The eye of the needle, again

The problem can only be resolved by reducing inequality in society as a whole, and particularly, by increasing access to high quality post-school education.

I’m in favor of reducing inequality and in increasing access to high quality post-secondary education, but there’s something odd about tying this to this particular scandal. That’s because there is _lots_ of “high quality post-secondary education” in the US, but less (but still lots!) “high prestige” education. I mean, there is no way in the world that USC, as good of a school as it is, is more of a “high quality education” than UC San Diego, or Michigan, or UT Austin, or many, many more schools. But, the particular actions take were about “prestige”, not about quality of education. (USC has high prestige in the entertainment world in California, which is why the particular people involved in that case were paying bribes to get their vapid daughter in there. They had no concern about the “quality of education”, of course.) And even though many state universities, even the flag-ship ones, are under significant economic stress, and getting less and less direct support from the state (just like Australian universities, as I know all too well), they still _generally_ tend to provide a “high quality post-secondary education”. So, there are lots of problems with inequality, and there are lots of problems with access to higher education in the US, but I think it’s going to be an up-hill battle to make this particular scandal, as bad and vulgar as it is, do the work you want here – the issues are different than the ones suggested.

Fairer: Strict quotas. Allocate 10% of Harvard spots to candidates from socio-economic bottom decile, and so on. Individuals test score compete with intra decile peers. (Or percentile, or whatever resolution is practical.)

”But no one seems to have mentioned the central point”.

But Matt@1 did:
”the particular actions take were about “prestige”, not about quality of education”.

and anybody who knows a little bit about the lovely University of Spoiled Children (USC) would probably like to add – ”prestige” – is perhaps the wrong word? – let’s call it ”Vitamin C” -(C=connection) as nobody get’s ahead in my homeland without ”Vitamin C” – even if this stereotype isn’t true in many cases – but ”the people” believe it – and that’s why I (ME) never ever will become really rich or/and famous – BE-cause I didn’t go to USC – like my mother – my grandfather and my great-grandmother…

Another approach similar to #3 above would be to have a strict quota based on the normal curve for family wealth so that there would be around 0.15% of the openings set aside for those students who come from a family with a wealth that is more than 3 standard deviations below the mean wealth for the country as a whole, 2.35% of the openings would be set aside for those coming from families with a wealth between 2 and 3 standard deviations below mean wealth, 13.5% of openings set aside for those coming from families with a wealth between 1 and 2 standard deviations below the mean, 34% of the openings set aside for those between mean wealth and 1 standard deviation below mean wealth, and i’m sure most of the readership here can extend the pattern to the set-aside of 0.15% of the openings for those who come from families with wealth greater than 3 standard deviations from the mean.

Using the example of Harvard which accepts around 2000 new students annually, this would result in setting aside 3 spots each for those in the highest and lowest economic situation, 47 spots for each of the next band of wealth, and a total 1360 spots set aside for those within a radius of 1 standard deviation from the mean wealth.

Upon reflection, this would probably not increase the diversity greatly but it would reduce the number of spots being given to those students from families with great wealth. It would be fun to hear conservatives whining about the results of applying that bell curve they seem to be so fond of sometimes.

A large part of the growth in inequality must be simply down to population growth and the long-term influence of legacy admissions: so long as population is growing and the number of places at elite universities doesn’t change, pressure to get into them will grow. If you want to have elite universities (or any kind of ranking of educational institutions) then there is no solution to this except to reduce the importance of a university education. But in societies like the US and the UK where equality of opportunity (the “ladder” of opportunity, etc.) is the main ideal for reducing inequality, this won’t work. And in any case equality of opportunity will never fix inequality, since society needs someone to clean the toilets and in countries like the US and the UK the people who clean the toilets aren’t paid a living wage.

I don’t understand what you mean by “the Japanese example isn’t encouraging”. Japanese universities don’t use SAT scores, or anything like it, but have university-specific examination processes. I don’t think there is much corruption in university admissions and, having proctored admission exams at the University of Tokyo, I can confidently say that while they’re difficult they’re not impossible for good students to pass without tutoring. Furthermore, Japan is facing the exact opposite problem that the US faces – with declining student numbers every year many universities are heading towards bankruptcy and university admission is getting easier, while at the same time membership of an elite university is not required to live a good life here.

China has a system of provincial-level admission exams for its top universities, I think, so for example Tsinghua gets a fixed number of admissions from each province. I think also tuition is low and dormitories are low cost. If a university like Harvard introduced that system it would become a much less unequal institution overnight. It’s also worth remembering that the endowments of some of these American universities are so huge that they could run a massive program of low-income and minority admissions, properly administered, and squeeze the rich people out. They just don’t want to.

Every problem in the USA’s education system is simply a reflection of the larger political choices Americans have made for years to build a society based on racism and inequality.

