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You know meritocracy† was coined as term to satirise the problem of promoting "greatness", which is hard to measure and results in promoting conformity and class, as opposed to finding the creative minority who bring real progress?
Top colleges should select randomly from a pool of ‘good enough’ (2005)
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Re: Top colleges should select randomly from a pool of ‘good enough’ (2005)
#22Let's take it further. Colleges should be government-funded, and their level of discretionary funding should be based on how they are rated by their students and an independent assessment of their students' skills and general knowledge (to be administered before and after attending).
While there's something to be salvaged from your idea (I was amazed when some of my expensive courses were taught by a TA, and one we couldn't even understand), unis aren't just vocational schools.
One of the most important classes I took during my engineering degree was a philosophy 101 course I procrastinated until my last semester. 11 years later I somehow still periodically get to talk about Callicles (from Gorgias) with a stranger at a bar—it's happened twice—, and it's generally awakened me to reading philosophy, something I assumed was dull and impenetrable.
I have no idea how any of that could be measured on a standardized test, and it would be a shame if it was dropped from curriculum just because it can't easily be measured.
Uni is more than a vocational school that prepares us for the work camp.
Re: Top colleges should select randomly from a pool of ‘good enough’ (2005)
#23Commenters bringing up "meritocracy" don't seem to realize that fair meritocracies rarely exist in society. Often, your merit allows your to accumulate more merit, making the merit function geometric rather than linear. When the merit function is geometric, all it takes is a small change of fortune to start a rapid rise or a rapid decline.
"Turning 100 dollars into 120 is work. Turning 100 million into 110 million is inevitable."
Re: Top colleges should select randomly from a pool of ‘good enough’ (2005)
#24College should be a meritocracy, it's just that we want people to be able to be able to afford it and not be shit out of luck if they can't go to it. This would also reduce stress as you don't have to worry about not getting into a college if you know your life is going to turn out fine either way. Why has this goal been malformed and twisted around to the point where people are coming up with any solution that doesn…
I disagree that college should be a pure meritocracy. Students from disadvantaged backgrounds would have a really hard time getting into college, even though many are extremely smart and have great potential to succeed at college. Meritocracy is biased towards the privileged.
When that is the definition of meritocracy, I agree. But for me, true meritocracy implies an even playing field for everyone, and proper measures taken to correct it when it's uneven. In turn this implies: huge and long-term investments in public education, not to mention myriad other social reforms. Much more work than just giving everybody the same test and calling it a day, and calling that "meritocracy".
Re: Top colleges should select randomly from a pool of ‘good enough’ (2005)
#25College should be a meritocracy, it's just that we want people to be able to be able to afford it and not be shit out of luck if they can't go to it. This would also reduce stress as you don't have to worry about not getting into a college if you know your life is going to turn out fine either way. Why has this goal been malformed and twisted around to the point where people are coming up with any solution that doesn…
I disagree that college should be a pure meritocracy. Students from disadvantaged backgrounds would have a really hard time getting into college, even though many are extremely smart and have great potential to succeed at college. Meritocracy is biased towards the privileged.
> Students from disadvantaged backgrounds would have a really hard time getting into college, even though many are extremely smart and have great potential to succeed at college
If they’re smart and have potential to succeed, a meritocratic measure should rank them favourably. The problems with tipping the scales too far are (1) it’s inefficient, in that the total likely production of the student body is lowered and (2) it can backfire, by visibly creating a two-tier student body between those admitted on their own merits and those admitted for other reasons.
In the United States, we tend to tip the scale towards privilege through legacy admissions and institutional advancement programs. We also tip them towards social goals through affirmative action.
Re: Top colleges should select randomly from a pool of ‘good enough’ (2005)
#26Earlier quoted context omitted.
I think your argument is engaging in “what aboutism” and detracts from the issue this article is trying to address. The problem they are trying to address is that true meritocracy only exists in a perfect system, that is to say that you can not fairly compare individuals across different environments. More concretely one of the problems it is trying to account for the situations where wealth or post code privilege gi…
> There are often situations where students just performed better on a standardized test because they could afford a couch or had better teachers and not because they are “smarter” or more capable The solution is to make sure that students have good teachers and a couch (??) to become more capable, and not to waste limited elite teaching resource on less-capable students.
Impoverished regions are always going to have lower than average outcomes.
If you could afford enough teachers, with good training, on a impoverished region tax base, it would be revolutionary.
Re: Top colleges should select randomly from a pool of ‘good enough’ (2005)
#27We have lower-hanging fruit.
If a college accepts students taking government-subsidised loans, or otherwise receives any federal funding, it should not be permitted to consider legacy [1] or institutional advancement for admissions.
Re: Top colleges should select randomly from a pool of ‘good enough’ (2005)
#28[flagged]
You know meritocracy† was coined as term to satirise the problem of promoting "greatness", which is hard to measure and results in promoting conformity and class, as opposed to finding the creative minority who bring real progress? † https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Meritocracy#Etymology
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Re: Top colleges should select randomly from a pool of ‘good enough’ (2005)
#29College should be a meritocracy, it's just that we want people to be able to be able to afford it and not be shit out of luck if they can't go to it. This would also reduce stress as you don't have to worry about not getting into a college if you know your life is going to turn out fine either way. Why has this goal been malformed and twisted around to the point where people are coming up with any solution that doesn…
You're assuming that standardized testing procedures, high school grading, and college admissions officers have the precision necessary to correctly distinguish between the 99.9997% perfect candidate and the 99.9998% perfect candidate.
All I can say is that's nuts. I got a perfect score on my ACT, and I know for a fact that I guessed on some questions. Am I really a stronger applicant than somebody else who made less-lucky guesses?
There's a garbage-in/garbage-out problem here where people who desperately want "meritocracy" are deluding themselves into believing they can accurately identify "merit" down to some extremely fine precision.
Re: Top colleges should select randomly from a pool of ‘good enough’ (2005)
#30Commenters bringing up "meritocracy" don't seem to realize that fair meritocracies rarely exist in society. Often, your merit allows your to accumulate more merit, making the merit function geometric rather than linear. When the merit function is geometric, all it takes is a small change of fortune to start a rapid rise or a rapid decline. "Turning 100 dollars into 120 is work. Turning 100 million into 110 million is…
That's an enlightening comment, thank you.