From where? The land of rainbows and unicorns? The US has never been a meritocracy.
The US doesn’t want meritocracy. Even if it did, your description of “qualifications” is your idea of how to objectively measure ability. I’m sure others have their ideas regarding how ability should be measured.
It’s impossible to have a defined system of measuring ability, for all people, for all positions, that is universally accepted.
It’s amusing that most of the people crying about DEI and pushing meritocracy have no issue with unqualified white people being nominated for cabinet positions.
Can anyone tell us how needing to know race, sex, gender, height, weight, name, national origin, address, etc could possibly go into a measurement of merit at age 18.
This is clearly true. But it doesn’t have to be perfect, and it doesn’t have to be universally accepted, it just has to be reasonably fair and accepted to the vast majority.
If you imagine a student who had major success in high school. Patents, authored a well done play or song, or poem, did a wonderful painting or sculpture, i suspect the admissions committee would recognize that creativity. Especially at places like Juliard.
But those traits usually emerge later in life. You suspect that teachers spotting potential for further development are more practical. And more frequently considered in admissions.
At Kiwanis we give out annual scholarships. To be fair to all we grade applications like an exam with points for mentions of community service or honors etc.
If you don’t do that you can easily be accused of favoritism or discrimination.
As a result we penalize the applicant who neglects to mention honor role or National Honor Society, etc.
No, the ideal place is to reduce the prior bias is in the prior bias. But, I do think that there are a certain number of people that one would want to admit if one got to know them, but which might not be admitted if one applied one of the formulas applied here. So, handle most admissions with the formula, but provide one or more channels for the “odd balls” to be handled more individually.
Not quite in this vein, but when I went to UIUC back in the Cretaceous, they had a program called James Scholars where they looked for bright people who might have some issues with regular schooling. One of the tipoffs was a very high test score and a grade history which was mostly high, but which had a sprinkling of very bad grades. Once identified as a James Scholar there were special counselling services, special sections of the hated Freshman Rhet which focused on meaning instead of rules, stack privileges, etc. Very small staff required. It is easy to think of other populations one could address.
How else to evaluate candidates other than by what they have accomplished in their life? Colleges reasonably ask for some evidence of achievement, leadership, or organizing skills.
You brought up the University of Michigan. UM gets about 90,000 applications for a freshman class of about 7,000. Consider the logistics of that. No way UM can do detailed interviews with 90,000 applicants. So a big chunk of that applicant pool is going to be eliminated solely by what is on the application. What’s the alternative?
Suppose you are on the admissions committee. You have an applicant who is very successful based in conventional metrics–high GPA, high SAT, varsity tennis and track, president of science bowl team, won awards for piano, and organized a canned food drive for the poor. You gonna recommend rejecting that person for being too traditional?
Here’s the thing, the single best indicator of success in college is high school GPA, especially if supported by solid standardized test scores, and teacher recommendations. If an applicant is deficient in those metrics they are statistically more likely to do poorly and drop out. Why accept people into an academic institution at the college level who haven’t demonstrated that they can be successful at the high school level?
Creativity and intelligence isn’t sufficient for success in college or life. Perhaps more important is drive, “grit”, and being able to get along with people. Leadership skills is a plus as is disciplined work habits. The great thing about America is that there are many ways to be successful. There are many different kinds of colleges and each college has many different departments and majors.
It depends on whether one believes there is sufficient racism and sexism in society to impact the ability of certain demographics to achieve (i.e., show evidence of merit). Or whether economic factors play a role on what kind of extracurricular activities one should consider a significant achievement.
Two applicants score in the 90th percentile on their SAT. One is from an Indian reservation in Oklahoma and the other from a wealthy neighborhood in upstate New York. Is one a more impressive achievement than the other?
They are forever telling us zip code is the best indicator of performance on standard tests like the SAT. Clearly there is an economic bias no matter how fair the tests are. When a student from a disadvantaged area does as well as a student from a much better area or school I would give them a priority.
As in my example: the president of the local chapter of Aryan Nation, who organized and executed armed protests in front of the homes of mixed race couples, will have displayed the same skills and experience as organizing a canned food drive, but I bet he would not be accepted.
And a kid that has to work after school does not have time for fluff like “science bowl team” or organized food drives.
Well colleges have to have some standards don’t you think, if only for student safety? Active participation in hate groups, drug cartels, organized crime, or terrorist organizations as some examples can justifiably be seen as not being a positive on a college application.
Why do you believe work is not often considered a more impressive extracurricular than the science bowl team? Most people doing the heavy lifting on admissions committees do not come from wealthy backgrounds and understand that a necessary component for success in college is self-discipline and time management. A student that can balance a heavy work schedule with academic success is generally seen in a very positive light.
What about the student who went to some crappy high school where there was little opportunity, except sports, to demonstrate success and the student was not a jock, but they did significant self-education. Many high schools are not exactly ideal places to show off academic excellence.
This is one big reason why colleges adopted the SAT as a metric. It allowed the self-taught kid from a bad school a chance to shine nationally. It is also why we liberals are being foolish when we demand colleges not use standardized tests for admissions. Here’s an OpEd from a once disadvantaged kid that nicely explains this POV.
The Left has good intentions but keeps losing elections because it behaves stupidly.
Which is why colleges tried to take a “wholistic” approach to admissions. They tried to evaluate SAT scores within the context of ethnicity, gender, and zip code. They tried to take into account income, number of parents, quality of school, etc. That’s why a Chinese-American with professional parents had to score a higher SAT score than a Hispanic-American from a working class family to have the same impact.
We can argue whether this is reverse-racism or not but I don’t believe the intent was racist. The intent was to try to create a more even playing field to try to take into account all the biases mentioned in this thread.
Yes. the INTENT was ‘honorable’. And, it took some time, but the result … is 4Nov2024.
No, it wasn’t JUST the college/university admissions. it was bureaucratic red tape across the board, every where. Even those who were supposedly being ‘helped’ by the ‘affirmative action’ … rebelled.
The industry’s go-to measure for the route — which excludes loadings in Iran — typically rises in the final quarter on seasonal factors compared with the preceding three months, but it’s bucked that trend this year.
The world’s biggest food importer has asked traders and processors to buy less foreign grains this year in an attempt to buoy prices and support local farmers amid a slowdown in domestic demand. Authorities initially suggested corn purchases be kept subdued and then later requested halts of barley and sorghum imports, but the measures seem to be leading to longer customs wait times for other crops as well.
White voters voted against Harris. The perception of self interest. Some women did not vote because their husbands supported Trump and the women were turned off but they did not turn out to vote.
Regardless of what a few Latinos and African Americans did the vote was on racist lines as usual. This is America.
