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Comment by darawk | Hacker News Reader

The actual problem here is not the bribery. The problem is that those bribes are being captured by random 3rd parties, rather than by the school itself. The correct way to implement college admissions is this: Charge a sliding scale fee based on application quality, and then use the excess revenue generated to subsidize poor kids tuition. Your kid has a 2.5 GPA and wants to go to Harvard? Great, that'll be a million dollars a year. You'll be funding the tuition of 20-30 kids of lesser means and everybody wins.

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I'd urge you to think more about this. You can imagine the same thing for murder trials: 10 million per victim or you go to jail. You can use the money to make the world better!

I'm not so sure. These institutions have an embedded narrative. For universities it's that they are meritocracies, where class/race/gender/etc do not matter. For the justice system it's that everyone is equal before the law and the guilty will be punished.

I don't think these institutional narratives are superfluous. While it's naive to expect the institutions to live up to the narratives, the narratives end up serving as ideals. And I don't think the institutions can exist without those ideals.

I would really like universities to be meritocracies. However I went to a highly ranked school for undergrad and I can assure you it was nowhere close to a meritocracy, nor did it really try to pretend that it was.

That narrative may exist for you and others, but it's entirely accidental.

I also went to a highly ranked school.

It wasn't a perfect meritocracy but it was at least oriented towards merit. But my initial point remains: the idea of the meritocracy is necessary.

I don't think universities can exist without it, at least not in this form.

See, I really don't think they are oriented much towards merit either. At least, not my idea of "merit". My idea of merit would be purely academic: test scores, grades (though these are very leaky), and academic achievements outside the classroom (e.g. performance in academic competitions). Yet many, if not most, people at highly ranked/competitive universities don't fall into the "academic" admissions bucket: there's also athletes, musicians, people with "quirky hobbies" (many of which are invented purely for college admissions), people who might have had standards relaxed a bit to meet demographic targets, and most of all kids from rich feeder schools + legacies.

Then you get the rest of the students who get in purely on academic merit. In my experience those maybe make up a plurality but not a majority. They're basically there to lend legitimacy to the rich kids.

Isn't research the main driving force behind many universities? Would they really be affected that much by how some undergraduates got in, especially since they likely wouldn't even be participating in research anyway?

How about with traffic laws? Finland applies a sliding scale to them based on income:

https://www.theatlantic.com/business/archive/2015/03/finland...

The narratives aren’t superfluous, but they are at best aspirational.

Universities are not certainly not meritocracies, and the justice system certainly does not treat everyone equally. So I think it is by all means good to support moves towards the ideals that these institutions make, but there may be a practical middle ground where in recognition that they do not in fact meet these ideals, resources could be captured and used in ways that address this imbalance somewhat?

> The narratives aren’t superfluous, but they are at best aspirational.

This a paraphrase of what I wrote.

> Universities are not certainly not meritocracies, and the justice system certainly does not treat everyone equally.

Neither is perfect. But it's not like they're random. In universities there is correlation between "being smart" and "getting in/excelling at universities" and in the justice system there is a correlation between "killing someone" and "going to jail".

> So I think it is by all means good to support moves towards the ideals that these institutions make, but there may be a practical middle ground where in recognition that they do not in fact meet these ideals, resources could be captured and used in ways that address this imbalance somewhat?

The middle ground is understanding that the institutions aren't perfect and constantly working to shore them up.

But my feeling is that if we go from understanding that the institutions aren't perfect to throwing out the ideals completely then the institutions will crumble. My sense is that we can't do without the ideals. People aren't rational agents.

  The middle ground is understanding that the institutions aren't perfect and constantly working to shore them up.

I think you are rejecting the idea of a middle ground completely. Holding institutions to their stated values is table stakes for me.

I don't think you have to reject the ideals in order to recognize that the world is not meeting them. For example, a university could be quite open about the pressure to allow lower merit students from privileged backgrounds. What if they said "look, we can't completely withstand the political and other pressure put on us. So we're going to allow 5% enrollment of students who do not meet our regular thresholds, so long as they pay 5x (10x?) full tuition. This extra tuition will be used to create N full scholarships and M partial scholarships for students that meet the academic requirements but do not have the financial ability to attend. All students will be treated equally academically throughout their programs"

To some degree you cannot stop this from happening (see prep schools, etc.) but you can bring it out in the light.

> I'm not so sure. These institutions have an embedded narrative. For universities it's that they are meritocracies, where class/race/gender/etc do not matter. For the justice system it's that everyone is equal before the law and the guilty will be punished.

Do they have that narrative though? We already have affirmative action, which is the explicit inclusion of race/gender/class in admissions criteria. We are already a long ways from pure meritocracy.

