>>>"Some kids are better at school than others. Colleges sort the good from the bad and pursue the former. How can we ever make this a progressive project? "
Serious, not snarky question - how is acknowledgement of greater capability or virtue "non progressive"? I am not "progressive" in the political sense, but this assertion is confusing me. Please ELIA12.
Progressive in the sense of reducing inequality and providing equal opportunity. If some people are better at some things than others, and we create institutions of "meritocracy" to identify and reward that inequality, the very act of sorting better and worse perpetuates social inequality. If the system has any material consequences at all, it must.
Hmmm. 1) In your opinion, would it be more equal to admit (or forcibly enroll) every one in college, and then just fail the ones with less ability to use that opportunity? 2) Do you recognize natural inequality vs social inequality? 3) How is selecting against those with less ability denying equality of opportunity? And 4) As a progressive, what is the 'steelman' response to the assertion that pursuing progressive equality (rather than pursuing meritocracy)almost inevitably would end in a Harrison Bergeron dystopia?
(1) he thinks college isn't for everyone, in fact he thinks there should be more opportunities for kids who don't want to finish high school; (2) I can't possibly believe you've read his book if you don't know the answer to this; (3) he argues "equality of opportunity" is a bullshit idea and we should focus on equality of outcomes; (4) this is itself a ridiculous straw man. The premise of HB is that the government tries to prohibit differences in intelligence, ability, etc. Freddie's whole analysis begins with the need to recognize differences in ability between students.
You and I (or perhaps I should say, almost the entire contemporary political culture and I) have very different ideas of "equality." When the Declaration of Independence refers to equality, it's talking about how people are regarded by the state: everyone treated equally. Later this notion was extended to equality of opportunity. All very good and desirable and progressive.
But modern progressives are now seeking equality of outcomes, a bizarre distortion of the idea. And this represents a rejection of reality, simply because people are not equal. Some are smart and other are dumb; some are slothful and others are energetic; some are creative and some are not; some have mechanical and athletic aptitudes others lack. Anyone who has spent more than a day in a room full of people (ie, any student or factory or office worker) knows this. But modern progressivism pretends it's not true and asserts a weird (and frankly horrible) leveling of humanity (except for media and tech elites, natch) as their objective.
If this is really what you regard as the goal of "equality," not only will you never achieve it, but you will end up endorsing monstrous programs (like agricultural collectivization, the Great Leap Forward, the Cultural Revolution, cancel culture, etc) in your pursuit of a fantasy.
Everyone is different, with different capabilities and aspirations. A society dedicated to "equality" will arrange matters so that everyone has more or less the same shot at achieving what they want to achieve in life regardless of race, sex and SES, but NOT without regard to native ability, which will necessarily have more influence on outcomes than anything else.
I can see by articles like this one you recognize this reality, but I'm not sure why you continue to employ the word "equality" in the currently fashionable manner. True meritocracy, by allowing people to find their own level, frankly offers more justice to all members of society than any other 'ism under the sun.
"...but NOT without regard to native ability, which will necessarily have more influence on outcomes than anything else."
True, but should differences in native ability be allowed to drive the differences in economic inequality that are present in today's society?
"True meritocracy, by allowing people to find their own level, frankly offers more justice to all members of society than any other 'ism under the sun."
But having found their true level, is there a floor of support that all people should be allowed to walk on no matter what their own level happens to be? If someone aspires to be x and another person aspires to be y, and both fulfill their aspirations to the same degree, what amount of inequality--if any--should exist between their material circumstances?
I think you can recognize inequality of abilities between people but still not love to see massive outcome differences between them. Some people are a lot smarter, healthier, taller, better-looking, etc., than others, and that will make their lives different. But in some societies you can imagine, their lives will be worlds apart (the janitors live in unheated mud huts while the surgeons live in giant mansions); in others, they'll be closer together (the janitors usually live in smaller and less pretty houses, drive older cars, eat less expensive food, etc., than surgeons, but everyone lives in a house and gets enough to eat).
Nature gave us the inequalities, but we collectively get to decide what our society should do with them. Some ways of leveling out the inequalities will be very destructive--at the extreme end, you get Mao or the Khmer Rouge at their craziest. But others look like modern welfare states + graduated income taxes--non-horrible societies we know how to build.
Funny--surgeons and janitors were the exact two categories in my mind as I composed my post.
