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Going beyond "surface diversity" makes no economic sense for a profit-making institution.

You need some kids from "tough backgrounds" and ethnic minorities to convince your sponsors that their financial support is breaking down barriers, but you wouldn't want to spend money traipsing across the country mopping up all the "rough diamonds" to replace the regular upper-middle-class kids that don't need scholarships and are probably more likely to complete the course and leave a lavish endowment afterwards.

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Only if you assume that the bright kids from "tough backgrounds and ethnic minorities" are less likely to succeed than dimmer non-minority rich kids. Which could be the case, but might not be.

Because if it's not, and those bright kids end up being successes, it could very well be in the long-term interest of a profit-making institution to make sure those kids are alumni. Not just for any possible donations, but for maintaining your prestige.

There's an interesting phenomenon that happens in the US. Upward social mobility almost never happens, but in the rare instance when it does, those examples are given as proof of the "American Dream". The book Ain't No Makin' It (http://www.amazon.com/Aint-Makin-Aspirations-Attainment-Neig...) does a good job of explaining the sociological issues.

It's a fair assumption to say that bright kids from "tough backgrounds" are less likely to succeed. That's not on an individual level, but on a national level it's certainly true. For most, these are kids who saw their parents work hard and get nowhere. That's a special kind of demotivation that's difficult to shake by the time college rolls around. It's also why there's almost no upward social mobility in the US.

I haven't read that book. I recommend:

Limbo: Blue-Collar Roots, White-Collar Dreams http://www.amazon.com/Limbo-Blue-Collar-Roots-White-Collar-D...

EDIT to add: $25.52 for a Kindle book (Ain't No Makin' It)?! So the people who would be interested in perhaps reading it are screened out from affording it. Insanity.

It's also why there's almost no upward social mobility in the US.

What's your basis for claiming that? It doesn't jibe with available data. See:

http://news.investors.com/ibd-editorials-viewpoint/011110-51...

http://www.creators.com/opinion/thomas-sowell/dangerous-dema...

http://www.treasury.gov/resource-center/tax-policy/Documents...

Quote:

    The key findings of this study include:
    There was considerable income mobility of individuals 
    in the U.S. economy during the 1996 through 2005 period 
    as over half of taxpayers moved to a different income
    quintile over this period.
    Roughly half of taxpayers who began in the bottom 
    income quintile in 1996 moved
    up to a higher income group by 2005.
    Among those with the very highest incomes in 1996 – the 
    top 1/100 of 1 percent –
    only 25 percent remained in this group in 2005.     
    Moreover, the median real income of
    these taxpayers declined over this period.
    The degree of mobility among income groups is unchanged 
    from the prior decade (1987 through 1996).
    Economic growth resulted in rising incomes for most    
    taxpayers over the period from 1996 to 2005. Median 
    incomes of all taxpayers increased by 24 percent after
    adjusting for inflation. The real incomes of two-thirds 
    of all taxpayers increased over this period. In 
    addition, the median incomes of those initially in the 
    lower income groups increased more than the median 
    incomes of those initially in the higher income groups.

In almost all discussions of social mobility, the measure is intergenerational mobility (do you end up in the same socioeconomic class as your parents), not if you made more later in your career than when you started. Almost everyone makes more later in their career than when they started, that's not a sign of upward social mobility (at least not on an intergenerational level).

For some reason, you cherry picked the one study that looked at all incomes in one of the most prosperous periods in the US. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Socio-economic_mobility_in_the... does a good job of summarizing a number of studies that show that the US ranks as one of the least socially mobile countries in the world.

No one is arguing that people make the same amount their entire career. That's not what social mobility is. The fact is, the US has one of the lowest levels of intergenerational social mobility, and that exceptions to the rule are held up as evidence of The American Dream in action. It's not impossible to end up better off than your parents (in relative inflation adjusted terms), but that's the exception, and it's usually due much more to luck than hard work. Millions of americans work hard and end up exactly where their parents were.

All I'm saying is that a claim that "there is almost no social mobility in the US" is not backed up by the data. I'm not saying "everything is fine" or that we shouldn't do things to improve the situation.

You're saying that because most people make more money later in their career that the US doesn't have an issue with upward social mobility. That comes from a fundamentally flawed notion you have of what everyone else means when they say social mobility.

The fact is, most people end up in the same socioeconomic class as their parents. There are exceptions to the rule, but upward social mobility happens so infrequently in the US, that it's perfectly reasonable to model that as almost never happening. It's not impossible, it just almost never happens. The bigger problem is that the few counterexamples are used as anecdotal evidence to say "if everyone else would have just tried as hard, they'd be better off too". That's simply not true.

You're saying that because most people make more money later in their career that the US doesn't have an issue with upward social mobility.

No, that's not what I'm saying at all. But you seem determined to intentionally misinterpret what I'm saying, and this conversation isn't doing anything to benefit me, so I'm bowing out.

To a point, yes, but there's no desperate shortage of smart amongst their existing intake, and especially once you've taken into account the career boost these institutions offer, I'm sure their alumni will do just fine even if they don't include the latent geniuses in village schools a couple of thousand miles away (many boringly white and not poor enough to make an interesting rags-to-riches story anyway). If you want prestige, it's a lot easier just to mop up the sports superstars, famous families and academic prizewinners anyway.

Aren't all the ivy league schools (and most if not all prestigious universities) non-profits? I assume they have a bit more to their mission than just investing in alumns who will generate returns in the form of endowments.

Just because it's a non-profit doesn't mean the institution isn't out for all the money it can get its hands on. It means that there aren't owners who are able to get the profits distributed to them in some form. But having more money rolling in means a lot to the careers of college leadership, even if they don't own the university - they can expect more prestige and power, distributing travel grants to faculty in the underwater basket-weaving department and whatnot... and generally buffing their resumé in case any other interesting college wants to hire them away.

Sorry, but "non-profit" does not mean altruistic. It's an exploited tax dodge a huge proportion of the time. Just look at the huge salaries in any successful non-profit, and you know they are not what they position themselves as.

This is not even slightly accurate and I hope most people can see your post as the trolling that it is.

It has been argued that Harvard is basically an unregulated hedge fund attached to a university.

http://www.cnbc.com/id/100291522

>Aren't all the ivy league schools (and most if not all prestigious universities) non-profits?

Yes, but nonprofits still act like businesses with the exception that they don't return money to shareholders. I'm part of a grant writing consulting firm and wrote a blog post inspired by a previous HN post like yours: "Why Nonprofits Are More Like Businesses Than You Realize" (http://blog.seliger.com/2012/09/02/why-nonprofits-are-more-l...) that explains what working with and around nonprofits is like.

Here's a question, though. If you went to a public university gathering at one of these universities (students, profs, administration, whomever you prefer) and - without connecting it to the school's extant practices - proposed that the university undertake a course of action...

Do you think that they would agree with you, or protest loudly that such a thing is ideologically invalid and that you're a horrible person who deserves to be shunned for the rest of your life and possibly longer?

If you think of kids as investments, which is a very apt analogy from the perspective of these universities, the question is whether you should try to build a VC portfolio (aiming to get a few ultra-successes) or a mutual fund (aiming to get consistent growth from the majority of them).

It would be interesting to see if there are any admissions departments on record with statements that map to those philosophies, and any data that shows how those schools endowments fare over time.

This query completely ignores the human issue, which is significant and deserves consideration. But it would be interesting to know.

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