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"By “merit” I don’t mean cosmic merit — moral deservingness, a judgment by the almighty at the gates of heaven. I mean the traits that enable a student to profi

"By “merit” I don’t mean cosmic merit — moral deservingness, a judgment by the almighty at the gates of heaven. I mean the traits that enable a student to profit from an elite university education, including cognitive aptitude, conscientiousness, and a thirst for knowledge." The premise sounds nice however I'd gander that you'd likely end up with a similar results as is the case now, a trend towards the connected and interested wealthy making up the student body of Harvard and other elite colleges. This is due to people having money being able to afford good educational programs for their children at the start while those without significant affluent backgrounds will have significantly less access to quality educational resources before they reach college age. On paper meritocracy sounds reasonably fair but in practice I believe we'll find it to be otherwise.

jevoten 3y ago
> On paper meritocracy sounds reasonably fair but in practice I believe we'll find it to be otherwise. In practice, the non-connected/wealthy Whites and Asians are faced with a choice between 'meritocracy' with all the caveats you list, or a system that still has all those caveats, but also actively racially discriminates against them. In fact, given how under-represented Whites are at the Ivies, all those connections and wealth fall far short of counter-balancing discrimination against them, so it's not just the lower-class Whites that are made 2nd-class citizens: https://archive.org/details/ivy-league-demographics https://archive.org/details/ivy-league-demographics
- practicemaths 3y ago
  Does it actively discriminate or is that just a talking point that is repeated? Presumably what we want to say is if we have 100 children with similar economic and educational backgrounds and experiences and 70 are of type A, 25 type B, and 5 are type C then when it comes to the college body there ought to be relatively similar representation by those ratios. That is for every 100 students in college, 70ish are type A, 25ish are type B, and 5ish are type C. However that's with the premise that each type's makeup of the whole is also having a similar background and experience which we also know is likely not to be true. So if you wanted to be "more fair" you'd have to include socioeconomic conditions each applicant is coming from rather than just purely by particular racial makeup. So if you have Low income, middle, high, and 300 students, then take 100 from each income bracket, then within those brackets aim for the racial/cultural make-up be reflective of those income brackets make-up.
  - sokoloff 3y ago
    I believe that Asian Americans are actively discriminated against in elite college admissions in the US (as mentioned in the article here). This has resulted in several court cases with mixed findings, but even in the 'wins' to support the status quo, it seems to me that there was fairly strong evidence of discrimination.
epivosism 3y ago
> This is due to people having money being able to afford good educational programs for their children at the start while those without significant affluent backgrounds will have significantly less access to quality educational resources before they reach college age. When you survey high achieving people in the world, or in your wikipedia history, do you mostly find people who got there because of the opportunities their parents paid for? How many of those people have brothers and sisters - do you also find that their entire family does well? I don't see that. At most I see richer/more fortunate people have a higher average. But the idea that it's the dominant factor is in conflict with observation - that it's really common to see people who do much better than those around them even though they all had about the same level of resources. Also: is your thesis that the more money that is spent on a child's education, the better they will do? How do you square that with observations? Do you believe that claim is supported by evidence? I don't - I think that for example a town with poor but middle class people (i.e. a suburb of Shanghai) would have way higher scores than a town of blue-collar workers in the US who had nominally higher pay. i.e., pay/spend doesn't really matter (unless pay is so low that the kids are directly feeling the effect of poverty). Do you believe that school districts which spend more per student also have higher scores as a result? Have you ever looked up that claim? Also note that by your thesis that spending money on childhood education leads to improvements in "merit", the educational quality of US & ivy league students should have been going up dramatically in the last 30 years as prices grew much faster than inflation. Yet, I'd bet that per person, Ivy graduate productivity (patents/person, innovative academic publications/person, etc.) has been dropping the entire time. If money makes people more academically proficient, how do you explain that?
- practicemaths 3y ago
  > When you survey high achieving people in the world, or in your wikipedia history, do you mostly find people who got there because of the opportunities their parents paid for? When you look into the backgrounds of the people whose names live on as the units we use to describe and measure physical qualities I think you'll find most had a pretty good early educational foundation and financial support from family or a patron. > Yes, look up the How many of those people have brothers and sisters - do you also find that their entire family does well? https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nobel_Prize#Family_laureates https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nobel_Prize#Family_laureates There's the Curie's being a prominent example. You can find other examples of Scientists/Mathematicians having remarkable siblings as well. However in the past the female siblings, while respected by their bother(s), weren't always given the same opportunities to persue intellectual ambitions as their male counterparts were.