> I don't think these institutional narratives are superfluous. While it's naive to expect the institutions to live up to the narratives, the narratives end up serving as ideals. And I don't think the institutions can exist without those ideals.

Two things:

1. I think you're overindexing on the importance of these narratives a bit, but you're right, they're important.

2. More importantly, this policy wouldn't destroy those narratives. You can make the scale very steep such that you have to pay quite a bit to get your average student in, and the steepness of that curve will be determined by the eliteness of the institution. You have the same meritocratic rules, they're just tempered by money.

Some of the idea behind programs like affirmative action is that because of race/class/gender, some people score lower on various exams than they could. They were not given equal opportunities - and so to judge them equally during admissions would not be fair.

I think affirmative action is tricky, because we single out some reasons for 'sub-potential' performance, but we ignore a lot of others. But even if I think it's tricky, I tend to be in favor of it.

My biggest issue with these programs is that they should really have some built-in "off-switch", when the program should be dismantled because there's no longer a pressing need for it. I don't think we're there yet, but hopefully we will get there - and then what?

Ya, I wasn't trying to argue for or against affirmative action in that comment. Just trying to point out that it's already not driven purely by intellectual merit. I agree on the off-switch issue as well. It's the problem with subsidies of any kind - they might be useful for a time, but at some point, we want to get rid of them...but they tend to be permanent.

> Do they have that narrative though? We already have affirmative action, which is the explicit inclusion of race/gender/class in admissions criteria. We are already a long ways from pure meritocracy.

I think affirmative action is a bad idea for exactly this reason. It has eroded the narrative. It's trendy for left-wing types to argue things like "Harvard isn't a meritocracy" or to sneer at the idea of a meritocracy altogether (don't get me started on the right-wing types).

> More importantly, this policy wouldn't destroy those narratives. You can make the scale very steep such that you have to pay quite a bit to get your average student in, and the steepness of that curve will be determined by the eliteness of the institution. You have the same meritocratic rules, they're just tempered by money.

I think doing this in the open would be a disaster. What won't destroy the narratives is implementing your idea in the background. This has already happened to some degree. Most students at Harvard don't pay very much. Their education is subsidized by rich families one way or another.

But I don't think that's a good thing. Somewhere along the line our institutional narratives have become cliched in people's minds. Maybe this will lead us to a wonderful new world where we can be perfectly rational and implement ideas like yours. But I doubt it. I think if we lose the institutional narratives we're going to lose the institutions. Maybe the new institutions will be better, who knows? (I'm not optimistic).

> I think affirmative action is a bad idea for exactly this reason. It has eroded the narrative. It's trendy for left-wing types to argue things like "Harvard isn't a meritocracy" or to sneer at the idea of a meritocracy altogether (don't get me started on the right-wing types).

I too hate those people passionately. I'm all for meritocracy in general. I'm just also for pareto-optimal outcomes in resource-constrained environments.

> I think doing this in the open would be a disaster. What won't destroy the narratives is implementing your idea in the background. This has already happened to some degree. Most students at Harvard don't pay very much. Their education is subsidized by rich families one way or another.

Ya it's definitely already a thing in the background. And maybe that's the right level for it, i'm not sure. Though I think we could basically be providing free tuition to say, 75% of students by opening it up to people who aren't willing to donate a building, but could pay say 500k/year. Which is quite a large group of people, especially when you consider international students.

> But I don't think that's a good thing. Somewhere along the line our institutional narratives have become cliched in people's minds. Maybe this will lead us to a wonderful new world where we can be perfectly rational and implement ideas like yours. But I doubt it. I think if we lose the institutional narratives we're going to lose the institutions. Maybe the new institutions will be better, who knows? (I'm not optimistic).

That could be. But I think a big part of the problem right now is that we don't treat education enough like a financial investment. The narrative around it is already too imbued with some moral character that it doesn't really have. We have people going into debt to earn degrees in poetry or psychology, in part because of this odd narrative that a college degree magically endows you with the ingredients for success - regardless of what that degree is in. I think dosing that with a degree of financial realism might be a benefit.

> I think doing this in the open would be a disaster.

Thought experiment: What would happen if it were public knowledge how much each student was paying to attend school? If you were far down the sliding scale and you were spending hundreds of thousands of dollars per year to get in, and that was public knowledge, would it hurt the school's reputation as much? Then it would be clear why this particular person got in, and their intelligence (or lack thereof) wouldn't weigh against people who earned their place by merit, which you could tell by seeing that their tuition cost is low or zero.

They would still be meritocracy. You can pay to get in the door but getting out with a degree is still a matter of merit.

