We've come to accept that money and legacy power provides access and opportunity regardless of merit. If that more fundamental problem was solved, many of these others would melt away on their own.
I think the fact that there does seem to be some grumblings about 'legacy admissions' is progress.
Based on what I read several years ago, social mobility in the U.S. used to be significantly higher, such as in the 1980s, and I know the U.S. used to define itself on social mobility - the Land of Opportunity and of Liberty, where a person is free to do and accomplish what they can through merit and hard work. I'll add that the U.S. long has been run by children of the working and middle class, such as Clinton, Obama, and LBJ, as well as elites (Trump, Bush, Bush, Kennedy, etc.). (I'm not cherry-picking; I just don't remember the economic backgrounds of Reagan, Carter, Nixon, etc.).
Of course it still was very imperfect, but my point is that we shouldn't think that the way things are is the way they've always been.
This has always been the reason I'm not as eager as lots of people to smash universities and elitist admissions. The children of the rich and powerful took the reins without trouble before widespread university attendance, and they'll probably keep doing so after it declines.
In this narrative, the breakthrough of the last ~70 years is running a whole bunch of highly-qualified non-elites through what are effectively elite finishing schools, introducing them to the existing elite and in many cases giving them the shared experiences and cultural habits to enter the halls of power. It's not a great system, it leaves people trying to hide their lack of a Vineyard summer home from their classmates, but it's far better than a lot of older systems like "anyone who has to work for their money can't be an elite" or "if you don't learn Latin you can't go to college".
I certainly think this is a major flaw in the grand hopes for MOOCs; the aspirational Ivy League and top 20 experiences are the part of college they're least capable of replacing.
Parents of means sent their children to College so they'd have a leg up on the under-class. The Screwing Of The Average Man [0] pointed this out to me. It additionally pointed out that college was subsidized for returning WWII soldiers so they'd have something to do that didn't involve fighting, via the GI Bill [1]. This had the effect of causing college costs to spiral out of control.
My dad's parents both went to college before WWII. My grandfather's mother had played Prohibition well (legally), and sent all four of her children to college. My grandmother was an only child, and her parents had the means to pay for college for her.
My mom's father was relatively old by the time he was released from the army, and didn't take advantage of the GI bill. My grandmother said he really should have - that they probably would have greatly benefited financially from it.
Education is an industry whose purpose is mostly to keep people out of the workforce for as long as possible. Some people get a lot out of their degree programs, but mostly school is just a distraction.
I wonder if there's a way to gracefully reform K-12 & post-secondary education so that it better serves the needs of the students.
[0] https://books.google.com/books?id=-PJ0DLVOIXcC [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/G.I._Bill
Or were sold a merit based social contract and it has always been an ineffective set of rules that has no bearing on the way goods and resources are apportioned.
Your cognitive dissonance comes from how you expect goods and resources to be apportioned. How you expect people should "earn" access, when the elites/oligarchs/connected rarely earn anything. They merely maintain access.
Positions based on merit may be the aberration!
And you could potentially make a case that it's illegal, even though it's flimsy and you'd probably would lose. Harvard makes all sorts of claims that they pick the best and the brightest based on merit. That's false advertising, and potentially even fraud. I could see a Harvard grad suing the school for admitting Z-List students because it waters down the prestige of their degree. Again, they'd almost certainly lose, but my point is that there are existing legal hooks into this bad behavior.
they didn't lie - they do pick the best and brightest. But they don't claim that's the _only_ people they pick.
In my experience the social access of the Z-list is the primary draw of an “ivy-league” education.
Nah, because such an admissions policy impacts reputation. All else being equal, you probably wouldn't hire a civil engineer with a BS from Harvard over one from MIT.
That doesn't appear to be a good assumption given Harvard's current budget situation.
And really begs the question, given Harvard's current budget situations, why haven't their practices created significantly more spots.
It's less clear what the quid pro quo is for racial discrimination against Asians, so people are less okay with it.
The argument cuts both ways. The reason there is this lawsuit is because many came to accept that merit provides access and opportunity. Both views are extremes.