As a Buddhist, I am all for a middle path between Mao and the society I currently inhabit. One key is not leveling out the inequalities, but rather the consequences of those inequalities. Again, what are the minimum material circumstances due to all human being for doing nothing other than achieving a human rebirth.
To clear up some of your confusion, progressives often distinguish between "equality" and "equity" . "Equality" is essentially what you are defining here : everyone has equal opportunity, while "equity" is giving an advantage to those who have historically been disadvantaged (defined sometimes via class, but more often via race.) (Seriously: they're teaching this in public schools now. Equality is immoral/unfair; equity is moral/fair.) Unlike Freddie (who defines himself as a communist), I actually believe in capitalism (and meritocracy) as an imperfect, but the least bad, economic system out there. That being said, I also believe that, in no way is there an even playing field: equal opportunity is somewhat of a myth. Anyway, for this reason, I generally believe in affirmative action (esp for low income students). And I believe in a solid welfare state to support those who, for whatever reason, fail to thrive in our capitalist world.
Meritocracy as a concept is a mask for classic social reproduction of the classes though. (I believe the term was invented as a pejorative description of that kind of thinking). Even if it wasn't, is it any less cruel or Hobbesian to erect a hierarchy that privileges intelligence in lieu of strength? Lots of Freddie's writing has been on issues around that question for a long time.
Hhm good question. I guess I would say, yes, that a society based on intelligence is less cruel than brute strength. But that aside, I guess I see human nature as essentially hobessian - naturally greedy and self-serving. I think you have to start with that principle, build a society that harnesses that drive. Wouldnt it be great if we all just naturally wanted to share? But we don’t. So you have to start with human nature’s basic instinct, then do what you can in an empathetic society to minimize the crueler aspects of capitalism -to even the playing field, essentially. Look- my dad was a Marxist. It’s a lively idea. Tell me where it has worked. Tell me where it hasn’t led instead to corruption, fear and totalitarianism.
I mean other than this temporal island that we're in (and it sure looks like an island given the global backslide from liberal democracy in the face of late capitalism), corruption, fear, and totalitarianism seem perfectly compatible with a market derived society based on competitive distribution of means (pick your organizing principle and your foundational philosopher, I don't think it matters much in the outcome, given that similar shifts are happening in Sweden as in Eastern Europe, modulo the starting points.).
The other thing is that 'Marxism' broadly understood is more a diagnosis and a goal, not a plan. There's nothing inherently contradictory between liberal democracy and social distribution of production. I think it's clear that vanguardism does exactly what you say, but that also can't be divorced from the regimes that vanguard movements have displaced.
Anyway, we're far afield from the question about the SAT and the reproduction of the elite, so to connect it back, I think universities at their core represent exactly the Hobbesian competition that you're describing, and all the stuff we're strapping onto the mission of universities doesn't work because, as Freddie pointed out, it's fundamentally at odds.
I agree that the holistic approach favors students from high-income families, not just because they can get better extracurricular and service opportunities but also because their teachers can write such good recommendations for them. (When I taught English at an elite high school, I spent an average of four hours on every letter of recommendation I wrote; it was part of my job to help my students get into top colleges.)
However, I would like to push back on your claim that the SAT, as an objective measure of intelligence, is the best measure of college performance. In order to succeed in college and in life, students are helped by intrinsic intelligence, but personal skills such as the ability to defer gratification, get along with others, accept and learn from criticism, resist peer pressure, and work hard are all at least as important. All these qualities are measured in high school grades and teacher recommendations. Women’s colleges such as Mount Holyoke, which have been SAT-optional for many years, have compared first-year grades of students who reported SATs with those who didn’t, and they have found no difference.
I am probably biased because of my experience as a student at the University of Chicago in the early 80s. The U of C was famous for admitting students who had stratospheric test scores but often poor grades. The college had by far the lowest four-year graduation rate of any elite school in the country. When I was a third-year student, the university appointed a new Dean of Admissions to address the problem. He shifted to a greater emphasis on grades, extracurriculars, and recommendations in an effort to find students who were not only intelligent but who also had these personal qualities. The U of C’s four-year graduation rate is now close to 100 percent, which is even more remarkable because the university makes a real effort to attract and fully fund low-income and first-generation students.
In my ideal world, college admissions would be done by lottery. The universities could set their own cut-offs for GPA and SATs, and they could give extra weight to low-income students, but beyond that they would just do a lottery. It might actually be fairer than what we have now.
