"James Fallows pointed out that there are between 3,500 and 5,500 colleges in the U.S. and all but 100 of them admit more than 50% of the students who apply. Only about 70 admit fewer than a third of all applicants. That is, according to a study by the Pew Research Center, “the great majority of schools, where most Americans get their postsecondary education, admit most of the people who apply to them.”
The United States spends an outsized amount of attention (not to mention alumni donations) on these 100 elite universities (well, more like the top 20 of them) and how they sort our future ruling class toward elite positions in society. But, like the (mostly-)wealthy people who attend them, they are different from you and me. Meanwhile, most Americans don't go to college at all, and almost all American college students go to one of the other 4000 or so less-famous institutions that don't really have competitive admissions, in practice.
Does it matter who gets into Harvard? Yes, insofar as the Ivies send such a disproportionate number of alumni into the commanding heights of the American Establishment. But most of the kids attending Harvard come in as elite as they came out, and that includes non-white students. These students would be fine, either way, so one wonders why all the fuss about getting into Harvard in the first place?
Meanwhile, the schools that are actually giving vertical mobility to racial minorities are less famous and contested. If a more equitable society is the goal, we'd be much better off supporting those than fighting over a few thousand spots at these brand schools.
I'm against affirmative action and other forms of racial discrimination, but I don't consider it a good argument for my position that it took 20-25 years for black admission to recover after prop 209
I'm frustrated that the main spin on this seems to be "Harvard was trying to be Good and let in more under-represented minorities, but the hateful Supremes stopped them." [EDIT: to be clear, I don't mean it was Noah's main spin here, but I mean out in the general liberal infosphere.]
Let's not lose sight of the actual discrimination against Asians!
Harvard was discriminating against Asians to maintain a status quo of White dominance. They were happy to let in "diversity" as long as the WASPs kept the reins. That's basically tokenism, not multiculturalism.
Yes, I am sad that the short-term result here is bad for Hispanics and Blacks. But I am hopeful that this moves us toward a true multiculturalism, which will only happen when Whites become just another minority group. When no group has control, we will be in a better spot with more recognition of minority protections.
Our 3 girls are half-Latino by genetics and half-Filipino by adoption and look completely white. We've taught them that it doesn't matter and it's wrong for people do give them preferences or punishments based on their perceived or actual race. However, we've also made it clear that we are fine with them checking whatever box they think will help them in any given setting. After all, if your gender-identity can change day to day (or minute to minute) surely your racial identity can too.
The sooner we stop obsessing about race, the sooner we can talk about the real privilege that matters: class.
2016 Bernie was the last man in the ruling class room who acknowledged this. The political consultants got to him by 2020 though and he jumped on the racialist bandwagon (and became far less interesting as a result).
This decision is, first and foremost, an invitation to right-wing lawyers and law firms to sue, sue, sue the elite institutions that hatched them. It's like a full-employment program for those dolts.
And I very much look forward to that time in the not-too-distant future when the student bodies of the Ivies consist entirely of Asians, uber-rich legacies, and football players: The white Federalist Society bros who engineered that result will come to rue the day they were born. Their kids will have to write admissions essays detailing their struggles with the anxiety and depression induced by the knowledge that, though anxious and depressed, they don't really have a chance of getting into Harvard anyway. And when they don't get in, they'll all be, like, "Daddy, WTF were you thinking??"
Surely now is the time for US to shift more to class-based metrics and measures to combat institutional disadvantage?
In UK access to Oxbridge has been opened up during recent years by encouraging applicants from state schools. The proportion of places taken by mainly male former pupils of elite private (public schools) has fallen.
The result is a more diverse intake without accusations of positive discrimination.
The process may lead to some of the offspring of the privileged or moneyed elite (think of Boris Johnson, David Cameron) applying to Ivy League universities instead, some think!
Surely, likewise, practices, such as, in effect, preferential quotas for offspring of previous graduates should end a clear example off what we call indirect discrimination in the UK are insupportable?
"Most Americans will continue to consider SCOTUS a legitimate actor" Kinda sorta. Once it's accepted that the Gorsuch appointment was just part of the game, why would there be genuine outrage (as opposed to partisan posturing) if a Democratic majority expanded the Court? That position had majority support among Democrats a year ago https://www.npr.org/2022/06/27/1107733632/poll-majorities-oppose-supreme-courts-abortion-ruling-and-worry-about-other-righ, and the exposure of personal corruption can only have enhanced that.
Some years ago I participated in the admissions process for a graduate program at a selective private university. I rated the applicants on a variety of qualities, high, medium, or low. I was given guidelines for each category. The applicants were compared to others in their designated group, so that Asian applicants had to have higher GRE scores in math (which was most relevant to admissions) than Whites in order to be ranked as High and non-Asian minorities would be rated High with lower scores. It was as if there were three separate input streams.
I was once interviewing a group of middle school girls of color who had participated in a federally funded program designed to encourage them to pursue higher education and make them aware of opportunities for them in STEM careers. When I asked them if they had thought about college, one said, “I’m the first person in my family to go to middle school and my family is excited that I might finish high school and go to college.” Another girl said, “My mom went to Stanford and my dad went to Berkeley…” Such different backgrounds, yet this program lumped them both in the category “underrepresented”.
