So here is what Chief Justice Roberts said in his opinion for the Supreme Court:
At the same time, as all parties agree, nothing in this opinion should be construed as prohibiting universities from considering an applicant’s discussion of how race affected his or her life, be it through discrimination, inspiration, or otherwise. . . . A benefit to a student who overcame racial discrimination, for example, must be tied to that student’s courage and determination. Or a benefit to a student whose heritage or culture motivated him or her to assume a leadership role or attain a particular goal must be tied to that student’s unique ability to contribute to the university. In other words, the student must be treated based on his or her experiences as an individual—not on the basis of race.
So, race per se cannot permissibly be considered a type of merit, but if an individual overcame racial discrimination, and in that way demonstrated courage or determination, that could be considered a type of merit. It wasn’t an issue in the case, but presumably overcoming adverse socioeconomic circumstances in a way that demonstrated courage or determination could also be considered a type of merit.
In terms of Harvard’s treatment of Asian applicants, they won the part of the trial accusing them of using the Personal factor to intentionally discriminate against Asian applicants, and that part of the trial outcome was not overruled by the Supreme Court. It would obviously be wrong, and illegal, if they were actually doing that, but again Roberts writing for the Court made it clear it is otherwise permissible for colleges to consider things like demonstrated courage, determination, leadership, and so on as types of merit.
Now none of this means you have to like colleges doing that. But it isn’t going to be persuasive to them to accuse them of being anti-meritocratic when they consider courage, determination, leadership, and so on, because they know the Supreme Court and others have agreed that those are permissible types of merit for them to consider.
Suggesting the 35% of Oxbridge interviewees admitted is comparable to the 35% of admits from feeder schools in America seems rather inaccurate.
I’m not familiar with the process at Cambridge but I’ll outline the Oxford process which seems very transparent with their admission process, based on the information I am familiar with. There is the initial application process where one submits their application to not only Oxford but up to 4 other UK schools with the exception of Cambridge using the same application and the cost is very reasonable (~50 dollars). For Oxford and Cambridge and likely others, applicants are also required to take a subject test ie. the Oxford MAT test is taken for math, computer science and possibly other course applicants. Note that Oxford provides study materials and previous year’s tests for at least some of these tests such as the MAT test. They also provide videos that students can watch. Applicants who did well enough on the assessment test are invited to interview. There can be several rounds of interviews. The interviews are evaluative for the subject matter at hand so this is a way to assess an applicant’s preparation for the course they wish to study and to gauge how they would fit into the tutorial model. Applicants are then told if their application was successful or not (no deferrals or wait lists) and are provided their score on their assessment test. On the Oxford site, the university provides the statistics regarding likelihood of success. For instance, students who score very high on the MAT test are far more likely to be admitted vs. those who scored lower but were also invited to interview so students can understand the process Also I believe applicants can ask for their interview evaluations but not sure. In any case, it’s a very different admission process and certainly someone who is from an unknown school but scored well on the test would have a higher chance to gain admission than a student with a lower score, even if the latter was from a feeder school. The two admission percentages while similar in value are hardly comparable.
Agree 100%. Meritocracy is race blind. MIT does it right. I am Caucasian and perfectly fine if it goes to 100% Asian. Make the others compete and try harder.
The is a more in-depth and active conversation of the recent MIT articles here, which is also the only place they can be discussed. If you’re not yet a member of the Politics Forum, you will need to join first.
I’m British not American but am aware to a certain extent of the US class system, financial disparates and racial divides.
I value diversity.
To illustrate: MI5 (James Bond stuff) used to almost exclusively hire graduates of Oxford and Cambridge. They increasingly were overcome by group think, a single perspective and it caused serious security ‘misses’. Now GCHQ (CIA-ish?) MI5 and MI6 hire those of diverse cultural, financial and neurological backgrounds - not because they are ‘woke’, under social pressure or political pressure - simply because it works and we are all safer because of it.
If by merit you simply mean the highest exam marks then no. If by merit you mean what positive attributes insights and perspectives they can bring to the organisations then yes.
Neurological diversity would for instance include those with dyslexia where many have the ability to bring what to others may seem unrelated topics and ideas together in creative ways or those with Asperger’s with potentially meticulous methods and attention to detail. Different types of brain bring different benefits and that’s what the security services need. This is now at the heart of the UK’s security hiring policy.
It’s not like you can’t be hired as an Oxbridge grad but having only, or even mostly, Oxbridge grads lead to some dire issues with intelligence in both Afghanistan and Iraq in recent times. When the whole room thinks the same way and comes up with the same conclusion it can be disastrous.