I grew up around a lot of rich kids and watched them get professional help with their college essays. It's one aspect of the admissions process that has absolutely no guard rails for cheating. It's conceivable that a lot of the well-meaning people involved in this push are genuinely naive about the subject - I'm not sure I would be so cynical about this if I didn't see it with my own eyes.
We could put some guard rails around the process if admissions essays were written in a monitored environment, similar to taking the AP English test, but I suspect the people who are anti-standardized tests would have the same complaints that they do about any other test.
I think there are at least two important sources of pushback against standardized tests:
a. The racial and social-class numbers don't come out right--too many Asians and not enough blacks get top scores.
b. Wealthy/connected parents individually want to get their kids into top schools. Standardized tests are hard for parents to help with; essays, extracurriculars, etc., are easier for parents to help with, in ways ranging from providing external motivation and editing by the parents all the way to hiring someone to put together an optimal package.
My intuition is that while a lot of the political cover for eliminating test scores for college or selective high school admissions comes from (a), most of the actual energy comes from (b).
Regression to the mean is a harsh thing to accept. If you and your spouse are unusually bright, diligent, and accomplished, your kids will, on average, be brighter, more diligent, and more accomplished than the average person, but less so than you or your spouse. Lots of upper-middle-class parents despair of getting their perfectly nice and competent but not super-driven/brilliant kids into a top school, or onto the track for a top-tier life. To the extent this is mainly determined by the kids' performance in school/on tests, it's hard for the parents to influence much.
Decreasing the emphasis on SAT scores or AP scores and increasing the emphasis on a good essay and a good interview and impressive extracurriculars is a great way to make it easier for parents to help their kids up the ladder a bit at the margin. That's not going to get your dumb kid into Yale (only endowing a new chemistry building will do that), but it might push your kid up a hop or two on the elite-school hierarchy, so maybe they go to Harvard instead of Duke.
" ... while a lot of the political cover for eliminating test scores for college or selective high school admissions comes from (a), most of the actual energy comes from (b)."
I'm glad to hear someone else say this. Standardized tests are great at smoking out two kinds of kids: ones with more brains than money, and ones with more money than brains. Every time I hear someone write an article about how evil the LSAT is, I can't help but think that I'm reading an article by a grown-up teenager whose family is loaded and who heard how "gifted" they were for their whole childhood, but who got a 135.
I think part of the problem is that a lot of the discussion of SATs and admissions is wrapped up in who goes to *elite* colleges. The vast majority of students attend non-selective schools where scores aren’t even that much of a barrier to entry because requirements are so low. But I guess as long as the media and our politicians and our professionals mainly went to highly selective schools, we will continue to argue about what’s important for those elite few. Nobody cares about Kennesaw State University’s SAT/ACT cutoffs because they admit 75% of their applicants. But they also educate more kids every year than Harvard. But hey, they don’t count, do they?
"How can we ever make this a progressive project? Well, we can’t."
True, but the problem that this progressive project is trying to correct remains.
I am old enough to be part of the last cohort where people went on to higher education to pursue something they loved, My father was able to provide a nice house in suburban New Jersey for his family working as a salesman, having obtained a degree from DeWitt Clinton High School and nothing more. When he left that job after more than 40 years, his company would only consider applicants with a 3.5 college GPA or better, and as my Dad said, a college GPA has no correlation to whether or not a person will be good working in sales.
When the ante for entry into the arena of well-compensated work rose from high school diploma to college degree (since risen further to graduate degree), it helped solidify a permanent underclass who were condemned to work low-paying jobs since they lacked the credentials to get into the high-wage game. For example, many years ago my husband was applying for jobs as a receptionist or other entry level positions as he worked toward his degree. He continually ran into the obstacle of not having a BA degree--to answer phones! With the BA (and its attendant GPA) becoming the new high school diploma, colleges are now tasked with the job of preparing students for entry-level work, instead of tending to a smaller cohort interested in specialized fields.
You are correct that colleges are in the inequality business--sorting out who will be good for various specialized pursuits. But they have also now assumed/been tasked with the job of providing a general seal of fitness for entry-level work, which used to be the function of a high school education, whose seal was the diploma (sans GPA).
Can culture be changed so that entry-levels jobs are once again understood to require only a high school diploma? I doubt it. The college industrial complex is too well-entrenched in society to agree to its diminishment.