What the above poster is describing is effectively how the status quo works, but more explicit and with transparency. Universities are not purely meritocratic. They factor in race, gender, and VIP status into the application. Donating money is one way of obtaining VIP status.

WRONG.

Murder is a negative to society.

A loser going to Harvard is not, may even improve society if they study well.

If Harvard had infinite seats maybe.

Using an analogy to murder isn't going to be very convincing when the thing you're comparing murder with isn't remotely as close to as bad as murder itself. It's a poor argument that trivially be rebutted by pointing out that the other thing isn't nearly as bad as murder, so the conclusions don't follow.

I feel that your idea is already reality. It's just not official. The issue is that the people caught up in this scandal aren't wealthy enough to fund a building or even a building wing, or they would just go through the more acceptable route.

William Rick Singer, the guy at the center of this, said exactly that:

"There is a front door which means you get in on your own. The back door is through institutional advancement, which is 10 times as much money. And I’ve created this side door in"

(unfortunately for him, he said it on a wiretapped phone call...)

Ya, it is partially reality you're right. I just think it ought to be more explicit.

Buildings, wings, and other structures are named after them. Imo it already is

When the news first broke there was an article where the some of the admissions officers were asked about it by journalist. Unfortunately I do not remember where the article was published. The gist of it was that the bribe devalued the schools -- the rate for "you will admit so and so" is north of $10 million.

The only reason admission to elite schools is so coveted is because, in theory, you can't buy your way into a degree. Once you can buy your way in then no one will want to.

Your idea would work for a bit but eventually, it would fall apart.

Well, being a legacy student can absolutely get you into the school. You can't buy it for yourself now, but someone can have bought it for you earlier.

No. No amount of money should get you a way to get into an "elite" school if you don't deserve it. Unless we're ready to admit that these schools aren't really elite if any billionaire's dumb dumb kid can get in with enough money thrown at the institution. The issue with trying to solve every single problem with money is that capitalism isn't designed to solve problems where a moral compass is needed.

Theocracies justify their existence by enforcing a moral code.

They haven't worked out very well.

> if any billionaire's dumb dumb kid can get in with enough money thrown at the institution

Do you really think this isn't already the case?

> No. No amount of money should get you a way to get into an "elite" school if you don't deserve it.

Why? What's so precious about elite schooling that you're willing to sacrifice 10 kids getting a free education just to prevent one billionaire's kid from going to an elite school?

> The issue with trying to solve every single problem with money is that capitalism isn't designed to solve problems where a moral compass is needed.

Except that capitalism will give more people an elite education, and your moral compass will give fewer of them one. There's a reason we don't guide economies by moral compass - it doesn't work very well.

In the country I come from (France), all the top schools are publicly funded and you get in by taking exams where the whole country students compete once a year. Based on how you rank, you get in or not. Most of them have really low annual tuitions. In some of them, you're even paid! Hard to imagine anything remotely close here when there's always a way to throw money at something (your congressman, dean...) to get the outcome you want.

Go research financial aid programs and outcomes at elite US Universities. The fact that these schools are subject to financial pressure at the margins absolutely does not mean that they are closed to needy students. There are MANY unfair elements of the US educational system that disadvantage poor and minority students, but access to elite schools for the deserving fraction is just not one of them. We're doing fine here.

What about the middle-class kid who doesn't qualify to any of these programs whose chance to get the best teachers and nurturing environment is spoiled by the dumb rich kid taking a spot and wasting it? What about the extra administrative, time burden and uncertainty of outcome the poor kids have to suffer to chase all these financial aid programs? There's clearly room for improvement.

> What about the middle-class kid who doesn't qualify to any of these programs

Citation needed. I was that kid myself. There are no "programs" to "qualify" for. You file a financial aid form. Whatever you and your parents can reasonably pay, you pay, and the school covers the rest. It works for everyone. And one of the reasons it works for everyone is revenue that the school generates, and yeah, that includes some shady benefactor greasing.

I'm not going to sit here and deny that legacy admissions are distasteful and unfair. I jumped in the thread to point out that what they do not do is significantly disadvantage the needy. If you really care about these issues, call your congressperson about federal education funding and stop bitching at Harvard.

yea that doesnt work. anyone with a family above poverty level basically gets no financial aid other saying get some loans. try asking literally any of the thousands of kids applying in california or texas or new york

All the top schools are publicly funded because all the top schools were nationalized. And the rich have always been free to go to England, America, or elsewhere.

Many of the premiere U.S. schools are also public, and in general I think it's implied that pay-to-play college admission proposals would be limited to private institutions.

