a few years ago the president of Harvard declared that the institution was all about inclusion. On the face of it that is just a bald-faced lie, and everyone knows it. Harvard is about exclusion, selection, and curation. “Inclusion” actually meant that there are certain views and backgrounds that Harvard is going to curate and encourage. Which is fine. But an institution which excludes >95% of those who apply for admission is by definition not inclusive and open.
Note that we take it for granted that a “selective” college chooses the students who are easiest to teach. One can imagine different criteria. You could auction slots to the highest bidder, regardless of ability. You can then try to prove that you know something about teaching. Or you could select low-ability and disadvantaged students only, since they need the most help. Or you could take a large initial random sample of applicants, retaining only those who do well in their first semester.
Anyway, the paragraph above, although well said in my opinion, is not Khan’s main point. His main point is this:
Harvard educates the American ruling class. And it wants to continue to educate the American ruling class. As such, it is self-conscious of the fact that it, therefore, can’t have the demographic profile of Cal-Tech.
Khan is inclined to predict that Harvard’s admissions policies will not really change, even if it loses in court. If they don’t change, what happens to the Asian applicants it rejects? More interestingly, what happens to the otherwise-qualified students it rejects because their profiles are too culturally or politically heterodox? They do go to college somewhere. Are their life outcomes affected by not having Harvard’s brand on their degrees? Do those other colleges take advantage of the opportunity to develop distinctive brands, or do they mostly just position themselves as slightly inferior versions of Harvard?
Do those other colleges take advantage of the opportunity to develop distinctive brands, or do they mostly just position themselves as slightly inferior versions of Harvard?
All of the Ivies, and other top schools like Stanford, are mostly like Harvard, and Yale. And the last two rule the USA thru the Supreme Court.
Harvard will lose the lawsuit — but as Rahn says:
the “Deep Oligarchy” is more powerful than the judiciary or the executive branch.
I favor stripping Harvard of its tax advantaged status because of its secret discrimination against Christian conservative / Republican professors. Rahn alludes to this as a threat to Harvard’s long-term grip on power.
It’s actually a subset of the very important issue of “law optimization” where, given different groups in a society, but only one set of laws & norms, for which group will the laws be optimized, including cultural norms? While the “middle class” might not be losing out so much in actual numerical numbers, the laws & norms are very much going away from the elite-hated “bourgeois values” which were possibly optimal for middle class, and sub-optimal for the very rich and very poor. As laws change to be more optimal for the rich, arguably like the LGBT norms (rich weirdos — Rocky Horror), the middle normal folk feel they’ve lost something. Which they have.
Admission optimization is similar, in that the Reps who have been discriminated against by Harvard will have less loyalty to the prior, pro-Harvard policies which have helped make Harvard so successful.
So you are in favor of installing a regulatory regime on major universities to enforce idealogical balance in hiring? Or are you just in favor of this one intervention?
Maybe asdf can weigh in on the IQs of Christian conservatives.
I think we should treat Harvard (etc) as a kind of unelected ruling body that we all have a stake in shaping. How many people vote for a candidate just for Supreme Court picks. Well, the pool of people that are even considered for the Supreme Court were picked by Harvard (etc) decades earlier.
Cutting Harvards government funding or tax incentives is rather beside the point. In a world where the Deep Oligarchy determines everything and has no limits on either its power or willingness to use that power, we need to extend the “domain of struggle” to such bodies.
The basic idea is that one side has been playing realpolitik (with an ideological coordinating mechanism) and the other side hasn’t been (because they are uncoordinated and have been taught not to do so).
From Razibs own post:
Of course, it could just be that white conservative Christians are not academically up to snuff. My previous inquiries do suggest there is a strong correlation between secularity and social liberalism and very high IQs. But, if you look at the GSS’s WORDSUM variable you see there are probably a reasonable number of intelligent white conservative Christians.
First, looking at the WORDSUM scores of non-Hispanic whites by ideology, you can see that liberals tend to be smarter than conservatives, and both are smarter than moderates. This is a pretty robust pattern. Intelligent people tend to have stronger and more strident views. Moderates are probably moderate in part because they aren’t as bright and so have weak opinions.
