8 ms·

Merit is not easily definable. Standardized tests are bullshit, IQ tests are phrenology, class rankings are not comparable across school districts. Someone who

Merit is not easily definable. Standardized tests are bullshit, IQ tests are phrenology, class rankings are not comparable across school districts. Someone who was president of every club at school may be less able than a kid who had to flip burgers in the evenings to help make rent. Merit to a university may mean "someone whose charisma and social connections will bring great repute to the institution" more than "a child prodigy who will burn out at 27 and end up fixing typewriters in his parent's garage because they actually had an undiagnosed mental illness growing up". Merit may mean "a middling student smart enough to pass who will stick around working as a post-doc temporarily forever because they have no ambition beyond performing slave wage labor in exchange for the cold comfort of the known and familiar". Any definition of merit is going to be irredeemably faulty. Like recruiting sporting talent based solely on stats without considering if the talent is an asshole who will destroy the atmosphere in the clubhouse and immediately get arrested for DUI after being signed. I thought we wanted to let the market decide? The government funding aspect is irrelevant. Nearly every business in the country receives some form of government funding either direct or indirect and they hire based on a wide variety of criteria. I was once hired to a position I would need time to be a productive in because I am a ham radio guy and my boss wanted someone to talk radios with.

gazebo64 2y ago
I fail to see how the lack of a perfect quantifiable metric of merit logically flows down to "stop admitting Asians because we have too many"? Whatever the university's method of determining merit is, it should be applied to everyone equally, and racially discriminating because one group historically performs well is indefensible imo
- kenjackson 2y ago
  It’s also not what they’re doing. Seems like you’re arguing against a strawman.
renewiltord 2y ago
Yeah, it's like how when they wanted to put in a Jewish quota at the university it was struck down and then they found that the same percentage of Jewish applicants were well-rounded coincidentally so they just stuck to determining if they were well-rounded. Today's folk may call it anti-semitism but really it was just that Jews Were Square.
impossiblefork 2y ago
Standardized test reliably predict academic success. IQ tests similarly. Here in Sweden, if you do well enough on the entrance exam, we simply let you in, even to the best universities. This means that people other than hoop-jumpers have a chance.
- viraptor 2y ago
  > Standardized test reliably predict academic success. IQ tests similarly. So do home addresses. And skin colour. And parent's money. There are issues with all of those for different reasons. People saying IQ is problematic don't mean there's no correlation at all. Just that they can be culture / approach / etc. specific and we shouldn't treat them as an objective measure.
  - piker 2y ago
    Are you saying these aren’t objective measures or that they’re “problematic”? The distinction is important.
    - hansvm 2y ago
      They're obviously objective. That doesn't make them good. Think of Harvard's goals, maybe some more complicated version of a combination of: 1. Meritocracy: Give a chance to the students with the best innate chance at real-world success 2. Self-preservation: Give a chance to the students with the best chance at real-world success 3. (implicitly) Don't let too many people in who don't further (1) or (2). Those measures (SAT, high-school GPA, gender, color, income, ...) are weak predictors of (2). How couldn't they be? We live in a world that encourages feedback loops, making it difficult for the most intelligent and ambitious people to break through class barriers with any reasonable degree of success. They're not good measures because (a) they're not even particularly strong predictors of goal (2), and (b) they're piss-poor predictors of goal (1). By way of contrast, a compelling essay is much harder to assign an "objective" score to, but it's a stronger predictor of both (1) and (2) than the rest put together, especially at the top end. The important thing to keep in mind with all of those though is that they're proxy measurements. We can't directly measure the future, so we come up with tests to try to guess less incorrectly. It doesn't matter which measure you pick; they'll all be "problematic." If you recognize that though, it's easier to move past a shallow thought like whether the measure is objective or not and toward a system that better align's with the university's goals.
bananalychee 2y ago
Both standardized tests and IQ highly correlate with success in higher education and career over a lifetime. Harvard's performance and reputation have tanked as a result of its anti-meritocratic policies, and the market is indeed responding, slowly but surely. You are making things up and conjuring nonsensical hypotheticals to deny the evidence that's right in front of our eyes.
- chipgap98 2y ago
  > Harvard's performance and reputation have tanked as a result of its anti-meritocratic policies Do you have data to back this up?
  - kenjackson 2y ago
    Admissions data does not back it up. And based on my college recruiting data, recruiting doesn’t back it up either.
- Zamaamiro 2y ago
  > Harvard's performance and reputation have tanked as a result of its anti-meritocratic policies [Citation needed]
s1artibartfast 2y ago
Sounds fine, test for those things and admit the best. Or do a random lottery. Just dont pick and choose students to disqualify based on race.
deleted 2y ago
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imgabe 2y ago
“Merit definitions can be faulty, so completely abandon any attempt to measure merit and admit people based on vibes.” This is why Harvard students now need remedial algebra classes.
davidblowie 2y ago
"Standardized tests are bullshit, IQ tests are phrenology" Asians don't believe this because our society is much more homogeneous than western societies. Correlation is often causation.
brigandish 2y ago
> I thought we wanted to let the market decide? That sounds like an excellent reason to remove government funds.
deleted 2y ago
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gazebo64 2y ago

