<p>It is not so hard to understand, ChiCityStudent. If “upward trend” means getting the HS mob to chase after Chicago admission in the numbers it does the “Ivies” then it will attract many applicants who are chasing merely a “popular name” and not applying to a University whose nature they understand and whose academic culture fits them. Already this happens, as indicated by all those posts on the lines of “Chicago accepted me, so so kewl, but what’s this needing to study hard bit? Chicago can’t be serious, right? Right? Hard work is So So unkewl!”.<br>
The proportion of such applicants, who can’t distinguish between what a Chicago, or MIT, might ask of you, and what a Harvard or Brown might ask of you, is still perhaps tolerably low. But this “upward trend” that the USA Today acolytes seem so enamored of can only keep so trending by passing into waters sparse with students who care for any serious discipline of the mind. Should standards keep, then these will be most unhappy campers; and the College will be made full aware of their fury. So will future classes of possible applicants be made full aware of their fury. And these classes, now richly represented by those who have the happy thought that if Chicago aims to join Versailles then it had damn better abandon the uncouth bourgeois virtues [of recognition earned through merit, and of mastery crafted out of dedication and intelligence], will turn away from the College and turn to more “accommodating” institutions.
This in itself is not so bad. The “upward trend” stops. Chicago gets the students who care for Chicago, and are prepared for what will be asked of them. The mob bays off in a different direction, to those who wish to pander to it. All’s Right With The World…
…Ah, but what if Chicago is now run by folks who want, really really want, to keep that “upward trend”? Who now interpret that measure of sheer popularity as “What is Important”? Then will come the pressure, and powerfully so, to lessen standards, to ease the workload, to be “like Harvard”. With a Will, it wouldn’t take so much to find a Way. After all, die hard Professors die off. After all, doubtful Professors can be reassured that they are free to keep standards for graduate students…and what do kids matter compared to training one’s apprentices? After all, happy campers tend to have happy camper parents with greater willingness to dispense monies upon the University. After all, doesn’t Chicago have to become Versailles to get the Versaillean wannabes? After all, isn’t popularity so much Kewler than mere stodgy oldfashioned Achievement?</p>
<pre><code>ChiCityStudent, it doesn’t take much to convince many that being "loved’ is worth a little betrayal of the self. This is true for institutions as much as for people. [Not so surprising, given that institutions have the strange propensity of being run by people].
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<p>If “upward trending” --based on likeability to the HS mob–is to continue, particularly beyond current levels, it can only come via the deliberate decision to cater to the mob, and what the mob wants is not so much work, not so rigorous academics, not so insistent hard thinking, not so daunting a grappling with challenging ideas, not so much unkewlness.</p>
<p>And this would be a tragedy. Capisce?</p>