That being said, when you look at the distribution of ideologies by WORDSUM scores you get a different perspective. Though moderates are on average less intelligent, there are so many of them that for non-Hispanic whites they are still the most numerous in the 9-10 category (that is, they got one item wrong, or none wrong). And, there is balance between the number of conservatives and liberals. The average liberal is smarter, but the much larger number of white conservatives means that even in the brightest decile they attain parity.
Yes, I’m in favor of stopping secret discrimination against Republicans.
I’m pretty sure there are employment laws against discrimination based on race, sex, age, creed, etc., tho I don’t know the law so well.
There should be lawsuits against that discrimination, and the tax-exempt orgs that do discriminate should lose their tax-exempt special tax status.
I’m also in favor of BIG taxation of those education institutions with huge endowments that aren’t spending it on more students. Which I understand means less exclusivity.
Actually, all “non-profits” should also have employees, like their Presidents, be subject to an excess salary tax of 10% or more when they make more than 2 times the median wage (about $50k, so all over $100k/yr). I think most Federal Pensions should be subject to an excess income tax too, along similar lines (excluding military who were in combat).
Those who want to do more money grubbing should be in profit oriented orgs.
These are tax details that the Rep Congress should have put on the table, and should increasingly be talked about. They’ve lost the House, so it will be off the table.
But when the Dems talk about “increasing taxes” instead of reduced spending, the Reps should be ready with these anti-elite tax increase proposals (which the few GOPe also don’t like).
What are other ways to reduce the discrimination against Reps by colleges? I claim that accepting the polarized discrimination in the University, with massive gov’t support, has promoted the polarized society led by the anti-Rep / anti-Christian elite.
I’d prefer ending the gov’t support, but gov’t regulation requiring more Reps be hired as professors and as administrators, at almost all colleges, would be better than what is there now.
One telling fact is the observation that the suit is against Harvard instead of any number of elite American universities which are all doing the same thing (and must thus be watching the proceedings quite closely, if not actively participating in them in some way on Harvard’s side).
IIRC, a few years back there was something of a joke about Princeton rejecting several top and prominent math olympiad talents in the past decade, including Sergei Bernstein in 2009 and perfect scorer Alex Song in 2015 (who, I think, eventually got his initial rejection reversed after an appalled math professor or two there personally intervened on his behalf).
But mostly, that’s not what Princeton is looking for in terms of undergraduates. That surprises a lot of people who naively buy the myth and assume that, for the most part, admissions at these places runs on a principle of intellectual meritocracy. But that’s not what they are trying to optimize.
What does the fact that the Ivies appear to have a lock on selecting likely next-generation leaders among applicants say about the social mobility in the US? Is academic ability and performance less important than who your family and friends are when it comes to being in the “next generation of leaders”?
Harvard isn’t trying to pick Nobel prize winners. It’s trying to pick people who will own the companies that exploit the discoveries of Nobel prize winners. To pick the judges that will rule on how those discoveries can be used. To pick the politicians and functionaries that will write regulations on that discovery. And to pick journalists and opinion shapers who will inform everyone how they are supposed to use and think about the new discovery.
Agreed. If they aren’t picking strictly by merit, what does that say about dynastic rule of those institutions?
Let me flip Arnold’s question a little.
If you were one of these kids, where would you go? Or, where would you recommend these kids go?
Harvard has set a trend; who is bucking it?
Someone on a previous thread posted the numbers on Stanford (I think) vs Berkeley. 10% vs 40%. So it would seem the University of California system is picking them up.
I’m not Asian, but I went to a state land grant school (Purdue) as an undergrad. I could have gone to a much more prestigious school, and in grad school I did (tuition waived, natch). It was hella cheaper even 25 years ago and I had a lot more fun – the smartest guys around get the research opportunities, and it was way easier to be one of them at Purdue than (say) MIT. Still had time for a social life, even.
“Note that we take it for granted that a ‘selective’ college chooses the students who are easiest to teach. One can imagine different criteria. You could auction slots to the highest bidder, regardless of ability.”
Open Harvard/Yale/whatever outlets all over the world to satisfy demand. Use normal supply/demand market pricing like any other service. Let anyone who wants elite curriculum and coursework buy it and learn. Prestige should be based on achievement, not based on admission to a particular facility. Existing university interests might resist such major change, but government funding should serve the greater good.
