“Top-tier universities are just idea factories—but portray themselves as arbiters of human worth”
This article, by a senior Yale professor reacting to the current admissions scandal, gets it right, imo. Universities admit the classes of students that the universities believe will best advance their mission of developing ideas. They shouldn’t be ashamed about this, and they should stop talking about how they admit “the best people”.
From that page:
Of course, it should be no surprise that, once merit become more important in college admission, the aristocrats with money deployed the money to ensure that their scions had great advantages in acquiring the needed merit (though the scions have to do more of the earning of it themselves than before). Some aristocratic privilege remains in legacy preference, and (if necessary) even more money can be deployed for a development boost.
@DeepBlue86 That’s, literally, a near perfect piece.
Thanks for posting and the professor for writing this honest assessment.
Rather dubious non sequitur at the end of the article to plead for legacy admissions as a form of cash-grab. The times, however, seem to be a-changing at elite institutions like Yale & Harvard:
https://www.thecrimson.com/article/2018/3/8/editorial-unjust-legacy/
“We are also perplexed by administrators’ claim that legacy admits are “better candidates on average” to enter Harvard. If this is true, then removing legacy status from consideration would not substantially diminish family connections to the University nor the donations that comes from them. It would simply render the admissions process more meritocratic… removing preferential treatment for legacies will be a welcome and overdue step forward.”
What a ridiculous piece. How can the author proclaim “The core of a university’s real mission is to produce and disseminate ideas” then go on to suggest that it’s essential to admit on grounds other than who will be best at producing and disseminating ideas. Even ignoring the legacy issue, how does he then justify giving preferences to athletes? And with regard to legacy and donors, saying “we’re only as corrupt as the church” isn’t exactly inspiring.
It’s a great piece, and I agree with much of it. But let us be aware it’s written from the bias of an academic insider.
If ideas were the sole mission of the university there would be less conflict–and a lot less clamoring for admission. We are now witnessing a pile-up collision of conflicting missions. Universities are more than idea factories. They also are gateways to social, political, and financial power. Believe me, all those 40,000 applicants are not just seeking monastic lives of mind.
Elite institutions are trying make impossible compromises. Are they elite clubs or meritocracies? Are they fundamentally academic institutions or social ones? Are they in the business of opening social mobility or preserving access to the highest echelons of power? Are they beholden to the public good, or to their private stakeholders? Right now they’re trying to do all of those things—and the result is the mishmash of selective admissions. Complex, non-transparent systems create conditions for abuse, hypocrisy, corruption—and we’ve seen all of that recently in the recent criminal case. The Harvard admissions trial put some of this hypocrisy on display with laudable examples of meritocracy alongside nakedly-plutocratic preferences for certain classes of applicants.
Personally, I don’t buy Witt’s apology for admissions preferences for children of wealthy donors. Of course he doesn’t have a problem with it–he holds an endowed chair at Yale! We can surmise the system works pretty well for him. Hearing him say we shouldn’t be embarrassed about these practices is like hearing a Congressman say we shouldn’t be ashamed of the campaign finance system favored by his big donors.
But I applaud his deflation of the “best and the brightest” myth. This sort of self-annointment is intellectually dishonest because it ignores the many factors that compete with, and often outweigh, the mission to “produce and disseminate ideas.” Any school that rejects 90-95 percent of applicants inevitably turns away more much talent than it accepts. As we all know, only a small portion of those are accepted purely on academic merit and the rest are smart kids who fulfill institutional goals (development, athletics, alumni relations, special talents, etc). At Harvard, one-third of students are family legacies and 10 percent were on the “dean’s interest list” of children of VIPs. Look, Harvard is a great school and if you have the opportunity by all means go but let’s not create mythologies about “best people.” Even worse, this sort of self-annointing is destructive because it creates a sense of entitlement and overconfidence among its beneficiaries–many of them future leaders. (It’s no coincidence that a book about the geniuses who got the USA into the Vietnam debacle was titled “The Best and the Brightest.” ).
