10 ms·

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

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.
        joshuamorton 3y ago
        Do you have data to back up the implicit claim you're making that dropping affirmative action will, all else equal, result in a larger number of lower-income people attending schools, and that affirmative action policies weren't aiding non-immigrant Blacks?
        kelnos 3y ago
        On the contrary, when California enacted a ban on AA in university admissions in 1996, enrollment of minorities plummeted. Sure, maybe some of them would have dropped out, and some may have changed majors, but at least they would have had the opportunity, and certainly some would have been able to take advantage of it.
    - deleted 3y ago
      [deleted]
  - tptacek 3y ago
    Here's an interesting defense of racial preferences a mutual acquaintance wrote on HN some years ago: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=4758529 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=4758529
    - tekknik 3y ago
      > It has to do with correcting specific and massive historical wrongs in which our government was complicit, not lifting up disadvantaged people generally. And I tuned out. I’m not paying for the sins of our fathers.
      - ves 3y ago
        You’re definitely happily collecting the proceeds of those sins, though, I’m sure.
        deleted 3y ago
        [deleted]
        tekknik 3y ago
        being a veteran who swore they’re life, lol no. not a chance.
        corimaith 3y ago
        We can say that for just about everyone though.
        rayiner 3y ago
        Most Americans came here after slavery ended, so no they’re not. If you can trace the “proceeds” of slavery anywhere, it’s not the pocket of some Polish guy whose parents got here in 1920, or some German American from the Midwest or some Appalachian. It’s to places like Harvard and the banks, insurance companies, etc., that Harvard graduates end up working at.
        tptacek 3y ago
- jchw 3y ago
  I think the debate regarding affirmative action is very simple and not unexpected at all. Here's how I view it. To start, in America I believe that most of us believe that the "default" behavior should be to avoid unfair discrimination, especially for protected classes. I think most people would agree to at least this, it's a pretty generic and obvious statement. Therefore, when we deviate from this for some reason, generally, it REQUIRES a healthy amount of thought: the baseline should be at least a strong hypothesis to begin the conversation. The world is very complicated, so simply assuming something does what you expect it to because it intuitively sounds like it does is generally not a reasonable position. And of course, the idea behind affirmative action, hopefully put into words that people feel is fair, is a sort of discrimination, but the intention is of course to try to adjust for past disgressions and injustice to try to "re-balance" opportunity. So unlike the four-letter-word that was discrimination in historical contexts, it is not based on racism[1], for example. So does affirmative action work? It seems to do roughly what it is supposed to do, although honestly a huge problem is that it's sort of tautological. Of course it works, at doing what it's meant to do. Some have argued that it could potentially harm students by leading to a "mismatch", but the evidence is mixed and in any case it probably causes more good than harm in terms of outcomes. I am not an expert on this though, and I have not been into the studies for a while. The real question that I think causes so much strife and pain is the one that hurts to try to answer: is it worth it? And that is not easy to answer, nor does it have an obvious objective answer. I truly believe that most of this argument boils down to proxies for this particular question. Some people who have a particular egalitarian bend to their views on life and society might blanket oppose such a policy on an ideological basis, whereas someone who is strongly anti-racist is highly likely to prefer such policies even at high cost. Cost? By that, in this case I mean in terms of going against the basic belief of not discriminating. Ideology is important to people even when there isn't a discrete cost, but in this case the micro and macro views are very different. On the micro level, someone who is less qualified will be preferred over someone who is more qualified, on the basis of factors outside of their control. On the macro level, population demographics change, generally reducing biases. There's a lot of finer points. Like clearly, on the micro level, when someone "less qualified" according to some criteria passes due to affirmative action, the idea is that it was beyond their control in the first place that they were less qualified, which may very well be true. And on the macro level, statistics may not tell the full story: demographics are a measurement of people, and people are not fungible. The numbers surely look better on paper, but one must wonder sometimes if it's actually doing what it looks like it's doing. You might think that I am staunchly opposed to affirmative action based on my framing of this, and the truth is, I simply don't know. I think that it's potentially very powerful, but it also is damn scary to wield institutional discrimination even if it's supposed to be a force for good. This isn't exactly a slippery slope situation, of course, but the road to hell is paved with good intentions. I've personally flip-flopped probably a lot of times. All I can say is that I sort of hope people don't just assume this is the right way to solve all of the problem of injustices, or maybe even more importantly, that merely instituting policies like this doesn't "solve" America's history with racism and sexism; and I don't think most people believe that it does. For some of those things, I think only a lot of time will truly be able to heal most of that, and it's going to leave a pretty nasty scar. Of course, beyond the fairly straightforward debate is the culture war bullshit surrounding it, but to me it's mostly noise. I look forward to a future with less influence from Twitter and news organizations so that people can go back to discussing things at least slightly more like human beings. [1]: Using racism in this context to refer to the fairly strict definition of being related to beliefs about races rather than about discrimination.