jevoten 3y ago

> On paper meritocracy sounds reasonably fair but in practice I believe we'll find it to be otherwise. In practice, the non-connected/wealthy Whites and Asians are faced with a choice between 'meritocracy' with all the caveats you list, or a system that still has all those caveats, but also actively racially discriminates against them. In fact, given how under-represented Whites are at the Ivies, all those connections and wealth fall far short of counter-balancing discrimination against them, so it's not just the lower-class Whites that are made 2nd-class citizens: https://archive.org/details/ivy-league-demographics https://archive.org/details/ivy-league-demographics

practicemaths 3y ago
Does it actively discriminate or is that just a talking point that is repeated? Presumably what we want to say is if we have 100 children with similar economic and educational backgrounds and experiences and 70 are of type A, 25 type B, and 5 are type C then when it comes to the college body there ought to be relatively similar representation by those ratios. That is for every 100 students in college, 70ish are type A, 25ish are type B, and 5ish are type C. However that's with the premise that each type's makeup of the whole is also having a similar background and experience which we also know is likely not to be true. So if you wanted to be "more fair" you'd have to include socioeconomic conditions each applicant is coming from rather than just purely by particular racial makeup. So if you have Low income, middle, high, and 300 students, then take 100 from each income bracket, then within those brackets aim for the racial/cultural make-up be reflective of those income brackets make-up.
- sokoloff 3y ago
  I believe that Asian Americans are actively discriminated against in elite college admissions in the US (as mentioned in the article here). This has resulted in several court cases with mixed findings, but even in the 'wins' to support the status quo, it seems to me that there was fairly strong evidence of discrimination.

epivosism 3y ago

> This is due to people having money being able to afford good educational programs for their children at the start while those without significant affluent backgrounds will have significantly less access to quality educational resources before they reach college age. When you survey high achieving people in the world, or in your wikipedia history, do you mostly find people who got there because of the opportunities their parents paid for? How many of those people have brothers and sisters - do you also find that their entire family does well? I don't see that. At most I see richer/more fortunate people have a higher average. But the idea that it's the dominant factor is in conflict with observation - that it's really common to see people who do much better than those around them even though they all had about the same level of resources. Also: is your thesis that the more money that is spent on a child's education, the better they will do? How do you square that with observations? Do you believe that claim is supported by evidence? I don't - I think that for example a town with poor but middle class people (i.e. a suburb of Shanghai) would have way higher scores than a town of blue-collar workers in the US who had nominally higher pay. i.e., pay/spend doesn't really matter (unless pay is so low that the kids are directly feeling the effect of poverty). Do you believe that school districts which spend more per student also have higher scores as a result? Have you ever looked up that claim? Also note that by your thesis that spending money on childhood education leads to improvements in "merit", the educational quality of US & ivy league students should have been going up dramatically in the last 30 years as prices grew much faster than inflation. Yet, I'd bet that per person, Ivy graduate productivity (patents/person, innovative academic publications/person, etc.) has been dropping the entire time. If money makes people more academically proficient, how do you explain that?

practicemaths 3y ago
> When you survey high achieving people in the world, or in your wikipedia history, do you mostly find people who got there because of the opportunities their parents paid for? When you look into the backgrounds of the people whose names live on as the units we use to describe and measure physical qualities I think you'll find most had a pretty good early educational foundation and financial support from family or a patron. > Yes, look up the How many of those people have brothers and sisters - do you also find that their entire family does well? https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nobel_Prize#Family_laureates https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nobel_Prize#Family_laureates There's the Curie's being a prominent example. You can find other examples of Scientists/Mathematicians having remarkable siblings as well. However in the past the female siblings, while respected by their bother(s), weren't always given the same opportunities to persue intellectual ambitions as their male counterparts were.