I don’t want to pick on a few schools that happened to be in the news. The same applies to the whole list of schools. I think we should change the message we send to these kids. Instead of telling them they’re the best and the brightest we should remind them of their privilege–tell them they’re not only pretty smart but also incredibly fortunate to be admitted to this club (and yes, these schools still are more like private clubs or prep schools than they would care to acknowledge). With that good fortune comes responsibility. Personally, I think it’s high time we resurrected the old concept of noblesse oblige.
Actually, it is not just now that they are trying to do multiple goals. Vance Packard in his 1959 book The Status Seekers wrote that HYP took a large portion of their classes as academically ordinary students from SES-elite prep schools while taking the top academic students from anywhere (including public schools) to maintain an academically elite reputation. The former group was generally content with “gentleman’s C” grades needed to graduate and settle into the high SES world of inherited jobs, social status, social clubs, etc., while the latter did strive for excellence.
But it was presumably a lot less competitive then for both “academic merit” applicants and high-SES-preference (development and legacy) applicants than it is now. Of course, the high SES parents did respond by deploying money to help their kids earn the increasing levels of merit that became necessary, even with high-SES-preference (presumably, the prep schools catering to the SES-elite also upgraded their academic standards).
Cruel to whom? This seems like the type of image-statement that all colleges put forward.
@LadyMeowMeow - as we know, and as I think Witt would be willing to state, the Crimson’s debate with the admissions office is just kabuki. Legacies, like everyone else, are admitted holistically, which means that, based on all their attributes, the university believes it’s better to admit some of them rather than other applicants.
From the context of Fitzsimmons’ quote, he’s saying that legacies in general are holistically better than the average applicant, and the evidence elicited in the Harvard affirmative action case indicates that on the basis of stats alone, they probably are. They’re also likely to adjust well to college. Sometimes they’re athletes or have special talents. Finally, and importantly, they’re much more likely to be net subsidizers of the university and the rest of the student body, now and in the future, helping to make the experience of the Crimson editorial board possible in its present and future forms.
If Harvard sees fit to admit some number of legacies because it sees this as being in Harvard’s interest, Harvard has nothing to apologize for. On the contrary, their failure is in not being more explicit about it and leading students to believe that admissions is about some abstract measurable one-size-fits-all assessment of merit. This is Witt’s central point, and I agree with it.
If Harvard advertised and sold some number of spots a year to the highest bidder because they believed it would make the Harvard experience much better for everyone else, I would support it, on the basis that it’s their business and they’re in the best position to assess the pros and cons of it. You aren’t the arbiter of what it’s proper for Harvard to do, and the only reason you’re emboldened to think you are is because Harvard isn’t being transparent about who they choose to admit and exactly why (which, of course, they have no need to be).
@merc81 While I do agree with you – after all, no college is going to say they admit terrible students – I completely see what he’s saying, and quite frankly, I think it’s about time someone says it. Yes, every school wants good students who are good people, but I think that the focus on what Witt calls “applicants’ intrinsic merit” in top schools is completely “preposterous and cruel” to students.
In my opinion, I think most of this stems from the addition of non-academic items such as extracurricular activities, essays, letters of recommendation, etc. to college applications. Top colleges imply that these activities make someone a better applicant and, therefore, a better person; if they didn’t get in, maybe it’s because they didn’t volunteer enough in high school, weren’t creative enough in their essay, didn’t talk to their teacher enough in class. I don’t see a way to eliminate ECs or essays from college apps, but I also don’t see how I would magically be a “better” person or a better student if only I had played soccer or the piano. Colleges are about academics, but at times it seems that being intelligent is only a prerequisite to elite admissions, but the main focus.
Furthermore, colleges promote an idealized view of the admissions process: that admissions committees and their decisions are somehow infallible, seeking out and correctly identifying the best applicants, however that is defined. Students put a great deal of trust in the colleges they apply to – spending time, money, and considerable effort to fill out the application and pinning their hopes and dreams on a few people whom they will never meet. And yet, we have seen clearly that the admissions process is deeply flawed, or at least more biased than most people would hope. I even read one article in which an AO recalled a time when he rejected an entire state’s remaining applicants because he didn’t feel like reading all of them.
