Honest to goodness, I think 99.9% of people in the U.S. never give Harvard a single thought. We know it's where rich people go, but it's kind of like Saint-Tropez or Vichyssoise. Each state has a land-grant university, and as Hubert Horatio Humphrey used to say, "we are pleased as punch" about that. (HHH a grad. of University of Minnesota).
I'm glad you got that off your chest, and I agree with every last word.
My wife has had a long career working at community colleges. The CC's accept everyone who applies. That, to me, represents something really good about education in the U.S.
Great rant, Freddie. Too bad for those hard-working Asian kids if their parents ain't got the dough. Not racist AT ALL. Thanks Harvard for policing our aristocracy!
Core point: " You can’t make Harvard 'fair!' You can’t make it 'equal!' Thinking otherwise is absolutely bonkers to me. Harvard exists to make sure our society is not equal. That is Harvard’s function."
Regardless of the degree to which admissions is corrupt... I mean, that's actually kind of a secondary problem, right? Harvard's admissions committee could be a cabal of pure-hearted monks dedicated to finding only the very best and smartest and kindest and prettiest students in the world. It could be a computer that ONLY looks at SAT scores. It wouldn't change the fact that the function of elite universities in our society is to award credentialing that provides (a significant boost to) access to wealth, power, influence, professional attainment, and so on. I suppose you could argue that isn't even always a bad thing -- why should society be entirely equal? and Harvard is somewhat more meritocratic that pure aristocracy -- but social stratification is indeed the end result and primary function. (They also fund some research, I believe.)
I feel like I just got out of the moshpit at a Slipknot concert after reading this. I'm ready to storm the ramparts and tear shit down. I like my music angry and evidently my essays angry as well.
not only funny but brilliant and totally cuts to the point. The powerful will NEVER support the common people. Ever. Places like Harvard will NEVER support the common people. The 1960s were a time when power to the people did in fact have a real impact. Did it last. No. Why? Because the powerful and rich looked at everything that happened and figured out how to short circuit it ever happening again. And the one major thing they did was to make sure that the common people who went to college would be forced into indentured servitude to do so. Why do you think that one of the few things you can't get out of through bankruptcy is student loans? The last thing they need is a bunch of liberally educated young people who have time on their hands to make their lives miserable. So, yeah, Harvard sucks but more than that it is evil in the true sense of the word. It is NOT a democratic institution, it will never be. The only way to win the game is not to play. So . . . instead of Harvard get the cheapest degree you can, start with community college and then go to the cheapest 4 year college for the last two years. Then find the cheapest Ph.D. program in the country if you want to go that far and get your degree there. No one cares where a degree comes from except the rich and powerful. But just remember that no matter where you go to college, whether you get a Ph.D. or not, most graduates now are stuck as adjunct teachers, or as gig workers, or can find no job at all. The game is not worth the candle. Period.
"Is it not obvious that the whole scheme of fixing our racial inequalities by starting at the top by selecting some tiny number of Black overachievers and hoping the good times trickle down has failed, over and over again, since the start of desegregation? You can’t make Harvard “fair!” You can’t make it “equal!”"
But there IS a way Fed policy can influence them to admit more of whatever group is desired - tax code changes. You know that Harvard is non-profit hedge fund, with a college front, as you state "reap insane profits from the interest on their endowments alone, "
Limit not-for-profit status to those colleges with no more than 1% from the top 1%, no more than 10% from the top 10%, and at least 50% from those at the 50% or lower after tax rankings from the IRS. All of the elite colleges are too full of elite kids and "obviously future elite" kids. That's what admissions is mostly about.
The real purpose of scrapping SAT scores is to allow elite colleges to discriminate against poor & middle class Asian who are more highly qualified than Blacks or Hispanics, so it's less objectively obvious they are discriminating.
You don't quite mention how Harvard skimming off the cream of Blacks, so as to fill the bottom ranks of the classes they take, is like an intellectual castration. Instead of being one of the Biggest Fish in a smaller Black pond, like at Howard, they are the butt of "Low IQ Black affirmative action charity case" jokes & thoughts by the far more academically qualified other students.
Still, they get very high paying token Black jobs in lots of corporations who, too, are looking for the "best Blacks" available for their real but non-explicit Black quotas.
I'm now still a supporter of "colorblind", but am seriously wondering if maybe "separate but equitable" isn't possibly better.
> You understand that what Harvard and its feckless peers would like is to admit fewer students whose Korean parents clear $40,000 a year from their convenience stores, right?
THANK YOU for spelling this out. The entire post was cathartic. (And thanks for an extra weekend post! They are always an unexpected treat.)
I don’t know if my Asian kid will be interested in schools like Harvard one day. I certainly don’t plan to encourage it (state school worked out fine for me). But I’m sick of these elite institutions doing everything they can to reduce the number of Asian students while dressing it up as social justice. The hypocrisy is nauseating.