By the time the kids are college age, the field is well spread out. The way to improve the general education level is to make high school meaningful so that community colleges “for everyone” don’t have to do remedial basics. That will be easier to do given adequate primary schools with reasonable class sizes and resources. Also, getting the kids decently socialized in pre-school will help, as will universal prenatal care.

But sure, free Uni for everybody.

I have a naive question. What’s actually changed? Elite schools have long been places where well-off, well-connected people sent their kids to confirm their status, but they were also centers of high-powered research and serious learning. There was a tension between the two roles of such institutions, but the scholarship students and the legacies could coexist without interfering with each other very much and some of the rich kids had qualifications and ambitions beyond being rich. Are things different now? Is the quest for prestige crowding out everything else in our musical chairs world of winners and losers? Does anybody want to learn anything or do they just want to get into Harvard?

KISS program for elite education: Shut down the supposedly elite schools; stop pretending credentials are necessary and being massive recruitment from supposed non-elites.

The problem of course is that this is the sort of thing that is condemned universally as Cultural Revolution.

The irony about that is the real Cultural Revolution was supposed to be nothing but a scam, where some elites were attacking other elites with pretend charges that supposedly favored the masses. That it was all rigged prosecutions of non-crimes for narrow political gain. This is ironic because so far as I can see this whole investigation is largely about targeting liberal Hollywood, or at least liberal Hollywood celebrities who are not properly deferential to Trump. (Why should they? He was one of them which is exactly why they will never be impressed.) Ditto the attacks on Harvey Weinstein, and the hopes that Jeffrey Epstein will somehow take down Clinton. Trump really does want to change politics so that elite losers go to jail.

– and a ”tiny” correction of @15 –
”He (Trump) was one of them”

He (Von Clownstick) was NEVER EVER ”one of them” –
and he NEVER EVER will be or become ”one of them” –
and there is this theory that’s why he ran for US Presidency –
Von Clownstick really thought – that by becoming the so called US President he would become ”one of them” – and now all of his illusions are just in his silly head…

It is not just connections. One thing that at least some of the elite prestigious institutions do is socialize the kids in specific ways. A STEM professor of my acquaintance, now in his mid-30s, told me that looking back on his time at Yale he is struck by how much of what went on both in and outside the classroom was grooming for leadership in politics, business and whatever else is important for running the country. His sense is that this was stronger at Yale than many of the other Ivies, although it seems to be true to varying degree at most of them as well as both peer institutions and smaller schools like Williams and Amherst.

A second function of these institutions is to allow their students a very sheltered place to grow up, where they can make certain kinds of dumb mistakes that are typical of the young without long term consequences. This is something that I think would be valuable for all, not just the elite: young men, if not so much young women, are properly notorious for their poor judgment. It would be good if they can be placed for a few years in an environment, the equivalent of a padded cell, where the greatest cost of poor judgment is shame and embarrassment. OTOH, Brett Kavanaugh is a good argument against this feature.

I went to a state flagship for my undergraduate engineering degree and an elite school for my doctorate. As a kid from provincial middle-class suburbia, my idea of “rich” was what I saw there: doctor, lawyer, etc., i.e., a professional with a six figure salary. Yes, of course, I knew about the celebrity rich, whether athletes or Warren Buffett, but the idea was abstract: you saw them on TV, they wouldn’t otherwise obtrude into your life, and you certainly wouldn’t rub shoulders with them. The social worlds of the 0.01% and even the 1% were invisible to me. I knew nothing of their thinking, mores, habitus, etc.

The state flagship did little to change this: I remember a few international students from the UAE and such places with sports cars and luxury apartments, but it was easy to write them off as anomalous. (This wasn’t Virginia or Berkeley, by the way; maybe top-tier flagships are different.) The domestic students were largely drawn from the middle class and upper middle class.

It was only after coming to the elite school that I came into contact with the ultra-rich: students whose families owned pieds-a-terre in Manhattan and central Paris; the son of a famous Google executive; etc. To their credit, many of these students were pursuing difficult STEM PhDs. Even great wealth cannot smooth over all of the challenges of a PhD, and I got the sense that much of this class has a certain respect for the degree, as one might have for summiting K2. This mix also included a sort of “academic nobility” — the sons and daughters of famous professors who were groomed for academic careers from infancy.

This new environment was eye-opening.

I suspect that one reason why NYC and other coastal cities are more open to social democratic politics than Middle America is because the middle and working classes actually see the rich and their advantages.

John at 16 – yes, I know – our disagreement is a bit different, in that I think there are many, many more schools that offer “high quality” educations than the very top ones. I think you’re mistaking prestige for quality here, if you think only the best brand-names ones offer “high quality education”.
(A different problem is that even for less band name schools, cost is going up quickly, but the fact that it’s going up quickly even in non brand-name schools suggests that the problem is a bit different than what’s suggested in the post, I think.)