Can hiring practices be altered so that GPAs are no longer used as measuring tools? Again, I doubt it. If that happened, all colleges should then adopt a pass/fail grading system, which would not serve the function of distinguishing the good from the bad.
Universal Basic Income--a living wage--universal healthcare--guaranteed housing--all of these might help people so that no matter their educational credentials (or lack thereof), they will be able to make enough money to support a family, and no longer stress over how many degrees they possess or what their GPA is.
I basically agree, but would invert the question: can high school be changed so that its diploma means someone is actually fit for most jobs? As recently as 1990 -- yes, to me that's the recent past -- I worked at a small Silicon Valley company that hired PhDs from nearby universities ... and graduates of nearby high schools. Into different roles, sure, but the no-college kids were welcomed.
Or maybe the minimum wage should be 20 for people with Bachelor's degrees.
Good inversion. I wonder if it can be, in that so many positions/functions can now be handled by technology if desired. For instance, the need for an assistant to schedule is obviated by new technology where everyone does their own scheduling. Friends have told me about their workplaces where assistants and other support staff have been relentlessly reduced.
The ghastly truth is that my job can be done by someone without a university degree. I *was* doing it before I got my degree. Certainly I am better now than I was then, but most of the difference is the fruit of experience and on-the-job learning. I too could have gone to a trade school, or its modern equivalent.
"Ghastly" is the word. The fiction must be maintained to a) keep the college-industrial complex humming; b) maintain a permanent underclass; and c) foster permanent inequality justified by a veneer of meritocracy.
I agree with this; credential inflation benefits no one and is partly responsible for the insane rise in college tuition. I often hear people say that college should be free or very inexpensive, “like it is in Europe.” Well, I live in Europe and my son goes to college in the UK (saving us a lot of money), and what most Americans don’t realize is that in Europe only about 10 to 20 percent of high school graduates—the academic elite as measured by nationwide exams—go on to university. Most European kids take apprenticeships or work-trainings after high school. These programs are highly regarded, have challenging curricula, and—the most important aspect—lead directly to a well-paid job. The distinction between university education and job-training is actually quite clear: is the topic something you learn by reading, writing, and discussing? Do you require lab facilities? Is the subject so abstruse that you will need to work through problem sets with your professor and other students in order to fully grasp it? Or, alternately, is the topic better approached through real-world experience? If it’s the last, it makes more sense and is an order of magnitude cheaper to learn through an apprenticeship rather than a four-year college degree that many students will be unable to complete.
american schooling has a number of purposes which have been grafted one upon the other over the decades, the more that are grafted on, the more unwieldly the thing gets. prior to mandatory schooling it was about a certain kind of education (not schooling). Most who went prior to mandatory schooling seemed to stop by 8th grade, then went into trades of one sort or another. a relatively small percentage graduated high school, even fewer attended college. my great-grandfather, to graduate high school learned what was called the scientific-latin curriculum which necessitated higher mathematics, 2-3 foreign languages, and an extensive study of world history, among other things. but as mandatory schooling was instituted the focus shifted to indoctrinating immigrants into the american myth, in other words, to making a citizenry attached to the idea of being an american. it shifted again as industrialization expanded, creating a functional work force, then again as it became a baby sitting service for their industrial-employed parents (which it still mostly is). i think it telling that when mandatory schooling was instituted it was resisted most of all by the young, many of whom would rather have worked than spent their time sitting, immobile in class rooms. Now the schools have grafted more to the curriculum, much of it relatively nonsensical. I never did fit into the system, i found it all pretty hypocritical which many adolescents do, and quit to make my own way, designing my own education and mentors as part of the process. the whole thing needs to be broken apart and redesigned from the ground up. and yeah, you are right, the current goals are inconsistent.
It appears the SAT’s have a significant correlation to lifetime financial success, but where a person goes to college does not. So raspberries to all the private colleges out there; it appears people are scamming themselves by paying that high tuition. A rather gratifying result: the privileged are wasting their money and should be sending their kids to community college. Everyone else, if rational and not giving in to envy, should be rejoicing while mocking them. :)
>>>"Some kids are better at school than others. Colleges sort the good from the bad and pursue the former. How can we ever make this a progressive project? "
Serious, not snarky question - how is acknowledgement of greater capability or virtue "non progressive"? I am not "progressive" in the political sense, but this assertion is confusing me. Please ELIA12.
Progressive in the sense of reducing inequality and providing equal opportunity. If some people are better at some things than others, and we create institutions of "meritocracy" to identify and reward that inequality, the very act of sorting better and worse perpetuates social inequality. If the system has any material consequences at all, it must.