One reason the American university system is usually ranked so highly is because it's such a global destination for the world's rich. Not only does their tuition fund much of the system, but the demand drives the elite status, which in turn helps to attract real talent. And even smart people know that, all else being equal, it's better to sit in a classroom with the rich and elite. I don't think it's a coincidence that Stanford is a private university. Of the startups I've personally been involved with, directly or indirectly, I can't think of one that didn't successfully cash out where one of the founders didn't also have "connections", such as a rich uncle who made introductions.

The fact that the rich and elite drive eduction in the U.S. creates problems of its own, but there's no getting around the inherent funding dilemmas. Especially in a culture like in the U.S. where t-a-x is a four-letter word (i.e. unspeakable), it's better to view these proposals as alternative taxation schemes.

The point of an elite school is that it's meant to be 'elite', i.e. selective. The more dumb rich kids get in, the more the value of the school's degree declines. This deal has always been bent at the high end ('buy us a new library wing and we'll ignore that little Timmy has a room temp IQ') but not overtly broken, which is what this proposal (and the behavior that people are being prosecuted for) amounts to.

> The point of an elite school is that it's meant to be 'elite', i.e. selective. The more dumb rich kids get in, the more the value of the school's degree declines.

If that had any truth to it then affirmative action wouldn't work.

Has it? At the margins, but I don't think it's even come close to achieving the type of societal transformations envisioned.

The percentage of African Americans at Harvard this past year was only 15%, roughly comparable to the overall population demographics (~%12 black, ~14% mixed). I suspect Harvard is average or above average in this regard. It's not saying much that the rich are okay with going to historically elite schools with the same demographic ratio as the country-wide general population.

And before anybody brings up Asians as the exception, don't forget that smaller liberal arts colleges and less well known tier-1 private universities (e.g. George Washington) are still very popular with the wealthy, and those colleges are much whiter and richer. Even on HN you still see the trope about how Americans are more "creative" than the Chinese, and someone who claims that such sentiments don't at least partially reflect prejudices against American Asians and don't color college preferences are fooling themselves. I mean, if you don't get into Berkeley you can just wave it off with the observation that it's mostly Asian anyhow--i.e. you didn't really have a fair chance to get in and/or it's somehow less desirable than historically.

It's pretty wild that you think that providing preference to the most able people who have typically come from disadvantaged backgrounds (i.e. affirmative action) is equivalent to providing preference to insanely rich people who are vastly underperforming their privileged cohort.

Elite schools are a great mechanism to entrench privelege. Paying to get your slacker kid a middling GPA at an elite school is a great way to connect them to a business network of other wealthy people, and fast track them for high paying jobs at the top of the corporate ladder. Also some poorer kids get a good education, while not quite being able to tap into those same connections.

In terms of research output, it's true that elite institutions are at the top... but not if you adjust for their revenue and assets. We'd get way more bang for our buck socially and scientifically by spreading those billion dollar endowments around, and properly funding state institutions like most other sensible countries.

> Elite schools are a great mechanism to entrench privelege. Paying to get your slacker kid a middling GPA at an elite school is a great way to connect them to a business network of other wealthy people, and fast track them for high paying jobs at the top of the corporate ladder. Also some poorer kids get a good education, while not quite being able to tap into those same connections.

The children of the wealthy already have connections. You know who doesn't? Poor kids. The poor kids they'd be subsidizing.

Then why are wealthy people paying (and in many cases risking) so much to get their kids into elite schools? It's an important signalling complement to existing networks, and a way to extend them.

> We'd get way more bang for our buck socially and scientifically by spreading those billion dollar endowments around, and properly funding state institutions like most other sensible countries.

The Obamacare fiasco has proven to me that such approaches are impossible in the near term. The 2017 tax cut really drove it home. How are people not seeing this?

A principally public approach is not viable. It could be, as amply demonstrated around the world. But roughly 50% of the American population rejects these schemes when they're forced to reckon with the costs. It's been this way since before Roosevelt. Social Security was a watered down, private labor market-focused program for the precisely the same political reasons Obamacare was.

The exceptions are clearly and demonstrably anomalous. For example, the heyday of public universities come from a time when only a fraction of the population went to college, much of the land and capital assets were donated, labor was relatively cheap, and the burden on the public purse was negligible.

There are many types of elites - financial elites, academic elites, social elites, etc, etc.

An elite school tries to cater to all of those. It would be better if they were more up-front about this rather than pretending they are all about academic achievement but they would still be elite schools. And they'd still have some exceptionally bright students in their classes.

I’m sure someone has a reason to not like this, but I actually think this is a fantastic approach. Especially when you raise the bar that high (a million) that it could fund many students. There’s just got to be a way to enforce it so the money doesn’t end up in some stadium renovation fund or executive bonus.

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