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Comment by noobermin | Hacker News Reader

I fundamentally do not understand why merit is something you should focus on when it comes to admission into a university. The entire point of an education is to learn, may be you need the bare minimum to enroll but universities shouldn't be chasing the brightest students, they need an education the least.

Just because thats how it should work in some people's heads as the ideal doesn't mean it makes any actual sense if you really interrogate the idea. Meritocracy makes sense after you have an education, it doesn't make sense before it.

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Perhaps it’s politically incorrect to say, but students learn best when they’re around students that are of similar intelligence and motivation to succeed.

Taking a brilliant kid and putting them around underachievers doesn’t do anyone any good.

Students learn best when they have a quiet home to study in, 3 quality meals a day, parents who aren't working 3 jobs they can ask questions to, parents who aren't fighting about paying the bills that month, good school supplies, etc.

Agreed. So let's go solve those problems directly and stop pretending the solution is to put underachieving kids into top schools to make ourselves feel better.

I will only feel better when the working class controls the society it built.

Once they do that, they become the ruling class and the elites. Then their children are no longer working class, and are now the enemies.

In such a case, I won't feel better yet will I? So we'll try again...

Just like we've tried in the past again and again and again... and a few thousand years later here we are and we will keep trying :)

Exactly. A lot of progress was made in that time, so I have little patience for defeatism.

You're missing the point: If the working class becomes the ruling one finally the majority rules, not a rich elite.

Conversely, putting someone who isn't well suited to that environment is setting them up for failure.

> Taking a brilliant kid and putting them around underachievers doesn’t do anyone any good.

In a meritocracy, those that do not achieve do not advance, so this is not a problem after a time. I was in the US Navy's Nuclear Propulsion program. It was the closest thing to a pure meritocracy. You didn't pass a test, do the work, or behave in line with expectations you were sent to the fleet. After a few months, only the capable and motivated were left. It was completely colorblind, completely free of social agenda. You could either do the job well enough or not.

I watched a lot of wash outs where there someone would find a way to tip the scales in college to keep them passing along. I watched the following wash out: the son of a Navy Captain, a congressman's kid, a couple of sons of really rich parents.

Resources are finite. If college courses were recorded lessons or they just gave you a theory book and an exercises book, then of course we could automate everything. Just sign up, pay your fee and take the exams and once you're done you get the degree, even full remote. Your taxes will go towards professors and a fuck ton of TAs for questions and exercises and to keep the infrastructure running.

But we're not there yet

> Meritocracy makes sense after you have an education, it doesn't make sense before it.

This is really a truth. There really is no meritocracy if you gate who is allowed to have merit before you measure it. Regulating opportunity to control outcomes is the exact opposite of what should be done to have a true meritocracy.

> universities shouldn't be chasing the brightest students, they need an education the least.

Or it can be seen as give education to the students that will make the best use of it maximizing value to society.

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