<p>Canuck-
I for one agree with you. It isn’t that I don’t think that Ivy league schools aren’t great schools, they are, and the reputations they have is not just pr, they have been able to attract the best and brightest, despite the legacy stuff, and as a result they also can attract great teachers and so forth. </p>
<p>You are correct,too, when some talk about things like meritocracy as an argument against things like affirmative action, that things should be based on merit, and talking out of both sides of their mouths. Colin Powell made a remark about that, he said that those upset about affirmative action that helps a relatively few number of people often were defenders of systems that did just that, like legacies. (One of the ironies is that conservatives often point to Colin Powell as an example of someone who made it ‘without Affirmative action’. What they leave out is that as talented as he is, if it weren’t for affirmative action type policies, he probably would not have risen as high as he did. The armed forces adopted policies that targeted talented, bright, promising minority officers in the late 1950’s, realizing that the culture of the military still was heavily influenced by the segregated Army of past years…). One of the interesting things is if you look closely at the legacy system, the one thing that defenders of it throw out there is the idea that 'these kids and their families donate a lot of money, that lets other kids go there and have scholarships, the library, etc"…if in fact legacy students were, as claimed (and seemingly disproven) simply better equipped, why bring that up? The reason is they know darn well the legacy process doesn’t bring extra benefit to the school, that legacy kids are not in many cases ‘the best of the best’, but it is an old tradition, one that those running the schools were part of as well, and so forth. </p>
<p>It is why Ayn Rand and her followers are not telling the whole truth, because as with legacy admissions, they don’t want to point out the unearned privilege many of them have had in achieving success. Despite what that horrible woman said, few people are successful do to their own efforts alone; it takes mentoring, it takes access to networks, it takes of course hard work and talent, and often what gets you the access and the networks is who you are. The legacy kids at the Ivies get in there because of a network of wealth and privilege (and class as well), and because they are there, they hook up with other people (with or without the help of family and rich friends) and are given access others don’t have…David MaCollough the historian has said that Americans operate under the myth of the self made man, the rugged individualist, doing things by the sweat of their own brow and such, but as he says, investigate their life and you will find probably 10 people who have helped them on that path. Andrew Carnegie, who was a bright, talented man, would not have been successful had he a)not been a Scotch Protestant b)not had the luck of being discovered by mentors and c)not had the opportunity of time and place to be where such a fortune could be wrought (read the last Carnegie Biography, trying to remember the author’s name).</p>
<p>With the Ivies, you also have to look at the history of them. By the 19th century, these were the stomping grounds of the ‘old money elite’, where they were being groomed to take over in the familiy business, whether it was politics, industry,mercantile or finance, or in many cases, living off the money an entrepeneurial ancestor left and learning the social niceties of Greek and Latin and Elocution,and maybe Math and perhaps some science if they were inclined to it (like Theodore Roosevelt, for example). In one of my better college courses, the professor pointed out the tension between the old guard elite, who were anti imperialist, bound by a rigid social structure and were champions of 'traditonal culture as opposed to the nouvea rich industrialists, with their crass attention to fortune and lack of caring about ‘tradition’. And it was a war of sorts; there is a reason that MIT, which was founded by industrialists who knew they needed scientists and engineers to drive their business, is in Cambridge alongside Harvard (where the idea of a college education being about pragmatic skills needed in industry would have been considered gauche and ridiculous), it was a direct shot across the bow. It was not until the turn of the 20th century that Ivies caught up to the idea of practical education…</p>
<p>The legacy system in a sense, at least at the ivies, reflects those old school values, where the idea is to get kids of a certain class into “Alma Mater”, so they too can carry on the chain, meet the right people, and then get out there. It obviously is not the same as the 19th century, it is a bit more then a finishing school, but the big point about accessing networks and such is still quite valid IMO.</p>