As for “educating the ruling class”, progressives and conservatives and libertarians should all believe in removing caste or class systems to increase fairness and opportunity and efficiency, not subsidizing bigger caste systems with public support.
Harvard does not have elite curriculum and coursework. Period. Full stop.
The curriculum is remarkably similar to several hundred other colleges. What Harvard has is the students. All of them have worked hard and competed to get into Harvard, knowing that getting in is very, very difficult. Harvard picked lots of top kids in many different areas, by no means all of them academic. They then are thrown together in relative freedom–to be academic if they want, to be musical if they want, to be Conan O’Brien if they want, to be …
Franchising the Harvard name is not going to duplicate that.
If you are right that Harvard’s educational content is standard and the added value is just the exclusive peer group; it shouldn’t receive any public support.
Useful education should be franchised and distributed for maximum efficiency like a popular retail chain franchise. If calculus classes or chemistry classes are useful, make them available far and wide. Offer standard curriculums and evaluation, and offer teaching + coaching service, regardless of location. Let any willing adult purchase them for market price.
Efforts to build caste systems or exclusive social peer group networks and a “ruling class” should not receive any public funding, and in fact be taxed. The parts of Harvard that do this shouldn’t receive public funding.
Those calculus and chemistry classes ARE available far and wide. With two caveats. They are available at institutions where most students can “keep up.” Which means institutions that are at least somewhat selective. Institutions that aren’t as selective have slower, abridged versions of the same courses.
At Harvard, and many selective institutions, the courses are “taught” by senior professors who lecture once or twice a week, but much of the action takes place in “sections” or “labs” run by graduate students. Senior professors are often bad lecturers, more so if American English is not their first language. They are hired, after all, for their research skills, not their teaching skills. A good lecturer and a good section leader may make for a great experience. A bad lecturer and a bad section leader may make for a terrible one. (Though ironically, it may force you to work out how to learn on your own.)
The model to emulate is adult exercise CrossFit. The exercise curriculums are designed by committees of experts. Facilities are conveniently located far and wide. Coaches are at every facility to say hello to students and provide face to face coaching and motivation. Students have human face to face peers. There are online components but they are accessory to the in-person face to face experience.
CrossFit has ~13,000 gyms in ~120 countries. You get the same brand of training, the same expert designed curriculums, and it mostly doesn’t matter which location you attend. If you want to gain prestige or go on to compete, your ability and your evaluation scores matter, your location does not.
In academics, taking a generic undergrad course like calculus at Harvard is far more prestigious than taking the exact same thing at an obscure school. That isn’t reasonable or efficient. Also, some obscure schools have great education and rigorous evaluation, and others have terrible education and loose evaluation, and it’s hard for outsiders to tell the difference. The Crossfit style model makes more sense. Everyone gets the same brand of education and the same well known curriculums and anyone can sign up for a competition. There is wide variance of ability, and they cater to that very well.
You stress the importance of quality face to face coaching, CrossFit is a great model for that as well.
People mostly don’t care if you took calculus at Harvard or what grade you got in it. Mostly, their reaction is, “You went to Harvard; you must be really smart.”
Unlike getting physically fit, most people don’t go to college to learn much. They go to learn a few things and to get that piece of paper that says, “I graduated from selective school X.”
Yeah, that seems like a waste of time and money, but so far at least, online education has hardly made a dent in it.
The status quo you describe is outrageously wasteful an inefficient, which means there is a giant opportunity for improvement.
You are also right that online education efforts were a major disappointment. The lesson to learn with the failure of online education is that people want a place to go, they want human peers and human coaches. Think of online exercise offerings, which have outrageously low retainment and effectiveness rates.
The lesson to learn with the failure of online education is that people want a place to go, they want human peers and human coaches.
Yes, they want a place to go and human peers. What they don’t want is to learn most of what colleges teach. Which is only natural because they will never use it.
To steal from Bryan Caplan, a college degree does not certify that you know what was in the courses you took; most people forget quickly if they don’t use the knowledge. It certifies a certain level of intelligence, conscientiousness, and conformity–an ability to learn a job, to carry it out, and to co-operate with others. Since in most cases, you don’t get that from online education, there has been little demand for it.
You are arguing the cynical case, where the education itself is basically useless. I agree that is the common scenario, I agree with most of Caplan’s points.