I should add that I _don’t_ think that the education offered at all universities is equally as good. Having studied at both Boise State and Penn, it’s easy to see that if you were equally smart and motivated, you could get a _better_ education at Penn, because of more highly motivated and smart peers, more professors who are at the top of their game, and just more opportunities. But, nonetheless, it’s still possible to get a pretty good education at Boise State, and it’s certainly possible to get a high-quality education at, say, SUNY Binghamton.

Nastywoman at 5 – USC has, over-all, greatly improved its quality over the years, but in particular, my understanding (as an outsider) is that it has long been and still is a place for making connections and getting established in the California entertainment world, and that is why it was a target for bribes in this case.

I’ve been arguing for a while (and pretty publicly-for example, here:
https://signsofchaos.blogspot.com/2017/01/more-universitiy-campuses.html)
that more-or-less standard economic theory would argue that in cases of rapidly rising (and hence excess demand), we would expect the price of the service to rise (“elite” schools, and others, have certainly raised their prices) and for producers to expand capacity (which elite schools, and other, have not done). I can see no reason that Harvard or Yale or…could not successfully open new campuses in enticing locations, maintaining their current tuition levels, and expanding their student populations.

faustusnotes

If you want to have elite universities (or any kind of ranking of educational institutions) …

What reason would anybody have to want those things, apart from ‘to support and maintain my privilege’?

I don’t understand what you mean by “the Japanese example isn’t encouraging”.

Obviously I can’t say for sure what John Quiggin meant, but it’s likely he has seen or heard in the Australian media reports similar to those which I remember seeing or hearing. My recollection (although it’s a long time since my own personal experience with them) is that those reports suggest that Japanese children and adolescents experience intensive competitive pressure to achieve the academic results necessary to gain admission to the most prestigious universities (because that’s perceived as key to future career success), that attendance at the most desirable schools is perceived as providing an important advantage in pursuing those desired academic results (which is what makes those schools the most desirable), and that the effects have progressively cascaded through the system to the point where even very young children (and their parents) are affected by competitive pressure to achieve the necessary results to secure admission to the most desirable pre-schools/kindergartens.

I also observe that similar or related criticisms are mentioned in the Wikipedia article on education in Japan, citing US media reports. Given your comment, you might question the accuracy of the Australian and US media reports, and you might be right to do so, but if I’ve been exposed to them it’s likely John Quiggin has as well.

Jim Harrison

Does anybody want to learn anything or do they just want to get into Harvard?

It could be misleading to pose the question in a simplified binary form: it’s more instructive to think in terms of the different strength, importance, and impact of different motives.

What’s actually changed? Elite schools have long been places where well-off, well-connected people sent their kids to confirm their status, but they were also centers of high-powered research and serious learning. There was a tension between the two roles of such institutions, but the scholarship students and the legacies could coexist without interfering with each other very much and some of the rich kids had qualifications and ambitions beyond being rich. Are things different now? Is the quest for prestige crowding out everything else in our musical chairs world of winners and losers?

Does ‘Yes’ seem an unlikely or inadequate answer to your question? Do you doubt what John McGowan wrote above about how …

… the panic about getting your child into one of the best schools can be, indirectly, tied to growing inequality. To wit: the realization that the gap between winners and losers is growing–and that the cost of being a loser is much higher than it was when the middle class was being emptied out.

steven t johnson

Trump really does want to change politics so that elite losers go to jail.

My understanding of what you’re referring to here is hazy at best, but whatever you’re referring to I feel confident that no part of Trump’s program is likely to reduce social inequality.

marcel proust

His sense is that this was stronger at Yale than many of the other Ivies, although it seems to be true to varying degree at most of them as well as both peer institutions and smaller schools like Williams and Amherst.

It was my understanding that even within the Ivy League there was a hierarchy of prestige: kudos to anybody who recognises the context of this dialogue:

– … I think Carly went to Yale.
– Brown.
– Still.

(It’s clear from context, and from delivery, that what ‘Still’ means is ‘Still impressive, even if not as impressive’.)

A second function of these institutions is to allow their students a very sheltered place to grow up, where they can make certain kinds of dumb mistakes that are typical of the young without long term consequences. This is something that I think would be valuable for all, not just the elite: young men, if not so much young women, are properly notorious for their poor judgment. It would be good if they can be placed for a few years in an environment, the equivalent of a padded cell, where the greatest cost of poor judgment is shame and embarrassment. OTOH, Brett Kavanaugh is a good argument against this feature.

I imagine some people might argue that it would have been better if Brett Kavanaugh had been subjected to a greater degree of shame and embarrassment, and that part of the problem may be that he wasn’t. One of the things about poorly judged actions is that they can have a negative effect on other people, not just on yourself, and there’s a problem with situations where it’s one person’s judgement that’s most responsible for negative effects, but another person who not only experiences most of those negative effects but is also subjected to the greater degree of shame and embarrassment.

I think I’ve read that the normal maturation of the brain, and particularly of the parts involved in impulse control, isn’t complete until the mid-twenties. I don’t recall reading that there’s a gender difference, although it would be consistent with other experience if the reports were based on studies of males and it hadn’t occurred to anybody that there might a gender difference and that females should also be included in the studies.