- tivert 3y ago
  > 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... Understanding "equality of opportunity" to be literal and absolute is nonsense, because to do so would require hobbling people with natural talent (for instance), since not all people have the opportunities created by those talents (there's a famous sci-fi short story about that https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Harrison_Bergeron https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Harrison_Bergeron). IIRC, rejecting "equality of outcome" in favor of "equality of opportunity", means rejecting explicit policies to pick winners and losers.
  - enragedcacti 3y ago
    I don't think you do remember correctly, and equating the ideal of equality of opportunity to Harrison Bergeron is silly. Feel free to peruse any one of this to get an idea of the common usage the term. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Equal_opportunity https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Equal_opportunity https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/equal-opportunity/ https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/equal-opportunity/ https://www.britannica.com/topic/equal-opportunity https://www.britannica.com/topic/equal-opportunity
  - sidlls 3y ago
    I think you have it backwards: targeting "equality of outcome" necessitates policies to pick winners and losers. Specifically, it requires policies that aim to minimize both. Equality of opportunity doesn't mean hobbling talented people or enforcing that everyone be given identical opportunities. It simply means that people regardless of talent (in a given ability) ought not be restricted from an attempting to take an advantage of an opportunity should they happen to have it.
    - Retric 3y ago
      All admissions policies pick winners and losers, that’s the point. A collage which sifts the relative importance of SAT scores vs GPA is picking winners and losers, it’s hardly an argument in favor of any specific policy. AA increases how much innate talent matters vs some peoples social position. It’s the same outcome as removing legacy admissions, just with a slightly different set of beneficiaries. Collages have many leavers to get these kinds of outcomes. Favor elite prep schools and suddenly you have a surplus of high income families etc.
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.

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.
        joshuamorton 3y ago
        Do you have data to back up the implicit claim you're making that dropping affirmative action will, all else equal, result in a larger number of lower-income people attending schools, and that affirmative action policies weren't aiding non-immigrant Blacks?
        kelnos 3y ago
        On the contrary, when California enacted a ban on AA in university admissions in 1996, enrollment of minorities plummeted. Sure, maybe some of them would have dropped out, and some may have changed majors, but at least they would have had the opportunity, and certainly some would have been able to take advantage of it.
  - deleted 3y ago
    [deleted]
- tptacek 3y ago
  Here's an interesting defense of racial preferences a mutual acquaintance wrote on HN some years ago: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=4758529 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=4758529
  - tekknik 3y ago
    > It has to do with correcting specific and massive historical wrongs in which our government was complicit, not lifting up disadvantaged people generally. And I tuned out. I’m not paying for the sins of our fathers.
    - ves 3y ago
      You’re definitely happily collecting the proceeds of those sins, though, I’m sure.
      - deleted 3y ago
        [deleted]
      - tekknik 3y ago
        being a veteran who swore they’re life, lol no. not a chance.
      - corimaith 3y ago
        We can say that for just about everyone though.
      - rayiner 3y ago
        Most Americans came here after slavery ended, so no they’re not. If you can trace the “proceeds” of slavery anywhere, it’s not the pocket of some Polish guy whose parents got here in 1920, or some German American from the Midwest or some Appalachian. It’s to places like Harvard and the banks, insurance companies, etc., that Harvard graduates end up working at.