Pretty much the tone I adapt when anyone gives me shit about my alma mater, Stuyvesant H.S., and the paucity of African-Americans in incoming classes. Basically, just listening to lectures from people who never went to Stuyvesant and how somehow the admissions process is so fucked up, when Stuyvesant is not the problem in NYC; clearly the issue is inequality in K-8 that becomes manifest in the NYC HS testing system.
Basically, the Clueless Do Gooders would like to eliminate testing as the entry requirement for very successful NYC public HS. . . a school that--ironically-- requires testing almost every day during the school year. How will that work out for those who can't take tests?
As someone who’s been somewhat forced to teach ACT/SAT prep to high schoolers, it’s just plain true that the best way to do well on the language section of these tests is to be an awesome, fluent reader by reading an absolute shitton of books for 12 years before taking the test. It’s what I did, and got a perfect score on the language section of both tests without any test prep. Now, did it help that my parents spoke with a high level of vocabulary and used complex syntax, that both of them had masters degrees? Sure. But I have met kids whose parents didn’t finish high school who just love reading, and who got great SAT scores but have mediocre GPAs because their high school classes are boring and below their reading level, and those kids should be able to go to the flagship state school college for free, and if state schools start doing what Harvard does because it’s Harvard (like the California system) then we should really be ashamed of ourselves.
You're clearly super p*ssed about this, and you make some good points, but what I don't understand is, what do you see as the solution? If you were God Emperor of the United States, would you:
1. Force Harvard & Co. to accept all applicants; watch the value of a Harvard degree plummet;
2. Accept that not everyone can/will/should get a degree from Harvard; reorganize society so that non-Harvard-degreed people can have a secure, prosperous life (this is a wonderful goal, but how would you accomplish it? Universal basic income? Funded/distributed how? How to avoid the inevitable Law of Unintended Consequences? This could be a whole series of posts by itself);
3. Start a Marxist revolution, abolish Harvard as a symbol of vile capitalist depravity, let the people seize the means of production (new and improved, this time with 100% less totalitarianism/purges/starvation);
4. Something else?
I'm not trying to troll you; I sincerely would like to know.
Honest to goodness, I think 99.9% of people in the U.S. never give Harvard a single thought. We know it's where rich people go, but it's kind of like Saint-Tropez or Vichyssoise. Each state has a land-grant university, and as Hubert Horatio Humphrey used to say, "we are pleased as punch" about that. (HHH a grad. of University of Minnesota).
I'm glad you got that off your chest, and I agree with every last word.
My wife has had a long career working at community colleges. The CC's accept everyone who applies. That, to me, represents something really good about education in the U.S.
To borrow your colorful metaphor, Fuck Harvard.
This is beautiful, and I agree with every last word. "Harvard exists to ensure society is not equal. that is it's function." is pure gold.
That being said, the rhetoric here is a good deal more passionate and perhaps heated
than your baseline. If that's intentional, it's awesome, and do more like it. If it wasn't entirely intentional, someone needed to tell you that.
Great rant, Freddie. Too bad for those hard-working Asian kids if their parents ain't got the dough. Not racist AT ALL. Thanks Harvard for policing our aristocracy!
Core point: " You can’t make Harvard 'fair!' You can’t make it 'equal!' Thinking otherwise is absolutely bonkers to me. Harvard exists to make sure our society is not equal. That is Harvard’s function."
Regardless of the degree to which admissions is corrupt... I mean, that's actually kind of a secondary problem, right? Harvard's admissions committee could be a cabal of pure-hearted monks dedicated to finding only the very best and smartest and kindest and prettiest students in the world. It could be a computer that ONLY looks at SAT scores. It wouldn't change the fact that the function of elite universities in our society is to award credentialing that provides (a significant boost to) access to wealth, power, influence, professional attainment, and so on. I suppose you could argue that isn't even always a bad thing -- why should society be entirely equal? and Harvard is somewhat more meritocratic that pure aristocracy -- but social stratification is indeed the end result and primary function. (They also fund some research, I believe.)
I feel like I just got out of the moshpit at a Slipknot concert after reading this. I'm ready to storm the ramparts and tear shit down. I like my music angry and evidently my essays angry as well.
not only funny but brilliant and totally cuts to the point. The powerful will NEVER support the common people. Ever. Places like Harvard will NEVER support the common people. The 1960s were a time when power to the people did in fact have a real impact. Did it last. No. Why? Because the powerful and rich looked at everything that happened and figured out how to short circuit it ever happening again. And the one major thing they did was to make sure that the common people who went to college would be forced into indentured servitude to do so. Why do you think that one of the few things you can't get out of through bankruptcy is student loans? The last thing they need is a bunch of liberally educated young people who have time on their hands to make their lives miserable. So, yeah, Harvard sucks but more than that it is evil in the true sense of the word. It is NOT a democratic institution, it will never be. The only way to win the game is not to play. So . . . instead of Harvard get the cheapest degree you can, start with community college and then go to the cheapest 4 year college for the last two years. Then find the cheapest Ph.D. program in the country if you want to go that far and get your degree there. No one cares where a degree comes from except the rich and powerful. But just remember that no matter where you go to college, whether you get a Ph.D. or not, most graduates now are stuck as adjunct teachers, or as gig workers, or can find no job at all. The game is not worth the candle. Period.