I fail to see how the lack of a perfect quantifiable metric of merit logically flows down to "stop admitting Asians because we have too many"? Whatever the university's method of determining merit is, it should be applied to everyone equally, and racially discriminating because one group historically performs well is indefensible imo

kenjackson 2y ago
It’s also not what they’re doing. Seems like you’re arguing against a strawman.

renewiltord 2y ago

Yeah, it's like how when they wanted to put in a Jewish quota at the university it was struck down and then they found that the same percentage of Jewish applicants were well-rounded coincidentally so they just stuck to determining if they were well-rounded. Today's folk may call it anti-semitism but really it was just that Jews Were Square.

impossiblefork 2y ago

Standardized test reliably predict academic success. IQ tests similarly. Here in Sweden, if you do well enough on the entrance exam, we simply let you in, even to the best universities. This means that people other than hoop-jumpers have a chance.

viraptor 2y ago
> Standardized test reliably predict academic success. IQ tests similarly. So do home addresses. And skin colour. And parent's money. There are issues with all of those for different reasons. People saying IQ is problematic don't mean there's no correlation at all. Just that they can be culture / approach / etc. specific and we shouldn't treat them as an objective measure.
- piker 2y ago
  Are you saying these aren’t objective measures or that they’re “problematic”? The distinction is important.
  - hansvm 2y ago
    They're obviously objective. That doesn't make them good. Think of Harvard's goals, maybe some more complicated version of a combination of: 1. Meritocracy: Give a chance to the students with the best innate chance at real-world success 2. Self-preservation: Give a chance to the students with the best chance at real-world success 3. (implicitly) Don't let too many people in who don't further (1) or (2). Those measures (SAT, high-school GPA, gender, color, income, ...) are weak predictors of (2). How couldn't they be? We live in a world that encourages feedback loops, making it difficult for the most intelligent and ambitious people to break through class barriers with any reasonable degree of success. They're not good measures because (a) they're not even particularly strong predictors of goal (2), and (b) they're piss-poor predictors of goal (1). By way of contrast, a compelling essay is much harder to assign an "objective" score to, but it's a stronger predictor of both (1) and (2) than the rest put together, especially at the top end. The important thing to keep in mind with all of those though is that they're proxy measurements. We can't directly measure the future, so we come up with tests to try to guess less incorrectly. It doesn't matter which measure you pick; they'll all be "problematic." If you recognize that though, it's easier to move past a shallow thought like whether the measure is objective or not and toward a system that better align's with the university's goals.

bananalychee 2y ago

Both standardized tests and IQ highly correlate with success in higher education and career over a lifetime. Harvard's performance and reputation have tanked as a result of its anti-meritocratic policies, and the market is indeed responding, slowly but surely. You are making things up and conjuring nonsensical hypotheticals to deny the evidence that's right in front of our eyes.

chipgap98 2y ago
> Harvard's performance and reputation have tanked as a result of its anti-meritocratic policies Do you have data to back this up?
- kenjackson 2y ago
  Admissions data does not back it up. And based on my college recruiting data, recruiting doesn’t back it up either.
Zamaamiro 2y ago
> Harvard's performance and reputation have tanked as a result of its anti-meritocratic policies [Citation needed]

s1artibartfast 2y ago

Sounds fine, test for those things and admit the best. Or do a random lottery. Just dont pick and choose students to disqualify based on race.

deleted 2y ago

[deleted]

imgabe 2y ago

“Merit definitions can be faulty, so completely abandon any attempt to measure merit and admit people based on vibes.” This is why Harvard students now need remedial algebra classes.

davidblowie 2y ago

"Standardized tests are bullshit, IQ tests are phrenology" Asians don't believe this because our society is much more homogeneous than western societies. Correlation is often causation.

brigandish 2y ago

> I thought we wanted to let the market decide? That sounds like an excellent reason to remove government funds.

deleted 2y ago

[deleted]