The other half of pointing out that much of the value of going to Harvard is the networking is realizing that without legacy admissions much of the value is lost. Harvard is selling access to networking with the children of the wealthy.

Donald A. Coffin

If the thing that is actually happening is not the thing that is predicted by standard economic theory, doesn’t that suggest something is wrong with standard economic theory? ‘What is it that’s wrong with standard economic theory?’ would be the question.

J-D (and maybe also Engels et al?), about the need for “elite” universities. It is unlikely that even under a system of equitable student access elite universities won’t form – so long as there is some level of competitive access to funding or other aspects of academic success, top academics will gather in specific universities, others will accrete around them, etc. The government is going to need somewhere to dump its funding for flagship projects, and it’s likely that the best students will want to go to those universities. It’s not possible for every university to be involved in a super-collider or a telescope project, or to have a wind tunnel, and naturally some universities will become elite in consequence of this. The issue is whether “elite” means “best at what they do” or “the place where rich people go.”

Even in a system of free education, with perfect equity of access and a completely equitable system of high school education, elite universities can exist. The difference will be that under an equitable system even poor kids from uneducated families can get into those universities if they are good; getting into one will help you be best at what you want to do, but won’t necessarily guarantee you any other power or privilege; and not getting into such a university won’t destroy your wellbeing and future prospects. I think we can strive for something like this and undo a lot of social ills without reducing the quality of education or research.

@
”I am told, reliably, that at sporting contests between Cornell and other other Ivies the Cornell students and fans are taunted by fans of the other Ivy who chant, “Cornell is a state school”.

There will be a time where the ultimate ”prestige” will come from having studied at a ”European State School” – FOR FREE – and you will hear a very envious:

”What an international gal”!
-(or guy) – while being introduced to some USC dudes who think Monaco is a different ”State” than Monte Carlo.

I think there is more economic oddity to the scandal than is met in John’s post. Economists seem, on the whole, to agree: human beings are incorrigibly lazy pigs, who need the stick of starvation and the incentive of money to get them out of the stye. Yet here we have children who would really never have to work for a thing their whole life long: due to stabbing to death the “death tax”, and making it easier and easier for the rich to sluice money to their progeny, I think the question is: why do the parents bother? Especially as the symbolic capital of “knowing something” – that ur-humanities garbage – has deflated to adjunct salary levels of value, while everything you need to know you can find in self-help books, youtube videos and reading the memoirs of the great CEOS.
Maybe it is a generational thing. I was particularly impressed by the daughter who instagrammed that she really wasn’t into, well, learning things, and who had monetized her entire life at USC by becoming, oh what was the word? influencer. An influencer! I mean, this is not a pig in a stye, but a young woman brimming with entrepreneurial what have you, a real “maker” in the Romney sense of the word.
So the real mystery is: why does anybody bother with the Ivy Leagues? Save for the tee shirts. And I think hardnosed UCHICAGO economists would agree: the sooner these Ivy Leagues get into more productive business, such as totally selling the tee shirts, the better. Of course, there is the tax free issue to think about – Harvard does have that 18 billion dollar tax free endowment, and all the real estate. But I imagine a clever lawyer could come up with some way to keep the laughable non-profit label viable.

and this is utmost… ”relevant”

”An influencer! I mean, this is not a pig in a stye, but a young woman brimming with entrepreneurial what have you, a real “maker” in the Romney sense of the word”.

You -(”Non-Influencers) just don’t seem to realise what a tough world is out there – in LALALAND.
The pressure is sooo immense that some basic higher education is not enough – as one might have – additional – to learn -(at least in three languages) – ”the art of cheesemaking” in order to get accepted by such a tough crowd…

Perhaps even more cynically – in the circles the parents in this scandal operate in there is really no interest in an education whatsoever. In such circles children are a status symbol onto themselves. Having them get into elite institutions just embellishes this further. A few might actually be gifted or talented, but that isn’t the point either since few of them were ever taught to learn, only to network.

“Yes I have awesome children in addition to my awesome job and awesome wealth and amazing vacations and my perfect nanny and just so style sense”

“Why of course they got into USC. Why wouldn’t they – their scores were awesome and well – we can afford full tuition and I’m sure they’ll be looking for a donation, maybe to the crew team. Did I mention we were in Paris for half term last week? Only 8 hours in the G6”

“Oh she hasn’t picked a major yet, she still has a year or so till graduation. But she’s head of the sorority rush this year, of course. She and her ‘little sister’ are going to Mauritius at break – her family has a place there, I think her Dad owns a production company – they did Roma – its something about immigrants. We were going to go but the Yacht race at the club is late this year and no-one misses the spring social.

I have a proposal that will work. 1) Legally define ‘elite’ colleges as those where more than 10% of admits are legacy. 2) Bar graduates from elite colleges from being employed by (or paid in any way, including grants) by the federal government.