"Progressives will therefore take their campaign underground."
Since when have progressives ever taken their campaigns underground? They want society to be flat out transformed and accepting of their viewpoints. And that means they have to be "out" In the public square demanding there are large place in the sun.
And this is exactly what the far right is doing also. And that's why our politics are so very loud these days.
One thing Nixon was right about was when he called the middle in American politics “The Silent Majority."
I agree with you on the decision about Affirmative Action. I like the California approach.
Still, as the charts show, progress is good, but insufficient. We need to keep pointing to the data.
To quote a famous econ blogger, paraphrase, "..it is the dutiful responsibility of the strong to care for the weak."
Another famous tall guy long ago said, "Four score and seven years ago, our Fathers brought forth on this continent a new nation, conceived in Liberty, and >>>>> dedicated to the Proposition!!!! <<< that all "people" are created Equal."
A "Proposition" was how Lincoln nuanced his disdain for the original Constitution of the Founders as to slavery and injustice.
As I see it, elite selective institutions have a fundamental choice. They could make cosmetic adjustments to go on as before in contemptuous defiance of the law, or they could revamp themselves to do a good job of attracting and teaching non-elite students. It's imaginable that one of them could could get rid of legacy preferences, set a reasonable floor for SAT scores, and choose applicants by lottery weighted by a few non-racial criteria. But then they would not be elite institutions anymore. So I'm betting they will choose the first path, turning their admissions process into something like an interview for a country club, but with a lot of moralistic rhetoric slathered on top. No new tricks for that dog.
Are there any selective colleges that are likely to lean into this ruling and admit based on grades/test scores alone? The University of Chicago, maybe?
I don't know which way we will go, either. But, it's clear the momentum at the moment is towards ignoring our society's systemic issues with a narrow focus on our individualism. Unless our individualism embraces the collective good, this will not end well and entrenched power will become more powerful and the disadvantaged more so. Someone said something like this in the past....
Fantastic development, because it will break the connection between Stanford, the Ivies et al with “elite” employment opportunities. Activist groups/NGOs, grad schools, tech firms, investment banks, consulting firms will now need to recruit more from state universities and “second tier” schools, exposing them to a more economically and politically diverse student body.
"James Fallows pointed out that there are between 3,500 and 5,500 colleges in the U.S. and all but 100 of them admit more than 50% of the students who apply. Only about 70 admit fewer than a third of all applicants. That is, according to a study by the Pew Research Center, “the great majority of schools, where most Americans get their postsecondary education, admit most of the people who apply to them.”
The United States spends an outsized amount of attention (not to mention alumni donations) on these 100 elite universities (well, more like the top 20 of them) and how they sort our future ruling class toward elite positions in society. But, like the (mostly-)wealthy people who attend them, they are different from you and me. Meanwhile, most Americans don't go to college at all, and almost all American college students go to one of the other 4000 or so less-famous institutions that don't really have competitive admissions, in practice.
Does it matter who gets into Harvard? Yes, insofar as the Ivies send such a disproportionate number of alumni into the commanding heights of the American Establishment. But most of the kids attending Harvard come in as elite as they came out, and that includes non-white students. These students would be fine, either way, so one wonders why all the fuss about getting into Harvard in the first place?
Meanwhile, the schools that are actually giving vertical mobility to racial minorities are less famous and contested. If a more equitable society is the goal, we'd be much better off supporting those than fighting over a few thousand spots at these brand schools.
I'm against affirmative action and other forms of racial discrimination, but I don't consider it a good argument for my position that it took 20-25 years for black admission to recover after prop 209
I'm frustrated that the main spin on this seems to be "Harvard was trying to be Good and let in more under-represented minorities, but the hateful Supremes stopped them." [EDIT: to be clear, I don't mean it was Noah's main spin here, but I mean out in the general liberal infosphere.]
Let's not lose sight of the actual discrimination against Asians!
Harvard was discriminating against Asians to maintain a status quo of White dominance. They were happy to let in "diversity" as long as the WASPs kept the reins. That's basically tokenism, not multiculturalism.
Yes, I am sad that the short-term result here is bad for Hispanics and Blacks. But I am hopeful that this moves us toward a true multiculturalism, which will only happen when Whites become just another minority group. When no group has control, we will be in a better spot with more recognition of minority protections.
Our 3 girls are half-Latino by genetics and half-Filipino by adoption and look completely white. We've taught them that it doesn't matter and it's wrong for people do give them preferences or punishments based on their perceived or actual race. However, we've also made it clear that we are fine with them checking whatever box they think will help them in any given setting. After all, if your gender-identity can change day to day (or minute to minute) surely your racial identity can too.
The sooner we stop obsessing about race, the sooner we can talk about the real privilege that matters: class.
https://www.brookings.edu/articles/economic-mobility-of-families-across-generations/
https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0022103115000062 (for the nerds)
2016 Bernie was the last man in the ruling class room who acknowledged this. The political consultants got to him by 2020 though and he jumped on the racialist bandwagon (and became far less interesting as a result).
