The Harvard admissions lawsuit
As a Rutgers alumni who had a fantastic educational experience there, as well as other great personal and professional experiences, I agree with you on the misplaced priority on the Ivy League.
That said, I have seen those with Ivy League schools on their resumes get put on the top of the pile of job applicants in places I've worked. (And as your info above may indicate -- there is also a networking advantage to going to school with the wealthy and powerful).
Although I think their prestige is overstated, the Ivy League colleges are influencers: What they prioritize, many parents and teens will prioritize. I read recently that community service became a 'thing' as it came to be viewed as a positive on their college applications. The Ivy Leagues can decide to be role models, or elitists... or, what they seem to be doing now: playing at being both (by whatever is convenient at the moment, or works out best for them economically).
Runner_Guy said:
Although I do not support racial preferences based on diversity, I do think that diversity has an educational value and the diversity at a flagship state college is so much more multifaceted than it would be at an Ivy League college, let alone Harvard.
And if a state that bans racial preferences has a population that’s 14 percent black and flagship campus enrollment is 4 percent black, that’s a meager, sub-Harvard diversity facet, but so be it.
FYI... if anyone is curious (I was)
Jimmy Carter only had three people in his cabinet with Ivy League degrees. Cyrus Vance and James R. Schlesinger went to Harvard. Harold Brown went to Columbia.
Muskie went to Bates; Civiletti went to Hopkins.
Walter Mondale went to the University of Minnesota.
DaveSchmidt said:
Runner_Guy said:And if a state that bans racial preferences has a population that’s 14 percent black and flagship campus enrollment is 4 percent black, that’s a meager, sub-Harvard diversity facet, but so be it.
Although I do not support racial preferences based on diversity, I do think that diversity has an educational value and the diversity at a flagship state college is so much more multifaceted than it would be at an Ivy League college, let alone Harvard.
From John McWhorter. A must read.
https://www.the-american-interest.com/2018/06/28/affirming-disadvantage/
The article says:
Say that an upper-middle class black student is hobbled from tippy-top performance by the residual racism of 2018 and you are calling her a weakling.
Um... so does this mean that the OCR complaint against SOMSD was really a fake?
The ideal of diversity is in practice, undermined by the reality of self-segregation on campus and to some extent administration-tolerated, if not encouraged, separatism. I'm thinking here of single race dorms, which I know exist (or existed) at my son's university.
sprout said:
The article says:
Say that an upper-middle class black student is hobbled from tippy-top performance by the residual racism of 2018 and you are calling her a weakling.Um... so does this mean that the OCR complaint against SOMSD was really a fake?
Like Runner_Guy, McWhorter views race as a pigmentary quirk that is no longer the disadvantage it once was in white-dominant America. It’s racist, he says, to see racism as a still destructive and obstructive force. OK. It’s been clear for a while that we’re not all on the same wavelength here.
Also like R_G, McWhorter tilts at ghosts: “You are also leaving a perfectly valuable objection from assorted non-black people working with obstacles such as poverty, illness, family tragedy, and even racism (as some Asians can legitimately claim) as to why they don’t deserve the same special treatment or why this black student does.”
Let’s remember who’s calling whom undeserving in this debate. On the contrary, I say let them all seek an edge in admissions because of their “spunk.” I like spunk!
What gets lost when someone complains that some subjective factor knocks an applicant “down the stack” is that there are lots of subjective factors, and that others offer a chance to bounce up. Yes, one quality alone can prove decisive in lifting Applicant B over Applicant A. It’s not always that B is black and A is Asian.
For what it’s worth on one of McWhorter’s other points, my son probably had a diversity advantage getting into his West Coast school because he was a Northeasterner. I don’t think that’s given him an inferiority complex there.
bub said:
The ideal of diversity is in practice, undermined by the reality of self-segregation on campus and to some extent administration-tolerated, if not encouraged, separatism. I'm thinking here of single race dorms, which I know exist (or existed) at my son's university.
Presuming the single-race dorms were for minorities, I’d say chances are their diversity exposure to whites by the time they got to college was already adequate.
ETA: One may ask, “Doesn’t it cut into their usefulness as vessels of diversity exposure themselves?” Not when they’re off the clock.
I don't object to minority students in a majority white college having the option of living in an all-minority dorm.
That said, It was a good thing for me as a college student many, many years to share housing with persons who were not Caucasians from Minnesota. It was a good thing for my NJ daughter, not so long ago. I'm glad those dorms were not racial monocultures.
DaveSchmidt said:
bub said:Presuming the single-race dorms were for minorities, I’d say chances are their diversity exposure to whites by the time they get to college is already adequate.