Hmmm. 1) In your opinion, would it be more equal to admit (or forcibly enroll) every one in college, and then just fail the ones with less ability to use that opportunity? 2) Do you recognize natural inequality vs social inequality? 3) How is selecting against those with less ability denying equality of opportunity? And 4) As a progressive, what is the 'steelman' response to the assertion that pursuing progressive equality (rather than pursuing meritocracy)almost inevitably would end in a Harrison Bergeron dystopia?
I mean, the dude wrote a whole book addressing these exact issues
Which I have read, and dont recall how it addressed these. Could you summarize, please?
Perhaps you should do your own work? Instead of requiring someone else to drop knowledge in your lap?
(1) he thinks college isn't for everyone, in fact he thinks there should be more opportunities for kids who don't want to finish high school; (2) I can't possibly believe you've read his book if you don't know the answer to this; (3) he argues "equality of opportunity" is a bullshit idea and we should focus on equality of outcomes; (4) this is itself a ridiculous straw man. The premise of HB is that the government tries to prohibit differences in intelligence, ability, etc. Freddie's whole analysis begins with the need to recognize differences in ability between students.
You and I (or perhaps I should say, almost the entire contemporary political culture and I) have very different ideas of "equality." When the Declaration of Independence refers to equality, it's talking about how people are regarded by the state: everyone treated equally. Later this notion was extended to equality of opportunity. All very good and desirable and progressive.
But modern progressives are now seeking equality of outcomes, a bizarre distortion of the idea. And this represents a rejection of reality, simply because people are not equal. Some are smart and other are dumb; some are slothful and others are energetic; some are creative and some are not; some have mechanical and athletic aptitudes others lack. Anyone who has spent more than a day in a room full of people (ie, any student or factory or office worker) knows this. But modern progressivism pretends it's not true and asserts a weird (and frankly horrible) leveling of humanity (except for media and tech elites, natch) as their objective.
If this is really what you regard as the goal of "equality," not only will you never achieve it, but you will end up endorsing monstrous programs (like agricultural collectivization, the Great Leap Forward, the Cultural Revolution, cancel culture, etc) in your pursuit of a fantasy.
Everyone is different, with different capabilities and aspirations. A society dedicated to "equality" will arrange matters so that everyone has more or less the same shot at achieving what they want to achieve in life regardless of race, sex and SES, but NOT without regard to native ability, which will necessarily have more influence on outcomes than anything else.
I can see by articles like this one you recognize this reality, but I'm not sure why you continue to employ the word "equality" in the currently fashionable manner. True meritocracy, by allowing people to find their own level, frankly offers more justice to all members of society than any other 'ism under the sun.
La majestueuse égalité des lois, qui interdit au riche comme au pauvre de coucher sous les ponts, de mendier dans les rues et de voler du pain.
Is going to college an opportunity or an outcome? How about landing a good job, having rich parents, or winning the lottery?
"...but NOT without regard to native ability, which will necessarily have more influence on outcomes than anything else."
True, but should differences in native ability be allowed to drive the differences in economic inequality that are present in today's society?
"True meritocracy, by allowing people to find their own level, frankly offers more justice to all members of society than any other 'ism under the sun."
But having found their true level, is there a floor of support that all people should be allowed to walk on no matter what their own level happens to be? If someone aspires to be x and another person aspires to be y, and both fulfill their aspirations to the same degree, what amount of inequality--if any--should exist between their material circumstances?
I think you can recognize inequality of abilities between people but still not love to see massive outcome differences between them. Some people are a lot smarter, healthier, taller, better-looking, etc., than others, and that will make their lives different. But in some societies you can imagine, their lives will be worlds apart (the janitors live in unheated mud huts while the surgeons live in giant mansions); in others, they'll be closer together (the janitors usually live in smaller and less pretty houses, drive older cars, eat less expensive food, etc., than surgeons, but everyone lives in a house and gets enough to eat).
Nature gave us the inequalities, but we collectively get to decide what our society should do with them. Some ways of leveling out the inequalities will be very destructive--at the extreme end, you get Mao or the Khmer Rouge at their craziest. But others look like modern welfare states + graduated income taxes--non-horrible societies we know how to build.
Funny--surgeons and janitors were the exact two categories in my mind as I composed my post.
