Gifted Issues Discussion homepage Forums General Discussion Elite Colleges Admissions Merit Based?

In today's metaphyical lesson, we learn that money can be used to purchase services.

State schools give free rides to students who have no interest in otherwise attending them. I went to the school that offered me the best deal. In my case, it was a free education and room and board.

How is this different? It's just compensation at the other end of the spectrum.

Those are STEM schools.

HYP, etc. aren't STEM schools.

The cases of race and sex discrimination in college admissions are different. I don't think most of the American public is opposed to the existence of single-sex educational institutions (should we shut down Wellesley?), as long as there are plenty of institutions to serve both sexes. If an absolute preference for one sex is tolerated in institutions subsidized by Pell grants and guaranteed student loans, I don't see why a mild preference in favor of either sex to achieve "gender balance" should be disallowed.

What conservatives want is an end to racial preferences in college admissions at schools that get Federal money, which is about all of them. In state referenda on racial preferences (for example Michigan and California), the public has supported this position.

Yes, but you should not be able to purchase a seat at Harvard for $1 million and then claim it as a charitable contribution on your tax return. The receipts charities give for donations state that no services were rendered in return. Universities that accept donations, give such receipts, and factor donations into admissions decisions are committing tax fraud, as are the "donors".

I don't think this gets around the issue at all. If admissions should be merit-based and blind to all other factors, then they should be merit-based and blind to all other factors, regardless of Smith's existence. You're not in favor of anything else I can think of that does anything to address gender imbalances--for instance, the paucity of women in STEM fields. Why is it different in this case?

I agree with this position, and I also think that other preferences should be removed, especially donation preferences, alumni child preferences, friend-of-famous-or-superwealthy-alum preferences, and other random preferences. Admission should be merit-based. Defining "merit" is a complex question, but it's also a completely different question.

I'm not sure I even like gender preferences, but if the differences are very slight and the girl is picked so that there will a balance, then maybe it's okay. But only if the differences are very slight in a transparent rubric where all factors are relevant to academic ability (e.g. "SAT/GPA/Our entrance exam") that doesn't include opaque non-academic factors like donation dollar points or child of alum points.

In fact, I'd say the same for all the other preferences too: if you have nearly-equally qualified candidates and you want to pick the donor's kid/Hispanic kid/famous actress, fine. But ONLY if they're truly nearly-equally qualified in some fair and pre-defined way. So, setting a low minimum number of points that will admit 40% of applicants and then cherry-picking as you please isn't allowed. If you admit 13% of applicants, your pool of borderlines has to be very close to the 13% cutoff line. As in, close enough that the college won't be lowering standards to keep them enrolled and close enough that the parents can't find ways to game the system.

Sex preferences can go both ways. I think MIT should be allowed to give preferences to female applicants, and I believe it does.

I think the gross inequality in academia between tenure-track and adjunct professors hurts women. Women (and men) who step off the tenure track to raise a family cannot get back on and are paid a fraction of tenure track faculty for the same teaching load, with no job security.

This will never happen because these are social institutions.

One of their goals is to keep donations coming and to retain their social place in society.

They know what they are doing and they will not make the admissions fully merit based because that would interfere with their goals.

Our society apparently no longer has any interest in prosecuting such cases or cases involving massive systemic fraud.

Nearly-equally qualified is too vague a standard to be written into law. Either a school should be allowed to look at factor X or it should not. In the real world, schools might still give small preferences, but they would have to maintain plausible deniability.