We want actually smart and educated people working for us, not the children of oligarchs. If you aspire to vast wealth, then by all means go to Harvard. If you aspire to political power or good old public service, then consider one of the many other options. Might solve some of the business/regulator revolving door as well.

If you are feeling doubtful, feeling like we might be missing out on great people, you are experiencing exactly the societal bias at the root of the problem. We are missing out on great people right now!

A modest proposal:
https://www.currentaffairs.org/2018/03/admit-everybody

“Everyone who shows themselves capable of doing the work required of a Harvard undergrad is marked “qualified” for Harvard and allowed to apply. There are a limited number of places, of course, but those places will be filled by selecting a random group of students from among all of those marked “qualified.”
…
We know that college admissions are a crapshoot. But let’s just make them an actual crapshoot, so that nobody would be deluded into thinking that merit was involved, beyond the merit of basic literacy and numeracy.”

An system based solely on test scores, such as the SAT, would not be as obviously arbitrary as the current one. But it would clearly favor those with the resources to get test prep tutoring and so on. The Japanese example is not encouraging, at least from a distance.

You could derate test scores by the money spent to achieve them. Admissions selection is a two-part question:
a: given the student’s current knowledge can the student successfully complete the course as it’s structured,
b: among the students who answer “yes” to question a, which will attain the greatest benefit from the course as structured?

“how much have they learned per dollar spent thus far” is a good proxy for “how much will they learn through the course”.

[actually a is two parts, “can they start” and “can they keep up”… ]

After writing the above comment on legacy admissions, I read the WBUR news story from last fall linked by JQ in the OP. Contrary to what I said about figures being altogether unavailable, we do have the figures on legacy admissions in recent years at Harvard because the lawsuit alleging discrimination by Harvard against Asian-Americans has resulted in the disclosure of those figures.

Some of the key paragraphs from the WBUR piece seem to be:

Peter Arcidiacono, a Duke economist, was retained to analyze the data by Students For Fair Admissions (SFFA), the group that is suing Harvard. His 188-page report includes the finding that applicants with at least one parent who graduated from Harvard or Radcliffe were accepted at a rate of nearly 34 percent. That’s more than five times higher than the rate for non-legacies over the same six-year period: just 5.9 percent….

School officials say the legacy gap can’t be entirely attributed to deliberate weighting on the part of the school. An analysis conducted by Harvard’s own Office of Institutional Research found that “legacy” status conferred a 40-percentage point advantage of being accepted, but mainly for students already in the most desirable 20 or 30 percent of the applicant pool.

So we know that at Harvard (in that six-year period, anyway), the legacy preference conferred a substantial advantage esp. for those who had already survived some initial cuts (though according to the analysis by the plaintiff’s expert Arcidiacono, roughly two-thirds of legacy applicants were still rejected), but we don’t know the figures for other schools that use the legacy preference. Harvard in the wake of this lawsuit by SFFA (however the suit turns out) should consider getting rid of the legacy preference completely. Would be interesting to see what effect that would have on the things the administration claims to care about here (alumni “loyalty”, giving, etc.) — maybe not that much, I’d guess.

faustusnotes
Given that my earlier question was: ‘What reason would anybody have to want elite universities (or any kind of ranking of educational institutions) ?’

It is unlikely that even under a system of equitable student access elite universities won’t form – so long as there is some level of competitive access to funding or other aspects of academic success, …

What reason would anybody have to want competitive access to academic success?

The government is going to need somewhere to dump its funding for flagship projects, and it’s likely that the best students will want to go to those universities. It’s not possible for every university to be involved in a super-collider or a telescope project, or to have a wind tunnel, …

The Large Hadron Collider and the Square Kilometre Array aren’t owned or hosted by universities. There are many research laboratories, museums, botanical gardens, libraries, research collections, zoological gardens, archives, aquariums, and so on, which are owned or hosted by universities; but there are also many which aren’t. What reason would there be for wanting them to be preferentially assigned to universities?

Even in a system of free education, with perfect equity of access and a completely equitable system of high school education, elite universities can exist.

My question wasn’t about whether it’s possible for them to exist but about what reasons people would have for wanting them to exist.

the big point is the need for more places in high-quality education.

I doubt this thesis. I attended a completely unselective college as a freshman, transferred to a very selective college, and have met a significant number of people since who studied at Ivy League and equivalent schools, and at somewhat selective schools.

There was a visible difference in quality between my two institutions, but it wasn’t mostly in things money buys. Yes, the buildings were older, there were chalkboards instead of whiteboards–but the really important difference was in the students, not in the professors or the buildings. But it seems, from anecdata, that once you get some level of selectivity, the student capability/interest doesn’t vary that much either.