As a Buddhist, I am all for a middle path between Mao and the society I currently inhabit. One key is not leveling out the inequalities, but rather the consequences of those inequalities. Again, what are the minimum material circumstances due to all human being for doing nothing other than achieving a human rebirth.
To clear up some of your confusion, progressives often distinguish between "equality" and "equity" . "Equality" is essentially what you are defining here : everyone has equal opportunity, while "equity" is giving an advantage to those who have historically been disadvantaged (defined sometimes via class, but more often via race.) (Seriously: they're teaching this in public schools now. Equality is immoral/unfair; equity is moral/fair.) Unlike Freddie (who defines himself as a communist), I actually believe in capitalism (and meritocracy) as an imperfect, but the least bad, economic system out there. That being said, I also believe that, in no way is there an even playing field: equal opportunity is somewhat of a myth. Anyway, for this reason, I generally believe in affirmative action (esp for low income students). And I believe in a solid welfare state to support those who, for whatever reason, fail to thrive in our capitalist world.
Meritocracy as a concept is a mask for classic social reproduction of the classes though. (I believe the term was invented as a pejorative description of that kind of thinking). Even if it wasn't, is it any less cruel or Hobbesian to erect a hierarchy that privileges intelligence in lieu of strength? Lots of Freddie's writing has been on issues around that question for a long time.
Hhm good question. I guess I would say, yes, that a society based on intelligence is less cruel than brute strength. But that aside, I guess I see human nature as essentially hobessian - naturally greedy and self-serving. I think you have to start with that principle, build a society that harnesses that drive. Wouldnt it be great if we all just naturally wanted to share? But we don’t. So you have to start with human nature’s basic instinct, then do what you can in an empathetic society to minimize the crueler aspects of capitalism -to even the playing field, essentially. Look- my dad was a Marxist. It’s a lively idea. Tell me where it has worked. Tell me where it hasn’t led instead to corruption, fear and totalitarianism.
I mean other than this temporal island that we're in (and it sure looks like an island given the global backslide from liberal democracy in the face of late capitalism), corruption, fear, and totalitarianism seem perfectly compatible with a market derived society based on competitive distribution of means (pick your organizing principle and your foundational philosopher, I don't think it matters much in the outcome, given that similar shifts are happening in Sweden as in Eastern Europe, modulo the starting points.).
The other thing is that 'Marxism' broadly understood is more a diagnosis and a goal, not a plan. There's nothing inherently contradictory between liberal democracy and social distribution of production. I think it's clear that vanguardism does exactly what you say, but that also can't be divorced from the regimes that vanguard movements have displaced.
Anyway, we're far afield from the question about the SAT and the reproduction of the elite, so to connect it back, I think universities at their core represent exactly the Hobbesian competition that you're describing, and all the stuff we're strapping onto the mission of universities doesn't work because, as Freddie pointed out, it's fundamentally at odds.
I agree that the holistic approach favors students from high-income families, not just because they can get better extracurricular and service opportunities but also because their teachers can write such good recommendations for them. (When I taught English at an elite high school, I spent an average of four hours on every letter of recommendation I wrote; it was part of my job to help my students get into top colleges.)
However, I would like to push back on your claim that the SAT, as an objective measure of intelligence, is the best measure of college performance. In order to succeed in college and in life, students are helped by intrinsic intelligence, but personal skills such as the ability to defer gratification, get along with others, accept and learn from criticism, resist peer pressure, and work hard are all at least as important. All these qualities are measured in high school grades and teacher recommendations. Women’s colleges such as Mount Holyoke, which have been SAT-optional for many years, have compared first-year grades of students who reported SATs with those who didn’t, and they have found no difference.
I am probably biased because of my experience as a student at the University of Chicago in the early 80s. The U of C was famous for admitting students who had stratospheric test scores but often poor grades. The college had by far the lowest four-year graduation rate of any elite school in the country. When I was a third-year student, the university appointed a new Dean of Admissions to address the problem. He shifted to a greater emphasis on grades, extracurriculars, and recommendations in an effort to find students who were not only intelligent but who also had these personal qualities. The U of C’s four-year graduation rate is now close to 100 percent, which is even more remarkable because the university makes a real effort to attract and fully fund low-income and first-generation students.
In my ideal world, college admissions would be done by lottery. The universities could set their own cut-offs for GPA and SATs, and they could give extra weight to low-income students, but beyond that they would just do a lottery. It might actually be fairer than what we have now.
