nd tier of state flagships that are taking all that in? I'm not sure they would go down without an epic fight. Now of course, we can question whether or not you need a men's baseball team to bring that money in? You probably don't. But they will all probably fight tooth and nail to keep football and basketball.

anovikov 3y ago

Beware. On the next iteration, education will simply lose it's importance in providing any sort of edge in life. Just because well, elites are hereditary, it's only about particular methods of maintaining their hereditary status. Education seems to about to cease to be that method. Which means, we will see all the same people on the same commanding positions in the society - except they will be uneducated/much less educated. Because why bother. A step like this increases the necessary level of violence applied to the society to keep the elites in their places and the masses in check. Because maintaining elites through educational attainment was the nicest avenue i can think of, all other methods will be uglier. A good society should know how to let the elites stay in power without getting everyone else too angry.

hunson_abadeer 3y ago

> With the end of affirmative action, legacy status in admissions becomes much harder to justify. I've heard this repeated nearly verbatim in a couple of places, and it's such a puzzling framing. Why was this practice any less ethically challenged prior to the SCOTUS decision?

chaostheory 3y ago
Not sure why this wasn't mentioned more often but it's because of donor money. Donor money that funds things like new cafeterias and other facilities ultimately benefits everyone at school and helps keep tuition prices in check, also complicates the ethics ie if they didn't have enough donors, then tuition will go up and it'll be even less affordable
- Jotra7 3y ago
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- hunson_abadeer 3y ago
  Yeah, it would be sad for Harvard to get unaffordable.
  - chaostheory 3y ago
    Noted your sarcasm, but it would be sad for Harvard and its ilk to get EVEN MORE unaffordable for anyone not upperclass.
    - hunson_abadeer 3y ago
      I think the argument rings hollow to me mostly because it's not that Harvard has to charge this much. I'm sure they could be providing the same quality of education for 1/5th the price. In fact, with the endowments many of these schools have, they could probably go tuition-free for a couple of decades and still be fine. They charge this much essentially because they can (govt-subsidized loans), and because it helps them maintain a certain reputation.

dionidium 3y ago

> With the end of affirmative action, legacy status in admissions becomes much harder to justify. I just don't see this. In our society we believe it to be illegitimate to discriminate on the basis of race. We believe that to be a special kind of uniquely harmful prejudice, one that fractures the deepest structures of society, and that it therefore clears the very high bar required for limiting freedom of association. That is what is at issue in the case of affirmative action, the elimination of which was not a broad referendum on the right to form elite social clubs.

MisterBastahrd 3y ago
We do not live in a perfect world. Instead, we live in a world where a collection of individuals has had the fruits of their labor stolen from them for most of the past 400 years, served in wars where promises were made and not kept upon their return, and are still being discriminated against in representative democracy. And when someone enumerates all the reasons that these people have been harmed, financially, spiritually, democratically, and physically... the people who are against attempts to rectify the situation given the tools available also have nothing but "fairness" to fall back on when attempting to justify their positions, because they'd rather sweep it under the rug and pretend like it's something that we should never address.
- intimidated 3y ago
  You might not agree with the spirit of this an endeavor, but I have a yes/no question for you: If you were to wear your most clever, most creative writing cap, could you make a convincing case entirely contrary to your beliefs? I'm not asking whether you could write a convincing case against racial affirmative action, because I know you could handle that just fine. Instead, could write a convincing case that the group you're talking about owes some collective debt to the rest of society, rather than the other way around?
  - MisterBastahrd 3y ago
    I used to be a dyed-in-the-wool conservative. Their entire case is "it's not fair" in the absolute sense. That because some white folks descend from people who didn't have anything to do with slavery that all should be absolved from participating and benefitting from systemic racism. It's not an intellectual argument. It's an argument from performative and wanton ignorance.

MisterBastahrd 3y ago

Harder to justify? In an absolute vacuum, they were always the hardest to justify. There's absolutely no reason that they should have ever existed. I do still like the idea of employees of universities getting the benefit of their children attending for free, though... but then I also had no problem with affirmative action for many of the same reasons.

