""Americans have come to view diversity as integral to learning and to trust that the path to leadership is open to all," lawyers representing Harvard University wrote in a court filing."
This is not true, and the Asians who were denied entry based on their race would agree.
What ever happened to access based on merit?
I am not saying this out of some abstract concern about asian kids with perfect scores failing to get admitted to Harvard. While that's definitely a problem, imagine how much more difficult it is for asian kids from poor socio-economic backgrounds to get literally into any decent college. They dont have the socio-economic advantage of upper-middle class asian kids, but have all the disadvantages of coming from a poor family AND then get shafted by race-based affirmative action on top of that. This is just plain disgusting in my eyes.
I realize that this approach might fail to address everything perfectly, but it is better than race-based AA on literally every single measurable metric. So we might as well switch to that, while in search of a "perfect" solution.
However, I would much rather have a tiny percentage of wealthy game it, than a much larger number of poor people of the "wrong race" getting shafted and another number of wealthy people of the "right race" "gaming" it. Because race is pretty deterministic, you don't need to game anything. Poor people of "wrong races" get hurt by the current AA system heavily. While under AA based on socio-economic status, at least the poor won't get screwed over.
Also move the efforts down the prestige ladder. Affirmative action at Harvard does diddly-squat do address anything except allow Harvard to signal its own virtue.
Society would be much better served to take a large fraction of Harvard's endowment, and use it to send disadvantaged kids to state land-grant colleges. You could help a lot more of them, and they'd be less likely to flame out to do culture clash and/or relative lack of preparation.
If you mean poor, say poor.
I literally said "poor" in my example in the second paragraph.
Also, "socio-economic status" is a spectrum between poor and wealthy, including all of them. Just like "race" includes all races. We don't call it "non-white-and-asian-based affirmative action", so i dont see why you have an issue with me not calling it "poor-based affirmative action". It is a sliding scale, with all groups within it having different weights attached. So calling it "poor-based affirmative action" makes zero sense to me.
The weight is decided based on the socio-economic status, hence why we refer to it this way.
In total: One can make up the groups ... and the weights. It's completely arbitrary. That's why socio-economic is closer to astrology than a clearly defined term. Sure, you can make up cool calculations (with statistics even!), but it does not mean anything.
Think about the current state of education. Parents with resources over-optimize their kids' education because they understand the inefficiencies in the system and/or understand what it takes to become successful in our society.
This is a perfectly fine response to meritocratic pressure. With tuning to ensure the response is productive learning, versus e.g. rote memorisation, the outcome should be a more-productive citizenry.
In any event, the case is about race-based affirmative action. Nobody is going after means-based anything.
> should be a more-productive citizenry
I'm not sure I care that much about that. Especially w.r.t college admissions. If you wanted to be more productive you'd not even send many people to college in the first place and just have them go straight into the labor force.
This is incorrect. The question of education's impact on GDP per capita is thoroughly researched [1][2][3]. When one broadens to measuring living standards, the results get starker.
[1] https://pdfs.semanticscholar.org/60b0/ad7223c9ba54c73af7d332...
[2] https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/abs/10.1080/09654313.2018.14...
[3] https://www.researchgate.net/profile/Ma-Wadud/publication/48...
Your DNA is not an "external factor". Rather, it's the most internal factor there is.
The important thing to consider is the benefits afforded by meritocracy. When we have adequate filtering mechanisms to help put competent trustworthy people in positions of power, we get less bridges that collapse, less space shuttles that explode, less government officials demanding bribes, and less subtle failures at many levels of the economy. These failures are years downstream of the decisions that set people on their path in life. Most people have not yet mastered their profession; helping this process along is good for everyone.
Those who criticize meritocracy should be honest with themselves as well that these failures can happen.
I feel like a lot of the argument is little more than regret filled excuses and sour grapes.
This is a great populist message but not sure it can be backed up with enough data at any meaningful enough scale to enact policies. Just like if I posited, "Generally, there are a lot of smart, capable and hardworking people who are just surviving check to check." It feels good and there are plenty of anecdotes to back it up, but it's too vague to make policy decisions upon. Raj Chetty's research [0] on social mobility dives into the complexity of it all.
[0] https://rajchetty.com/publications/
Edit:
> But it's only a disadvantage, not a roadblock.
You really nailed the crux of it here in terms of equality of opportunity vs. equity in opportunity. The unhappy compromise to avoid irreparable divisions in U.S. society lies somewhere between removing roadblocks vs. addressing disadvantages.
The equity vs equality is hard to square. Imagine someone who came from real poverty who worked 2 jobs while studying to give his family a better life. He or she makes it, finally, only for them and their kids to be punished for it come admissions time. Is that fair? I don't have great answers, I just feel like everything they try today isn't right, either.
So just like it's not fair for the person working hard and studying to get their family a better life (equality of opportunity), it's also not fair to penalize minors who don't have those types of parents or can't outlast their broken environment to reach a better life (equity in opportunity).
I don't have the answers either but think we should keep trying rather than accept some large number of kids can work hard and still fail due to circumstance beyond their reach. Especially when at the same time, some large number of kids can just be kids and eventually figure it out due to circumstance beyond their reach.
I view this as misguided because while people who wish to discriminate often have good intentions(theoretically discrimination simply means "recognition and understanding of the difference between one thing and another" after all) it's emblematic of the difficulties of discrimination that the most prevalent description of discrimination is "the unjust or prejudicial treatment of different categories of people or things, especially on the grounds of race, age, or sex."
I would say merit is a goal - it's never achieved as an end state and requires constant vigilance to stop entrenched powers from corrupting it.
I'm not sure how much race plays an impact on difficulty of academic achievement, but I'm sure there's data on it that Universities are using. Black students, on average, probably have to overcome more adversity, since racism does exist. Being able to include that in admissions should mean more of a meritocracy, not less.