I can’t remember what school it was, but one small liberal arts college sent me a brochure once saying that they look at all of their applicants and “admit the kindest ones.” If I got rejected from that school, does that mean they think I’m unkind? Probably not, but they’re disguising their other motivations as simply a quest for kindness, and I don’t think it sends a great message to students. Honestly, I find most of the colleges’ rhetoric about the admissions process to be very off-putting, although I think they mean for it to be reassuring.
Sorry for the long post…I’ve spent a lot of time thinking about this, mostly when I should be filling out college applications! 
“Colleges are about academics, but at times it seems that being intelligent is only a prerequisite to elite admissions, but the main focus.”
I think you mean not the main focus. I agree with that. But the reason is pretty clear. US high school coursework, AP exams and standardized tests are quite easy (though include a lot of busy work), relative to exam systems in other countries, and don’t identify the most brilliant students very effectively. And in reality, US colleges don’t just want the most academically able students, because they have social objectives as well (if you want to see pure academic selection, go to Oxbridge, and try having dinner with a bunch of their mathematicians 
).
So elite colleges require you to spend a lot of time (say 20-30 hours per week for many years) on ECs, on the basis that if you can do that and still get excellent results in your academic work then you must be good (and dedicated). And if that 20-30 hours leads to some recognizable achievement in sports (especially ones they favor), arts or academic competitions then all the better for their social objectives.
@SuperSenior19 Great post. You’re going to do great wherever you end up!
@SuperSenior19 Exactly.
But the biggest problem is the broad population. We have invested in these illusions of prestige and “better than” in a big way.
Bumper stickers for mom and dad plus the right sweatshirts for “Junior” are really important for a vast slice of our society.
Usnwr would be out of business without its rankings.
It’s like the annual rite of fall.
I would bet the vast majority that clicks on the rankings each year are alums checking in to make sure their place in the world is secure
It’s not kids and it’s not the schools. It’s everyone. And guess what the funny thing is, it’s just as a meaningless, short lived and vapid as any other beauty pageant.
And by the way, I am guilty as charged myself. I am really starting to see things a bit more clearly.
@twoin18 You’re right, that’s exactly what I meant!
I’ve never though about ECs that way, but yes, you’re right – the ceiling effect on the ACT/SAT and most AP tests makes it impossible to winnow out the best students academically, and honestly, I think most people prefer it that way; who would want to take a test where even fewer people get top scores than they already do?
Overall, I would agree that including ECs and non-academic abilities in the college admissions process does, in general, benefit US students compared to other countries. Some may view college admissions here as cutthroat, but imagine taking the gaokao in China (which has driven many students to suicide, sadly) or even the baccalaureate in France (where about 12% of students fail senior year). And, due to social objectives and the sheer size of our country, America has so many universities that each looks for different things, so there really is a wide spectrum of college choices (English students choosing between Oxford and Cambridge don’t have that luxury). On the flip side, we have such a large population that not every exceptional student can go to, say, Harvard, hence the anxiety.
Like I said, I don’t think there’s a way to really change the system, but I think much of the rhetoric around college admissions could change. Actually, I think it goes beyond colleges – I read an interesting article the other day about how modern Americans expect their careers to provide personal fulfillment, as opposed to just money, and ultimately experience burnout and disillusionment that did not exist in the past. A lot of that really resonated with me in terms of the college process as well.
@privatebanker, I think it will be interesting to see how/whether the recent college admissions scandal changes things! Most kids I know don’t even think about the most elite colleges, honestly, but even without the Ivies and T20s, there’s still a lot of prejudice towards students who go to a state school versus out of state or private, despite ~50% of the senior class going in-state (and as much as I try, I’m “guilty as charged” too!).
At this point, truthfully, I think it’s gone the other way for me. I did apply to some “elite” schools, but even in the unlikely event I get in, I’m not sure if I’d feel comfortable at a school that propagates many of the same ideas that at this point I’m sick of. Sort of like fair trade chocolate – what matters more, the product or the process by which it is produced? I can’t honestly say that I know.