What the Ivy League schools offer is something other than a good education; they offer a global credential and a huge leg up in the global greased-pole-climbing contest. If you want to work at a big 3 management consultancy, or on Wall Street, or as a lawyer at a firm that represents governments (Skadden Arps, Sullivan and Cromwell, etc) or as a federal judge, or as a professor, or in any other position where being a credentialed cosmopolitan is critical–the Ivy League is a ticket in, and there are only so many tickets.

Expanding access to high-quality education is a good thing–but I’m not sure that you can expand access to the top of the pyramid of status.

I agree with the premise of the OP, namely, that no change to the admissions system will solve the underlying inequalities. And yet, I think it may still be valuable to change the admissions system. For example, either the “admit everyone” approach as suggested by the Nathan Robinson piece linked above, or some kind of lottery admission where an applicant’s name goes into a hat if they have cleared some baseline of test scores and grades, are both obviously superior to the current mix of phrenology and favoritism that constitutes the admissions game at elite schools. Both would of course have to be accompanied by a vast expansion in the number of actual available slots; that could probably be done by putting the screws to Harvard et al’s federal funding.

Of course that’s just dreaming, so while I’m at it, I’ll put my solution on the table which is to nationalize every last one of these places and expand them by fiat. It has about as much chance of happening as any reform.

There’s no fair way of allocating that limited set of places*

Choosing by lottery is an inherently fair process (although there must be strict rules about who is allowed to enter). A lottery cleanses the allocation procedure of all human influence even our own unwitting prejudices. You can read more about this on my website, or even read my book about it Lotteries for Education.

@60
”To me, it seems clear that 30 to 40 years of entrenched educative and financial inequalities have yielded a situation in which 1) the losers live in hell 2) the winners have a very faint idea of what hell entails”

Now that’s not true – as all of my US relatives – who still can send their kids to the Ivy’s know very well – that there are these Cousins who are currently learning French and/or German and Italian – BE-cause they will have to move to Europe – in order to be able to afford an ”acceptable” education for their – in one case 3 – in the other case four kids.

They -(our Cousins with the 3 and 4 kids – all not yet in University-Age) – have realised very well that – even with a pretty good income -(of over 200 000 dollars per year) they can’t afford to give their children an U-education which leads to acceptable jobs – as we all know how terrible the US job market really is – with a myriad of low paying services jobs and then – all of these great and well paying jobs which are – more or less exclusively reserved for all the ”alumnites” of the Universities of spoiled children.

Or in other words:
”The 30 to 40 years of entrenched educative and financial inequalities” have most of Americans completely priced out of the ”GREAT” American-Dream-Picture and –

HELLO!

WE can’t fix that ”structural problem” with a higher supply of ”unpayable” Higher University Places.

Or in other words –
as we probably all are aware that most Americans can’t afford to live in their ”homeland” –
we probably now should realise that WE have a far too expensive education system which is only second to our far, faaar too expensive Health Care System.

And so there will be only one -(or two?) solutions:
Offer any type of education FOR FREE – and Health Care for a price families are able to pay – or my Cousins ”really” will have to move to Europe in a few years.

AND as my Cousins are REALLY GREAT – that will be a YUUUGE loss for THE homeland.

Capisce?

– and about@60
”But we should not kid ourselves: the greatest losers of that kind of policies will be us, and (not coincidentally) we are also the greatest obstacles against them”.

There is this GREAT idea about:
WE are sitting ALL in the same boat – and as simplistically silly this idea might be…?
Everybody who beliefs in this idea -(and the amount of people seems to be… growing?) –
is NOT an ”obstacle” anymore… like – they like policies which make them ”ultimately winning – short term losers”.

@ LFC

Well explained. I am somewhat involved in admissions at a prestigious U that uses such a system. My point is that a college can be defined as ‘elite’ or maybe ‘elite-serving’ if more than 10% of each class gets an admissions legacy bump.

People with bachelor’s degrees from elite-serving institutions should be barred from receiving employment (or remuneration for work) from the federal government.

problem solved.

@
”And yes, having had great tutors at a young age confers an advantage not just in the gaming of the selection process, but in the acquisition of good thinking habits at an early age”.

And yes – having great tutors as the possible youngest age are in great demand in the US – BE-cause –

”this pays lifetime dividends, and society can choose to benefit from these dividends… as long as some of these tutors come up with the good thinking habit to advice the kids to focus on their… ”talents” – and there is no need to focus on dividends and finance if there is – for example – a talent for ”engineering” – which later on can benefit society even more…?

So why does everybody in my homeland (still) want to become somebody with a Law degree from Harvard in order to become an Investment Banker?

SamChevre @ 55 makes an important point:

What the Ivy League schools offer is something other than a good education; they offer a global credential and a huge leg up in the global greased-pole-climbing contest. If you want to work at a big 3 management consultancy, or on Wall Street, or as a lawyer at a firm that represents governments (Skadden Arps, Sullivan and Cromwell, etc) or as a federal judge, or as a professor, or in any other position where being a credentialed cosmopolitan is critical–the Ivy League is a ticket in, and there are only so many tickets.

