I think a century from now, we'll look back on privatized higher education the way we look back on privatized health care: Something that evolved by a series of compromises, that society depends on, but that is perpetuating inequality while also gouging us and not making us healthier.

Ironically, the appeal of an "elite" university depends on the public image of the student body. The university has to manage that image through its admissions process. Any open criteria for "merit" will quickly turn the student body into a monocultural freak show. This would in turn diminish the public image of the university -- the exact thing that the students were hoping to benefit from.

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fn-mote 6 days ago | parent | next [-]

In the US, you can look back on the previous century of privatized education. No need to wait.

Edit: Oh, you think in a century we won’t still be in this situation? Hmmmm.

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decimalenough 6 days ago | parent | prev | next [-]

> Any open criteria for "merit" will quickly turn the student body into a monocultural freak show.

So just to spell the quiet part out loud, what you're saying is that admissions based purely on merit would mean the student body would become entirely Asian, and this would be a "freak show" that's bad for the university's image?

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zmgsabst 6 days ago | parent | next [-]

The same group in society has been lamenting “too many Jews” in higher education for generations — and has several Supreme Court cases against their discrimination.

Quotas to DIE have all been ruled to, in practice, amount to illegal discrimination on the basis of race, but some people truly believe Harvard and UNC were right to discriminate against Asians.

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tyre 6 days ago | parent [-]

I think if you look at polling, people’s feelings on admissions is heavily influenced by whether the criteria helps/hurts them. Especially when it comes to students and parents.

Which makes sense. If it came to your kid, would you give up their spot at an Ivy for the “common good” (assuming you saw it that way)?

Or would your definition of what’s right/wrong change to fit the practicals of the circumstances?

	▲	Jensson 6 days ago \| parent [-]
		For a large majority purely numerical merit based wouldn't change what school they could go to, but it would make it so much easier for them to plan and know where they can go since now its no longer based on the whims of some random bureaucrats. So most people would benefit, a tiny minority who currently unfairly get into elite colleges would be hurt.

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brewdad 6 days ago | parent | prev | next [-]

That’s certainly one possibility for “merit” but “merit” could mean lots of things. Stanford goes big into athletics. Perhaps merit could mean they’ll only take students who placed in the top 10 in their state in some athletic competition. Perhaps merit means if your parents didn’t attend, you won’t get in.

Merit doesn’t have to mean SAT scores.

	▲	moomin 6 days ago \| parent [-]
		It could mean many things, but you’d still need to explain the monocultural freakshow remark.

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adastra22 6 days ago | parent | prev | next [-]

I think you injected a lot of assumptions in there.

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decimalenough 6 days ago | parent [-]

Only that "monocultural" is a dog whistle for "Asian". If you have a plausible alternative hypothesis for what that could mean, I'm all ears.

	▲	HDThoreaun 5 days ago \| parent \| next [-]
		monocultural means all the students spent all their free time doing the type of stuff that helps get you into elite institutions and none of their time doing other things. By hyper focusing on a few activities that are known to be liked by admissions you create a monoculture.
	▲	adastra22 6 days ago \| parent \| prev [-]
		You are interpreting “cultural” too narrowly. It could also just mean that if you only focus on grades you get the kind of people who get good grades—-and not the people who don’t do as well grade wise, or have other priorities and bring a diversity of experience to campus culture. This doesn’t have to be a dog whistle for anything racial.

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FooBarBizBazz 6 days ago | parent | prev | next [-]

Nah, he's just describing CalTech. :-)

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6 days ago | parent | prev [-]

[deleted]

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cameldrv 6 days ago | parent | prev | next [-]

I think that's the trick. These university admissions committees are essentially choosing the ruling class for the next generation. What makes a good ruling class depends on more than just test scores and grades, so admissions committees look at other things the applicant has done, and at least they used to also do an interview with an alumnus. All of this is fairly gameable though, and the kind of person who would excessively game these metrics might not be person who they want to choose. Knowing that someone is the child of someone who already was admitted and indoctrinated into the values of the university is a pretty good signal that this person is more likely to be the kind of person they want to admit.

Now all of this runs into the same fundamental issue that any decision like this does, namely, that ideally you want everyone to have an equal chance, but also, you want them to do a good job in their role. Unfortunately, people, through no fault of their own, are born into different circumstances, and some are prepared, in many different ways, better or worse than others, and this strongly affects how well they will perform.

	▲	analog31 5 days ago \| parent [-]
		Well, my post sure was a doozy. I wasn't thinking along racial lines, and I'm sorry if it seemed to imply that. Downvotes humbly accepted. My kids went to a competitive high school, and I saw how the top students funneled themselves into an extremely narrow range of interests. Those kids were nice, but putting 1000 of them in one place would be a freak show. The choosing of rulers is an interesting and complex problem. An idea with some popularity in HN is "sortition" which is the selection of rulers at random. This could be applied to college admissions in the following way. The college doesn't want to admit the top 1000 applicants according to any short list of KPI's that can be gamed. So they admit from the top 10000 students by manual curation, which is guaranteed to be controversial. Instead, why not identify the top 10000 applicants, and then send out acceptance letters to 1000 students chosen at random by a neutral third party. (Making up parameters here, just for definiteness). The schools would get the variety they want, with an opaque selection function that can't be inverted, and the same potential benefits that sortition offers for choosing the ruling class.

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tyre 6 days ago | parent | prev [-]

which monoculture?

side note: “monoculture” and “freak show” seem incompatible. an entirely homogenous student body doesn’t sound too freaky