Even Caplan agrees that some higher education, such as engineering is useful. Just about every STEM class has obvious concrete applications. Simultaneously, even for engineers, most engineering graduates don’t use any of their academic coursework after they leave school. Even the classes that are useful, most students won’t use them. But the prestige and credentials mean a great deal, which supports Caplan’s signaling model.
The idea that I’m advocating isn’t conflicting with Caplan’s assertions. People are going to continue to take academic classes. Give everyone access to the best curriculums and education brands. Take them global, even. Remove the prestige of getting accepted by an admission bureaucracy, and assign prestige more based on actual achievement. Remove the physical sorting and segregation of people into college campuses.
But there are no objectively “best curriculums.” And as I said before, the curriculums in most selective colleges are remarkably similar (and there are at least several hundred selective colleges, including “honors colleges” at large, less selective schools).
What there are are “best brands.” But much of what makes them desirable brands is their exclusivity.
Secondarily, what makes them a “best brand” is the college experience: the campus, all those other smart, exciting young people around.
Getting rid of both those things would indeed destroy the brand strategy of most high-tuition schools. But unless you force Harvard and every other school to accept people by lottery, and to have a low-cost online degree program (and to give the exact same degree for completing it), you won’t get rid of them, and the present system will continue.
We both agree that eliminating exclusive admissions would eliminate much of the prestige of attendance. I’m arguing that is a better model for society. It makes more sense for students to gain prestige and status by academic achievement, not by an admission process. Any out of shape person can buy CrossFit classes, so it’s not exclusive or prestigious to show up. It’s actually a little prestigious based on the reputation of the workouts, just like some classes at community college have difficult reputations, so even though there is no exclusive admission, taking them is still somewhat prestigious. That’s how it should be.
We both agree that much of the current value of both higher ed and K-12 schools is the other students. We see sorting and segregation in both. I’d argue this people sorting + segregation doesn’t deserve the heavy government subsidization it receives in higher ed.
There are no objectively “best” curriculums like there are no objectively best restaurant chain or exercise programs, but market competition works pretty well.
“Forcing” Harvard isn’t necessary. Any prestigious school with the willpower could lead the way. Federal government already spends massive money on education, redirecting funds towards this would help.
“Harvard educates the American ruling class.”
Well, yes and no. Harvard has a relative lock, along with Yale, on governing bureaucrat positions. It maintains this through good marketing, but ruthlessly through the discrimination of past graduates who control the selecting of individuals for those positions. Elected offices are problematic for these alum as non-approved candidates can win the offices, such as Reagan and now Trump.
Because of this monopoly on “ruling” positions, we see as Joseph Epstein quips in the clip below, some of the worst people are graduates of Harvard and Yale (law schools).
And we’d do well to learn from Thomas Sowell about not being impressed by a Harvard degree.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_embedded&v=JF2eJSHKKd0#t=992
If Harvard wants to continue to educate the US ruling class, it would do well to tighten up its admission standards rather cling to arbitrary notions of who deserves to run the country, even if it produces a demographic profile like Cal-Tech. Smart Asians running things is an inevitable part of the US future and that is not at all a bad thing.
People may be jealous of them, but I don’t think there is much of an animus or prejudice against Asians in the US general population. My impression is that most working class Americans have a lot of respect and trust for Asians generally. Being Asian is probably a better brand than anything Harvard offers. I know I was very pleased to be able to get a Japanese woman surgeon my last time under the knife. And my cardiologist is Asian too. If you were getting opened and you had to choose between two surgeons and all you knew was that one was a Japanese woman and that the other had gone to Harvard, I suspect most people would go with the Japanese woman. There is a reason they are considered trophy wives among billionaire tech executives.
And the new Asians entering government are genuinely impressive. Nikki Haley is widely beloved and sure to be back in an even more powerful role in government. Young Kim, if she doesn’t get cheated out of her seat, appears to be the real deal. And on the other side you have Kamala Harris who is part Indian. The new Asian power elite are not Patsy Minks.
Talent will out dynasty, and Cal-Tech will out influence Harvard in the years to come despite being so much smaller with only 235 entering freshman in 2017. Not a lot of grievance industry majors at Cal-Tech, just power degrees. And smarter students, per wikipedia:
Admission to Caltech is extremely rigorous and requires the highest test scores in the nation.
