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Comment by dpweb | Hacker News Reader

This was the best article, not just regarding academia, but describing the issue of privilege and its destructive effect on the "american dream" - that I think I have seen since the 2009 crash.

We have a controversy about wealth inequality and it seems that would be a natural result of a cycle of power simply being passed down generation by generation.

I think the opposite of that, a meritocracy, is what we want - but maybe what we have is inevitable in a money and status obsessed culture. I don't know if the culture is a cause or result of the systems we have that tilt the scales so far in favor of the elite over the non-elite, but one or the other would have to be addressed in some way.

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I think there are two distinct issues here. The first is that it seems like university students select schools and classes based on the academic background of their professors (having a professor from Harvard seems to be more prestigious than having one from most state schools). For many students (especially before they ever take a class), they don't know enough about most of the professors to evaluate them (so the educational background of their professors is the de facto proxy for quality). As long as that continues to be the case, and students (and prospective students) back those decisions with dollars (choosing to attend classes/universities based on their faculty), schools are going to continue to value (and possibly over value) that. That's straightforward market economics.

The second issue is more complex. The author argues that higher education isn't a meritocracy (that privileged students have a much easier change of getting in and staying in to a prestigious school). That's likely true to some degree, but the author over-simplifies things (there are certainly people attending those universities who are there based solely on merit).

It's clear that the job market for professors values educational background, because that's what students are voting for with their wallets. As long as that continues to be the case, those who have more money, and whose families value education, will continue to have an advantage. I don't know that we ever escape that.

I disagree with you on both counts:

1. Perhaps your university background is different, but I haven't ever had the impression that a particular professor's class is preferred to another due to the first professor's educational pedigree, in undergraduate classes. Such classes often conform to general topics and there is insufficient variability for two professors to directly compete for students.

Undergraduate students bring in the most money but, as I mention above, aren't really involved in selecting one instructor over another; indeed, undergraduates are often taught by graduate students. If the cash-generating undergraduates are cut off from professors, it stands to reason that undergraduates' opinions aren't important in hiring professors.

Graduate courses are, of course, different. First, graduate students often cost money (they often receive a stipend). But getting into graduate school isn't as meritocratic as it may seem, which both relates to the OP's point and to my second disagreement.

2. I don't believe that the OP ever says that graduate schools don't admit students based on merit. Instead, she gives an example of how a strong candidate might prefer a less-prestigious university to a more prestigious one (cost of living).

Undergraduate universities are chosen by parents at least as much as students. Parents may well see an Ivy-league stuffed faculty as attractive.

I turned down a couple of better name universities for a lesser known university (for graduate school) because my advisor there was top of his field. At that point, the university doesn't really matter. You look at the quality of work of your advisor and how well funded he/she is.

Who gets do define merit? Too many Jewish students were getting into Harvard in the early part of the 20th century, so the application process was changed.

and exactly the same thing now happens with Asians.

People will wax poetically about meritocracy and fairness. Then they will get children of their own and think to themselves that giving them all the advantages that they can get is their newest and most moral goal.

Meritocracy is a nonsensical construct and rarely amounts to anything more than further nourishing the already nourished. Often to the exclusion of nourishing those that actually need it. It's a perverse, self-deluding form of domination.

Guilty as charged.

But realistically, I know of no society where parents don't favor the interests of their own children, resulting in a trend towards increasing disparity.

Perhaps the best we can hope for is to remember that perfect meritocracy is utopian, and can't be reconciled with fairness, so long as individuals can choose to whom they share their advantages -- indeed when we can't even all agree on what those advantages are. So we look for second best, for instance, endorsing social and economic measures that counteract that disparity.

> But realistically, I know of no society where parents don't favor the interests of their own children,

"But realistically, everyone else is doing it..."

Yes. I didn't have any particular society in mind. Just our own nature.

From casual observation, it would seem a lot of black communities are not afflicted with this moral dillemma.

What's more the latest US Census post points quite clearly to a powerful assortat I've mating effect.

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