A big advantage for students at these schools is that they have already been filtered by the admissions process for suitability for these roles, so those who recruit focus heavily on the elite universities.

I wonder about something else. SamChevre mentions professors. Do any of the commenters here participate in decisions about admission to graduate programs? If so, it would be interesting to hear whether, all else aside, students from elite schools enjoy an advantage, either by virtue of their “brand” or possibly recommendations from better-known faculty.

Z @60: that comment is remarkable in two ways, which however are I think fairly typical of Z’s style.

First, the negative hyperbole: “30 to 40 years of entrenched educative and financial inequalities have yielded a situation in which 1) the losers live in hell ” – really one has to wonder how hellish life must have become in France. Is that really a valid way to describe social reality? Connected is an implies nostalgia for some golden age. It is clear that Z implies not just a high level of misery but an *increasing* level of misery in France, caused by the educatic inequalities of the last 30 to 40 years. It is possible that the educative system was somewhat more egalitarian in the 1970s but how is it compared to the 1960s and before? I bet in must of the developed world, by any measure, higher education was far more an elite privilege before 1970, when it really was restricted to a tiny fraction of the population, than it is nowadays when about half the population have access to it.

The second characteristic is Z’s insistence that it is his own social group, the educated middle class, who are to blame for all these “hellish” social tendencies. In other contexts he has referred to the “educated and wealthy elite” (or similar), as if education and wealth were coextensive social characteristics. That is nonsense. Plenty of the “educated” survive in precarious economic conditions, as adjunct instructors and such. The fact that they have excellent educations doesn’t in the least imply that they are wealthy let alone powerful let alone responsible for, and or profiteers of, rising economic inequality. Z’s brand of self-incrimination may soothe the bad conscience that middle class people tend to entertain but it’s not good political analysis. And it helps strengthen the anti-intellectual resentment of the far right, whose plutocratic benefactors have a better grasp of their class condition.

TM, I think maybe my education access was similar, except that I had to first complete an examination and get a score (between 0 and 100), with a minimum of approximately 55 to get into a basic university course and higher points required for more exclusive courses. The required score was set by the ratio of places available to applicants, so for example you needed 89 (in my year) to get into medicine because there were more applicants than places, but 59 to get into science. Also once in university you needed a higher score to get into computer science because there was a limited number of places.

I think it’s important to maintain these educational barriers. I don’t think everyone is suited to university and screening at admission seems like a good idea. Especially for resource-intensive disciplines (as computer science was when I entered uni!), where maybe not every uni has the facilities or the skilled staff, or in disciplines like physics that are actually really difficult and it’s bad for everyone to just let anyone enter them without some kind of screening process.

The key to me is that this screening process somehow be independent of wealth, and completion of the degree shouldn’t be essential for basic participation in society, as is the case now in those western countries that think the ponzi scheme of “upward mobility” is the solution to inequality.

– and take this CR:

”HEC Paris considers on-campus community and associative life to be one of the cornerstones of education. In many ways, it is an extension of the classroom experience. It encourages students to develop a sense of responsibility, as well as nurturing bold and creative minds.
There are as many clubs and associations as there are nationalities on the HEC campus, well over 100. The diversity and vibrancy of its clubs are truly astonishing.

A typical week of extra-curricular activities for a student can look something like this:

Monday: Debate on gender issues, co-organized by law professors and PhD students. Or, an evening devoted to African agriculture, organized by the African/West Indian students’ association.
Tuesday: Meeting organized by MBA students between refugees, student mentors and employers – part of a 12-week HEC course for integration.
Wednesday: Plenary session with a former French Prime Minister, organized by Grande Ecole program students.
Thursday: National Fight Club tournament for male and female students, organized by HEC Fight Club.
Friday: Energy Day closed by the launch of an eBook on solar energy by an MSc student.
Saturday: Conference on well-being and business, co-organized by MSc students and the Society & Organizations Center.
Sunday: The national Jump HEC Horse Show, organized by the students’ equestrian club”

TM, I think the aussie system has become much more of a rat race now than it used to be, but the rat race is equally afflicting academia and non-academia, and the reason is at its core the problem you identify in your second paragraph: that people are in deep trouble if they don’t “succeed”. In academia this means enormous pressure to publish and get grants, the end of tenure etc. In ordinary life it means that if you don’t get some edge you get screwed. Now I’m in Japan and I see much less of this, because academia is designed to be fairer (although it still has many many problems, none of which are necessarily less serious), and because simultaneously the rest of society is designed to enable people on ordinary salaries to live a full life. These things go to hell together, not separately.

I think it’s cute that at the same time people are commenting on this thread, Corey Robin has a post about a famous historian who studied slavery using his position of power at an elite university to attack an attempt to unionize and make the system more equal. The university in question being the university that produced Kavanaugh. The elite universities of the US and the UK are a poison on their societies. Oxford PPE has produced pretty much every leader who screwed Britain in the last 20 years. Elite universities as they are currently conceived are not making the world better…

@
”Seriously…”

Not so… ”seriously” it’s really difficult to understand Z –

As what is IT -(or he)?