@MusakParent, that really means a lot, thanks! You just made my day (and possibly my month, depending on how all those applications turned out!). Like I said, I’ve spent waaaay too much time thinking about this, usually when I should be sleeping.
@SuperSenior19 Actually British students generally find the UK admissions system fair, even if they are unsuccessful in getting into Oxbridge, because they know it is simply looking for the cleverest students. Niall Ferguson described it well in an article I quoted here:
http://talk.qa.collegeconfidential.com/united-kingdom/2131394-oxbridge-admissions-criteria.html
Many people are willing to say that US admissions are biased in favor of someone else and/or against them. Almost no one says that in the UK, they’re just upset that they weren’t smart (or well prepared) enough.
And it’s strange to ask “who would want to take a test where even fewer people get top scores” when many applicants to elite colleges do things like AMC/AIME etc which are precisely designed to identify the very best students in a way that the SAT does not.
Thank you for posting that quote from The Crimson: “We are also perplexed by administrators’ claim that legacy admits are “better candidates on average” to enter Harvard. If this is true, then removing legacy status from consideration would not substantially diminish family connections to the University nor the donations that comes from them.”
Exactly. If those students would have been admitted without being given special preferences, then why not just stop giving them special preferences? Smart Harvard students who recognize the major flaw when the admissions office tries to get them to believe two contradictory things: Those students would get in without the big donor preference but we can’t put them in the same pile with other students.
Another ridiculous article published by The Atlantic. Worthless dribble.
Why is this Yale law professor making a fool of himself. His entire beef is that US colleges & universities should not claim that they admit the best people.
Question: Why was this article written, much less published ?
Answer: To capitalize on the current admissions bribery scandal as quickly as possible,
@twoin18 That’s true, but I think that – despite the frequent complaints! – most American students also see the current system as a way that they can improve their chances; for example, if they feel they aren’t good test-takers, they might use their ECs to show proficiency in a subject.
Maybe it’s a cultural difference? I think the second paragraph of the quote given in the link you posted – “I did not recall my role as that of a social engineer, [and] I did not care if they could row or tap dance” – highlights that well. But like you said, is pure intelligence really the only factor colleges could or should consider? I think many people would argue for both sides. In fact, it does seem that many UK students do feel that the system is biased against them, with Niall Ferguson stating that “the Oxbridge system has long been criticised for admitting too few pupils from state schools or ethnic minorities.”
Personally, I do think that the difficulty of the SAT/ACT is relevant. Few students take the AMC, and that only applies to math. Harder tests would only increase the pressure most students face, and quite frankly, it’s up for debate whether the ACT/SAT are even valid measures of intelligence; overall, yes, but it would be difficult to make a test that differentiates students at the highest levels without making it too much like either AP tests or IQ tests.
It’s just a different system.
But that goes back to my problem with the original article suggesting that “the core of a university’s real mission is to produce and disseminate ideas”. If that is the claim then why wouldn’t you want “pure intelligence” to be “the only factor colleges could or should consider”?
In reality that is not what US colleges are trying to do in admissions, and hence they are either not fulfilling or actively diverging from what the author claimed to be their “real mission” and instead engaging in social engineering. That may be all for the good, but then the author is trying to mislead his readers.
And it’s not in the least bit difficult to “make a test that differentiates students at the highest levels without making it too much like either AP tests or IQ tests.” Look up what a STEP paper entails for students wanting to do math.
What other universities use STEP as an admissions test?
Cambridge has long had a tradition of setting its own admissions tests even before STEP was introduced in 1987. Written exams combined with usually two in-person interviews by the fellows (which were really tests) made the admissions process academically rigorous, on top of what one could produce for grades and recommendations. The admit rate was around 33% back then (people who didn’t have a real chance did not apply.)
Not clear whether a subset of US schools will decide to implement such an academically rigorous test to find the most academically able students. In-person interviews may be too costly with so many applicants.