Ah yes–the age old discussion of the value of “academic merit” vs “diversity.” And I would add another dimension…“non-academic merit.”
It is a difficult discussion to have since there are not really formal definitions for each of these concepts. Each concept means vastly different things to different people.
When I was at HBS, I noted that the school admitted a racially diverse class. HOWEVER, the overwhelming majority of the minority and international admits were actually from wealthy families. Whites and Asians too tended to be from wealthy families.
Class discussions about poverty were actually terrible. Most of the people in the room had zero concept of what it was to be poor. “The voice of the poor” was conspicuously absent.
Was HBS successful in its efforts to create a diverse class? I would say “Absolutely Not.” But HBS would point with pride at its class and claim that it was diverse with data to back up their claim. HBS and I had different definitions of “diversity.”
My HBS experience was a long time ago. Perhaps “conceptual definitions” have gotten better with time? I would put my bets that we have gotten better definitions in some areas just as we have devolved to worse definitions in others.
There is still plenty of debate about what diversity should mean, but I would suggest in general that it is true that conceptions of diversity in higher education have mostly trended in more complex and nuanced directions over the last few decades.
Indeed, in terms of something like economic class diversity, there has very much a push to make this a higher priority for higher educational institutions, and I think in some ways there has been demonstrable progress over the last decade or so. Admissions is involved in that, but so are things like adopting no-loans financial policies, and other policies that serve to lower practical barriers for kids from lower-wealth families.
That said, the more selective US colleges generally still are far, far from a representative sampling of college-bound kids in general. In at least a lot of cases, somewhat closer than they used to be, but still pretty far.
And in the end, many of these colleges are valued in part because they are themselves wealthy and spend a lot on various things that kids and families care about. So there are likely practical limits to exactly how much they could limit their skew to wealthier families and stay wealthier colleges for generations more to come.
But for sure, within those limits, I think at least some colleges are successfully seeking at least some more economic class diversity than they used to have.
Even then, expanded definitions of “diversity” or “academic merit” might show colleges as lacking.
How about ideological diversity? Lots of schools lack it and think absolutely nothing of it.
Yet diversity of perspective is everything if you want good class discussions. Hillsdale College and Smith College are both basically conformist bubbles.
And the test optional movement, in my opinion, was a step backwards in terms of assessing academic merit.
We have a long, long way to go. There are plenty of holes in “the state of the art.”
So pretty much inevitably, competing goals and priorities for enrollment will lead to conflicts at the margins, of the form where further increasing A means reducing B, and vice-versa.
And since “diversity” is not a simple concept, in fact further increasing some forms of diversity may mean reducing other forms of diversity, and vice-versa.
The good news is no one is forced to go to a particular college. So to the extent you can find an affordable college that mostly shares your priorities, you can choose that over alternatives that do not.
That said, I do think when it is a public college and you are part of the relevant constituency, then you rightly should have some sort of voice in what it prioritizes. And then that is going to get sorted out through the democratic process in your jurisdiction.
But as consumers, we can (and should) vote with our dollars. And in fact, many kids/families here have a lot of choice. Others less so, but the colleges they tend to be looking at are more likely just to reflect their communities anyway.
From recent child experience with a Cambridge application…
What they want is academic excellence and only academic excellence. They have made great movement when it comes to having more state school kids rather than majority private school kids in recent years having outreach programs that my D was part of for two years. In the application, working with admissions, they made it very very clear they were only interested to hear about academic interest and achievement. All the Stella supra curriculars that got my daughter into Harvard were of no interest to them and Cambridge’s own advisors from the state admissions program insisted that she not put any of it into her application.
In the UK you do only three subjects from 16-18 and then one subject for a degree - ONE. You specialise from before you even arrive if you want to get in. There are three terms a year and they last at most eight weeks and the full degree takes three years not four. After a year you write a letter pay a few bucks and you get MA after your name but everybody in the UK knows this isn’t a’real’ MA.
They pick the best academic brains and hone them as experts in the one subject - to be clear that means no core, no gen ed requirements, no languages Nothing but what your degree is titled.
Now you know why I like US Diversity and why my daughter is now at Harvard.
My two cents, after researching all this along with S24, is they are basically much more similar to US graduate or professional programs than US undergrad programs, and in fact in some cases the UK equivalent of a US postgrad professional degree is an undergrad degree in the UK.
I think this does in fact have appeal for kids who really just want to get launched into a particular career path ASAP, and I would not say that is always a bad idea. But I am enough of a believer in the liberal arts and sciences tradition that I tend to think such kids should be more the exception than the rule.
Ideological diversity is probably one of the most important kinds. Although why do you think Hillsdale and Smith are the most obvious examples of the lack thereof?