Originally Posted by HowlerKarma
In reality, I think that he's suggesting that from a societal standpoint, that $$ could have been better invested in someone in the top 20% who actually was DRIVEN by love and passion and would stay in the field, rather than the top 1% driven by nothing more than ennui.

You price a failure rate into your scholarship allocations. Ennui students are just the education equivalent of bad debt. The distribution around a top 1%er is going to be tighter than for a top 20%er. Of course you can draw an observation from the 20% population that exceeds the 1% population*, but that will represent a statistical minority. Mathematically, I'd take those odds.

ETA: *=in observed post-bac economic and non-mometary value

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