I grew up around a lot of rich kids and watched them get professional help with their college essays. It's one aspect of the admissions process that has absolutely no guard rails for cheating. It's conceivable that a lot of the well-meaning people involved in this push are genuinely naive about the subject - I'm not sure I would be so cynical about this if I didn't see it with my own eyes.
We could put some guard rails around the process if admissions essays were written in a monitored environment, similar to taking the AP English test, but I suspect the people who are anti-standardized tests would have the same complaints that they do about any other test.
I think there are at least two important sources of pushback against standardized tests:
a. The racial and social-class numbers don't come out right--too many Asians and not enough blacks get top scores.
b. Wealthy/connected parents individually want to get their kids into top schools. Standardized tests are hard for parents to help with; essays, extracurriculars, etc., are easier for parents to help with, in ways ranging from providing external motivation and editing by the parents all the way to hiring someone to put together an optimal package.
My intuition is that while a lot of the political cover for eliminating test scores for college or selective high school admissions comes from (a), most of the actual energy comes from (b).
Regression to the mean is a harsh thing to accept. If you and your spouse are unusually bright, diligent, and accomplished, your kids will, on average, be brighter, more diligent, and more accomplished than the average person, but less so than you or your spouse. Lots of upper-middle-class parents despair of getting their perfectly nice and competent but not super-driven/brilliant kids into a top school, or onto the track for a top-tier life. To the extent this is mainly determined by the kids' performance in school/on tests, it's hard for the parents to influence much.
Decreasing the emphasis on SAT scores or AP scores and increasing the emphasis on a good essay and a good interview and impressive extracurriculars is a great way to make it easier for parents to help their kids up the ladder a bit at the margin. That's not going to get your dumb kid into Yale (only endowing a new chemistry building will do that), but it might push your kid up a hop or two on the elite-school hierarchy, so maybe they go to Harvard instead of Duke.
" ... while a lot of the political cover for eliminating test scores for college or selective high school admissions comes from (a), most of the actual energy comes from (b)."
I'm glad to hear someone else say this. Standardized tests are great at smoking out two kinds of kids: ones with more brains than money, and ones with more money than brains. Every time I hear someone write an article about how evil the LSAT is, I can't help but think that I'm reading an article by a grown-up teenager whose family is loaded and who heard how "gifted" they were for their whole childhood, but who got a 135.
I think part of the problem is that a lot of the discussion of SATs and admissions is wrapped up in who goes to *elite* colleges. The vast majority of students attend non-selective schools where scores aren’t even that much of a barrier to entry because requirements are so low. But I guess as long as the media and our politicians and our professionals mainly went to highly selective schools, we will continue to argue about what’s important for those elite few. Nobody cares about Kennesaw State University’s SAT/ACT cutoffs because they admit 75% of their applicants. But they also educate more kids every year than Harvard. But hey, they don’t count, do they?
"How can we ever make this a progressive project? Well, we can’t."
True, but the problem that this progressive project is trying to correct remains.
I am old enough to be part of the last cohort where people went on to higher education to pursue something they loved, My father was able to provide a nice house in suburban New Jersey for his family working as a salesman, having obtained a degree from DeWitt Clinton High School and nothing more. When he left that job after more than 40 years, his company would only consider applicants with a 3.5 college GPA or better, and as my Dad said, a college GPA has no correlation to whether or not a person will be good working in sales.
When the ante for entry into the arena of well-compensated work rose from high school diploma to college degree (since risen further to graduate degree), it helped solidify a permanent underclass who were condemned to work low-paying jobs since they lacked the credentials to get into the high-wage game. For example, many years ago my husband was applying for jobs as a receptionist or other entry level positions as he worked toward his degree. He continually ran into the obstacle of not having a BA degree--to answer phones! With the BA (and its attendant GPA) becoming the new high school diploma, colleges are now tasked with the job of preparing students for entry-level work, instead of tending to a smaller cohort interested in specialized fields.
You are correct that colleges are in the inequality business--sorting out who will be good for various specialized pursuits. But they have also now assumed/been tasked with the job of providing a general seal of fitness for entry-level work, which used to be the function of a high school education, whose seal was the diploma (sans GPA).
Can culture be changed so that entry-levels jobs are once again understood to require only a high school diploma? I doubt it. The college industrial complex is too well-entrenched in society to agree to its diminishment.