The ideal of diversity is in practice, undermined by the reality of self-segregation on campus and to some extent administration-tolerated, if not encouraged, separatism. I'm thinking here of single race dorms, which I know exist (or existed) at my son's university.
ETA: One may ask, “Doesn’t it cut into their usefulness as vessels of diversity exposure themselves?” Not when they’re off the clock.
Not entirely sure I understand the ETA. Are you suggesting the value of the diversity that justifies race as an advantage in admissions - being together, learning from each other - only occurs in the classroom or, what, passing each other in the quad but not form living together? You serious? I don't think I'm unusual in saying that my deepest, most long lasting connections with other college students came from living with them, not from some fantasy Socratic method type classroom experience. Most kids do not raise their hands in class and are often half asleep. God knows what its like now with cell phones thrown in.
bub said:
You serious?
Only half. I was anticipating that someone — anyone — might wonder why a supporter of diversity preferences wasn’t bothered by a separate dorm. Just my way of poking fun at the idea that students aren’t there for any other reason.
DaveSchmidt said:
For what it’s worth on one of McWhorter’s other points, my son probably had a diversity advantage getting into his West Coast school because he was a Northeasterner. I don’t think that’s given him an inferiority complex there.
And, for what it’s worth, an article from today’s Times in which students do express insecurities:
Testimony in the Harvard admissions trial concluded yesterday. Judge Allison Burroughs said that she was expecting more briefs and perhaps another round of arguments from the lawyers, and that she might not make a decision until February.
https://www.nytimes.com/2018/11/02/us/harvard-trial-college-admissions.html
"Federal Judge Allison D. Burroughs ruled Tuesday to uphold Harvard’s race-conscious admissions policies in the lawsuit filed against the University by anti-affirmative action group Students for Fair Admissions.
“Ensuring diversity at Harvard relies, in part, on race conscious admissions. Harvard’s admission program passes constitutional muster in that it satisfies the dictates of strict scrutiny,” Burroughs wrote in her decision."
............
"In her ruling, Burroughs wrote that Harvard’s policies meet the Supreme Court’s precedent for acceptable affirmative action admission policies.
“Ultimately, the Court finds that Harvard has met its burden of showing that its admissions process complies with the principles articulated by the Supreme Court in Fisher II,” she wrote."
https://www.thecrimson.com/article/2019/10/2/admissions-suit-decision/
eta - Here's the decision:
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This might be thread drift, but oh well...
What I really wish is that we as a society and as parents would be less caught up in the Ivy League colleges, especially Harvard, Yale, and Princeton. There are many other colleges out there with brilliant student bodies, and the quality of education one receives in a class isn't necessarily higher at all from a prestigious college. As a parent, I wonder if it is better in the long run for a student to be a high-performer at a "good college" rather than a low-performer at an elite college.
Although I do not support racial preferences based on diversity, I do think that diversity has an educational value and the diversity at a flagship state college is so much more multifaceted than it would be at an Ivy League college, let alone Harvard.
I think it is unhealthy for our society how dominant the Ivy League -- especially Harvard, Yale, and Princeton -- have become over the last few decades.
Before the 1950s, Harvard was mostly just a New England school and it had an acceptance rate over 70%. The "Ivy League" was just a developing football conference, not a list of the ultimate trophies of American higher ed and social status.
Franklin Roosevelt went to Harvard, but he only had four other Ivy Leaguers in his cabinet; Henry Morganthau went to Cornell, Henry Stimson went to Yale, Francis Biddle went to Harvard, and James Forrestal went to Princeton. Only two other cabinet members went to elite non-Ivies; Harold Ickes went to the University of Chicago and Frances Perkins went to Mt. Holyoke.
Some members of FDR's cabinet went to colleges most people have never heard of. Cordell Hull went to National Normal University in Ohio.
It's the similar story for John F. Kennedy. Douglas Dillon and RFK went to Harvard, Arthur Goldberg went to Northwestern and Abraham Ribicoff went to the University of Chicago. No one else went to an elite college.
By contrast, Obama's cabinet was always dominated by the Ivy League and the like. In the case of Arne Duncan as Secretary of Education, I guess in Obama's mind the Harvard degree compensated for the fact he never went to a public school and never was a teacher.
By now, nine/nine Supreme Court justices went to Harvard or Yale for law school*. (RBG finished her law degree at Columbia due to her husband's career).
The upper echelon of government is only symbolic of a larger pattern. Half of Fortune 500 CEOs went to just 12 colleges too.