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It boils down to this: If you have some fraction of your students who get in, not on their primary merits as students, but for some other reason that benefits t

It boils down to this: If you have some fraction of your students who get in, not on their primary merits as students, but for some other reason that benefits the rest of the student body in some way, eliminating that fraction of the students benefits a handful of students who were at the very top of the waitlist to get in, at the cost of the benefits those preferentially selected students provided. In both athletics and the kids of rich donors cases, I'd be happy to defend that being a bad trade-off. The networking value of the rich kids going to the same university as me far outweighs the slight increase in average academic prowess of the university (emphasis on slight: remember, these are students who ranked below every other student in the merit-based application pool). Athletics is a smaller effect size than the rich kids, but at the end of the day by providing very valuable labor to the university for approximately free, they completely pay for the sports programs (some of which the merit-admitted enjoyed, such as having a very large gym open 24 hours a day), in addition to feeding money back into the university, subsidizing everyone else's education. Couple that with the fact that these students are disproportionately NOT taking up seats in the most competitive programs, and it's still a net positive for the student body.

vkou 3y ago
I can make the same argument for AA. A diversity of backgrounds and perspectives, including students who managed to overcome a lot more adversity than the average rich kid, or white-collar family admittee will make for a better, richer learning experience for everyone.
- HDThoreaun 3y ago
  Which is why Harvard had AA. Turns out government funded institutions are banned from discriminating based on race though. But discriminating based on wealth, parental social status, or athletic ability is still cool.
- OkayPhysicist 3y ago
  As well you should.
Apocryphon 3y ago
> providing very valuable labor to the university for approximately free Which is perhaps exploitative of the student athletes, who should receive more of a cut of that the revenue they produce. > they completely pay for the sports programs (some of which the merit-admitted enjoyed, such as having a very large gym open 24 hours a day) Is that universal though? Not all schools’ sports programs do as well, and isn’t it a wasteful distraction for colleges to be spending tens of millions on stadiums and scoreboards instead of academics? It just seems like another example of excess infecting an institution of learning. Obviously campus sports is an age old tradition. But the amount of excess just feels like a phenomenon orthogonal to its original role. If schools are going to be lavishly investing in school sports, why not also school music scenes, school art galleries, school esports, school drag car racing, basically taking any competitive, prestige-driven, money-making aspect of society and stuffing it into an academic setting? And then optimizing for admittees who can fulfill those lucrative roles?

vkou 3y ago

I can make the same argument for AA. A diversity of backgrounds and perspectives, including students who managed to overcome a lot more adversity than the average rich kid, or white-collar family admittee will make for a better, richer learning experience for everyone.

HDThoreaun 3y ago
Which is why Harvard had AA. Turns out government funded institutions are banned from discriminating based on race though. But discriminating based on wealth, parental social status, or athletic ability is still cool.
OkayPhysicist 3y ago
As well you should.

Apocryphon 3y ago

> providing very valuable labor to the university for approximately free Which is perhaps exploitative of the student athletes, who should receive more of a cut of that the revenue they produce. > they completely pay for the sports programs (some of which the merit-admitted enjoyed, such as having a very large gym open 24 hours a day) Is that universal though? Not all schools’ sports programs do as well, and isn’t it a wasteful distraction for colleges to be spending tens of millions on stadiums and scoreboards instead of academics? It just seems like another example of excess infecting an institution of learning. Obviously campus sports is an age old tradition. But the amount of excess just feels like a phenomenon orthogonal to its original role. If schools are going to be lavishly investing in school sports, why not also school music scenes, school art galleries, school esports, school drag car racing, basically taking any competitive, prestige-driven, money-making aspect of society and stuffing it into an academic setting? And then optimizing for admittees who can fulfill those lucrative roles?