Is he:
”that by now, my wife and I can all but guarantee my sons a spot on pretty much any of them” (the French Grandes Écoles)
BUT
”But we should not kid ourselves: the greatest losers of that kind of policies will be us, and (not coincidentally) we are also the greatest obstacles against them”.
AND THEN:
”First, you attributed to me a social class (the educated middle class) and in doing so managed to insult me twice”
BUT
”As I keep pointing out, my social peers and myself personally have a vested interest in the destruction of a public system of education which gives everyone a fair chance to reach the top”.

And I thought this eye of a needle thingy was mainly for comparing our different educational systems –
(as we have commenters here from all around the world) –
and then we’re ALL – hopefully coming to the conclusion – that –
Actually the French or German – or in general the Social Democratic European systems are far – far more… let’s say ”people-friendly”-
(and much much more ”reasonable” – NOT only price-wise) –
than the Anglo-Saxon Ones – and that’s what WE –
(the European Commenters – and interestingly also the Japan based Ones are saying) –
and that’s what (perhaps) TM really meant to say?? –
AND damn it –
Z always spoils OUR party?!

nastywoman, that is really not so hard: my wife and I are at the very top of the hierarchy of educative achievements and capital, very far from the top (and even quite not at the middle) in terms of financial wealth. Like anyone else rich in a certain type of capital, we have a disproportionate ability to transmit that capital to our children if we wish to do so. It is people like us on the educative dimension which are the main problem for a reform of the educative system in a more egalitarian way. Those who are like us in the educative dimension but are in addition powerful in the economic dimension (not at the very top, just in the top 15% or so) are evidently more powerful than us so they have more impact and so are more harmful (when they act according to their narrow self-interests), but it remains that their interests and choices in the field of education tend to be more congruent to ours than to people in the same wealth bracket but low in the educative dimension (that latter category being the modal Trump voter), just like their interests and choices in the field of monetary economy evidently tend to be more congruent to their peers in that respect than to mine.

That is really transparent: all I’m saying is that people at the top of a hierarchy tend not to particularly like redistributive policies in that hierarchy, and tend to oppose such redistributive policies with the special authority that their high position allows. That’s something people apparently understand well when the hierarchy in question is measured in terms of money, but when the hierarchy is measured in terms of education, the point suddenly appears quite obscure. And in a sadly predictable way, advocating redistributive policies along this hierarchy elicits the usual spectrum of rhetorical answers which starts with the outright denial of the existence of a hierarchy in that case, then moves on to say that maybe there is a hierarchy but it is all for the best and the greater good and anyway those at the top really deserve to be there because of their talent and merit, then moves on to say that OK, there is a hierarchy and the losers are not having such a great time but trying to change things will make everyone worse to finally the admission that there is a hierarchy, that things are bad, that maybe change for the best is possible, that you know maybe just maybe super-millionaires could chill just a bit about the size of their yachts couples of PhD graduates could chill just a bit about having their child enter the absolute best class in a 50 miles radius but please don’t say that out loud and certainly don’t do anything about it because that is enabling the far-right – so more or less the exact mirror image of the standard reactionary right line when it comes to economic inequalities.

I expect better of us.

And it helps strengthen the anti-intellectual resentment of the far right

Ah yes the good ole Clintonite (/Gorite) ‘you’re either with us or against us’ (why not go the whole way and say ‘objectively pro-Trump’?)

a child born in 2000s of parents having both prestigious higher education diploma is all but guaranteed to get one, a child born with neither parents in this category, is all but guaranteed not to get one

I’m generally sympathetic to Z‘s Bourdieusian weltanschaung but this seriously downplays the fungibility of different forms of capital.

@Z 81

– that’s a lot of words for saying that you seem to think that the French -(or ”German or Social Democratic European” -) education system is less “people-friendly” than the US one – while it actually isn’t.

And that’s a fact and the point – as in this century we are really live in this ”interconnected world” where ”the people” -(of the US) need to know – desperately that if they can’t afford to live -(and or study) – in their homeland anymore – that there are much better alternatives – for example… in France?

And I understand – if -(like some Germans) – you wouldn’t want all of these (spoiled) Americans use your (”Grande and Excellence”) free education system – but… but…?

– and did I make a…
a mistake by mentioning that AFTER –

”Debate on gender issues –
an evening devoted to African agriculture,
Meetings organized by MBA students between refugees, student mentors and employers – as part of a 12-week HEC course for integration –
a Plenary session with a former French Prime Minister,
a National Fight Club tournament for male and female students –
Energy Day closed by the launch of an eBook on solar energy
a Conference on well-being and business – on ”Sunday” – just on Sunday there also might be poney-riding lessons offered by a ”Grand” -(noticed the use of English?) – Ecole?