        tptacek 3y ago
jchw 3y ago
I think the debate regarding affirmative action is very simple and not unexpected at all. Here's how I view it. To start, in America I believe that most of us believe that the "default" behavior should be to avoid unfair discrimination, especially for protected classes. I think most people would agree to at least this, it's a pretty generic and obvious statement. Therefore, when we deviate from this for some reason, generally, it REQUIRES a healthy amount of thought: the baseline should be at least a strong hypothesis to begin the conversation. The world is very complicated, so simply assuming something does what you expect it to because it intuitively sounds like it does is generally not a reasonable position. And of course, the idea behind affirmative action, hopefully put into words that people feel is fair, is a sort of discrimination, but the intention is of course to try to adjust for past disgressions and injustice to try to "re-balance" opportunity. So unlike the four-letter-word that was discrimination in historical contexts, it is not based on racism[1], for example. So does affirmative action work? It seems to do roughly what it is supposed to do, although honestly a huge problem is that it's sort of tautological. Of course it works, at doing what it's meant to do. Some have argued that it could potentially harm students by leading to a "mismatch", but the evidence is mixed and in any case it probably causes more good than harm in terms of outcomes. I am not an expert on this though, and I have not been into the studies for a while. The real question that I think causes so much strife and pain is the one that hurts to try to answer: is it worth it? And that is not easy to answer, nor does it have an obvious objective answer. I truly believe that most of this argument boils down to proxies for this particular question. Some people who have a particular egalitarian bend to their views on life and society might blanket oppose such a policy on an ideological basis, whereas someone who is strongly anti-racist is highly likely to prefer such policies even at high cost. Cost? By that, in this case I mean in terms of going against the basic belief of not discriminating. Ideology is important to people even when there isn't a discrete cost, but in this case the micro and macro views are very different. On the micro level, someone who is less qualified will be preferred over someone who is more qualified, on the basis of factors outside of their control. On the macro level, population demographics change, generally reducing biases. There's a lot of finer points. Like clearly, on the micro level, when someone "less qualified" according to some criteria passes due to affirmative action, the idea is that it was beyond their control in the first place that they were less qualified, which may very well be true. And on the macro level, statistics may not tell the full story: demographics are a measurement of people, and people are not fungible. The numbers surely look better on paper, but one must wonder sometimes if it's actually doing what it looks like it's doing. You might think that I am staunchly opposed to affirmative action based on my framing of this, and the truth is, I simply don't know. I think that it's potentially very powerful, but it also is damn scary to wield institutional discrimination even if it's supposed to be a force for good. This isn't exactly a slippery slope situation, of course, but the road to hell is paved with good intentions. I've personally flip-flopped probably a lot of times. All I can say is that I sort of hope people don't just assume this is the right way to solve all of the problem of injustices, or maybe even more importantly, that merely instituting policies like this doesn't "solve" America's history with racism and sexism; and I don't think most people believe that it does. For some of those things, I think only a lot of time will truly be able to heal most of that, and it's going to leave a pretty nasty scar. Of course, beyond the fairly straightforward debate is the culture war bullshit surrounding it, but to me it's mostly noise. I look forward to a future with less influence from Twitter and news organizations so that people can go back to discussing things at least slightly more like human beings. [1]: Using racism in this context to refer to the fairly strict definition of being related to beliefs about races rather than about discrimination.
tivert 3y ago
> 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... Understanding "equality of opportunity" to be literal and absolute is nonsense, because to do so would require hobbling people with natural talent (for instance), since not all people have the opportunities created by those talents (there's a famous sci-fi short story about that https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Harrison_Bergeron https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Harrison_Bergeron). IIRC, rejecting "equality of outcome" in favor of "equality of opportunity", means rejecting explicit policies to pick winners and losers.
- enragedcacti 3y ago
  I don't think you do remember correctly, and equating the ideal of equality of opportunity to Harrison Bergeron is silly. Feel free to peruse any one of this to get an idea of the common usage the term. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Equal_opportunity https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Equal_opportunity https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/equal-opportunity/ https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/equal-opportunity/ https://www.britannica.com/topic/equal-opportunity https://www.britannica.com/topic/equal-opportunity
- sidlls 3y ago
  I think you have it backwards: targeting "equality of outcome" necessitates policies to pick winners and losers. Specifically, it requires policies that aim to minimize both. Equality of opportunity doesn't mean hobbling talented people or enforcing that everyone be given identical opportunities. It simply means that people regardless of talent (in a given ability) ought not be restricted from an attempting to take an advantage of an opportunity should they happen to have it.
  - Retric 3y ago
    All admissions policies pick winners and losers, that’s the point. A collage which sifts the relative importance of SAT scores vs GPA is picking winners and losers, it’s hardly an argument in favor of any specific policy. AA increases how much innate talent matters vs some peoples social position. It’s the same outcome as removing legacy admissions, just with a slightly different set of beneficiaries. Collages have many leavers to get these kinds of outcomes. Favor elite prep schools and suddenly you have a surplus of high income families etc.

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.