Can hiring practices be altered so that GPAs are no longer used as measuring tools? Again, I doubt it. If that happened, all colleges should then adopt a pass/fail grading system, which would not serve the function of distinguishing the good from the bad.
Universal Basic Income--a living wage--universal healthcare--guaranteed housing--all of these might help people so that no matter their educational credentials (or lack thereof), they will be able to make enough money to support a family, and no longer stress over how many degrees they possess or what their GPA is.
I basically agree, but would invert the question: can high school be changed so that its diploma means someone is actually fit for most jobs? As recently as 1990 -- yes, to me that's the recent past -- I worked at a small Silicon Valley company that hired PhDs from nearby universities ... and graduates of nearby high schools. Into different roles, sure, but the no-college kids were welcomed.
Or maybe the minimum wage should be 20 for people with Bachelor's degrees.
Good inversion. I wonder if it can be, in that so many positions/functions can now be handled by technology if desired. For instance, the need for an assistant to schedule is obviated by new technology where everyone does their own scheduling. Friends have told me about their workplaces where assistants and other support staff have been relentlessly reduced.
The ghastly truth is that my job can be done by someone without a university degree. I *was* doing it before I got my degree. Certainly I am better now than I was then, but most of the difference is the fruit of experience and on-the-job learning. I too could have gone to a trade school, or its modern equivalent.
"Ghastly" is the word. The fiction must be maintained to a) keep the college-industrial complex humming; b) maintain a permanent underclass; and c) foster permanent inequality justified by a veneer of meritocracy.
I agree with this; credential inflation benefits no one and is partly responsible for the insane rise in college tuition. I often hear people say that college should be free or very inexpensive, “like it is in Europe.” Well, I live in Europe and my son goes to college in the UK (saving us a lot of money), and what most Americans don’t realize is that in Europe only about 10 to 20 percent of high school graduates—the academic elite as measured by nationwide exams—go on to university. Most European kids take apprenticeships or work-trainings after high school. These programs are highly regarded, have challenging curricula, and—the most important aspect—lead directly to a well-paid job. The distinction between university education and job-training is actually quite clear: is the topic something you learn by reading, writing, and discussing? Do you require lab facilities? Is the subject so abstruse that you will need to work through problem sets with your professor and other students in order to fully grasp it? Or, alternately, is the topic better approached through real-world experience? If it’s the last, it makes more sense and is an order of magnitude cheaper to learn through an apprenticeship rather than a four-year college degree that many students will be unable to complete.
My father always said that the disappearance of trade schools was a bad thing since not everyone was cut out for college.
american schooling has a number of purposes which have been grafted one upon the other over the decades, the more that are grafted on, the more unwieldly the thing gets. prior to mandatory schooling it was about a certain kind of education (not schooling). Most who went prior to mandatory schooling seemed to stop by 8th grade, then went into trades of one sort or another. a relatively small percentage graduated high school, even fewer attended college. my great-grandfather, to graduate high school learned what was called the scientific-latin curriculum which necessitated higher mathematics, 2-3 foreign languages, and an extensive study of world history, among other things. but as mandatory schooling was instituted the focus shifted to indoctrinating immigrants into the american myth, in other words, to making a citizenry attached to the idea of being an american. it shifted again as industrialization expanded, creating a functional work force, then again as it became a baby sitting service for their industrial-employed parents (which it still mostly is). i think it telling that when mandatory schooling was instituted it was resisted most of all by the young, many of whom would rather have worked than spent their time sitting, immobile in class rooms. Now the schools have grafted more to the curriculum, much of it relatively nonsensical. I never did fit into the system, i found it all pretty hypocritical which many adolescents do, and quit to make my own way, designing my own education and mentors as part of the process. the whole thing needs to be broken apart and redesigned from the ground up. and yeah, you are right, the current goals are inconsistent.
It appears the SAT’s have a significant correlation to lifetime financial success, but where a person goes to college does not. So raspberries to all the private colleges out there; it appears people are scamming themselves by paying that high tuition. A rather gratifying result: the privileged are wasting their money and should be sending their kids to community college. Everyone else, if rational and not giving in to envy, should be rejoicing while mocking them. :)
The kids, of course, go to college to drink and have sex in their prime partying years. And I believe that's a very rational decision, really.
I bet both are cheaper at the University of Wisconsin....
It's not lost to time! https://www.peoplespolicyproject.org/2018/03/20/the-sat-can-level-the-playing-field-in-education/
Aha! Will update.