Amazing! So this and another convo have given me a research idea. There are a few ideas for alternative admissions models kicking around. I think it's perhaps time to run some focus groups to figure out which model best inspires a sense of fairness for the public. Stay tuned!
Glad to see you taking this on! But are you also going to take on the problem of admissions criteria? I think that the way in which elite universities conduct their admissions processes is part of the reason for the mistrust.
I'm not talking about the race issues that were litigated in the Supreme Court. I'm really focusing on the notion that the first 2000 people who are admitted to Harvard every year (the standard number of admits, I believe) are somehow better or more deserving than the next 2000, the cohort that didn't quite make it in. The way in which universities conduct the admissions process makes it sound as if there's a linear scale in which all applicants can be ranked, and people at the top are "entitled" to admission, while those lower down are not entitled and less "deserving." In reality, there are thousands more people who would flourish and be a credit to Harvard who don't get admitted. But the fact that they're essentially equivalent to the lucky admits gets lost.
Once you start to believe that certain people "deserve" admissions to certain schools, you fuel many arguments we shouldn't want to fuel, including those that won recently in the Supreme Court.
Believe it or not, when I was a grad student in the Harvard gov department, I once gave a lecture arguing for lottery-based admissions for everyone over a certain threshold! I think Duncan Kennedy also argued for this in one of his publications. This idea isn't new, so why hasn't it gone anywhere? Why do universities think that the current model is better?
In any event, I'm very glad you're arguing for it now!
Amazing! So this and another convo have given me a research idea. There are a few ideas for alternative admissions models kicking around. I think it's perhaps time to run some focus groups to figure out which model best inspires a sense of fairness for the public. Stay tuned!
Nothing wrong with “nerds”! 😉
Glad to see you taking this on! But are you also going to take on the problem of admissions criteria? I think that the way in which elite universities conduct their admissions processes is part of the reason for the mistrust.
I'm not talking about the race issues that were litigated in the Supreme Court. I'm really focusing on the notion that the first 2000 people who are admitted to Harvard every year (the standard number of admits, I believe) are somehow better or more deserving than the next 2000, the cohort that didn't quite make it in. The way in which universities conduct the admissions process makes it sound as if there's a linear scale in which all applicants can be ranked, and people at the top are "entitled" to admission, while those lower down are not entitled and less "deserving." In reality, there are thousands more people who would flourish and be a credit to Harvard who don't get admitted. But the fact that they're essentially equivalent to the lucky admits gets lost.
Once you start to believe that certain people "deserve" admissions to certain schools, you fuel many arguments we shouldn't want to fuel, including those that won recently in the Supreme Court.
Argued for a lottery above a basic merit threshold here!
https://www.theatlantic.com/ideas/archive/2025/04/stem-academia-universities-citizenship-civics/682384/?gift=iriDSrxlDYm9llQtHCDnS6jJmZ8DHSC-CgexoVYhk7w&utm_source=copy-link&utm_medium=social&utm_campaign=share
Believe it or not, when I was a grad student in the Harvard gov department, I once gave a lecture arguing for lottery-based admissions for everyone over a certain threshold! I think Duncan Kennedy also argued for this in one of his publications. This idea isn't new, so why hasn't it gone anywhere? Why do universities think that the current model is better?
In any event, I'm very glad you're arguing for it now!