True merit is hard to define and even harder to measure. As another commenter has already pointed out, that measurement has to include challenges and circumstances overcome. Unfortunately, those don't easily reduce to numbers. Sure, we can measure income or wealth, but how do we measure the impact of being denied opportunities to prove oneself? Of being dragged down by family and friends who need help because of the discrimination they also face? Of living in a place with poor schools, poor food, poor health care, for the same reasons? Note that some of these can apply to (especially rural) white people as well as others, but they remain hard to measure.
All we're left with is statistical measures and proportions, which will inevitably result in some errors. No matter what policy is enacted, those errors make it easy to complain about quotas and tokenism. Responses are possible, but less compelling. So we end up back to the fake meritocracy of grades and test scores. "What can we do" say the people who have already benefited and will continue to benefit from a system that ignores systemic inequality.
Families with more resources apply those resources to the creation of apparent “merit.” Violin lessons, Kumon, French tutors, international travel. The mythology that what we call merit arises de novo with each subsequent generation is pervasive indeed. This investment process is intergenerational wealth transfer by another name; it’s just paid on the front end instead of the back end.
Whether university admission is the right locus of intervention or not is an open question; but kidding ourselves that merit exists solely as a stand-alone property separate from the developmental opportunities purchased by parents is a commonly-held belief that undermines advancement; but I suppose it makes us feel better about the structure of society. But if we were serious about allowing equal opportunity for merit to emerge we’d intervene much earlier than university admission. But then again, I doubt you’d find a consensus about what a just society would look like.
Is someone earning say, a 3.0 at Harvard better than someone that earned a 4.0 at state? What about the highschool student that graduated with perfect As in a lax highschool? Do you consider AP classes more valuable over the student that took college classes instead? How do you address the fact that these sort of things disproportionately affect different minority groups?
If you start taking a lot of these factors into mind, you end up with something very similar to affirmative action. There is no one-size-fits-all solution.
It’s a complex problem. If the process of evaluating someone’s merits is biased or restricted in some way, then the merits are an inaccurate way of evaluating them.
We’ve seen this exaggerated throughout history. If you deny groups the opportunity to learn how to read then they appear less competent based on their “merits”. When you then take those groups and give them the opportunity to learn how to read, then their “merits” improve over time.
But it’s complex because no two students are the same, nor are any two reading teachers, nor any two reading tests.
So, rather than making it unconstitutional to enfranchise groups, I hope the court comes up with some sort of test to see if a group remains disenfranchised or not. But that’s also an incredibly complex problem.
Sometimes courts when faced with an inherently ambiguous problem use a “reasonableness test”, which is basically taking it on a case by case basis and deferring to the current cultural climate to call BS on suspect claims.
For the context of this case, don't forget we're talking about Harvard.
This school, if they wanted, could limit themselves to selecting ONLY from applicants with PERFECT test scores, PEREFECT GPA's, ideal extracurriculars and still have far too many applicants than they could admit. They would then have to resort to either a lottery system to select randomly from this pool of perfect applicants or maybe come up with ever more extreme and rarefied criteria to select the "best" from "perfect". Is that the way to go? Many don't think so.
Doctor one has a 3.9 GPA from Harvard medical.
Doctor two barely passed your state's medical school
Which do you want doing your operation?
The "meritocracy trap" often caves into "wealth and privilege" and this is not meritocracy.
My comment is merely that the criterion you are mentioning is actually not a great one for selecting who to perform surgery on you.
I've never been to med school but my understanding is you learn how to be a doctor in residency, where there are no grades. Medical school gives you theoretical knowledge but not the practical knowledge you need to actually do the work.
You might have a stronger argument in other medical specialties where theory is more important. But heart surgeons are more like athletes in a way.
You simply presented a chicken and egg problem...
Does the mediocre surgeon get all the surgeries and therefor become excellent at it?
IMO it would even be helpful for surgeons to do some time as carpenter, mechanic, fitter/turner etc for some time to really drill the hand/eye before they start on humans.
And this is EXACLY what they do, using cadavers, schooling, and internships. Their work on cadavers is graded, much like most of what they do. This goes back full circle, grades do have an input into the quality of a surgeon. It may not be the "best" or "only" indicator but it shouldnt be outright discounted.
People with high GPA's work hard to get them and have a high level of understanding of the topics at hand.
My ex is excellent in math and always scored very high on tests, but she is not very practical.
If i a math problem i'd have full confidence her answer was correct. If i asked her some non-math questions my trust would be adjusted.
Contrary to the a priori hypothesis that care would be compromised by so many of the top cardiologists being gone, they find that adjusted mortality for high-risk heart failure and cardiac arrest is lower at teaching hospitals during the cardiology meetings than during the rest of the year. And although patients were less likely to get a percutaneous coronary intervention for a myocardial infarction during the convention times, there was no associated decrement on myocardial infarction–associated mortality.
https://jamanetwork.com/journals/jamainternalmedicine/fullar...
One student went to the most expensive private school and had private tuition. They recieved AAABB. Anothers student went to a poor school and never had private tuition and recieved ABBBB. Which should be accepted for a single University place?
Ask the wrong question and you will rarely get the right answer.
Good lord, this really encapsulates the level of this debate, and how it is about anything but actual merit.
The meritocracy trap obviously does not imply that competence/merit does not matter: it implies only that we should be much more careful and critical about whether we measure competence/merit fairly and properly, especially a posteriori.
I would say that your example illustrates a very shortsighted conception of competence/merit.
Lower performing applicants aren't going to be taking the same classes and are not going to be achieving the same scores.
I wasn't a high performing student either. Where was my equal opportunity to attend an Ivy League?