The middle 50% range of SAT scores for enrolled freshmen were 740-800 for critical reading, 770-800 for math, and 730-800 for writing. The middle 50% range ACT Composite score was 34-36. The SAT Math Level 2 middle 50% range is 800–800.
And the resulting Cal-Tech demographic profile is 43% Asian American, 28% white, 16% “underrepresented minority,” 8 percent “international,” and 5 percent with 2 or more races.
I suspect percent enrolled Asian is going to be a quality metric an increasing number of families make when considering colleges.
Wikipedia informs us that since its founding in 1891, Cal-Tech has produced with only “22,930 total living alumni in the U.S. and around the world. Twenty-two alumni and 15 non-alumni faculty have won the Nobel Prize. The Turing Award, the “Nobel Prize of Computer Science”, has been awarded to six alumni, and one has won the Fields Medal.”
Harvard’s glory days are over. The new raw power wielders and the future nouveau riche will be found among graduates of schools like Cal-Tech, UC-Berkeley, MIT, Duke, Rice, and the University of Washington, all of whom are among the top 40 institutions in terms of highest percent of Asians enrolled. Antiquated admissions standards at the old elite schools will only propel these new elite school’s prestige higher.
There are reasonable arguments for publicly financing research grants and subsidizing education for the masses.
Building a social ruling class does not deserve any public support. The idea is even outrageous; that the public would be expected to finance and support this tiny exclusive social leadership caste. Both major political factions should unite against that.
There’ a ton of other prestigious universities to choose from. It’s not like Harvard or nothing, and IQ is better predictor of success than university choice.
http://www.overcomingbias.com/2009/03/college-prestige-matters.html
The solution is to give all students access to high prestige brand curriculum and coursework. Students should earn prestige based on achievement not based on admissions bureaucracies assigning people to segregated college groups.
Hearing individuals resentful about their prestige level is very unsympathetic. But thinking about the big picture, there are obviously better, more fair, and more efficient models to assign prestige.
What happens to competitors at a lower level?
What happened to Stuyvesant? What happened to Montgomery County gifted programs?
If Harvard was trying to find the next generation of elites then it probably would increase Asian %. However, Harvard doesn’t just find the next generation of elites. It’s SELECTING the next generation of elites. If it says that generation will only be 20% Asian, then it will.
Look at how Asians talk about this. Those that have graduated from Harvard defend it. Those that are plaintiffs on the lawsuit have their names hidden so Harvard can’t retaliate against them. As long as they stay below 20%, Asians will be a client rather than an independent force in the elite. If Harvard was 40% Asian, do you think they would take what is being dished out to them? If they had the power to push back, they would. Harvard won’t allow that.
“I suspect percent enrolled Asian is going to be a quality metric an increasing number of families make when considering colleges.”
hahahaha,. No. No, it won’t. Quite the contrary.
That’s why Harvard doesn’t want too many.
Everyone with any sense understands the obvious: Harvard and the rest want their undergraduate classes to have a particular racial composition, this many blacks, that many Asians, so many whites, and any student ends up competing for the fuzzy quota of slots set aside for his or her particular identity group. The formula changes slowly with the country over time, but not by much. There may even be a token slot or two left for suspected conservatives or Christians, though I’m guessing none for Trump supporters.
The thing is, if someone were to tell the average admissions official at Harvard that one wanted to manage the country’s selection criteria and future population in accordance with the general principle of identity preference: “Not too many Asians or Muslims, a certain fraction of Europeans, 99.9% of a particular political persuasion … ” she’d flip her lid.
In the hypothetical event there were tens of millions of foreign white evangelical Christians yearning to enter the US, I’m sure your admissions official could find some rationale for keeping them out. In the real world, the Obama administration was fairly adept at minimizing the number of actual persecuted Middle Eastern Christians admitted to the country.
If a nation denying admission to immigrants is anti-immigrant and immigrant bashing, is a university denying admission to students anti-student or student bashing? Is that xenophobic or student phobic? Are schools afraid of new students just trying to learn?
In general, prestige is a lagging indicator. My rule of thumb is that when the conversation shifts from what useful things the institution or industry is doing to how inclusive it is, it’s probably jumped the shark. E.g. by the time Black Panther came out, I was getting kind of sick of Marvel movies.