This decision is, first and foremost, an invitation to right-wing lawyers and law firms to sue, sue, sue the elite institutions that hatched them. It's like a full-employment program for those dolts.
And I very much look forward to that time in the not-too-distant future when the student bodies of the Ivies consist entirely of Asians, uber-rich legacies, and football players: The white Federalist Society bros who engineered that result will come to rue the day they were born. Their kids will have to write admissions essays detailing their struggles with the anxiety and depression induced by the knowledge that, though anxious and depressed, they don't really have a chance of getting into Harvard anyway. And when they don't get in, they'll all be, like, "Daddy, WTF were you thinking??"
Surely now is the time for US to shift more to class-based metrics and measures to combat institutional disadvantage?
In UK access to Oxbridge has been opened up during recent years by encouraging applicants from state schools. The proportion of places taken by mainly male former pupils of elite private (public schools) has fallen.
The result is a more diverse intake without accusations of positive discrimination.
The process may lead to some of the offspring of the privileged or moneyed elite (think of Boris Johnson, David Cameron) applying to Ivy League universities instead, some think!
Surely, likewise, practices, such as, in effect, preferential quotas for offspring of previous graduates should end a clear example off what we call indirect discrimination in the UK are insupportable?
"Most Americans will continue to consider SCOTUS a legitimate actor" Kinda sorta. Once it's accepted that the Gorsuch appointment was just part of the game, why would there be genuine outrage (as opposed to partisan posturing) if a Democratic majority expanded the Court? That position had majority support among Democrats a year ago https://www.npr.org/2022/06/27/1107733632/poll-majorities-oppose-supreme-courts-abortion-ruling-and-worry-about-other-righ, and the exposure of personal corruption can only have enhanced that.
Some years ago I participated in the admissions process for a graduate program at a selective private university. I rated the applicants on a variety of qualities, high, medium, or low. I was given guidelines for each category. The applicants were compared to others in their designated group, so that Asian applicants had to have higher GRE scores in math (which was most relevant to admissions) than Whites in order to be ranked as High and non-Asian minorities would be rated High with lower scores. It was as if there were three separate input streams.
I was once interviewing a group of middle school girls of color who had participated in a federally funded program designed to encourage them to pursue higher education and make them aware of opportunities for them in STEM careers. When I asked them if they had thought about college, one said, “I’m the first person in my family to go to middle school and my family is excited that I might finish high school and go to college.” Another girl said, “My mom went to Stanford and my dad went to Berkeley…” Such different backgrounds, yet this program lumped them both in the category “underrepresented”.
"Progressives will therefore take their campaign underground."
Since when have progressives ever taken their campaigns underground? They want society to be flat out transformed and accepting of their viewpoints. And that means they have to be "out" In the public square demanding there are large place in the sun.
And this is exactly what the far right is doing also. And that's why our politics are so very loud these days.
One thing Nixon was right about was when he called the middle in American politics “The Silent Majority."
New York Times, 2019:
The Gaps Between White and Black America, in Charts
https://nyti.ms/3fDJ39J
I agree with you on the decision about Affirmative Action. I like the California approach.
Still, as the charts show, progress is good, but insufficient. We need to keep pointing to the data.
To quote a famous econ blogger, paraphrase, "..it is the dutiful responsibility of the strong to care for the weak."
Another famous tall guy long ago said, "Four score and seven years ago, our Fathers brought forth on this continent a new nation, conceived in Liberty, and >>>>> dedicated to the Proposition!!!! <<< that all "people" are created Equal."
A "Proposition" was how Lincoln nuanced his disdain for the original Constitution of the Founders as to slavery and injustice.
It means a test? Will we be Equal?
It means a Proposal? Will be be Equal?
It means an unfinished Project to be Equal.
Just remember, it doesn’t matter so much what race you think you are, it matters what race the police officer thinks you are.
As I see it, elite selective institutions have a fundamental choice. They could make cosmetic adjustments to go on as before in contemptuous defiance of the law, or they could revamp themselves to do a good job of attracting and teaching non-elite students. It's imaginable that one of them could could get rid of legacy preferences, set a reasonable floor for SAT scores, and choose applicants by lottery weighted by a few non-racial criteria. But then they would not be elite institutions anymore. So I'm betting they will choose the first path, turning their admissions process into something like an interview for a country club, but with a lot of moralistic rhetoric slathered on top. No new tricks for that dog.
i wish alba was right but i think he was wrong. brazil shows a path of mixture where there is still a lot of racial dynamic going on...
Are there any selective colleges that are likely to lean into this ruling and admit based on grades/test scores alone? The University of Chicago, maybe?
I don't know which way we will go, either. But, it's clear the momentum at the moment is towards ignoring our society's systemic issues with a narrow focus on our individualism. Unless our individualism embraces the collective good, this will not end well and entrenched power will become more powerful and the disadvantaged more so. Someone said something like this in the past....
Fantastic development, because it will break the connection between Stanford, the Ivies et al with “elite” employment opportunities. Activist groups/NGOs, grad schools, tech firms, investment banks, consulting firms will now need to recruit more from state universities and “second tier” schools, exposing them to a more economically and politically diverse student body.