What passionate truth!
"Is it not obvious that the whole scheme of fixing our racial inequalities by starting at the top by selecting some tiny number of Black overachievers and hoping the good times trickle down has failed, over and over again, since the start of desegregation? You can’t make Harvard “fair!” You can’t make it “equal!”"
But there IS a way Fed policy can influence them to admit more of whatever group is desired - tax code changes. You know that Harvard is non-profit hedge fund, with a college front, as you state "reap insane profits from the interest on their endowments alone, "
Limit not-for-profit status to those colleges with no more than 1% from the top 1%, no more than 10% from the top 10%, and at least 50% from those at the 50% or lower after tax rankings from the IRS. All of the elite colleges are too full of elite kids and "obviously future elite" kids. That's what admissions is mostly about.
The real purpose of scrapping SAT scores is to allow elite colleges to discriminate against poor & middle class Asian who are more highly qualified than Blacks or Hispanics, so it's less objectively obvious they are discriminating.
You don't quite mention how Harvard skimming off the cream of Blacks, so as to fill the bottom ranks of the classes they take, is like an intellectual castration. Instead of being one of the Biggest Fish in a smaller Black pond, like at Howard, they are the butt of "Low IQ Black affirmative action charity case" jokes & thoughts by the far more academically qualified other students.
Still, they get very high paying token Black jobs in lots of corporations who, too, are looking for the "best Blacks" available for their real but non-explicit Black quotas.
I'm now still a supporter of "colorblind", but am seriously wondering if maybe "separate but equitable" isn't possibly better.
> You understand that what Harvard and its feckless peers would like is to admit fewer students whose Korean parents clear $40,000 a year from their convenience stores, right?
THANK YOU for spelling this out. The entire post was cathartic. (And thanks for an extra weekend post! They are always an unexpected treat.)
I don’t know if my Asian kid will be interested in schools like Harvard one day. I certainly don’t plan to encourage it (state school worked out fine for me). But I’m sick of these elite institutions doing everything they can to reduce the number of Asian students while dressing it up as social justice. The hypocrisy is nauseating.
Pretty much the tone I adapt when anyone gives me shit about my alma mater, Stuyvesant H.S., and the paucity of African-Americans in incoming classes. Basically, just listening to lectures from people who never went to Stuyvesant and how somehow the admissions process is so fucked up, when Stuyvesant is not the problem in NYC; clearly the issue is inequality in K-8 that becomes manifest in the NYC HS testing system.
Basically, the Clueless Do Gooders would like to eliminate testing as the entry requirement for very successful NYC public HS. . . a school that--ironically-- requires testing almost every day during the school year. How will that work out for those who can't take tests?
Very good. This post has converted me to a paying subscriber.
As someone who’s been somewhat forced to teach ACT/SAT prep to high schoolers, it’s just plain true that the best way to do well on the language section of these tests is to be an awesome, fluent reader by reading an absolute shitton of books for 12 years before taking the test. It’s what I did, and got a perfect score on the language section of both tests without any test prep. Now, did it help that my parents spoke with a high level of vocabulary and used complex syntax, that both of them had masters degrees? Sure. But I have met kids whose parents didn’t finish high school who just love reading, and who got great SAT scores but have mediocre GPAs because their high school classes are boring and below their reading level, and those kids should be able to go to the flagship state school college for free, and if state schools start doing what Harvard does because it’s Harvard (like the California system) then we should really be ashamed of ourselves.
Hi Freddie,
First time commenter here.
You're clearly super p*ssed about this, and you make some good points, but what I don't understand is, what do you see as the solution? If you were God Emperor of the United States, would you:
1. Force Harvard & Co. to accept all applicants; watch the value of a Harvard degree plummet;
2. Accept that not everyone can/will/should get a degree from Harvard; reorganize society so that non-Harvard-degreed people can have a secure, prosperous life (this is a wonderful goal, but how would you accomplish it? Universal basic income? Funded/distributed how? How to avoid the inevitable Law of Unintended Consequences? This could be a whole series of posts by itself);
3. Start a Marxist revolution, abolish Harvard as a symbol of vile capitalist depravity, let the people seize the means of production (new and improved, this time with 100% less totalitarianism/purges/starvation);
4. Something else?
I'm not trying to troll you; I sincerely would like to know.