29athrowaway 3y ago

Then they will put their money into another pay-to-win system.

ericmcer 3y ago

Why did they lump athletes in with those other three groups. Athletics is the ultimate meritocracy. If athletes are a significant portion of that 43% it dilutes the whole argument. If 10% were alumni/donors/faculty it would still be outrageous, no need to pump up the numbers.

xdennis 3y ago
> Athletics is the ultimate meritocracy ...but not in education. The US system of making athletes waste time in university is quite unique and ridiculous.
- kulahan 3y ago
  I like that we still emphasize education even if you're going for a job that doesn't even require you to know how to read.
  - oblio 3y ago
    Don't they basically get a free pass for regular courses as long as they behave and provide results?
    - nocsi 3y ago
      Yea.. These students also generate capital through ticket sales and rally alumni to donate. Unless a non-producing sport.

mabbo 3y ago

> Nearly three quarters of them would have been rejected if they had been subjected to the same standards as other white applicants. That's kind of insane. Over 30% of white students at Harvard would have been rejected if not for those programs.

Scarblac 3y ago

But also, why is meritocracy so above any criticism? Why is it considered so great? It would be fairer to just pick at random. Or even better, make sure everyone who wants a good education can get one.

koolba 3y ago
The rationale for meritocracy is that a limited resource should be allocated to the individual that will make most use of it. Demonstrating that you understand the prerequisites and are studious is a pretty good indicator that you’ll attend class and strive to learn more. Randomly picking students with zero minimum qualification would be a massive waste of resources. Randomly picking students above a given objective standard would be okay. Though arguably not as good as given the best of the best first dibs (depends on who you ask!).

deleted 3y ago

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CraigRo 3y ago

This statement is a bit misleading, as the criteria get to be hair-splittingly narrow when you are talking about a school with a sub 5% acceptance rate -- you could fill the whole class with valedictorians. Nevertheless, my experience is that in terms of finding a 'better' candidate: Legacy -- legacy preference is pitched as a tiebreaker. Most of the legacies are actually quite good, and many are exceptional, so perhaps 30-50% got in over some 'better' kid. But in many cases, those slots represent something like geographic diversity, or a legacy kid of a minority or a kid of some famous person, and they generally don't take dolts. So this is not a huge tip. FacBrat -- The kids of professors tend to be extremely and sometimes extraordinarily good -- their parents are Harvard professors, and that tends to rub off. Staff members less so, but it is politically hard to reject them if you want to keep their parents. There are more in the second category than in the first. So perhaps 60% of the kids get in based on this tip. Donor -- Not a lot of these that I know of. Even in the 1930s, the son of the President of IBM got rejected from Harvard and Princeton because he was a goof off. I seriously doubt that there are more than 10-20 kids/year who get in this way who wouldn't otherwise. Athlete -- This is where very few of these kids would get in if they were in the general pool -- 10% max I'd guess. A lot of them are very good, but that level of dedication to sport tends to eat time that could have been used for academics or other worthwhile pursuits. I've always been amazed that they recruit for Golf, Squash, Crew, Fencing, Diving, Tennis, Lax, and Water Polo... these sports are limited to prep schools and rich suburban districts ... not exactly equitable.

whimsicalism 3y ago
Your comment is pretty spot on about the admission dynamics. > Legacy I think it is more of a tip than you are making it out to be simply due to yield farming - the smart kid who has a Harvard parent is more likely to go to Harvard over Yale than a generic smart kid, so if you want to keep your admission rates as low as possible you tip legacy. > 10-20 kids/year who get in this way who wouldn't otherwise. They certainly exist, Harvard has the z-list.
- meetingthrower 3y ago
  Hah just heard that come up in another context. Confirmed. Heard the price tag was $3m and you have to take a gap year.

theiwefrtifre 3y ago

[flagged]

bushbaba 3y ago

Which is why many have stated it’s hardest to get into university if you are a non wealthy, legacy white or Asian male. I totally see that’s institutions all issuing apologies for the past discrimination.

agentofoblivion 3y ago

Headline in 5 years: “Endowments from alumni down 50% and no one knows why!”