The Point of College, My Dear Glaucon...

“The people cry out for affirmative action, Socrates.”

“Why, my dear Glaucon?”

“To achieve greater representation of Black and Hispanic students in elite colleges and universities.”

“Under what moral principle?”

“Under the moral principle that diversity enhances the educational value of attending college, Socrates.”

“How is ‘diversity’ defined, Glaucon?”

“In a way that enables elite universities to harvest those students plausibly labeled ‘minorities’ who nevertheless have wealthy parents who will donate to the alumni fund.”

“This moral logic appears dubious.”

“Once, the justification was as a matter of reparations for racial injustice and to adjust for racial inequality in the selection system. This logic was deemed unconstitutional, but was much more defensible in basic terms of equity and moral sense.”

“Ah, but the colleges would simply game that logic too, my dear Glaucon.”

“Perhaps, Socrates, perhaps.”

“But then, the vast majority of students of any race will never even apply to an elite college. Any student of color who fails to gain entry into a truly elite college because of the death of affirmative action will have dozens of other excellent schools to choose from. Any student who is not on the elite path can go to hundreds of colleges that accept essentially anyone with a high school diploma. Why fixate on such a small percentage of students?”

“Because going to an elite college provides social and economic advantages in elite spheres, my dear Socrates, and the lack of visible diversity in elite spaces makes white elites uncomfortable.”

“I see. Why?”

“Because representation among elite classes has symbolic cultural valence that significantly outstrips its practical value.”

“Does college provide benefits to the vast majority of students who attend schools that are not competitive or elite?”

“They do, Socrates. There are economic and social advantages to attending college, such as a generic college wage and unemployment rate advantage.”

“And why does college convey economic and social advantages, my dear Glaucon?”

“Because it increases the human capital of the students, giving them skills and abilities they previously lacked.”

“Let’s accept as given that this claim is true, rather than that the hierarchy of college exclusivity simply reflects the underlying ability spectrum of a given college’s students. What do these students do with that human capital, Glaucon?”

“They sell it, Socrates, to employers. In turn, those employers utilize that human capital to generate profit, and grow the economy.”

“Where do those graduates sell their human capital?”

“LinkedIn or Indeed or Craigslist or whatever, Socrates”

“I meant ‘in the labor market,’ my dear Glaucon.”

“Ah. Right. In the labor market.”

“And what governs the price of any commodity in a market?”

“Supply and demand, my dear Socrates.”

“Supply and demand, indeed. And what happens to the monetary value of a commodity when we flood the market with a previously-scarce good?”

“Its value collapses.”

“And the college wage premium specifically, do we know that its power is a product of supply and demand?”

“Indeed, we know that very well, Socrates.”

“Thus, does the dogged attempt to make college universally accessible make any sense, my dear Glaucon, given that it will dramatically increase supply with no attendant increase in demand for college-educated workers?”

“It’s hard to say that it does.”

“Let’s return to those elite colleges, Glaucon. What does it mean to say that a college is ‘elite’?”

“It means that they accept only those students who have the most impressive academic credentials, Socrates.”

“In other words, it is difficult to gain entry to those colleges.”

“Indeed it is.”

“Is that incidental to their appeal, or are they pursued so ardently precisely because of that difficulty?”

“I must admit, exclusivity is indeed core to their appeal. We are impressed by someone’s college in inverse proportion to that college’s accessibility.”

“And thus is not the quest to make elite college attendance more accessible a charade as well, my dear Glaucon? Would achieving that goal not degrade the very goods that elite college educations are meant to provide?”

“It is, my dear Socrates, and indeed it would.”

“If Harvard’s acceptance rate was ten times larger, making the school ten times less exclusive, would that not immediately reduce the perceived social value of attending Harvard? Would Harvard graduates be pleased if their diploma was suddenly far less scarce of a scarce good?”

“It would, and they would not be pleased, and I get your point.”

“Is it not then the case, my dear Glaucon, that the fundamental problem at hand is that contemporary American liberals cannot accept that some of life’s goods are inherently zero-sum, and that they cannot be democratized or made egalitarian within a fundamentally inegalitarian economic system?”

“I get it, Socrates, I get it. But something troubles me. Are there not intrinsic goods that colleges provide that are not a function of exclusivity or labor market value - education itself, time for personal development and intellectual growth, an expansion of one’s worldview and moral imagination, the ability to dedicate significant time to interests and ideas that have no pecuniary value, social opportunity, a romantic marketplace, connections that one will enjoy for life?”

“There are indeed such benefits.”

“Then has the turn in the past half-century towards defining college as primarily an engine of social justice and economic mobility, advanced by politicians antagonistic to the labor movement that had traditionally served those ends, not fundamentally been a bargain with the devil for higher education?”

“So it would seem, my dear Glaucon. So it would seem.”